Thursday, June 20, 2013
Monday, March 19, 2012
Practical Ideas for using an IWB in class
Hi everyone,
as a follow-up to our recent session, I thought the simplest way to remind you of the activities we looked at (and show you how to do them yourself!) would be to record myself going through the different steps for each activity.
So, here's part 1 (part 2 will be added very soon).
Enjoy - and if you have any questions, please get in touch.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Using an IWB in Primary & Secondary
... and here is the Power Point presentation we looked at to start off our session. Again, any comments welcome!
https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AfgK-XdM2gygZGRrNHRkM2dfODBja3JtZGM5dA&hl=en_US
Saturday, October 1, 2011
A few tips about using an IWB in your school
If your school has recently acquired (an) electronic board(s), here are a few tips on getting things up and running with the board:
• Check what resources come with the board software and make sure they have been installed on the system by your IT person – there will certainly be a selection of templates, backgrounds, shapes, images etc which will prove useful and save time in the preparation of ‘flipcharts’ (documents).
• Make sure all teachers know how to download the software onto their home computer – usually a very straightforward process from the company’s website. There will be a much better take-up among teachers (as well as faster progress in the use of the software) if they can practise at home.
• Check what flipcharts are available (a) on the website (b) on xtec
• Promote a SHARING CULTURE in your centre if one does not already exist– keep shared flipcharts in an easy-to-find folder or on Moodle – this makes the individual workload much smaller! If I prepare a flipchart about the past tense of irregular verbs, for example, I am happy to share it, as I am likely to get plenty of other flipcharts back in return – who’s got something on the conditional? relative pronouns? etc
• Most important of all - make sure TRAINING is available for all teachers – I cannot emphasise this strongly enough: it seems such an obvious point but in a lot of schools that I know of, it seems that this step has been given much less importance than it deserves or even left out altogether!
• (a) there should be a simple initiation session first with the ICT technician (switching on, opening the software, the functions of the data projector, how is and where to save documents in the file system etc), and then…
• (b), more importantly, pedagogical training in step-by-step stages – if this is done in a 1- or 2-day intensive at the start of term (for example, when teachers are preparing for the imminent academic year in the 1st week of September), there will almost certainly be information overload for most teachers and it can be off-putting and even stressful. My suggestion would be to organise a series of, say, four 2-hour sessions on a Friday afternoon (e.g.), not weekly but every 3 or 4 weeks, with an increasing level of difficulty. After session 1, teachers will have 3 weeks to practise the basic skills that have been dealt with and will then feel confident and ready to move on to the next stage, and so on with the other sessions. In addition, if teachers know that they do not have to devote every Friday afternoon, at the end of a hard working week, to IWB training, it is much more likely to get more teachers on board – and keep them on board!
• Most if not all IWB software now incorporates an export feature, meaning that the documents prepared for use with the board can be transformed into other formats, such as Word, Power Point, pdf (Adobe Reader) etc. – this is useful if, for example, you wanted to send a page, or a whole flipchart, to your class via e-mail or paste it up on your Moodle if you have one. I sometimes make a pact with my classes: if they promise to just look at the board and not copy the answers from it while we are doing, say, an error correction exercise in class (and therefore, I hope, improving their concentration levels and reinforcing pair or group work), I will send them the solution to the exercise in pdf format so that they can refer to it whenever they want and keep a record of what we have done. In most cases, this has proved quite a popular ‘trade-off’!
• Check what resources come with the board software and make sure they have been installed on the system by your IT person – there will certainly be a selection of templates, backgrounds, shapes, images etc which will prove useful and save time in the preparation of ‘flipcharts’ (documents).
• Make sure all teachers know how to download the software onto their home computer – usually a very straightforward process from the company’s website. There will be a much better take-up among teachers (as well as faster progress in the use of the software) if they can practise at home.
• Check what flipcharts are available (a) on the website (b) on xtec
• Promote a SHARING CULTURE in your centre if one does not already exist– keep shared flipcharts in an easy-to-find folder or on Moodle – this makes the individual workload much smaller! If I prepare a flipchart about the past tense of irregular verbs, for example, I am happy to share it, as I am likely to get plenty of other flipcharts back in return – who’s got something on the conditional? relative pronouns? etc
• Most important of all - make sure TRAINING is available for all teachers – I cannot emphasise this strongly enough: it seems such an obvious point but in a lot of schools that I know of, it seems that this step has been given much less importance than it deserves or even left out altogether!
