What's new about Lessons in Digital Literacy

What's new about Lessons in Digital Literacy

Sardi    November 01, 2018    Comment   

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 of the student materials, they can just click on it and the infographic will open and they can scroll up and down it.

Another feature that these digital materials include is a marker for annotating over the presentation. This is easy to access on both the teacher and student copies and can be opened and closed along with the annotation.

Where writing activities are suggested I've also created a link to an external notepad which students can use and then publish their work directly to the internet.

If your students don't have access to digital devices in the classroom you can still use these lessons as there is a PDF version of the students' version provided.


The underlying structure of each lesson looks a little like this.

As you can see I try to work from what students already know and believe, introduce new information to them, see how they respond to the information and then get them to examine and evaluate the information more deeply. The final part of each lesson helps students to synergise the information and incorporate it back into their belief system.

All of the lesson plans include detailed step by step instructions and guidance for teachers, as well as answer keys.

Although each plan contains eight to ten tasks and about 2 hours worth of material, they don't have to be completed in one lesson and some of the evaluation tasks used selectively.

 You can download all of these lesson plans and materials from: PeacheyPublications

I hope you enjoy themand sign up to my customer list to be informated when new materials become available and to get customer disocunts.

Related links:

• Creating illustrations and infographics for ELT tasks
• Exploiting Infographics for ELT
• Digital Video - A manual for language teachers
• Managing the digital classroom - Using a backchannel
• Managing the digital classroom - Getting students' attention
• 20 + Things you can do with QR codes in your school
• Brainstorming and polling with AnswerGarden

Best

Nik Peachey

Recap for enouraging reflection on learning

Recap for enouraging reflection on learning

Sardi    Mei 11, 2017    Comment   

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 have an email, but you do have to add all of their names.

Once the class is created you get a link and a code that students can use to enter your class. I’ve set up a dummy EdTech class, so feel free to join and try it out as a student if you wish. Just use the code shown in the image below.

Once your class is ready you can add two types of tasks, a Recap or a Journey.

When you click on Add Recap you can type in and / or record your first question.

You can then click on ‘Next’ and set the length of recording for your students’ response and the due date for the assignment. You can also decide if it goes to the whole class or individual students and enable to do some self assessment of their recording.

Once you click send the task becomes available to the students.  Once they have replied you can click on the student list and then select each student to see their responses.

You can also click on ‘Assess’ and access all the student responses and respond back to them or watch a ‘showreel’ compilation of their responses.

Once you have responded to their comments they can reply, so this can set up a kind of discussion chain.

The second type of task you can add to Recap is a Journey. This is a question based around a sequence of materials with links to different media and video stimulus that you can record on your webcam or phone to help engage with students.

To do this just click on ‘Add Journey’, allow access to your webcam and microphone, record your video and then add steps and links to media you want your students to explore.

The video you record has to be very short so this isn’t a tool for delivering lectures, it’s more of a tool for setting students up to discover things for themselves.

Once you have created your ‘Journey’ activity for your students you ca share it with them, but you can also add it to the Recap ‘Marketplace’ this allows you to share or sell your ‘Journey’ activity to other teachers, so this is a great way to potentially make a little money (the maximum sale price is $0.99).

 You can also find ‘Journey’ tasks that you can use with your students there.

How to use Recap with students?

• Set a Recap task each evening after class and use it as a form of learner diary.
• Use Recaps for action research and get students to tell you how they feel about what and how they are learning.
• Set Recaps as short pronunciation assessment activities by getting students to read short texts.
• Use Recaps to build a more positive dynamic and get to know your students a bit better and discover their motivation and interests.
• Set Recap tasks to check students remember the vocabulary they learned during previous lessons.
• Create Journeys based around infographics to get them researching and reflecting on the information within the graphic.
• Use Journeys to get students doing research before coming to class for debates or for information sharing in class.
• Use Journeys to share SOLE type questions that students can research.

