Get Connected!

If you are a teacher  and searching for a great place for your students to globally get connected I've found just the place! It is called ePals. EPals can open your students eyes to a whole new world. Experience new cultures without leaving the classroom, students can create project with students around the world, and collaborate. As a teacher you can set up an ePal group for your class by simply signing up for an account. After you've signed up there are a million options to choose from. It is important to choose the language your students will be speaking or writing, what grade or ages they are,  what kind of project you are looking for, and choose a region you are interested in connecting with. For example, if you are an EFL teacher you may look for somewhere in France or Spain because students there will speak French or Spanish. Some projects you can choose from include: penpals, skype/video chat, or project workspace. EPals also has a feature where you can pick the subject area or choose from the Common Core standards which includes: Art/Music, Language-learning, Science, Reading, Writing, Social Studies, Math, Culture,Literature, Informational Text, Writing, Math, Speaking and Listening, and Language. The learning choices are ENDLESS. A class project  I came across that caught my attention was a Discussion Circle Project with writing. Students can choose to work alone or collaborating with partners in the classroom and around the world. Students have the option to work and learn new things from their ePals from another region, who could possibly have new learning strategies or ideas the students could learn from. Another simple, but great idea is to connect to another region and become penpals with these students to learn more about their culture, community, region, what games they like to play, what music they listen to, etc. This is a good way for students to focus on writing, learning more about someone else's culture, and work on their communication skills. When students are a part of an online collaborative learning community, powerful learning takes place. Having the correct digital tools, like wikis, blogs, forums, email and media galleries, all in one place make for a rich learning environment ready for collaborative and interactive project work...

As a future ESL teacher I would be willing to try out many of the tools offered on ePals. It is important when choosing a project for your students to keep in mind their learning level. You don't want to pick an activity that would be intimidating for your students. Therefore, I would hypothetically say I have "newcomer" students. Therefore, a project I would be willing to try out with my students would probably first be penpals. I would like my students to practice with the English language and find penpals that are also practicing English as a second language. Then, the students are on the same level. While writing their penpals I wouldn't give the students too many guidelines. They could write as they wish, with my assistance, and get to know their "pal."After the students got good with penpaling we could move to video chatting or skyping because it would feel more real for the students and they can socialize a little while practicing English. Both penpaling and skyping are very authentic ways for learning.  I also like the project workshops. It seems amazing for students around the world to collaborate on the same assignment, but this kind of activity would seem more appropriate after connecting with your ePals first. I highly suggest teachers find more ways to make their content AUTHENTIC and ePals is one of them!

Can using games in an L2 Class Really Be Beneficial?

According to "7 Things You Should Know About Gamification," "The application of game elements in non-gaming situations of to motivate or influence behavior."Using gaming to motivate learners is a great thought for now and the future. I never thought about how much more motivating gaming could be than a worksheet. According to Stephan J. Franciosi's "A Comparison of Computer Game and Language-Learning",
Task Design Using Flow Theory "recent studies show that a gaming approach to language instruction is more intrinsically motivating than non-gaming approaches. "This article explores the ways that goals, feedback and skill/difficulty balance are typically implemented in computer games and tasks. The article touches on constructivism, and that constructivism favors the notion that learning is an active process which alternately involves skill-challenging experiences and reflective thinking. Franciosi compares computer gaming and language learning task design using flow theory, and it turns out computer games and 

language learning tasks are fundamentally identical in that both can be considered goal-oriented, rule-driven activities. He points out computer gaming could be used to prepare learners with authentic and real-world communication skills. "Three important insights resulted from this comparison: (1) goals should be concrete, quantifiable objective, and appeal to learner interests; (2) feedback as a means of fostering flow should be considered in addition to feedback as a means of supporting reflection; (3) task difficulty and player skill are ideally balanced moment-by-moment at the individual level."

A “Fun” Online Video Game For English Language Development I found was Phantasy Quest. I played this game once. I thought this game would work well for language learners because you have to search for things and you are stranded on a deserted island. Students need to learn the language as they are trying to figure out how to get off the deserted island. The game motivates them to try and learn more vocabulary words and direction skills faster to then move on to the next level.  There seem to be a lot of basic words the students can learn including cat, rope, lantern, clothes, etc. It's just very basic. I'm sure by also playing the game the students will begin to talk to you (the teacher) about how to advance or tell you what they collected. Students will also possibly talk to each other to help each other get further in the game. You could also place students in pairs to help each other during the game and work on more communication skills together. All these strategies are a great way to develop better communication skills and the students are motivated to do it. It's a  win, win! A learning objective that I would use for this game is students will learn basic vocabulary words, including direction skills, that will help their future communication skills. Besides the basic communication skills being used with the teacher and students, the teacher will be able to assess that students knowledge of the words they are truly learning from the game. Students could keep a 'new word' journal to look back at. This way you could see if the students are paying attention to the skills being learned or simply trying to get to the next level without grasping any new concepts. While the students were in pairs I would also use a walkthrough so students could work on direction skills and communicating with each other. They would be using team work while building new vocabulary, as well as trying to advance on the game. I would also try and use images from this game around the classroom, so students could continue building their vocabulary, or I  could help them in they're having trouble with any words. We could make our own adventure out this game, and be stranded on our own classroom island trying to escape. This game has some advanced words so students may need your help.

"Tweet-Tweet"

According to " 10 Amazing Ways For Teachers & Tutors To Use Twitter In Education" "Twitter like all other social media is a virtual Aladdin’s cave."This fits twitter to a "t." There is so much information a learner can receive from twitter, if the teacher takes the first steps. There are so many ways teachers can connect with their students using twitter. You can set up a 'classroom' hashtags around lessons and topics. This way the students can look back and keep a record of what was taught. "Hashtags also make it easy to follow interesting topics related to the curriculum or anything else that might broaden a student’s knowledge base." Twitter makes it easy for an after class discussion or if students need help they can get a hold of the teacher or their classmates for help! Language learners can begin to use BICS. There is no pressure to communicate "correctly" and hashtags keep everything together. I find twitter could be especially useful for intermediate ELLs to become familiar with English from a whole different perspective. Teachers can also use twitter as a bulletin board, interact with students parents, or even create a classroom newspaper. It genius!! I would love to able to communicate with my parents on a daily basis and that's easy. Teachers can easily tweet something that all the parents could see, or connect directly. My favorite idea I found was a history graduate posting events from WWII and it could become an interesting history project that brings things to life. You could pick all different events in history. It's a new way for learning.

According to an article called "How To Use (Internal) Microblogging For Education,"
"Microblogging is an outstanding technique for supervision."  You can encourage students to track their  activities in a microblog.  If students are posting information about their work, this creates more time for the teacher to participate in the students work and track their progress. We are all able to then stay connected! Teachers never seem to have enough time to really track each students progress, twitter could possibly make our lives a little easier. Possibly more time consuming, but we also would have a better grasp on each student as an individual learner. You can create microblogs for everything!