• (a) there should be a simple initiation session first with the ICT technician (switching on, opening the software, the functions of the data projector, how is and where to save documents in the file system etc), and then…
• (b), more importantly, pedagogical training in step-by-step stages – if this is done in a 1- or 2-day intensive at the start of term (for example, when teachers are preparing for the imminent academic year in the 1st week of September), there will almost certainly be information overload for most teachers and it can be off-putting and even stressful. My suggestion would be to organise a series of, say, four 2-hour sessions on a Friday afternoon (e.g.), not weekly but every 3 or 4 weeks, with an increasing level of difficulty. After session 1, teachers will have 3 weeks to practise the basic skills that have been dealt with and will then feel confident and ready to move on to the next stage, and so on with the other sessions. In addition, if teachers know that they do not have to devote every Friday afternoon, at the end of a hard working week, to IWB training, it is much more likely to get more teachers on board – and keep them on board!
• Most if not all IWB software now incorporates an export feature, meaning that the documents prepared for use with the board can be transformed into other formats, such as Word, Power Point, pdf (Adobe Reader) etc. – this is useful if, for example, you wanted to send a page, or a whole flipchart, to your class via e-mail or paste it up on your Moodle if you have one. I sometimes make a pact with my classes: if they promise to just look at the board and not copy the answers from it while we are doing, say, an error correction exercise in class (and therefore, I hope, improving their concentration levels and reinforcing pair or group work), I will send them the solution to the exercise in pdf format so that they can refer to it whenever they want and keep a record of what we have done. In most cases, this has proved quite a popular ‘trade-off’!
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Make a Comment!
Hi everyone,
I'd be very interested to hear any comments you may have on the training session and / or the blog - if you want to do this, just go to the Post A Comment section.
Thanks,
Mike
I'd be very interested to hear any comments you may have on the training session and / or the blog - if you want to do this, just go to the Post A Comment section.
Thanks,
Mike
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Session 5th May
Here are the 10 websites that we looked at in our session:
1 www.cueprompter.com Teachers' comments: AGE: It can be adapted for any level.
It could be useful for students to read any kind of activity they have already prepared: dialogues, songs, chants…
In that way they don’t need to hold the materials, like paper, in their hands. This helps them to improve body language and other skills.
-it can help students to improve their reading, listening and writing skills.
2 http://futureme.org Teachers' comments: AGE: Primary level & upper
This resource can be useful for:
• To revise the date (ordinal numbers, month of the year, etc.)
• To learn & check basic vocabulary to write an e-mail (from …, to …, deliver on …, subject…). To achieve basic competences.
• To make the students remember things they have to do in the future.
• To introduce / practise simple future.
• you can use it for writing practice.
3 www.eslvideo.com (look at: http://www.eslvideo.com/view_quiz.php?id=5909 and
http://www.eslvideo.com/view_quiz.php?id=5567) Teachers' comments: AGE: according to the objectives to be achieved.
• To practice listening skills.
• To ask questions related to the listening.
• From the teacher’s point of view it’s useful to input your own questions according to the objectives you want to achieve.
-it’s very good for listening practice but with highly-motivated students and with good level.
-As the teacher works through the listening task, (s)he can adjust the questions and tasks to lower levels so that students can successfully complete the tasks.
4 http://busyteacher.org Teachers' comments: AGE: all ages
In this website you can find lots of resources like worksheets already made for you to use (to practice all the skills).
A pretty useful tool for teacher when they need to find extra activities to bring into their lessons.
5 http://iteslj.org/questions/ (then use http://www.parapal-online.co.uk/resources/sentencemix.html) Teachers' comments: AGE: all ages
You can find lots of language: vocabulary, expressions, etc. to practise conversation.
Helping students to develop questioning and getting them involved with speaking.
6 www.howjsay.com Teachers' comments: It is useful for pronunciation and listening. All levels. There is also a dictionary.
7 www.vocaroo.com (listen to: http://vocaroo.com/?media=vVh8X4RfFQvJJVq3L ) Teachers' comments: It is a voice recording service. Students can record their own voice and send it to the teacher to assess.
