Love them or hate them, emojis are now a part of everyday life, in 2017 there was even a movie about them. Unlike that movie, which failed to wow the critics đ´, I think embracing emojis in the classroom could get you a đ from students.
In 2015 Oxford Dictionaries (1) chose đ as its word of the year. Since then the number of emojis has grown to over two and half thousand (once you factor in skin tones and gender). There is everything from passport control đ through to a pretzel emoji đĽ¨, which was one of the 60 or so added in the last update (2).
The popularity of emojis has naturally led to headlines from the media such as âemoji will cause the death of Englishâ, âAre emojis killing language?â and the rather wonderful âemojis are ruining civilisationâ. Such headlines, by the way, are a journalistâs version of a substitution table; a quick search will reveal that they said the same about text messages and social media.
As one journalist put it: âA picture speaks a thousand words, yes. But an emoji cannot express the myriad of meanings that language allows forâ (3).  As a teacher then, we can choose to go one of two ways; for or against the headlines. I suggest we can take a more positive approach, similar to the one taken recently by this professor of communication: â’Emojis enhance human interactions. Itâs trying to put emotional, non-verbal information back inâ (4). In other words, emojis are now an important part of communication. As a language teacher, it is this aspect that first got me hooked on emojis and how they can be used as part of our language lessons. I use them now for everything from vocabulary practice to judging how well a student has understood key parts of my lesson.
Whatâs your favourite emoji? Do you have one? Why that one? At the moment I quite like đ¤Ż, used to mean anything from shock to awe.
This simple question is a speaking activity in itself. âOK class take out your phones, tell your partner what your favourite emoji is and why.â
At the very least, emojis provide us with thousands of symbols that we can use in teaching. Think how often we use flashcards or pictures, emojis at a very basic level can act in the same way. See the funny thing about emoji is that they have a universal meaning. They cross linguistic borders like no other form of communication. That is not to say that some donât alter meaning in different cultural and group contexts, but on one level the meaning of many is the same. Show a picture of an emoji to your students and there is a good chance that they will know what it is, a very useful scaffold on which we can exercise vocabulary. And when they donât know what it is, we immediately enter a speaking and thinking exercise as students try to work it out.
Now some of you might be thinking âyeah but I donât know what half of them mean myselfâ đ¤. Keep calm! There are many tools at our disposal – from an emoji dictionary, through to an emoji encyclopedia. You can even get real-time usage stats of the worldwide use of emoji (NB: I might have become a bit emoji obsessed).
Join Shaun as he opens the door to activities – from speaking and writing to grammar and vocabulary, guaranteeing to turn a âcrying faceâ into âtears of joyâ!
Read even more about using emojis in the ELT classroom with Shaun’s Q&A.
Shaun Wilden is the Academic Head of training and development for the International House World Organisation and a freelance teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer. He currently specialises in technology and language teaching, especially in the area of mobile learning. His latest book âMobile Learningâ was published in 2017 by OUP. He is a trustee of IATEFL and also on the committee of the Learning technologies special interest group. He makes the TEFL commute podcast for teachers.
Nicky Hockly is Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E. She has worked in ELT since 1987 with teachers all over the world. She has also written several prize-winning methodology books about new technologies in language teaching. Her latest book is Focus on Learning Technologies.Â
During my recent webinar Going Mobile, I described activities that use mobile devices in the classroom, and that I have used with my own EFL students. This included two QR code activities, which generated quite a few questions from the audience! QR (Quick Response) codes can be read by mobile phones, and can deliver a text message to studentsâ mobile phone screens (among other things). If you are unfamiliar with QR codes, you could take a look at this post on my blog: A dummies guide to QR codes.
The two activities I described in my webinar are also described in detail on my blog. Both were carried out with a beginner (A1 level) class of EFL students in the UK. The first activity involved four QR codes, each of which (when âreadâ by students with their mobile phones), gave them a question reviewing recent vocabulary and grammar. You can read about how the activity worked in practice here: Intro to QR codes.
The second activity was a treasure hunt, in which QR codes were placed in various locations around the school. The students went in pairs and threes to each location, read the code with their mobile phones, and carried out a task that was delivered in text message format via the QR code in each place. The tasks included looking for information and taking notes, taking photos, interviewing people in the school (two receptionists, the Director of Studies, and myself), and audio recording two of these interviews. You can read about how the activity worked in practice on my blog here: QR codes: A treasure hunt.
