[Teacher-autonomy] Facebook

Why is it important for teachers to also become autonomous learners? Aren't the teachers the ones that are responsible for  emerging autonomy and independence out of students' learning process?

However, when teaching in an institution that enforces a curriculum on teachers to abide to, it's easy for teachers to just follow the given syllabus and materials without evaluating whether or not it completely fits the students' needs. Instead, teachers settle down with a fixed approach and syllabus of the curriculum; they forget that resources in education keep on changing and evolving as researchers discover newer and improved ways to teach. Therefore, it is crucial for teachers to be autonomous; there is never a point where we're done learning, so we need to keep that driving force to seek knowledge, reflect on our own teaching methods and strategies, and continue revising and improving our skills and experience in teaching. It is difficult to go back to databases and academic journals frequently after completing your masters degree and departing from the academic atmosphere, so I think social media is a great alternative for teachers to stay up to date on the newest teaching techniques and perspectives.

As an active user of Facebook, I take advantage of its newsfeed function and follow educational Facebook pages to receive notifications and updates about the latest topics and issues in teaching. Facebook is not just about gossip and celebrities; you can make your time spent on social media more meaningful and educational!

Following Facebook groups is a good way to teachers to explore educational sources 

Facebook pages are public platforms for people to "like" so they can follow and get updates of the content shared by the page on their newsfeed.  Facebook page owners can write posts, share links, photos and videos. This function is convenient for followers to gain access to useful, contemporary, and interesting sources. Facebook users (not only followers) can like, comment on, or share the posts. With these options, new sources can be circulated easily, and users may be able to discuss and gain different perspectives and ideas about the topic shared. Facebook also has the hastag (#) function for users to label and categorise their posts, but it isn't used as frequently as Twitter, so you may not be able to find abundant sources through this function. The best way to find pages is to type in keywords in the search bar, such as "Teaching English", and groups related to the keywords will appear on your screen. Sometimes you can see other pages liked by the page, which may take you to other resourceful links as well. 

Type in keywords to find pages relevant to your teaching context

You may discover something helpful by browsing through pages liked by another page 

There are various types of groups on facebook you can follow. Take your time to browse through the groups and follow those that suit your teaching context and students' needs! The groups range widely from simple grammar tips, such as Grammar Girl, or various topics about teaching method, beliefs, examples such as TeachingEnglish-British Council or TeachThought. These Facebook groups often share new, trending ideas in the teaching field for teachers to learn about and improve on their teaching! These groups are just a sneak peek of the many, many groups out there on Facebook for you to explore. 

Like, share and comment on posts to mingle with other teachers and gain insight

The drawbacks to using any form of social media to learn more about teaching approaches is that you cannot filter out comments or posts that you find unnecessary, helpless, or sometimes even time-wasting. In this case, it's best to be selective when following groups and reading their posts. Anyone can gain access to social media, so sometimes you might see or interact with people that you disagree with or find offensive. This is unavoidable with social media, which can be distracting or affect your mood, so try to view these posts and comments without letting your emotions take over your mood and unleashing it in public!

Although teacher-learner autonomy may be time consuming as trying out new methods and techniques may be a bit time consuming, but incorporating or supplementing materials and tools that fit students' needs and their learning context may motivate and enhance their learning process, which can be rewarding for both the teacher and the learners!

Is there a Facebook page that you recommend for teachers? Or is there another form of social media that you find helpful to access innovative and insightful sources? Please do share with me by leaving a comment below! :)

[Tool Sharing] Blended learning with blendspace

What is Blended learning?

According to Thomlinson and Whittaker, blended learning is the mixture of face-to-face teaching and online technological tools in the language classroom. Many teachers face the same problem of not having enough time to provide basic linguistic and content input and advanced, analytical exercises. Therefore, blended learning has become a growing approach for teachers to use in class sessions effectively as students get the receptive component done at home (such as readings or online lectures) as they meet in person to learn critically. Blendspace is a tool that allows teachers to design input and comprehensible tasks for learners to complete before coming to class.

Blendspace is a tool that has many educational sources for you to search for and incorporate into a mini lesson for students to complete when they're outside the classroom. It is user friendly as it has templates for you to choose from as you package the materials and exercises into the lesson. 

