Immersing into the Canvas of Learning with Canva!

Among various roles played by the teacher of a language classroom, the material developer is a significant one. There are many educational institutions in Bangladesh where English language teachers are required to develop their own materials. What do you think of materials development? Is it all about ‘writing’ the teaching instructions? Probably many of you would agree on the fact that ‘designing’ is a predominant part of material development. How can we design the teaching materials effectively so that learners become motivated and engaged in the activity? Yes, you have got it right: my today’s blog post is about a designing tool, Canva.

Canva

Canva is an incredible graphic design platform on which immense varieties of visual content can be produced. This tool can foster creativity and autonomy among learners by allowing them to design for their presentations, posters, and projects. Moreover, by using this tool, they can demonstrate their content knowledge and skill-based knowledge of the language which establishes a visual communication with the audience. As a whole, the procedure of producing necessary visual content can be highly satisfying and motivating for them.

How to use

You can just use your Gmail or Facebook account and log in to it. After logging in, you will be able to see your own account on Canva which will be attached to your email account. In your own folder, you will be able to store and work further on designs. Not only that, Canva also gives you the option of downloading your designed materials. Everything is available!

A sample task:

Suppose you are preparing your students for an International Students’ Conference where they will be attending discussion, seminar and workshop sessions on their desired projects. For presenting a project, visual demonstration of acquired knowledge is immensely important. That’s why, show them the following infographic and ask them if it is possible for them to create one like this:

Show them the following video which provides a step-by-step procedure for creating an infographic on Canva:

Now, divide the class in groups of 2/3 and ask them to prepare an infographic on Canva on any one of the following themes and give a short presentation after uploading their infographics on Google classroom. While the groups deliver their presentation, project their prepared infographic from Google Classroom.   

Benefits

Canva has an immense variety of templates, frames, and formats for creating and designing books, magazines, worksheets, lesson plans, presentations, infographics, or even Instagram posts! You will just be overwhelmed by the diversity and variety it provides!

The designing procedure is relatively easy and does not require any technical knowledge. If you can operate MS Docs and PowerPoints, you will be able to operate Canva, trust me!

There are already various types of templates available to be used in education, language learning and language teaching. So you can just select one and let it go…

Shortcomings

O my goodness! I am struggling to find any shortcomings of it! This is because, it also has the paid and non-paid distinction but the free account is more than enough for your purpose. The only thing that is peeping through my mind is that the designing procedure is indeed time-consuming. Then again, this is not a downside of Canva but all designing procedures, I believe.

So, hurry up! Try it this hour!   

Enjoy the joy of learning English with ejoy: ‘Wherever you go, ejoy will follow’

If I ask you ‘which gadget is the most useful one in your day-to-day life?’, I think the first thing that would pop up in your mind is the mobile phone. It has become an inseparable part of our existence. It is even truer for our young and adult students who are always connected with the community through their mobile phones. Sometimes, we reflect: "I wish my students could study with the same passion and interest they invest in mobile games or apps!" So, why don’t we give the Generation Next an opportunity to learn through mobile phones with the same enjoyable and enthusiastic activity that they find in games? Yeah, it’s tricky I know, but not impossible! Probably, your thoughts are hovering around the institutional permission for pedagogical integration of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL), right? I think if you persuade your authority by saying that the desired app is developed very systematically to learn and hone language skills, then they may get assured that mobile-based learning is not trash at all. Okay? Let’s have a look at ejoy, a mobile-mediated language learning app.

Ejoy

ejoy English App claims to level up the users listening and speaking skills along with an emphasis on vocabulary. This app allows the learners to choose resource materials from a wide variety of their in-app collections. Not only that, it also provides freedom of bringing the learners’ own learning materials in the form of movie clips, documentary videos, articles, or online books. After connecting the documents with ejoy, the users will be able to search the meaning of a word/phrase in the dictionary from the subtitle. Moreover, there are also opportunities of turning any text into audio. Amazing! There are more. The app also provides fun activities and vocabulary games which are based on the selected documents. You can also record your voice and re-record selected videos

Getting started

You need to download and install ejoy app from Google play or App store. Once it is installed, it will keep track of your progress and give you time to time reminders about your to-do things and unfinished work in the app. If you want to learn more about ejoy, visit the following link and watch the videos:

https://ejoy-english.com/en#!

Sample tasks

a) Listening

Instructions for students:

Download and install ejoy on your mobile phones.

Select a 3-5 minutes movie clip of your choice.

Look up the difficult words in the dictionary.

Then, narrate the story in as much detail as possible to the person sitting next to you.

 

 

b) Speak Game

Instructions for students:

Select a video-based text.