Based on these two activities, here are some of the questions that the audience asked:
What didn’t you give them these questions on a paper [instead of using QR codes]? Why all that time-consuming work?Â
This is a great question, and probably the first one that needs to be asked! I could certainly have given students the questions on pieces of paper stuck on the wall. There are a number of reasons I decided to use QR codes instead. Firstly, although most of the students in the class had seen QR codes before, it turned out that not a single one had a QR code reader on their phones, or knew how to read QR codes. So by getting them to download a free QR code reader app (using the school Wi-Fi), and showing them how QR codes work, they gained an additional digital skill. But more importantly, using QR codes had a direct and visible impact on the studentsâ motivation and engagement in the lesson. It got them up and moving, it provided variety, it was something new, and there was the element of âcracking a codeâ â you don’t know what a QR code says until you actually decipher it via a QR code reader app on your mobile device. But the important point to make here is that the two lessons were not about QR codes. The QR codes were simply a means through which to deliver the task instructions. The tasks were where the students really had to work, by answering questions, by the interviewing people, by finding information. Some of the tasks (like carrying out and recording two audio interviews with native speakers) were very demanding for A1 level students, and they worked hard at it. This is where real learning took place.
The second question is also an excellent one. Creating QR codes is not particularly time-consuming, but the great thing is that you can reuse these activities with different classes. Also, if various teachers in your school are creating different QR code activities, the codes can be put on cardboard or laminated, and then used by different teachers with a range of their classes. Creating any new materials for your class (handouts, slides, tests, etc.) will require you to invest a little bit of time, but if the materials are effective, they can be reused.
Did you design the QR codes yourself? Or did you use them from a coursebook? Which QR code generator do you use?Â
I designed the QR codes myself, because I wanted the QR code messages to review recent vocabulary and grammar that my students had studied in class. I’m not aware of any adult EFL coursebooks that integrate QR codes as part of language review activities (which is what my two activities did). To create the QR codes before class, I used a QR code generator called Kaywa. But another very good one is QR code generator, which both reads and creates QR codes, and is easier to use than Kaywa. The students in my class were using their own mobile phones, so we had a range of mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows and Blackberry). For them to be able to read the QR codes, I asked them to download a cross-platform QR code reader called i-nigma, which I’ve found to be excellent. âCross-platformâ means that the same app works on different mobile operating systems.
 I’ve got 40 students in my classes. Do you think I can still do the QR activities?
Good question! I was lucky to have very small classes, with around 12 students per class. So when my students were moving around the school in the treasure hunt activity (in separate pairs and threes), there was very little disruption for the school. With large classes (and assuming your school Director gave permission for students to be moving around the school!) you could include more QR codes with tasks (say 20 in total) and have them in lots of different areas of the school, with pairs of students working with different QR codes in different locations at the same time. Essentially this is a question of logistics, and it’s going to depend on the size of your school, the age (and noisiness!) of your students. Youâd need to make sure that there is enough space in the school for this activity to take place without everyone crowding into the same place at same time!
Can I do this with elementary school students? What about primary students? Do you think these activities are more suitable for teenagers?
My students were a mixture of teenagers and adults (aged 16 â 45), and activities were definitely suitable for both age groups. Essentially, weâre talking about using QR codes as a prompt to a language activity, remember. I can see this working with younger students as well (primary and elementary school), assuming your students have access to mobile devices. In the case of younger learners, they are unlikely to have their own mobile phones. But if your school invests in a âclass setâ of mobile devices (for example, low cost Android tablets) students could use one tablet per pair to read QR codes which give them tasks suitable to their age and language level. For example, for primary school students, imagine they’ve been learning vocabulary for colours, simple adjective or shapes in class. You could have QR codes asking them to use the mobile device to take photos of things of different colours, sizes or shapes. Each QR code task might say something like: âTake a photo of something redâ, âTake a photo of something smallâ, âTake a photo of something squareâ, etc.
Thanks to everyone who came to the webinar! And good luck if you decide to try out any of the webinar mobile activities with your own students!
If you missed the webinar and want to catch up, feel free to visit our Webinar Library, for this session and previous recordings.
Nicky Hockly is Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E. She is the author of several prize-winning methodology books about technology in EFL, and her most recent book is Focus on Learning Technologies (OUP, 2016). Today, she joins us to preview her webinar ‘Going Mobile: Choices and Challenges’, on March 15 and 16.
Using Mobile Devices with Students Effectively in the Classroom
Do you already use mobile devices with your students in the classroom? If not, would you like to? Perhaps your students use their devices regularly during your classes, or perhaps youâre just starting out â either way, there are several key things to keep in mind to make sure that things go smoothly.
