How about Prezi? Why not introduce interactive lectures?

Every teacher knows it - the feeling of despair after spending an hour or two preparing the perfect PowerPoint for a lesson. The number of clicks, the various ideas, the numerous attempts to make the presentation look attractive enough to draw the students' attention, be interesting enough to keep their attention, and on top of it all, have the merit of a well-organised and structured lecture hopefully resulting in the outcome known as covered content - good performance - achieved goals. And then they just don't listen. Or worse, they don't even care.

Well, how about a change? 

The decision on what kind of change to introduce may not be easy, especially if there is only one computer and a regular projector in the language classroom. Using the computer classroom might not be an option at everybody's institution for various reasons. A one-computer classroom is probably more likely. That is why computer-assisted language learning is so great. Language learning assisted by only one computer can easily be implemented in the classroom where the lecture is being presented, whereas students can cover a large segment of a computer-assisted plan on their own computers at home.

That is why the perfect change for both teacher and students would be the introduction of a completely new form of presenting. The primary focus should be on the aspect of interaction because only then the amount of time spent on the preparation of the presentation will be worth the trouble. 

For instance, students may be asked to anticipate an answer or some other type of information on an upcoming slide, or interactive games may be introduced by using action buttons. Furthermore, different types of media may be inserted in the PowerPoint presentations allowing thus the implementation of a wide variety of learning styles. Many different kinds of media can be used, including graphic images, different backgrounds, photographs, sound files, video clips, animations and text. Various online and offline pages can be hyperlinked within the presentation. All these ideas can easily transform a boring presentation into an interactive teaching tool.

This great resource How to Give Interactive Lectures sorts out some of the most important steps for creating an interactive lecture and they are summarised as follows:

1. Engage in pre-instructional planning.
2. Select engagement triggers and learning tasks for interactive segments.
3. Select and adapt from interactive lecture techniques.
4. Structure and manage the interactive class session.
5. Select mechanisms and methods for collecting, organising, and responding to feedback.

With all these points in mind, how about a new tool for presentations - Prezi. 

Many a teacher has used the option of introducing hyperlinks, embedded content, insertions, animations, etc. in PowerPoint presentations, but the effect produced by Prezi even on the very basic level is really great. Just by engaging an audience in the sense that they are following the transitions from one slide to another is enough. It is eye-catching, engaging audio-visual senses in every possible way and making the audience rationalise while following the path. It practically forces the observer to follow the map in the way it has been created. Personally, I am a great fan of introducing provocative ideas and content enhancing abstract thinking so that Prezi is a real favourite of mine as far as presentations are concerned. 

Another reason why Prezi is great apart from enabling dynamic and interactive presentations is that it is an online tool and students can access it as many times as they need. It can also be downloaded, in case the Internet is not available in the classroom, it can be converted to a Pdf file and it can be posted on a workspace or wiki.

I would like to share a Prezi that I created for my Legal English students and I must admit I use it over and over again. The aim is to practise writing and I decided to focus on the structure of a closing argument. The interactive Prezi is always presented in class, and the students are then expected to submit a written closing argument based on the ideas from the presentation. The interactive aspect is realised quite effectively by means of several interactive tricks, such as questions and answers on separate slides, a “Think-pair-share” exercise, a YouTube clip, etc. The students always participate, they ask many questions referring to possible supporting arguments and the final submissions are really good. 

Hopefully, this Prezi will be interesting and illustrative enough to provoke some teacher to consider introducing interactive presentations in their language classroom. Please follow the link to Closing argument and feel free to comment or share some of your own ideas.

Lesson planning

Lesson planning seems to have become a dreadful phrase. Most teachers still remember the torture they had to undergo in their methodology classes. 

However, the importance of properly set objectives and outcomes, aims and contents of any class is essential. My favourite author of methodology and teaching instruction, Jeremy Harmer, stressed that

“Lesson planning is the art of combining a number of different elements into a coherent whole so that a lesson has an identity which students can recognise, work within, and react to - whatever metaphor teachers may use to visualise and create that identity. But plans - which help teachers identify aims and anticipate potential problems – are proposals for action rather than scripts to be followed slavishly, whether they are detailed documents or hastily scribbled notes” (Harmer, 2001, p. 308). 

When asked which part of the lesson plan seems to be causing the greatest difficulty, most teachers complain about being confused when they have to differentiate between objectives and outcomes. Yet, the difference is amazingly simple: objectives are the results planned to be achieved and outcomes are the results projected to be achieved. 

When trying to define the objectives for their lesson plan, syllabus or curriculum, teachers further confuse objectives and activities. However, this distinction is also rather simple as objectives describe all the facts or skills students are expected to have mastered as a result of completing a particular set of instructions. Unlike that, activities refer to the particular tasks and exercises the students are supposed to complete in order to learn the facts or skills. Clearly, objectives focus on what is expected to be learned as a result while activities describe what is actually to be performed to achieve that goal. 

When it comes to lesson planning for computer-assisted classes, the task seems to be even more difficult. Many different decisions have to be made, which are not only related to the issue of the particular tools to be used, but also to the question involving the amount of computer-assisted activities to be involved. More importantly, in what way should they be involved? 

Nowadays, there are different terms used for more or less the same purpose. So there is technology-enhanced language learning and teaching, web-based language learning and teaching, computer-assisted language learning and teaching, blended language learning and teaching. And if that were not enough, terms, such as information technology, information communication technology, technology education, etc. are considered closely related to the different forms of language learning and teaching. Yet, there is little practical advice regarding a clearly structured lesson deploying straightforward ideas based on the use of the computer in general. And that is probably why so many teachers decide not to use the computer at all.