What I like about Recap

• Students are often shy to speak and ask questions in class so this is a chance to get them talking just to you.
• Actually having the opportunity to listen carefully to each student during the class can be difficult, so Recap can provide you with the ability to fairly assess your students speaking.
• The video clips your students submit are stored on the site, so over time you can see how they are progressing.
• It’s a safe and controlled way for students to communicate with you through video.
• You can actually get to know your students a bit better and give them some one to one time.
• It’s great  to be able to give students speaking homework and for students to see themselves speaking and reflect on their own performance.
• It’s free and works across platforms (there are apps for both Android and iOS).
• It offers teachers the opportunity to make some money from their work.

I hope you find Recap useful to help develop your students’ ability to reflect and your own ability to develop a closer understanding of your students’ needs and abilities.

You can find lots more video based apps and activities in my award winning ebook - Digital Video - A Manual for Language Teachers.

I want this book

Related links:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Tools for Teachers & Learners
• VideoNotes

Best
Nik Peachey

Digital Tools for Teachers

Digital Tools for Teachers

Sardi    Januari 02, 2017    Comment   

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 Tools
•  Writing Tools
•  Speaking Tools
•  Listening Tools
•  Grammar Tools
•  Presentation Tools
•  Poll & Survey Tools
•  Infographic Tools
•  Course Creation Tools

You can download the first two chapters free here:  Digital Tools for Teachers

At present each chapter contains between 5 – 10 different sites that have been selected to help you make a quick choice of the tools you need.

All of the tools and resources selected for the book are either free or have a useable permanent freemium offering, so you will never be forced to pay for any of these resources in order to sustain the work you are doing with your students.

Over the coming years it is my intention to regularly review and expand on the contents of this book. If you would like to be involved and assist in this process you can do so by:

•  Suggesting tools to be included in future editions
•  Writing an entry about a tool you have used and found useful
•  Reporting a dead link or a tool or resource that has become commercially unviable for teachers
•  Reporting a typo or factual error.

Anyone who contributes in any of the ways above will get a brief mention in the next edition of the book along with a link to their own blog or website.

Related links

• Digital Video - A Manual for Language Teachers
• Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media 
• PeacheyPublications 
• Tools and alternatives for creating presentations
• Technology, Autonomous Learning & a Decline in Critical Thinking

Best

Nik Peachey

Exploiting Infographics for Digital Literacy and Critical Thinking

Exploiting Infographics for Digital Literacy and Critical Thinking

Sardi    Oktober 02, 2016    Comment   

This is just a short post to anounce the publication of my new ebook 'Exploiting Infographics for Digital Literacy and Critical Thinking'.

Exploiting Infographics follows on from 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy, which is a collection of lesson plans based around infographics, and looks in more depth at the genre and how infographics can be used as both sources of information and as creative learning tasks for students.

The tasks that accompany the infographics are intended to encourage students to think more critically about the information they are exposed to and to question the sources of information they find whilst browsing the internet.

Exploiting Infographics should help teachers to start creating their own tasks, activities and lesson plans for students and to integrate infographics in a way that will enhance students’ critical thinking, digital literacy, language and communication skills.

Exploiting Infographics was conceived as part of The Digital Classrooms Series which started with the award winning Digital Video - A Manual for Language Teachers.

The series is intended to help teachers, teacher trainers, materials writers and course designers integrate digital technologies into their classroom practice in a pedagogically sound and impactful way.


I hope you enjoy these books and find them useful.



Related links:

• My Lesson Materials

Nik Peachey

9 Generic activities for exploiting infographics

9 Generic activities for exploiting infographics

Sardi    Januari 15, 2016    Comment   

Infographics are a great source of information and make reading information from the computer screen much easier, but just showing students an infographic and telling them to study it isn’t the most effective way to exploit the medium.

Creating your own infographic tasks can be time consuming though, so in this posting I’m presenting a number of generic ideas that should work with a number of types of infographic. You can use these ideas with students to help focus their comprehension of the information and give them clear goals for engaging with the information in the graphics.