Pedagogical considerations
First off, ask yourself why youâd like students to use mobile devices in your class. Answers might include: it adds variety to my class, in motivates my students, it enables us to do activities we couldnât otherwise do in class, it supports their learning. Itâs important to have a clear reason for mobile based tasks, and that these enhance the learning experience. You want to avoid using technology just for technologyâs sake. Good, meaningful task design is key here, with mobile based activities supporting your syllabus and learning aims. Youâll find some examples of mobile based classroom activities on my blog here and here.
Good, meaningful task design is key⌠with mobile based activities supporting your syllabus and learning aims.
Logistical considerations
Of course, if youâd like your students to use mobile devices in your classroom, they will need access to devices! There are a couple of options. Mobile devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, and whatever your teaching context, your students are likely to have a mobile phone. This may be a smart phone, or it may be a simpler âfeatureâ phone (e.g. with photo and audio capabilities). Your tasks will need to be designed around the devices your students have. For example, if your students have feature phones, you can design tasks in which they need to take photos (e.g. of examples of English that they find in signs/restaurant menus/billboards outside of the classroom), or audio recordings (e.g. of spoken pair work, interviews, etc.). Students using their own devices is known as BYOD (bring your own device). You can find one of my articles about BYOD for the language classroom, with some activity suggestions, here.
But perhaps you teach younger learners, who donât have their own mobile phones. In this case, some schools invest in a âclass setâ of devices â that is, a set of 10 or 15 tablets, which can be stored in the school. Teachers then book out the class set for their students to use in pairs during class. The class set option is also effective if you are concerned about some of your students having devices, and some not, or about some students having the latest most expensive devices and others not. Finally, there is a âhybridâ option. Here students can choose whether to use their own devices, or one of the schoolâs class set devices.
Technical considerations
These include having a decent Wi-Fi connection for your students in your school/classroom, especially if you want them to do activities or use an app that requires an Internet connection. Also, if youâd like your students to use a specific app for an activity, and you are using a BYOD approach, you will need to ensure that your chosen app is âcross platformâ â that is, no matter what sort of operating system (OS) your students have (Apple, Android, WindowsâŚ), they can all use the same app. If the app is not available for all OS, then you need to recommend similar apps for each OS, so that students can carry out the task no matter what device they have.
Classroom considerations
Teacher are often concerned about classroom management with mobile devices. For example, how to ensure that students donât get distracted by their mobile devices, and start messaging their friends, or checking Facebook, instead of doing the task you have set? Setting engaging tasks with a short time frame, and ensuring that students need to actually produce something with their devices, can help mitigate this. Another concern that teachers have, especially with learners under the age of 18, is the inappropriate use of devices. For example, teachers worry about cyber-bullying, or students accessing inappropriate content in class, or taking unsolicited photos of classmates or the teacher and publishing these online. These are legitimate concerns. If your school intends to use mobile devices with learners under 18, itâs important that a robust digital policy is put in place beforehand. Parental permission needs to be sought for the use of studentsâ own devices, and many schools include an acceptable use policy (AUP) as part of their schoolwide digital policy. The good news is that you donât need to create your AUP from scratch. There are plenty of excellent examples available online that you can adapt â simply search for âacceptable use policyâ.
⌠set engaging tasks with a short timeframe, and ensure students need to actually produce somethingâŚ
These are just some of the areas that teachers need to keep in mind when using mobile devices with their learners. Come along to my webinar âGoing Mobile: Choices and Challengesâ on the 15th or 16th of March, where we will discuss these and other issues in more depth. Weâll also look at some more activities that you can do with mobile devices in class!
Shaun Wilden, a freelance teacher trainer and expert in teaching with tablets, shares his advice for teachers on making the most of the interactivity of digital coursebooks from Oxford Learnerâs Bookshelf.Â
Part 2 â How interactivity in e-books supports independent learning, pair work and whole class learning
Welcome back. How did your first lesson go? Did the students get to grips with their new digital coursebooks? Are you finding the right balance of use and non-use? I trust that by now the routine of using a different form of book is kicking in and itâs beginning to feel a little bit more normal. Youâve also realised that the digital aspects of your book can augment your usual teaching practice.
With that in mind letâs look at a lesson. Weâll use the e-book version of Headway Beginner, but you can apply the ideas to any coursebook you are using. If youâre not using e-books at the moment, and youâd like to try out the ideas in this post, just download the app for iPad or Android tablets, or go to www.oxfordlearnersbookshelf.com and try the free samples.