Sources: Ready-made materials 

In this screenshot, you can see that there is a large bank of ready-made teaching materials for you to incorporate into your lesson. Simply type in the keyword of your topic in TES Resources Search search bar. Sources you can find may include worksheets, factsheets, videos, booklets...etc.

Sources: Online Materials 

If you do not fancy using others' ready-made materials, you can find more "raw" and authentic materials from other sources such as Youtube, Google web or images, Flickr, or even materials you have from your computer!  However, one thing I found a bit frustrating with this function is that it does not filter the search results, so sometimes the list of sources may be a bit messy and overwhelming for you when you're trying to find something educationally appropriate for your learners.

create questions to check students' understandings

Sources: creating your own 

If blankspace or the web doesn't have anything that matches your needs and that you don't have anything complete at hand, you can start from scratch and just type in your content in the "Add Text" function. The functions are pretty similar to a blog post setting! 

You may also use the "Add quiz" function to create comprehensive questions to evaluate whether students have understood the text or material given for them to study before class. This is very useful, as it gives the teacher a better idea of where the students' understanding currently are at so that they can make any last minute modifications to their lesson before meeting the students in class, such as reinforcing a grammatical rule that students are confused with, or rephrasing a point in the text that students did not understand, etc. 

Learner interaction outside the physical classroom 

Lessons created on blendspace can also promote collaborative learning with the "Comment" function. The teacher can add in the description section questions for students to respond to and hopefully start a discussion. How collaborative this task can get may depend on how the teacher structures the question! :P 

Blendspace is quite flexible and suits different needs. If you're a busy teacher and have no time to create your own lesson, you can use the ready-made materials and modify it to match your students' needs. If you cannot find anything that fits your syllabus, you can use this template and create an online lesson with your own materials and exercises to share with your students to complete at home. By integrating blendspace into your class, you'll save yourself time from providing the input that the students can gain on their own at home and focus on more practice, communicative, constructive and/or meaningful tasks in class. 

[Tool Sharing] Collaborative learning with tricider

Have you been frustrated with being unable to motivate your students to actively participate in your class, or to encourage them to voluntarily respond to your questions? I don't know about you, but this is a common phenomenon that occurs in Asian context, as students are afraid to stand out in front of their peers and also fear the possibility of making a fool of themselves if they answer incorrectly. 

If you have the same concerns, look no further! Tricider is an excellent and highly interactive tool that encourages students to use the target language purposefully and collaboratively. 

BASIC FUNCTIONS OF TRICIDER 

Tricider is an online tool that teachers can use to propose questions for students to think and discuss about. Any types of questions works, such as simple gist questions, like "What do you do to gain confidence?" to get students thinking, or deeper, in-depth thinking questions, "Should euthanasia be legal?" to boost heated discussion.  As the teacher publishes the question, she can share the link with the students via social network (Facebook, Twitter...etc) or by emailing the students the link. This function makes it easily accessible and manageable for students to partake the activity, and students may also collaborate with their peers and produce language outside of the classroom. 

GOING INTO DETAIL WITH THE  FUNCTIONS OF TRICIDER

Tricider allows students to contribute to the discussion by adding an idea, voting, and elaborating on an idea about what they agree or disagree with it. As students are allowed to add any ideas they have in mind, they can freely express themselves on the site without feeling pressured or anxious. 

The collaborative component of this tool is the 'Add argument' function. Instead of each student typing whatever thoughts they have, if they see an idea posted that they had similar thoughts or disagree with, they can expand on the idea. In the end, different ideas would have arguments, explanation, or examples from different perspectives, making it more well rounded. This also encourages students to think critically.  As students place their votes on the ideas they like or agree with, the teacher may use the 'Contest' function to reward students with most highly agreed idea (the reward can be customised and decided by the teacher), or to throw in some competition to activate more output.


Lastly, you are given the option of publishing the question or not. This may prevent the risk of having stranger lurking about the platform and disrupting the educational, stress-free environment (although chances are low), but this makes students and parents feel safer and relieved to know that this can be avoided. 

