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If there were no books…

Student with iPadRobert McLarty, Publishing Manager for Business English and ESP at Oxford University Press, explores the increasing use of digital media in education, the effect it has on students, and how it will affect teachers in the future.

A couple of years ago a group of schools in California decided to pilot a new approach to the teaching of algebra. Providing the students with iPads along with an interactive full curriculum app, the year-long pilot was to compare the results of a print-driven approach and a tablet-led one. Both groups had experienced teachers but the results were convincing. Over 78% of the “digital” students scored A or B compared with 59% using the “old school” approach.

Let us not worry how similar algebra and English are – they are both subjects which most students will need at some stage in their careers. They are also both subjects where some students “get it” immediately and others don’t. They are also often taught by experts who find it hard to understand why learners struggle with some basic concepts. Why is a tense continuous? When do we need to use brackets?

What the application clearly does is help the teachers explain, illustrate, practise and correct in a more effective way than print materials. It hasn’t replaced maths teachers, it has actually enhanced them and made them more effective, interesting and, probably, productive. Obviously the gadget itself has more immediate appeal to most sixteen year olds than a book would have. What we cannot deny, however, is that the modern generation of both learners and new teachers are used to the richness and range which digital offers us. If we can harness that technology and marry it to an efficient teaching methodology then surely we will have moved English Language Teaching on in much the same way the OALD, Headway or Practical English Usage did at different times?

The algebra app offers a personalized learning experience; in other words, each student doing an appropriate task for their level at the right stage of the lesson. It offers video tutorials where the new point is explained so that those who didn’t get it, or missed the lesson or want to go through it again, can do just that. It offers step-by-step examples and quizzes to test learning. It offers homework tasks with instant feedback prescribing remediation or intervention as required. It also offers a community approach to learning where you learn from your peers as much as from your teacher. Its three stage approach is based around teaching, review and assessment, a very similar methodology to our standard direct method approach. So what will it take to provide a similar course for English language learning?

A lot of good content has been developed for English language practice and reference but there is less which can be effectively used by teachers actually in the classroom during the teaching stages of their lessons. I don’t believe this would actually be a book on screen. It might well borrow the aims, objectives, activities and syllabus of a book but would probably deliver them in a way which suited a modern digitally equipped classroom where the tablet will replace the book.

Some weeks ago I asked a group of teachers what they would do if they were trying to teach a language point but there were no books. The stages they opted for, and the methodology they chose sounds very familiar. First select an image, video, dialogue or text which contextualises the language. Next engage the class, check their current knowledge and introduce the new items. After that they would provide useful extra practice at a variety of sub-levels before encouraging the students  to experiment and find further opportunities, texts or examples to help them personalise and remember.

A lot of great content is available on the internet but there is too much for a busy teacher to deal with and most of it is raw and unedited. What a good teacher of the future will need, and can then provide to their learners, is enough coherent learning objects to suit the needs of their learners, to keep the class engaged, to help them learn and practise new language all within a well-tested and graded framework provided by an expert in the provision of learning materials. These objects will be for use both in and out of classroom, allowing us finally to arrive at the ultimate course, designed to fit each individual learner with the perfect combination of print and digital publishing.

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Is The Teacher Going the Way of the Dodo?

Dodo bird

Image courtesy of net_efekt on Flickr

In this article, Chris Franek considers the risk to teachers posed by new and ever-evolving technologies.

Is technology a giant meteor that is threatening teachers with mass extinction? Are teachers perhaps like the infamous Dodo bird that mysteriously went extinct from its remote island off of the eastern coast of Africa in the late 17th century?

Dodo – such a funny name. In the contemporary use of the word, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “dodo” as “an old-fashioned, stupid, inactive, or unenlightened person.” This more modern association with the word might have relevant application for the purposes of this post as well; as such a person can also find himself on a path to extinction – be it in the literal or metaphorical sense. I was curious about the dodo in writing this blog post so I did some quick research using our good friend, Wikipedia. One theory about the cause of their extinction centers on the idea that because they lived on a remote island without any predators higher up in the food chain, when they encountered humans, they were unafraid and easily approached. This inevitably made them easy targets for capture and, ultimately, a meal.

I wonder if our lack of fear or respect for technology as teachers (as people in general, really) is a correlation to the lack of fear dodos felt towards humans. Are we teachers being unwittingly preyed upon by our love affair with technology?

In the last decade, there has been an explosion of technological advancements, including wide access to broadband and mobile access to information on an unprecedented scale. Through the popularity of touch-screen smartphones and, most recently, the explosion of touch-based tablet devices coupled with an associated rise in the development of mobile applications or apps, information has never been more abundantly accessible.

Consider this scenario: just 10 years ago, if you had showed up at a restaurant and discovered that there was a one hour wait for a table, it wasn’t easy to search for other nearby dining options. Now, if the same thing were to happen, you could just take your smartphone, open up an app, and quickly find not only dozens of restaurants nearby but also reviews on all of them. Now, with the speed of the new 4G LTE technology, you can actually complete this task much more quickly on your smartphone than you could on your computer using your home broadband. This is where the technology zeitgeist has brought us. Not only is information highly accessible anywhere but it has increasingly been presented in more visually intuitive and engaging ways.

