Video killed the Cranium’s job….or did it?

In my teaching I have used video clips from YouTube and others sources in order to emphasise a point or help enhance students’ understanding about a particular aspect of English. Many may think that watching a bunch of Asian men and a female, prance around shooting tomatoes at trees would in no way help develop a student’s learning. 

Well in fact, clips from Mulan helped to introduce the students to aspects of irony, feminism, metaphor, rhyme and juxtaposition. Now who said that English wasn’t fun?? 

Film and animation is such a big part of this generation’s world that it would be futile to ignore its value and stick with the old and battered ideas about teaching, and especially about teaching English. Keeping a student engaged will inevitably promote their learning, and making a topic relevant or relatable to students is just one way of doing it. Technology has many advantages in teaching and one part of it is in film/video. Using video clips in my teaching has helped to break up the teaching episodes and uses the entertainment value to teach students. From Disney clips to comedy shows, all of these forms of video entertainment that our students have access to and are exposed to on a daily basis more often than not, can be utilised to extend their learning and make teaching that much more exciting than it already is. Sarcasm could have been implied there… SO…. Don’t forget the value of technology that you may view as merely useful for entertainment purposes; this is the stuff that our students love, use and are engaged with, so take advantage of it!

                                                  

BYOD

Now stop right there, this post does not refer to alcohol in any way, shape or form... except for the fact that I just mentioned it then. Moving on. At my school they have a system called BYOD which stands for Bring Your Own Device. Back in my day (not that far back), phones and the like were frowned upon and were for personal use only. The only time you could get away with having them out, was if you had a reliever and convinced them that you needed the calculator on your phone in an English class.

This school (and I am sure many others) encourages students to bring their own digital/technological devices such as smart phones (yep they all have them), iPads/tablets, laptops etc. for use in the classroom. As the technological age is advancing, the education system has finally caught onto the fact that it might be useful for students to know how to use said devices effectively. I walk into a classroom and more often than not, at least 2 students will have their iPads or laptops out ready to partake in the lesson (or so it would seem). Some students work faster and more effectively using these devices rather than pen and paper, and it is also helpful having someone ready to Google a question that the teacher can't answer (we don't know everything ok?!!).

This system has its negatives as well as its positives. Some teachers who have not yet faced the reality of technology taking over the world, do not allow their students to use devices in their class or very minimally. Other teachers have no qualms whatsoever about their students using them in the lesson but it is hard to keep tabs on who is actually using them to good effective and who is playing MiniClip Free Games (I don't know if anyone but me actually still does that). Therein lies the issue of using devices in the classroom. Some students are responsible and will do the work without getting off task. Other students, will abuse the privilege and this is evident when they have done minimal work for the lesson. It is also difficult for teachers to monitor their activity because if they go and hover over students, the students will immediately appear to be doing what they should be. The teacher may not observe the Facebook tab that is still open next to the OneDrive page that they appear to be doing work on.

Consequently the BYOD idea is effective in allowing students to develop practical knowledge about technology. It also appeals to students who struggle with pen and paper, however, many teachers have difficulty in monitoring students' use of their devices and they are not always required in the lesson. Students need to learn how to write with pen and paper regardless especially in exams (NCEA hasn't cottoned onto technology quite yet). An effective way of controlling the BYOD is what my associate does which is to allow the students to use the devices when she says so, and put them away when they are no longer needed. Technology definitely has a place in the learning environment, but it is not always required.

Planning your day? How about plan the year? Use Plan board!

Planning. We’ll be sick of it by the end of our placement but it’s got to be done…apparently. Trying to work out how to plan effectively, whether to use paper and pen, or Word, your brain or Google’s, can be a nightmare at times à the one where you wake up glistening and you’re trapped in your sheets because you decided to become a mermaid.

The nightmare is over…Planboard is where it is at!!! Both of my associates use it to great effect to plan out their lessons, not just for the week but for the entire year!!! It is a handy wee tool which has its own wee calendar thing going on so that if you decide you want to plan ahead (haha), you can go right ahead and do it by clicking the day, week, month or whatever! It’s not the most advanced tool in the technological toolbox, but it’s simple and super easy to use. 

