flynn089

Over the last few months, I have been revising and redesigning the series of lesson plans I first published in 2016. These lesson plans help to develop students linguistic and digital skills as well as their critical thinking by introducing them to a range of topics and information-rich graphics. What's New about the Lessons in Digital Literacy? I've incorporated a number of new features into the redesigned lesson plans. The biggest change is that I have created digital versions for both teachers and students. Example: Studying How to Study These presentations have been created using a technology called html5 which means that they will work in the browser in pretty much any device, including mobile phones, iPads and other tablets. In order to make it easier for both teachers and students to access the infographic for the lesson, I've added QR codes, so that students can either scan them onto a mobile phone from the teacher's copy or if they are using their own version o...

One of the true keys to learning and developing any ability is the willingness and capacity to reflect on what we have learned. So how can we encourage our students to reflect on what they have learned? Generally we want them to reflect from a slightly more distant perspective of time rather than more immediately within the classroom and this is where Recap can really help. Recap is a cross platform app that allows teachers to create classes and manage students and set them reflection questions that they can respond to using video on their laptop webcam or smart phone from their own home. How does Recap work? To create a class and add your students just register on the site as a teacher. Once you have registered you click on Add Class and complete the class details form. You can also decide at this point whether you want your students to register with a PIN or an email. Email is a better option for older learners, whereas a PIN is better for younger ones as this doesn’t require them to...

This is just a quick post to share 5 very short ebooks that have been taken from my award winning ebook - Digital Video - A Manual for Language Teachers . Winner of the 2016 British Council Award for Innovation in Teacher Resources The ebooks come from chapter 9 of the manual which contains 12 more entries like these. As well as the explainer text, which shows you how to use the tools and gives suggestions for tasks you can do in your classroom, each ebook also has a video tutorial. Each ebook is available either as PDF from Payhip or from the iBooks Store . I hope you enjoy these free ebooks and find them useful. Digital Classrooms - TedEd TED Ed is a great tool for creating online lessons around videos. It enables you to structure a sequence of interactive activities around the video clip that guides the viewer towards a deeper understanding of the content. It’s an ideal tool for building blended learning. Digital Classrooms - MoveNote MoveNote is a great tool for getting your pre...

There is an assumption that persists in the educational community that more mature teachers are much more difficult and reluctant to be trained on the effective use of educational technology. To some degree, I think this assumption has been built on by the digital native vs digital immigrant myth. But as someone who has trained teachers of all ages all over the world I would say that, from my own experience, this hasn’t been the case. What I have found to be the case is that more mature teachers are: Less likely to lured by the shiny hardware and the seemingly wonderful claims made to go along with it. More critical and sceptical about the way technology is used in the classroom. Less confident when using various apps and websites and less likely to explore the different features. More easily discouraged by failures. Less familiar with various tools, applications and services that have become part of every-day life for younger users. More likely to be able to see through “technology fo...

Over the last few months I have been working on a new book project and finally have it completed. The new book is Digital Tools for Teachers . This book has been written and designed primarily with English language teachers in mind though the majority of the resources and tools contained in the book will have much wider use than just language teaching. The book is available at the introductory price of £1.99 from: iBook Store Payhip The book contains more than 70 tools and resources and these have been hand picked because they represent a broad cross-section of what is at present available. The chapters of the book are divided into simple pedagogical tasks that most teachers need to carry out or help their students with and the descriptions of the resources are suitably concise to make the book easy for a stressed teacher to access and browse in a few spare moments between classes. The sites, apps and resources within the book have been divided into the following chapters: Reading ...

Although the use of internet and digital materials in the language classroom has come a long way over the last 20 years, still the vast majority of web based material that finds its way into the language classroom is used for information input or comprehension purposes. The students’ interaction with the materials is as such largely passive with the teacher controlling the suitability of the materials selected and deciding what information the students will extract from it. In Thinking Critically through Digital Media I have tried to build on this model, but develop it and take it to deeper and more critical levels of analysis that go beyond the superficial linguistic level and help to develop students not only as English language speakers, but as capable information literate participants in the global knowledge economy. The book uses as its basis the development of key digital literacies. These include the ability to understand visually presented data, the ability collect and analyse...