A Little Bird Told Me...

I've never personally enjoyed Twitter as a social media. I find that I have nothing interesting to share with the world especially in only 140 characters. But I found, when given a purpose, twitter can be exciting and beneficial. For a educational technology class I am currently taking I had to follow a twitter chat. I decided to followed the hashtag #ELLchat. They post on Mondays at 9-10 pm EST and they are a group of Teachers of English Language Learners. This was a perfect choice seeing that I am currently getting my masters in ESOL. Some of the topics we discussed were testing out of ESL in Elementary and the criteria for that as well as how long students should have to stay in ESL and receive aid. 

Following this twitter chat is great professional development for me because I can follow and ask questions about teaching materials and strategies in real time and I will more than likely receive a response. It's amazing how quick and how many topics are gone through in just an hour! If only one thing interests you, you can pursue that topic in a conversation, but if you just want to sit back and read everything and then choose what to reply to, you also have that option too. I think Twitter can be very helpful as PD but it's also a little confusing and not well rounded. Some of your questions may go unanswered or the topic might be changed so quickly it's difficult to keep up. But at the same time I like it because teachers are known to be wordy and some people may dominate a conversation in person but with Twitter everyone gets a chance and it's easy to read because it's only 140 characters. 

Connecting Through Social Networking

A great way to connect and seek informal professional development is through Social Networking. Here are TWO helpful communities I find helpful and informative on google+

The first one is English Language Teaching (ELT). They provide helpful resources, discussions about important topics, tips for Teachers & Learners of English [ELT/EFL/ESL]. Specifically on here are various articles about grammar, geography, participation, and listening skills. As well as worksheets, information about seminars and teaching abroad.


The second community I found helpful is Teachers for Interactive Language Learning (TILL).
This site is great for creative, sharing, and daring individuals interested in helping others learn English as an additional language! This site has some nice inspirational quotes, teachercasts, material suggestions, and job opportunities.


Both of these google+ communities have great resources and opportunities to discuss questions that may arise in the ESL classroom!

Let's Prep Students for their Age, not the Teacher's

Hello There,

For my Technology class I watched some really interesting videos with an over-arching theme of incorporating technology in the classroom. The following are the highlights from those videos.
Education Change Challenge

This video asked a lot of questions: Why do we think that students will learn in the same way at the same time? Why is education the same it was 100 years ago? The video also made a lot of powerful statements: We need to make students lifelong learners. Teachers need to be relevant and credible in order to understand and meet the generation of students they are teaching.
I think that more of these questions need to be asked and statements be carried out. I know a lot of talk has occured about education reform but I don't think education needs to be "reformed" I think it needs to be completely changed. Reform indicates that it is taking what is already there and changing it a bit, instead it needs a complete overhaul. I think they used a perfect analogy in this video... If a doctor from 1914 was in a 2014 operating room they would be completely lost and be a inadequate doctor, but if a teacher from 1914 came into many 2014 classrooms they would hardly skip a beat.  

Social Media Revolution

I think this video is great at illustrating the changes and effect technology has on our academic and daily lives. It points out the ever growing and influential social medias. It states that over 50% of the population is under the age of 30 years old! Another interesting point was that people trust peer recommendations and only 14% trust advertisements. This video is indirectly stating that we should be embracing technology in our classroom by showing us how important it is to the population as well as how it affects our daily lives.  

A Vision of 21st Century Teachers

 This video is great! It's made by teachers about teachers who use technology in the classroom and the vast benefits it brings to their classroom! Some of the major points they make are how technology helps foster a global community, allows teachers to include differentiated teaching to address the many different types of learning styles, and how technology is aligned with real life. Technology also promotes critical thinking, global interaction, and engage the students. This video is promotes technology in a positive way that will help teachers reach standards while helping students understand and be interested at the same time.


The Future Starts Now

This video is geared toward Norwegians, but it is still relevant to American schools. It is made from a students point of view discussing how ICT (information and communication technology) helps students learn better because they are the most comfortable and enjoy using it but she wants to know why it's not integrated more into the classrooms. She makes the point that learning with technology makes education more relevant and helps students understand what they learn instead of just memorizing facts. I think the most important point she makes is that teachers may the the resources to work with but they don't have the time or professional development to keep their ICT knowledge up to date so they will be able to and comfortable using ICT in the classroom. I think that if schools provided the time and resources for teacher to update their knowledge and materials to be ICT based everyone involved would benefit.

Using Blogs in the Classroom

Hi there! 

We can all agree that as teachers professional development is important right? Well Steve Wheeler brings up some really interesting way we can achieve individual and collaborative professional development through blogs!  In Wheeler's blog "Seven reasons teachers should blog" he discusses teacher self-reflection about their actions, decisions, processes, successes and failures. All of this information can be recorded onto a blog and then be easily accessed later on. In this format a blog works as a digital filing cabinet where teachers can type in keywords to help help easily find a lesson or teaching strategy they want to reflect on or even reuse! This allows teachers to see what worked or didn't work and then decide if they want to reuse the idea or talk it over with someone to work out what went wrong.
On a similar note teachers can also gain valuable feedback through other teachers! This is the best because they may have zero idea why a lesson failed or what to do to make it better and someone may hop on their blog and help them solve their issue.

Blogging with Students

Not only can teachers use blogs to help express and reflect but students can too! According to Rita Zeinstejer  by using authentic and meaningful tasks students will become more engaged and learn more from the content. By being able to interact with the material in an authentic way they will see the use and purpose of the activity and be more inclined to participate enthusiastically. Through blogs students can publish their writing allowing experts or mentors from outside the classroom to add their comments, and this is a true exchange of opinions. Students can even satisfy standards through blogs!

Performance Indicator -Students can produce written narratives and expressions of opinion about radio and television programs, newspaper and magazine articles, and selected stories, songs, and literature of the target language. This standard can be easily accomplished with a blog! They can read one of the previously mentioned texts online and then respond in a meaningful way on their blogs. Then they can create a community of practice by commenting on other students opinions.

This feeds into another performance indicator -this indicator states that students can engage in extended discussions with native or fluent speakers on a broad range of topics that extend beyond their daily lives and are of general interest to the target cultures. This standard can be more easily accomplished with blogs than any other avenu. There are an abundance of blogs by native or fluent speakers on an enormous range of topics and are about the target culture!

In addition to to achieving the standards students can also create an ongoing portfolio of samples of their writing. This is amazing because ESL students can see how their writing has changed and grown over just one year. They then can keep adding to their blog so their ideas are all in one place just in case they want to revisit something!
I hope that you will consider using blogs in the classroom, I know I will!