Record your voice while repeating the text.

Compare your recorded version with that of the original one.

Share your percentage of correction with the class if you want.

 Benefits

This app provides the learners opportunities for personalization and individualization of the learning materials which help to build an ownership of the learning process and facilitate language learning.

It provides direct practice of listening, speaking, vocabulary and grammar and integrates reading and writing skills as well. Therefore, it’s a complete package of learning, practicing, and improving language skills.

The in-app listening and speaking materials are mostly based on interesting topics which can turn out to be engaging and motivating for the learners.

Pitfalls

If you are thinking that I will now start writing about the free and paid version of the app, you are correct! For updating some of the premium features, you need to pay.

Too much engagement with the activities will increase the time of scree-exposure which can be detrimental to health. Therefore, students must be briefed about standard everyday use like 30 minutes or 1 hour per day.

Now it's your turn to explore ejoy! I think the claim that ‘Wherever you go, ejoy will follow’ is quite logical. What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edmodo: Add modern features of blended classrooms

As a consequence of the long-lasting presence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the concepts of Blended learning and Flipped classrooms have rightfully received unprecedented attention among the educationists throughout the world. There are different platforms that provide the opportunity for blended learning through the creation of virtual classrooms. I know that in Bangladesh, Google Classroom has already gained much popularity as a blended learning platform. Apart from that, there are other learning platforms that provide the teachers with the freedom of content creation, lecture delivery, and students assessment. The most popular ones are Edmodo, Schoology, H5P, and the like. Considering the accessibility, infrastructural support, educational budget, and student-friendliness, I have chosen Edmodo for this week’s blog.

Edmodo  

Edmodo is one of the most popular online tools based on Learning Management Systems (LMS). By using this platform, teachers can create opportunities for the blended classroom. That is to say, this website offers immense opportunities for teachers to create a virtual classroom, share teaching content, upload audio, video, or document files and prepare students’ quizzes and assignments.

Getting started

Teachers can open an Edmodo account by using Gmail, Outlook, or Facebook accounts. Then, after creating a class, he/she can invite the students to join simply by sharing the class code. The following video will give you appropriate directions on how to use it: 

       

A sample task

As long as flipped classrooms are concerned, I have seen many teachers of my context become puzzled with engaging the students in the writing classes. Here, I have prepared a sample task for pre-intermediate/intermediate level students who have the EAP course Essay and Report Writing. If you are subscribed to an Edmodo account, you will be able to access the activity from the link: https://new.edmodo.com/groups/eap-essays-and-report-writing-38586112/posts  by using the passcode/class code: ac56ac.

As it can be seen from the designed task that students will be able to access the instructions and necessary documents for writing the report from the virtual class. 

Pre-class instructions

Not only that, while writing their second draft as an assignment, (they will write their first draft in the class) they need to interact with each other by commenting or editing their writing which would reestablish the features of collaborative learning.

Assignment

Moreover, while working on their own parts, they will be able to develop ideas and write autonomously. As a whole, their interactive writing journey will be highly motivating and engaging if it can be completed with virtual collaboration.

If you want to know more about preparing quizzes on Edmodo, just click on the following video:

 

Benefits:

It does not require any institutional affiliation to be connected on the Edmodo platform. You just need to have an email account to create or join any classes. Moreover, it is free and the operating system is simple to use and easy to understand.

Edmodo can save teachers’ classroom time as pre-class preparation materials can be uploaded here in the forms of video lectures, pdf/word files, power-point slides, or through generating links. Moreover, students can download the files and comment interactively on teachers’ posts. At this point, if they have any queries, they can place those on the virtual platform and both the teacher and students can address those.

By using this platform, teachers can keep track of students’ homework and assignments and monitor their progress regarding timely submission and obtained grades. It is also a tool where students can keep all the course-related documents and submissions systematically.

On the students’ submitted work, teachers can provide individual feedback in detail. He/she can also give general feedback by uploading audio or video files.

Therefore, it is evident that a virtual class on Edmodo is not only engaging but also motivating for both teachers and students.   

Limitations

In comparison to other high-tech teaching platforms like H5P, Edmodo offers less variety and diversity in using resources and decorative options for teachers to create class instructions, assignments, and quizzes. Moreover, it doesn’t look as polished and professional as H5P. However, in situations where institutions cannot afford to buy expensive applications and most importantly, where students do not have appropriate devices and high-quality internet connections, teaching tools like Edmodo is the best possible option to be utilized.

That's all for today. I hope to present another ICT tool from my magical toolkit in my next week's posts!

If you want to learn more about Edmodo, tap on the following link:

https://www.whatiselt.com/single-post/2018/01/28/What-is-Edmodo

Cast the spell on learning with Screencast-O-Matic!

