Having started preparing for and teaching this TELL course again, I keep coming across information about teaching with technology. I get invitations for webinars, read about relevant workshops, get emails and tips about publications, etc., all about enriching our ELT with technology. An interesting article I read yesterday is related to flipping the classroom, something I will briefly discuss in class tomorrow, which you may want to read as well: “You flipped your class and…”. The short article can be found in the TELL Toolbox under articles week 3 or here. I think the important thing that Graney points out here is that simply making a so-called knowledge clip is not enough to make your teaching flipped, or to make the learning of the pupils flipped. It is worth your while to read what else is involved in making flipping the classroom effective for you and your learners. It also helps you to critically look at examples of clips for flipping the classroom – is flipped learning really taking place? You may want to blog about this yourself after reading this article.
In the English department we are also thinking of creating a new optional subject on interactive reading (e.g. inanimate Alice) for the fourth year programme and for that I am also exploring interesting tools and sources. And then my colleagues and I have started planning the iXperium iXperience. We think we have chosen three interesting themes for you to explore during this field trip on April Fools’ Day (what was that again about a fool with…?) and we will TELL you all about these themes in class next week.
To finish off this blog post for this week, I would like to review our second session. Unlike last year, I decided to ask you to find out about the three models yourselves instead of simply lecturing about them. I think you managed to find out quite a bit about the models and this helped us to deal with the models together more quickly. However, I do realise that not all three models are equally easy to grasp in 15 minutes, even with helpful resources like the reader and books available. I hope the follow up reading that you are doing helps to fully understand the models and in a few weeks time to put the models into practice in your lesson ideas. Let me know if you agree with my short evaluation of this part of the session or if you have any suggestions as to how to introduce and present the models to future students.