HOW TO APPLY TRICIDER TO THE CLASSROOM 

The functions of tricider is very adaptable to the classroom; there are various ways to use it to execute the lesson. It can be used as pre-task, like generating thoughts with gist questions, during-task, such as comprehension question to check students' understanding of the content, and post-task such as discussion questions for students to explore their learning and thoughts on the text, or critical thinking questions for students to interpret the text. Teachers may also utilise this tool as a pre-writing task. With many ideas and arguments pitched in the platform, students may gain insight from different angles and use it to formulate the content of their writing assignment.  

If you wish to put an end to dealing with student passivity, don't hesitate to try out this tool to encourage more participation from the students and more usage of the target language!

[Tool sharing] Word Magnet from Triptico

Another week has passed by, and today we will be looking at one of the free tools from Triptico! I had some misunderstanding about how the free trial works for Triptico, so if you didn't see the [Edit] section in my previous post, the sad news is that the activities you create with the premium tools during your free trial period will be inaccessible after your free trial expires. :( Boo-hoo!

BUT... I'm going to introduce a FREE tool that you can use permanently! Hopefully after reading this post, you will be able to get a lot out of the free stuff Triptico has to offer!

WORD MAGNET is a very useful tool to enhance interaction between students and teachers, or students with their peers. The functions are easy to adjust, and there's wide range of various activities that can be applied to this tool.

BASIC FUNCTIONS

The main functions of this tool is to create words on magnets that can be dragged around as desired. The words can be made as single words, phrases, or even an entire paragraph. The magnets can be flipped back side by holding the right click of your mouse and swiping it vertically down on the magnet(s) (yes, you can flip more than one card at a time!). The magnets can be dragged around the page, and if you want to drag more than one magnet, just click the magnets you want, and a star will appear on the upper right corner.  It's okay if it's your first time using this tool or that you do not understand how it works. Triptico provides demo videos and ready made tools for you to familiarize with.

The vertical line indicates the magnets you will flip

Magnets can be flipped at the same time

The magnets are easy to move around and adjust! You can also see the basic functions for creating the magnets

ADVANCED FUNCTIONS 

What I love about Triptico's tools is that there are so many functions for you to personalise your tool to make this activity more relatable for the students and teachers and may even make the class more entertaining and lower students' anxiety!


1. Font
Triptico provides various types of fonts for you to choose from! If you are working with young learners, you can pick a whacky or creative font to grab their attention! I remember back in elementary school I used to like the curly fonts my teacher used!

2. Color and Size 

You may also adjust the color and size of the magnet and the background to match your needs. Bigger magnets are useful for large classrooms so students from the back can see, and it will be visually more comfortable, especially for elder learners! You may also color the magnets to categorize the magnets in different groups! It'll create a visual effect and help students internalize the words by associating them with one and another, or remembering the relationship between the words. 

3. Background 

The last function that you can use to customize your tool is to select a background. You can get creative with this, and use pictures OF your students or something you and your students have in common-- this will motivate them to participate in the class and may even excite them as well. 

The crop only lets me keep the upper half of the picture. :(

The only "less user-friendly" of this function is that you can't crop the portion of the photo that you want. When you zoom in, Triptico automatically "selects" the cropped section for you. One possible solution is to crop the picture to the desired proportion before uploading it. 

HOW TO APPLY WORD MAGNET TO MY CLASSROOM?

Seeing the various possibilities to play around with Word Magnet, there is so much you can do to apply this tool effectively to your classroom!

With the dragging function, you can ask questions for learners to drag the correct magnet, or have a relay activity for teams to drag the magnets into the correct order (e.g. chronological order, from small to big...etc.).

The flipping function allows teachers to create a matching game as well. Children enjoy playing games, and matching is a good way to make learning fun!

Lastly, Word Magnet (and other tools on Triptico) can be edited whenever you want, so teachers can even invite students to join in the learning process and create their own magnets to add onto the content.

So there you have it, Triptico's free tool, Word Magnet! Just because you are unable to access the premium tools forever does not mean there aren't any useful tools left!

How would you incorporate this tool into your classroom? Are there any other thoughts about how this tool would enhance your teaching? Leave a comment below! :)