Most ideas that may be implemented nowadays depend on the Internet. In other words, many tools, programs and technological solutions are used either online or are downloaded. These tools are basically referred to as Web 2.0 tools. A separate page within this blog, Web 2.0 has been designed to be dealing with these tools. A common thing related to these tools other than the Internet is that they are being used on a computer, tablet or smartphone. However, most classrooms will probably depend on the computer, sometimes even on a single computer. 

Of course, planning a lesson can be quite useful. After all, that is what this blog is supposed to be about - suggest applicable ideas easy to implement and yet rendering good results. Therefore, here is an example of a draft for a computer-assisted lesson that can be adapted to almost any type of content (general English, ESP, literature, culture, etc.) and expanded to a properly designed lesson plan:

Corpora-based writing in computer-assisted classes for a General English class:

1. Define a provocative topic, such as corporal punishment.

2. Instruct the students to open the Corpus of Contemporary American English. They will find a number of different entries, each supporting a stance of its own.

3. Tell the students to select five different sources (articles from the media, academia, etc.) by means of the narrowing search criteria provided in the search panel on the left of the main window.

4. Ask them to copy and paste the provided expanded context for each resource selected in separate word documents.

5. Instruct the students to read through the resources, compare and contrast the points of view, make a list of ideas they could extract from them.

6. Tell them to write a 300-word report clearly stating differences in views and opinions regarding the topic.

A possible follow-up would be reading the reports in class and evaluating them in the form of peer assessment. A rubrics evaluation sheet, created by Rubistar (more about this tool in another post) could be prepared beforehand and distributed to the students so they can evaluate their peers’ writing. Alternatively, in order to protect students who are less self-confident, the assessment can be conducted in the form of self-evaluation also based on rubrics.

This particular lesson plan (with slight adaptations) may be used in other types of classes (literature or culture courses) quite effectively. Obviously, the teacher would have to supply the necessary corpus for the students to use. There is an enormous pool of pages to resort to for this purpose. Some very useful pages can be found at Writingcenter, which supplies guided instruction for poetry appreciation as well as essays on prose and drama. Furthermore, an excellent resource to be incorporated in a lesson plan, and probably used extensively both in class and for homework writing assignments as well as exam practice would be the pages on Purdue supplying clear instructions, explanations, definitions, etc. Another excellent resource can be found at the Education-portal. At the bottom of the home page several links are supplied to video tutorials to be used for guided literature analysis. 

For a more detailed lesson plan, I would like to suggest the example for a class in Legal English prepared on the page CALL for ESP.

Exam tip: Organise your students

My first practical tip will be how to make exam life easier by using a simple app provided by Google as a tool to organise students for an oral exam - Google Docs.

At one point a few years ago, I really got frustrated by the number of students sitting in my classroom waiting for their turn in the oral exam. They were noisy, getting in and going out all the time, annoying both me and the students in the front currently taking the exam. 

That is when I saw a colleague of mine (from Canada!) pinning a self-made schedule onto the notice board at our students service office. I immediately realised how brilliant the idea was as students started entering their names into the prepared time slots. I literally facepalmed myself for not having thought of such a simple thing on my own. Thus I prepared a schedule for my next exam and it worked marvellously. 

Soon I got dissatisfied with all the trouble of either going to the faculty to put up the schedule on my own, or email it to the wonderful people at the student office to do it for me. That is when I discovered Google Docs! 

What I do is prepare the exam schedule as a simple table in the app itself. It is a simple document containing a table divided into appropriate time slots. Alternatively, the document may be prepared in Microsoft Office and pasted onto the Google Docs page. I then share the Doc with my students via their Facebook group page or send the link directly to them by emailing them. 

Here is an example:
Exam schedule: Oral Interpreting

An important thing to do before sharing the Doc is to set the share options by using the "Share" option in the upper right corner. The option regarding the "Who has access" has to be set appropriately. 

Upon clicking the "Share" option this window will appear:

The option "Anyone who has the link can..." can be edited via the "Change" option next to it. In the window that opens, the options should be set as shown here:

Once the options have been set and saved, the doc can be shared via any network page, such as Facebook, or emailed directly to each student by copying and pasting the URL provided in the first image above as "Link to share". Of course, the students have to be instructed to enter their name into the appropriate time slot while the teacher can follow the changes by following the changes undertaken in the document.

The benefits from having an oral exam organised like this are manifold. First, only those students who want to take the exam at a particular time will appear then. Those who want to take a peek at the exam may of course be present, but there will be much fewer people there than when they all wait to be called out. Second, a precisely set time frame helps the teacher control the exam. Depending on the length of the slot, the teacher will restrict their time to it accordingly and not allow unnecessary dragging out. Third, students will feel less nervous as they will not fear the moment they are called out. They will have a sense of control over the situation as they themselves have chosen the time, which they would like to take the exam at. Fourth, students who are employed may find it a lot easier to organise their work situation as they can choose when to leave their workplace instead of taking an entire day off. There are many more reasons I am sure could be mentioned. Let it suffice to say that an exam organised like this will make everybody's life easier.

Personally, I could not imagine doing my exams any differently nowadays. Without my exam schedules, considering the number of exams and students taking them, I would probably have to camp at the faculty during the exams!

I hope that this first tip will be useful. I also hope that queries and questions will follow as I would be delighted to share more thoughts regarding Google Docs for this particular purpose or any other. And believe me, there are quite a few options for Google Docs to be used effectively.