Peer created questions
Give your students an infographic and get them to create a quiz based around it. Once the students have created their quiz they can use it to check the comprehension or knowledge of other students in their class. You can make this competitive and have teams to quiz each other. You could also have different infographics for each group and they can exchange questions and infographics.

• This activity has a duel role in that students need to read through the infographic and understand it in order to create the questions, but they also practise formulating questions. The activity also adds an element of competition which some students find motivating and of course it saves you a lot of time creating questions yourself.

Fact finding
Ask your students to find x-number of what they believe are the most important or significant facts in the infographic. Get them to justify their choice and explain why these points are the most significant.

• This activity encourages students to evaluate and make value judgements about the information they are being exposed to. It also reveals elements of their own value system and exposes them for discussion which can be very enlightening.

Checking sources / corroborating information
Get students to check the sources of any statistics mentioned in an infographic to make sure they are correct and that the sources are valid. You could also get them to find supporting sources on other sites that either authenticate or contradict the statistics stated in the infographic.

• There’s a common joke that 83% of all statistics are made up. Often students tend to believe any information that they find online. This activity encourages students to be more critical and to check the validity of information they find. It also helps them to develop the necessary research skills to validate online information.

Comparing to yourself
You can get students to find out where they fit within any infographics that contain personal information. You can also use this as a mingle task by asking students to try to find someone in the classroom who fits into any of the same statistics that they do.

• This encourages the students to apply the information to themselves and by personalising it can make it seem more real, memorable and tangible. This can make data a little less dehumanising. The mingle activity can also help to improve classroom dynamics and help students to get to know each other.

Checking bias and motivation
Ask the students to find out who created the infographic and why they think it was created. This involves them researching the source and thinking about the relationship between the company that created the graphic and the information in it.

• This encourages students to think more deeply about information and to question the goals and motivation behind it. Students often think of information as neutral, but the way information is displayed and what information is chosen can influence readers. Pushing students to look more deeply at the motivations behind the information can make them more critical readers.

Personal response
You can ask students for a range of personal responses to any infographic. Here are some possible example questions.
What did you find interesting?
What information do you doubt?
What information would you like to share? Who with? Why?

• This encourages students to think about applying information and making it purposeful for their own lives. Encouraging a personal response from students can also make the lessons more meaningful and memorable for them.

Summary / Writing
Ask your students to take notes about the most important information in the infographic and then use the notes to write a summary. The summary could have some form of publication as a motivation, such as a newspaper report website publication. Once they have finished a first draft they can exchange with another student and compare to see if they chose the same main points. You could also ask them to peer edit the text and then return it before writing a final draft.

• This can help to develop students process writing skills and academic study skills. It encourages students to evaluate information and make and articulate the connections between different nuggets of information.

Presentation summary
You can ask your students to prepare an oral presentation based on the information they took from the infographic. They can also prepare a presentation deck with images and text to help support their presentation.

• This can help to develop students speaking and presentation skills. The ability to present and talk about information is also a valuable workplace skill.

Create your own research
Get students to create their own research questionnaire based around the same topic. They can use this either in class or share it through social media and collect the information for their own infographic.

• This develops students research skills and encourages them to think about the framing of questions to extract information. It also encourages them to think about how they present data once it has been collected.

 I hope you find these tasks useful. You can find more tasks, examples and ideas for using and creating infographics in my ebook - Exploiting Infographics for Digital Literacy and Critical Thinking

Related links:

• My infographic lesson plans
• Creating illustrations and infographics for ELT tasks
• Exploiting Infographics for ELT
• Digital Video - A manual for language teachers
• Managing the digital classroom - Using a backchannel
• Managing the digital classroom - Getting students' attention
• 20 + Things you can do with QR codes in your school
• Brainstorming and polling with AnswerGarden

Best

Nik Peachey