Have you got bored dealing with the same topic and mode of presentation years after years? Have your students become tired of the power-point mode of oral presentation each semester? Are you thinking of adding variety, diversity, and multimodality to your students’ presentation projects? ‘Yes’ for all the questions? Okay then, this blog post is for you! In today’s post, I will introduce Screencast-O-Matic which offers accessible tools that empower its users in making, remaking, decorating, and publishing their videos.

What is it?

Screencast-O-Matic is a video creating and editing tool using which videos can be created by recording the screen and capturing the video at the same time.

How to incorporate in education?

Screencast-O-Matic is very much compatible with the concepts of blended learning and flipped classrooms. After the unprecedented interruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, in many educational institutions in Bangladesh, online classes have already been established as alternatives to face-to-face classes. In this respect, for delivering class lectures with power-point slides you can use Screencast-O-Matic to create your video by capturing your screen, embedding your webcam appearance (or disappearance! Your choice!), incorporating background sounds, and more! You will be able to save your video and share it with your class. Not only that, in the face-to-face classes as well, you can use screencast videos for pre-class preparations or for giving general feedback to the class. Besides, another way of using it is to capture students’ presentations which would add versatility and enhance creativity. As you all know, delivering a face-to-face power-point presentation is the only presentation mode for the university students in here. Therefore, sometimes it becomes very tedious for the teachers to grade the same sets of presentations in almost every course. Not only that, it can also be demotivating for the students to have the same format of presentation in the available courses. Therefore, if the students use Screencast-O-Matic while creating their video, it would engage them in the task, enhance their motivation and ensure diversity in their completed task.

A sample task

Speaking: Understanding features of oral presentation

This sample activity will be suitable for intermediate-level university students.

Suppose, the students of the ELT module Methods and Principles of English Language Teaching are taking preparation for their semester-terminal oral presentation. Ask them to watch the following video created by using Screencast-O-Matic. You can ask them to reflect upon the following points after they finish watching the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-hOVpc7DvE

• What are the strengths of this presentation?
• What are the weaknesses?
• What is your suggestion for improvement? 

Now, keeping in mind the discussions after watching the video, ask them to prepare a 5-minute Screencast-O-Matic presentation on the strengths and weaknesses of their preferred teaching methods and upload it on the Google Classroom.

Affordances

For students, presentations recorded through this tool is not a ‘once and for all’ performance. They can go back through their presentations and can edit or re-record them before finally publishing them.

As it is asynchronous, teachers can also go back through the videos for checking or cross-checking the content before marking which will ensure reliability in grading.    

Moreover, in screencasts, two modes are blended together: the presenters can record their screen as well as their webcam appearances at the same time. Not only that, they can also add background music or edit videos with Screencast-O-Matic’s newly launched video-editing features. The incorporation of multimodal features in their presentations will motivate the learners to take charge of their L2 learning.

Above all, it would be a ‘less- worrying’ and ‘more enjoying’ experience of oral presentation for the learners.

Pitfalls

With other ICT tools, this tool and its application in the teaching context have some limitations:

Firstly, some of the advanced features like repositioning the webcam interface, editing backgrounds, and incorporating audio/video files will only work in the paid ‘pro’ version.

Secondly, as it would be a recorded presentation, students may just read aloud from their scripts while presenting which may move them away from the genuine purpose behind their presentation.

Lastly, there can be some students who are not comfortable with this mode of presentation. Even, as I know, some students in our context may not have the necessary device(s) for creating their videos.

Dealing with difficulties

Although the free version of screen does not cover some features, for students’ class presentations or the teachers’ lectures, the free version is enough! Regarding the second difficulty, students’ can be briefed about the importance of natural talk in their presentation so that they do not lean on reading aloud from their notes. Lastly, the students who do not have the necessary devices can be asked to use the computer lab to facilitate their presentations.

So, are you now ready to ‘banish the boredom’ of class presentations? Start casting the spells of Screencast-O-Matic!  

Rowing the boat of learning collaboratively through Conceptboard: Addressing the demands of online teaching and learning

The covid-19 pandemic has caused to emerge unprecedented situations in the education field. When the situation is better, regular face-to-face classes are held but when it starts deteriorating, those are shifted to various online platforms. In many countries of Southeast Asia, this has become a circular process because of which many teachers cannot maintain consistency in following lesson plans and implementing classroom activities. As you know the classroom interaction pattern and student engagement vary to a great extent between face-to-face and online classes. Teachers will hardly disagree that ensuring a standard level of classroom interaction and enhancing collaboration among students is one of the most frequently mentioned challenges in online classes in recent times. It is frustrating for the teachers, let’s say in the productive skills teaching classes, to see the bar of class learning outcome getting dropped. In this respect, it becomes a challenge for the teacher to get the best outcome from the activities. Here, a collaboration among the students can decrease the doom of motionlessness in the class. But how to engage them to collaborate in online (or even offline) sessions? Let’s open the magical treasure box of technology to find out what’s there to improve the situation.

