Integrating Technology in English Language Instruction

FOREWORD

"Integrating Technology in English Language Instruction" is a methodology course organised by Pearson Education. I took part in it at the end of October this year (2013) courtsy of our Ministry of National Education. I decided to submit some of my work related to this course on this blog (which I started a while ago and planned to dedicate entirely to translations) for several reasons: lack of time to design a new one and its convenient title. Trans-latio - this course is about how we, teachers, trans-late technology in the English class. "Trans" (Latin) means "across", "beyond". "Latio" comes from "fero, ferre, tuli, latum" which means to carry, bring, tell, relate. The books that I chose as blog cover are a mere translation of our experience between two covers. Their motley image is a mirror of the dappled beauty of the world; and however attractive books may be, it is always good to remember that they were called "le cendre de la vie" (the ashes of life) by Simone de Beauvoir.

 

Handout 3

Electronic Assessment Plan

Learning outcomes
A. Content & Skills: being able to speak about/describe houses and dwellings, rooms, household appliances; comparing types of houses, renting a house, requesting services; writing an advertisement for the sale/rental of a house, writing a letter describing a house for rent
B. Values: being able to work in a small group environment 

Games/Test and Quiz Makers/Flashcards

Students: students are sometimes relieved from the stress of taking a paper-based test; traditional paper-based testing is associated with long chunks of matter that has to be learned and memorised; online tests and quizzes are more flexible, more like progress test, students can be assessed in smaller steps; online games provide again a welcome diversion from the routine of lessons; flashcards offer variation in format.
Teachers: teacher can take advantage of these assessment tools which are better regarded by students than traditional paper-based tests; providing online feedback is accessible to everyone so every student can see correction and suggestions and can learn from somebody else's mistakes; it is easier for teachers to grade/mark such online assessment tools and make calculations (actually, the computer makes them automatically); it is more practical in terms of storage of tests and assessment data; there is no need for a teacher to carry tests at home, grade them and then carry them back to school and to the class to give them back to students.

Rubrics

Students: it is easy for students to estimate their test grade/mark, it is easy for them to organise their approach to the test (how and in what order they solve the exercises of a test)
Teachers: rubrics ensure transparency of the evaluation criteria, online rubrics are easily and readily available both to parents and students, they are practical (once you've put them down and posted them online, there is no cost and you saved the time and effort and printing and multiplying them); it is easier to work with ready-made online rubrics, practically all a teacher has to do is adjust them; scoring is more efficient and multidimensional; assessment can be bias-free


Electronic projects

Students: students have more responsibility and concomitantly more freedom in the research, organisation and design of their own materials; they can collaborate in ways other than face to face and outside the classroom; they become better consumers of multimedia, multimedia stimulates and motivates them to learn better because it enables them to do their own research; students can be known outside the school community if their projects are posted on a blog or website; knowing that their work is going to be posted (therefore seen and possibly criticised by others) motivates students to deliver a high standard outcome; easy access to evaluation criteria and grades/marks
Teachers: assessment of electronic projects is easier since teachers can do it any time; no longer to go to school and take out that large poster to have another look at it; hence, another advantage of electronic assessment of electronic projects - it can become public in no time, therefore available to both students and parents; the evaluation criteria are transmitted in a transparent manner; collaborative project can be scored as a whole, with individual students also scored by separate criteria (e.g. how much they contributed)
 
 E-Gradebooks

Students: students can see their grades just by logging in to their account, on their smartphone; they can also transmit messages to teachers via e-gradebooks; they can see their results to all the tests over a longer period of time; they can also benefit from statistics concerning their test results
Teachers: teachers can record grades from wherever they want and whenever they have some time to do that; in addition to that, they are provided with online statistics tools that automatically make complicated calculations in no time
 
Student self-evaluation (journals, portfolios, blogs)

Students: these are modern tools that can help raise awareness of self-evaluation and its importance students can also learn from the interaction through comments
Teachers: they can too have access to these self-evaluation tools and provide feedback
 

Self-assessment is essential for progress as a learner: for understanding of selves as learners, for an increasingly complex understanding of tasks and learning goals, and for strategic knowledge of how to go about improving.

Sadler, D. R. 1993. cited in Brookhart, S. M. 2001. Successful Students’ Formative and Summative Uses of Assessment Information. Assessment in Education. Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 153-169.

 

What are some ways you can use technology to differentiate or personalise learning?

Teachers can easily design tests adapted to individual learning styles and various proficiency levels thus giving students the chance to explore learning in their own preferred style and to all take part in the learning process. 
The content of learning can be approached from different perspectives (e.g. one learner may be interested in types of houses and architecture, another one may be interested in old buildings, and yet some other students may want to know how to rent a house or how to keep it safe), which increases student motivation.
 
http://allthingslearning.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/back-to-school-assessment-for-dummies/