Letâs jump into the book and look at page 36, which is a vocabulary and pronunciation lesson based on the topic of languages and nationalities. In doing this lesson you are focusing the students on developing their knowledge of how to refer to different nationalities and language in English. By the end of the lesson, the students will have been introduced to a lexical set of nationalities and languages and had the opportunity to practice the pronunciation of each. The lesson also revises question forms which appeared earlier in the unit.
Hereâs a quick question for you, how many ways are there of getting to page 36? One would be to swipe through the pages (albeit that would take some time). Before you read on, stop and as I said in part one, have a play.
Answer alert! You can use the tool bar on the left of the page, and the page thumbnails and numbers at the bottom. Add swipe, bookmarks, and search and there is a navigation method to suit pretty much everyone.
Getting started with my lesson, I project my iPad onto a bigger screen and pinch zoom the photos so that they fill the screen and remove the text. I donât want them distracted by the text at the moment.  Getting the students to look at the picture, I elicit which country they think it is (they did countries in a previous lesson so this is revision). Using the pen tool, I can write some of their answers on the page as in the picture below.
Once the students have the idea, I ask them to work in pairs and with one of their tablets look at the photos and write which country they think it is. We then get answers by again looking at my projected tablet. As the students are looking up I use the first picture to move from country to nationality leading into exercise 1, in which students have to match the countries and nationality.  To complete this exercise students can use the pen tool.
Whether the course book is paper or digital it is important for the teacher to mix up how the students are working. This helps meet the differing learning needs of the students. Since we began with the students working as a class, heads-up with me, I ask them to do exercise 1 working on their own tablet. However since I donât want it be a test-like atmosphere I encourage the students to support each other. I think this is important, as I want the students to learn to be independent and not always rely on their teacher for answers. If you remember from the first post I like my students working in islands. I think this helps them work with each other. In this lesson, since the answers are in an audio script, the students donât need me to formally check the answers. I can promote learner independence while at the same time having the space to help those students who need it, by getting them to play the audio on their tablet.
However, there is a danger when encouraging them to work like this that students might take a long time to complete the exercise. As I donât want them to take forever I change the projection on my tablet from the coursebook to a traffic light timer (for example Stop go or Traffic Light). The students then know that while the light is green they can work on the task, as the time expires the light will change to red signaling the end of the task. Being freed up like this I find I can give students more individual attention.
Since one of my favourite classroom techniques is drilling, once weâre all ready students put their tablets aside and we do some choral drilling. To add a fun element to this, I open the âtoo noisyâ app (iOS and Android). This is an app often used to show a class that itâs making too much noise. However since I want the students to be confident when they drill I turn this on the head and get them to make as much noise as possible so that the app goes off the scale.
Digital coursebooks have the ability for students to record themselves so rather than having to put individual students on the spot, once I am satisfied with the group drilling, itâs back to the âlisten and repeatâ part of exercise 1 on page 36.
Hereâs another quick question for you. There are two ways the students can record themselves in the digital coursebook. Do you know both? Answer alert! Student can record themselves using the audio note or by using the recorder that comes up when a student listens to audio.
More confident students, who do not need to refer back to a model, can practise the pronunciation into the audio note. Alternatively students can listen to the audio, tap record and say the word after each one is said by the coursebook. They can then play it back along side the audio to check their pronunciation.
One additional feature of digital coursebook audio is that the pace can be changed. If you look at the image above, you can see the plus and minus button on the audio toolbar. Students who have difficulty in listening can slow the listening down and those who want a bit of extra challenge can speed it up.  If you were running a listening lesson from the front of the class you wouldnât be able to allow so much flexibility to the students. Additionally this slow and fast can help a student with pronunciation. Slowing down highlights how the word is said, speeding up helps students reach a natural rhythm.
A similar approach can be taken with exercise 3, which this time asks the students to match country and language in order to make true sentences. However given the students have been working in their books for a while now if you are looking for a bit of variety, it could be done in a more traditional way such as using cut up paper prepared in advance. Either way after doing exercise 3 as preparation, itâs time for my students to âtestâ themselves. Books off, they make sentences (orally) for their group as per the model. However rather than always making true sentences, students can make them true or false for their classmates to decide.
Finally we finish the page by doing the pairwork in exercise 4. Rather than asking them to reopen their tablets, you can use your projected coursebook to orientate and instruct the students. Students then do the task to get the idea and practice. However this first run through is also a rehearsal for recording.