Hmm, I can see many options…Mindmaster, then Tricider, next Scribbler, oh Padlet is there… then-Yes! I have found it- Conceptboard!

Collaboration in Conceptboard

Conceptboard is a virtual and visual workplace where learners will be able to brainstorm on a topic, prepare a flow chart on a process, outline a framework for a project or draft a presentation proposal collaboratively with other students.

Please mark the word ‘collaboration’. The simple rationale for collaboration lies in the notion of ‘unity is strength’: the more united the students, the stronger their concepts become. If you are not convinced at this point, Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory is ready for giving you a boost! With the practice of ‘meaningful’ interaction, knowledge and understanding can be co-constructed. Not only that, Lave and Wenger (1991) further develop this point by stating that collaborative classroom learning helps to formulate longer lasing social relationships in the academic context. Therefore, collaborative learning is not only working together but also scaffolding and guiding each other to achieve a definite goal.

Sometimes, collaborative classroom activity can be the best option for bigger writing/speaking projects like writing an academic report or presenting an institutional renovation proposal. In these types of projects, students are expected to explore vaster dimensions and use more multimodal platforms than those for writing essays or oral presentations. Hence, as the saying goes, two minds can plan better than one, the collaboration among students can ensure diverse ideas from many minds to accomplish a multidimensional task.

What’s there

It’s really worth introducing the students to this tool because it provides immense opportunities to work collaboratively in an engaging manner rather than sitting idly and inactively while hiding their faces behind their online IDs.

It is just perfect for group tasks in online classes. It provides numerous features for the users to work together and visualize their concepts through the options of live cursors, infinite canvas, content upload, drawing tools, comments and sticky notes, and easy board sharing. Apart from image and element insertion support, this tool also provides an opportunity to utilize any audio or video file.

You can either log in with your Gmail account or you can create a separate account and then log in.  Then one user in the group can create a concept board for working together and can share the link or QR code with other members of the group so that they can join. Here, audio and video calls are also supported in the system along with a simple chat.

A sample task

Here, I have designed a classroom task that can be guided to completion by using the Conceptboard.

Instruction for students

Suppose your institution currently does not have any separate food corner for students. As a result, you have to go outside of the campus to find foods which is time-consuming and the quality of those foods are not satisfactory. Now, write a report to the director of your institute my mentioning how you plan to solve students’ problems by proposing a framework for establishing a food court at the institution premises.

Instructions for teachers

At first, ask the students to work in groups of four and within groups, pick one of the following sub-topics on which they want to work:

•     What would be the possible benefits of the food court?
•     What can be some of the obstacles in establishing it?
•     How many supporting staffs are needed to run it? In which location?
•     Which food items would be available? Why?

Next, ask them to log in to https://conceptboard.com/  and start brainstorming collaboratively on the given points. After each of them finishes working on their own part, ask them to fine-tune all the points in groups to prepare a draft framework for the food court. Finally, you can ask them to present their draft framework in the class and give a deadline for submitting their final group reports online.

Features

This is what a simple concept board looks like. Learners can work on creating a process-oriented stage-by-stage framework by inserting available graphics and charts in the Building block option. Moreover, they can use texts, scribblers, sticky notes, and comment boxes to brainstorm in a more organized and diverse way.

Not only that, they can also upload pictures and shapes from their device collections which would help them in personalizing the platform and in turn, will motivate them to engage more in the task.

Limitations

As there are various operations hidden under numerous icons, while using it for the first time, students may get overwhelmed and feel lost. In this regard, a little bit of teacher guidance can work as their savior.

When we say it’s an online class, we know that the students who have attended have a device and internet connection. However, in the context of Bangladesh, it would be ambitious to think that each student of the class possesses a laptop and has access to high-quality internet service. As you can presume, some students attend online classes from their mobile phones and have a very unstable internet connection. Since the Conceptboard works the best on laptop or tablet screens and demands a fast and stable internet connection because of the multimodal applications embedded in it, the under-privilege students may face challenges while using it. Lastly, like many other online tools, it’s not free: if you want to access its ‘pro’ features, you need to pay.

Anyways, now you know the pros and cons of the Conceptboard: it’s your turn to decide which one weighs more. I hope you understand what I mean 😉