Students prepare a dialogue in class and instead of reading it in front of the class, they record it, post it or send it and everybody listens to it.
8 http://novatores.com/stories/stories.htm (then http://www.readspeeder.com/ ) Teachers' comments: It is a reading task with multiple choice questions. You can also click on some difficult words in bold to find out the meaning.
Students can write their own words or compositions. Then, they can visualize them on the screen.
Reading comprehension
Vocabulary
Checking grammar
1st and 2nd ESO. Start reading a text and stop it to create interest and to assimilate the ideas.
9 http://l.georges.online.fr/tools/cloze.html Teachers' comments: You can do a piece of writing and then you can produce a cloze test by choosing an option available from the site which allows you to erase the parts of the text you want.
Filling the gaps
You can choose different semantic categories
10 http://www.listen-and-write.com:80/ (try Royal Wedding Draws A Worldwide Crowd (level 11) – choose no. 3 Blank mode) Teachers' comments: I used it with 4th level. It was very useful.
Listening and filling the gaps.
1 www.cueprompter.com Teachers' comments: AGE: It can be adapted for any level.
It could be useful for students to read any kind of activity they have already prepared: dialogues, songs, chants…
In that way they don’t need to hold the materials, like paper, in their hands. This helps them to improve body language and other skills.
-it can help students to improve their reading, listening and writing skills.
2 http://futureme.org Teachers' comments: AGE: Primary level & upper
This resource can be useful for:
• To revise the date (ordinal numbers, month of the year, etc.)
• To learn & check basic vocabulary to write an e-mail (from …, to …, deliver on …, subject…). To achieve basic competences.
• To make the students remember things they have to do in the future.
• To introduce / practise simple future.
• you can use it for writing practice.
3 www.eslvideo.com (look at: http://www.eslvideo.com/view_quiz.php?id=5909 and
http://www.eslvideo.com/view_quiz.php?id=5567) Teachers' comments: AGE: according to the objectives to be achieved.
• To practice listening skills.
• To ask questions related to the listening.
• From the teacher’s point of view it’s useful to input your own questions according to the objectives you want to achieve.
-it’s very good for listening practice but with highly-motivated students and with good level.
-As the teacher works through the listening task, (s)he can adjust the questions and tasks to lower levels so that students can successfully complete the tasks.
4 http://busyteacher.org Teachers' comments: AGE: all ages
In this website you can find lots of resources like worksheets already made for you to use (to practice all the skills).
A pretty useful tool for teacher when they need to find extra activities to bring into their lessons.
5 http://iteslj.org/questions/ (then use http://www.parapal-online.co.uk/resources/sentencemix.html) Teachers' comments: AGE: all ages
You can find lots of language: vocabulary, expressions, etc. to practise conversation.
Helping students to develop questioning and getting them involved with speaking.
6 www.howjsay.com Teachers' comments: It is useful for pronunciation and listening. All levels. There is also a dictionary.
7 www.vocaroo.com (listen to: http://vocaroo.com/?media=vVh8X4RfFQvJJVq3L ) Teachers' comments: It is a voice recording service. Students can record their own voice and send it to the teacher to assess.
Students prepare a dialogue in class and instead of reading it in front of the class, they record it, post it or send it and everybody listens to it.
8 http://novatores.com/stories/stories.htm (then http://www.readspeeder.com/ ) Teachers' comments: It is a reading task with multiple choice questions. You can also click on some difficult words in bold to find out the meaning.
Students can write their own words or compositions. Then, they can visualize them on the screen.
Reading comprehension
Vocabulary
Checking grammar
1st and 2nd ESO. Start reading a text and stop it to create interest and to assimilate the ideas.
9 http://l.georges.online.fr/tools/cloze.html Teachers' comments: You can do a piece of writing and then you can produce a cloze test by choosing an option available from the site which allows you to erase the parts of the text you want.
Filling the gaps
You can choose different semantic categories
10 http://www.listen-and-write.com:80/ (try Royal Wedding Draws A Worldwide Crowd (level 11) – choose no. 3 Blank mode) Teachers' comments: I used it with 4th level. It was very useful.
Listening and filling the gaps.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Welcome
Welcome to this Teacher Training blog, I hope you will find useful ideas and information here to help with your teaching.
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