Now, education institutions are racing to catch up to the technology curve. They’re trying to figure out how they can get this technology into the classroom and the learning experience. Often, the results are mixed at best. Education administrators are frantically trying to figure out how to get an iPad into every student’s hands when the answer is getting students access to better teachers. I’m not here to say that technology shouldn’t or can’t play a role in the learning process. However, I am here to say that technology is not the learning process.

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Read your way to better English with 30 new Oxford Bookworms apps available now on the App Store

Celebrate the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of Sherlock Holmes) with an Oxford Bookworms app and read your way to better English…

30 famous stories from the Oxford Bookworms series are now available as apps for the iPhone®/iPod touch®, and for the iPad® from the App Store.

Using the apps students can enjoy reading and listening to a wide range of famous stories including the exciting Sherlock Holmes adventure, The Hound of the Baskervilles. They can view colour illustrations and test their vocabulary using interactive quizzes on the app.

There really is no mystery to improving English. Research shows that reading many stories at, or just below your language level is one of the most effective ways to improve English. By making the popular stories available as apps, Oxford University Press is opening up reading to students who prefer using mobile devices to books. It doesn’t take a detective to work out that this will help encourage a wider range of students to continue reading outside of the classroom.

Oxford Bookworms apps offer six levels of Readers, from Stage 1 through to Stage 6 with stories to appeal to a range of interests. The thirty titles include some of the great Sherlock Holmes tales including, Sherlock Holmes and the Sport of Kings, and Sherlock Holmes and the Duke’s son, all-time best sellers such as Dracula and The Elephant Man, popular classics such as Alice in Wonderland and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and modern stories including Dead Man’s Island and Chemical Secret.

What’s your favourite Sherlock Holmes story?

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How using apps and online resources benefits ESL students with limited resources

Teenage girl using smartphoneIn this post Justin Birch explores how using apps and online resources can benefit ESL students with limited resources.

From spelling to grammar to intonation, learning a new language can be difficult. With its exceptions and broad geographical influence, the English language is no different. However, times are changing. Non-native speakers of English now outnumber native speakers 3 to 1. With the enormous increase in the number of students taking on English as a Second Language (ESL), especially those with limited resources, an array of wallet-friendly apps and online resources have cropped up to make the learning process speedier and less tedious.

Apps and online resources can make learning English fun. Instead of repeating common English phrases in a classroom setting, ESL students can play games and complete exercises while learning the ins and outs of the language, even if they are far away from a real teacher or school. The Internet TESL Journal created a site comprised solely of quizzes, tests, exercises and puzzles for ESL students. With thousands of contributions from teachers, students can take advantage of exercises that suit their needs. Users are allowed to choose their level of difficulty in grammar and vocabulary quizzes, and even crossword puzzles. In addition, the site offers a range of podcasts and YouTube videos, including those that allow students to listen and read along. For the technology savvy, the site is also accessible from the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

Though ESL classes can be extremely beneficial, they can also focus solely on the basics. Online resources and apps can supplement basic skills to allow students to learn slang and idioms. This creates more natural sounding dialogue and allows the student to better understand phrases and terms that aren’t available in a dictionary. Sites like ManyThings.org, not only feature games, quizzes, exercises, and vocabulary words, but also a collection of slang terms, English songs, proverbs, jokes, and American stories. Podcasts such as the Learn a Song Podcast, Jokes in English, and Listen and Repeat Podcast can also be fun ways to not only learn the language, but soak up the culture as well.

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5 Apps Being Used in the Classroom Right Now

Close up of smartphone on paperIn this post, Sarah Fudin, a community relations coordinator for the University of Southern California’s online Masters Degree in Teaching program, shares 5 mobile apps that teachers are already using in the classroom to aid learning.

Apple’s catchy tagline — “There’s an app for that” — is proving to be true in today’s classroom. Educational apps that are well designed and highly interactive engage students and make learning more enjoyable. A quick online survey shows that there are hundreds of apps available for every educational level, from pre-Kindergarten to college.

Many schools are putting iPads into the hands of students in the classroom. Even in classrooms where only the teacher has an iPad, Apple’s Video Mirroring technology allows the screen image from an iPad to be shared with the class via a projection screen or HDTV.

Here are five extraordinarily useful Apple and Android apps that are being used in classrooms across the country right now:

1. byki
byki AppMillions have people have used the byki (or “Before You Know It”) system to learn a foreign language. Byki utilizes spaced interval repetition to help users build a strong language foundation by locking words and phrases into memory. It’s a powerful tool for students and teachers in foreign language, ESL and TESOL courses. Programs for more than 70 languages are available for the computer and online versions of byki, though the byki Mobile app for Apple and Android devices supports only English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese.

2. World Wiki
World Wiki AppThis Apple app provides quick access to detailed information about more than 200 countries around the globe. According to Macworld, World Wiki uses data from the official CIA World Factbook. Country data includes maps, flags, native language, motto and national statistics, with more detailed information about a country’s government, economy and geography also available. World Wiki’s presentation and depth of information make it a useful tool for teachers and students of all educational levels, with particularly innovative applications in the ESL / TESOL teacher’s classroom, where bridging the cultural gap may sometimes be challenging.

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