My associates use it to organise their brain, work out what their lesson outcomes are and how they are going to teach that to their students. They list out their ideas for the lesson 1, 2,  3 and just take it from there. It’s adaptable and you can edit any of the lessons at any time so they’re not set in stone. It is a great piece of technology to use in teaching as it is in a safe and secure location, easy to find and great for refreshing your brain as to what you’re going to teach. Planning made simple…not easy, just simple. Maybe a little bit easy… 

Chalk and Cheese

Observing two different teachers and their approaches to technology in their teaching was like a contrast between Google and the hardback Collins Encyclopaedia. My associate for Year 9 English mixes a lot of writing, reading and digital use. The students are studying the film War Horse which is clearly going to make use of digital media. In order to engage the students in the topic, the students were asked to research three questions about the film using the internet. This can be a potentially risky move as students could get off task or take advantage of their internet use. My associate managed this by booking a library computer room where she could observe them as they were researching. 

The students were required to save their answers in Google Docs, so that my associate could see that they had actually done their work. She was able to access the Google Docs page during the activity which meant that she was able to see who was on task and who wasn’t. Using Google Docs was certainly effective as the students’ work was saved to a secure location, the teacher could observe the task without much effort and it would help the students compile their ideas as they worked further into the unit. My associate for this class also liked to make use of the projector and PowerPoint. Her PowerPoint for the lesson showed the task at hand, and she was able to get ideas from the students and draw them on the whiteboard around the PowerPoint slide. She said she likes to incorporate a fair amount of technology in her lessons in order to accommodate for the digital students that come through her class, and also to build the computer literacy skills and research skills of the students. 

       The lesson could not be more different in terms of technology with my other associate. Where a projector was in use in the previous lesson, the whiteboard was blank and ready to take on its rightful position as technological leader… My associate made great use of it, make no mistake, what with brainstorms, listing and statements, the board looked like a colourful scatter graph of words –as colourful as black and white can be. The students used their writing and reading skills but without digital means. My associate said that as they were a Year 11 class, the focus needed to be more on preparing them for their 3 hour exam where they would have to write essays. Tapping away at a keyboard was not going to help their hand with cramping in an exam. 

The students were allowed to use phones or other devices IF they needed to research something briefly but as a whole, my associate preferred to limit that use. She also mentioned that a reason behind board writing over PowerPoints was that the students wanted to see her doing the work as well. They can potentially get resentful of taking notes from a prepared PowerPoint because they see it as the teacher not doing any work – an interesting perspective on my beloved PowerPoints (see previous blog).

Two different teachers, who have two different styles, make different uses of technology. Both have valid reasons behind their technological use which draws attention to the fact that it may be effective for particular students, but not all. It may also depend on the class, the content and the purpose or outcome of the lesson. Use it, don’t abuse it.

The Power of Points

Recently I have used and created PowerPoints in my languages class for both micro-lessons and teachings on particular readings that we were required to do for the class. I enjoy using PowerPoints as they are reasonably straight forward to create and can be effective in getting a point across (no pun intended). When learning a second language, I find it effective to have written and visual cues to establish communication and learning. In my PowerPoints for my micro lessons, I often wrote the headings in French with no English translation, but had images to help the class identify what the headings or words meant. For example, when talking about the French culture I referred to its formality and politeness and put this sentence in the slide: "Le mythe que les français sont impolis". I followed this with this image -

I had the class pick out what they could understand from the sentence (myth, French, impolite) and then combine this with the image to gain an understanding. I found this was an effective way to engage the class and help establish understanding in the target language.

Using PowerPoints are an effective way of incorporating both written and visual language and a way of helping the lesson flow (just go to the next slide!). It does take a little bit of extra time, especially if you want to add transitions for effect so that can be an issue when there are a lot of lessons to plan but otherwise I see them as a great piece of technology to use in teaching. 

Plus, using them means I don't have to expose my terrible board writing skills...