Once the students are ready, going back to the audio note they record themselves doing exercise 4. They can then listen back and assess their own performance. You can help, guide and point them in the right direction before asking them to do the task for a third time (again recording) to note improvements.
There you go, a lesson using a digital coursebook. Â Not too dissimilar to what youâve done before the digitalization is it? But before the naysayers pipe up, look at what the digital coursebook added. First of all the material was in one place so no need for extra audio equipment or finding a way to project large images to work in plenary. We added the ability for the students to record themselves, we didnât have to control audio so they could work at their own pace. As a teacher I could work specifically with those that needed extra help while others could get on with a task. We still did group and pair work and we still got to do some good old-fashioned drilling.
Hopefully by now youâre getting into the swing of using the tablet. There are some obvious digital follow ups. By that I mean activities we can give the students as extension activities, just as you would do when using a paper-based coursebook. Obviously you can choose the ones that best suit your class but here are a couple of things to get you started.
As a class follow up for vocabulary I use the Socrative app to create a nationality or language quiz. The students can then play the team game. (When you download the app look through what it can do). You will see a game called space race. This makes for a fun way to end the lesson and review the lexis of the lesson. By connecting to Socrative through their tablets they are automatically playing in teams which provides a different interaction to those already used in the lesson. If you are new to Socrative, note that there are two apps: one for the teacher and one for students. After creating an account, you log in to the teacher version to create and run the game. The students join in on the student version of the app.
Homework will be getting the students to use an app such as fotobabble to create their own photo as per the examples on page thirty-six. They take a selfie and then use the language of the lesson to talk about themselves. Here that task not only uses the coursebook as the impetus but also because students have to record their audio (for other students) it gives a communicative focus to the language revision. If students cannot take their tablet home, they can do this on their mobile phones or computer. Alternatively, another task is to get the students to take photos of things of different origins e.g. An English dictionary, Italian food. If you set this for homework, students come to the next lesson with photos that not only revise the language of the lesson but sets up the next lesson perfectly!
Right, thereâs a lot for you to get trying out. Feel free to leave me a comment saying what worked or didnât.
Shaun Wilden, a freelance teacher trainer and expert in online tutoring, shares his advice for teachers new to using digital coursebooks in the classroom and offers practical guidance for getting the most from the Oxford Learners’ Bookshelf.
Part 1 â Preparing for your first lesson
If youâre starting to teach with digital, tablet based coursebooks for the first time, you may be wondering how best to get your students off to a good start. With this is mind here is the first in a series of blog posts to help you get started. Following the few key steps outlined below before you start, will have you facing your first digital coursebook lesson with confidence and a clear sense of what you are going to do and achieve.
Preparing the tablets
If your school is providing the tablets, make sure that the IT person who looks after the tablets has downloaded the free Oxford Learnerâs Bookshelf app (OLB). If students are bringing their own, theyâll need to download the app themselves. For iPad go to the App Store, for Android tablets go to Google Play.
Students need to register with Oxford, or log in with an existing account. Having an account means that your studentsâ e-books are safely saved in the cloud, and students can access them via the newly launched web player at www.oxfordlearnersbookshelf.com, as well as on their tablet. This video will show you whatâs changed and how to register and access your books.
If you havenât worked with a digital book before, open the OLB app and log in and youâll see the Bookshelf  with the books that have been added. If you donât see your book it might not yet be downloaded from the cloud. Look at the bottom of the screen and you can alternate your view between device and cloud. If the book is in the cloud, you can tap Download to transfer it to the device.
Ideally, the e-books will have been downloaded onto the tablets before the first lesson. They are quite large files, particularly the ones with audio and video, and can take a while to download. Your students can start looking at the books as soon as they start downloading, but it may take a while before any audio or video is available.
If the tablets are ready before the class, do check your own and some of the studentsâ tablets are working well before your first class. This gives you a chance to go back to the IT person to sort out any hiccoughs.
Getting to know your new coursebook
Tap on the cover of the book you want and it will open. If you compare it to the paper-based version of the book then youâll notice the content is the same. Now you can breathe a sigh of relief as you realise all those wonderful lesson plans and activities you used last year are still relevant.
I can hear you muttering, how are they still relevant, weâve gone digital. Well, the second point to remember is that you are not going to use the tablet all the time. Most of use wouldnât use a paper coursebook for the whole lesson so why would we change that? As I am sure you have heard before, the coursebook is one of the many tools at the disposal of the teacher, digital or not. To maximize language learning we want to encourage interaction as this leads to communication so sometimes, perhaps more often that you currently think, youâll be asking the students to switch off the tablet. Therefore those lovely laminated cards you have to prompt discussions are still going to make an appearance at some point.
So what are the differences? Rather than turn the page, a swipe changes it. Pinching can enlarge a picture or a text, something you canât do with paper. Remember that when you want the students to look in more detail at a photo or when the student who has visual impairments needs a bigger script.
As a I talked about in a previous blog post, for most books listening is inbuilt and some even have video. Play around, click on some of the icons on the page and see what happens. As I say to my students, you canât break anything. By the end of your playing make sure you also know how to input text into exercises. Now think about how you are going to show your students how to do these things, will you simply let them click and discover? If you have a projector in your class, do you know how to connect your tablet so that students can see your screen? If you have Apple TV or Google Chromecast, do you know how to reflect your screen so all can see?
There is of course one other feature that you need to get to grips with, the interactive tool bar.
You should see it on the screen a grey bar to the left of a page. To open it, tap the white arrow and it will appear. Personally I use this as part of the orientation process in the first lesson. So letâs move on and think of that.
Student orientation
Tablets ready, book downloaded, time for the first class. Weâll assume that the schoolâs administration has already gone over how they are to be used with the parents and students. So youâre entering the room tablets at the ready. I tend to prefer students sitting in groups when using tablets so I arrange desks into islands rather than in rows.
If you do this make sure everyone has sightline to the board. The first thing I would do is leave the tablets to one side. It is after all the first lesson of the year, time for students to tell you what they did in their holidays and get out their mobile phones to regal everyone with photos of whichever exotic location they spent their vacations in. Remember that students are used to doing things on their phone as most probably are you.  There is already a digital know-how to tap into. But bear in mind that it would be wrong to assume that students have touched a tablet before and therefore know how to use it. So before we get going on the digital books we need to discover what they know. In true traditional classroom style, what better way to do this than a âfind someone whoâ exercise. You know the one I mean, students have a set of statements that they walk around the class turning into questions and searching for someone who answers yes.
Here are some (for an iPad) that I show on a screen and get students to do:
Find someone who:
Can switch the tablet on
Take a screenshot
Search the iPad
Mirror the iPad through apple TV
Turn up the volume
Turn up or down the brightness
Lock the screenâs orientation
Take a photo
Open an app
Close an app
Give students time to circulate and try and find people. Do feedback with the class, now is a good time to hand out the tablets so students can teach each other. This is where sitting in islands aids peer teaching. You can âcheckâ students are getting comfortable with the tablet by walking round to each island, offering advice and helping as necessary.
After this task, I get the students to put the tablets down, give them some paper (yes paper!) and ask them to come up with a list of rules / limits for classroom use of tablets. These include factors such as staying on task, not downloading apps (though hopefully your IT person has locked down the wi-fi or added a content filter).  This is like making a class contract but not simply covering rules about punctuality and homework.
It is now time to launch the digital coursebook and start getting the students used to the tools. If you need the students to make their own accounts to download the books then walk them through it using your tablet on a projector. If the books are already there, then get them to log in and start getting them used to the tools. Itâs perhaps best not to go over them all in one lesson so as not to overload. On my tablet I project a word cloud of some of the tools like this:
(made with the Word Art app)
Get the students to switch on their tablets and tell them how to find their coursebook in OLB. They then work together to identify the features named in the wordcloud. When youâre ready to check the answers, switch your tablet to display the book and ask students to name the tools. If you are projecting onto a whiteboard you can of course write the name of the feature next to the tool.
So thatâs it, I hope thatâs helped you overcome any first lesson dread. When you think it about it, starting with a digital coursebook is not that different from any lesson using a new coursebook.  At first preparation time might increase but it will improve as you get more familiar with your material, the same as it would with when using the new coursebook. Often in a first lesson, a teacher does an orientation quiz and here itâs not different though weâre orientating to tools not the book itself. Whatâs more as I mentioned earlier, a lesson using a digital coursebook doesnât have to be dominated by the book. Here we spoke, collaborated, mind mapped and perhaps most importantly we got the students communicating in English.
Right, now thatâs the first lesson under your belt, time to get ready for the next one, which weâll look at in the second post.
Love them or hate them, emojis are now a part of everyday life, in 2017 there was even a movie about them. Unlike that movie, which failed to wow the critics đ´, I think embracing emojis in the classroom could get you a đ from students.
Nicky Hockly is Director of Pedagogy of 
Nicky Hockly is Director of Pedagogy of 
Shaun Wilden
