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Instructional Technology and Materials Development

Teaching in the 21st CenturyWelcome to the course resources for CTE319 on MOODLE!

 
1

Introduction to the Course

Blended learningWe will be using the MOODLE in a blended mode with the CTE319 course on Instructional Technology and Materials Development.

In this first week, find out more about the course by completing the activities below. Then you should complete the tasks that follow.

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Text analysis tools and sites

When we prepare materials as English teachers, we need to be aware of the characteristics of written English in terms of the nature of lexis, frequency of use of words and phrases, collocations, and readability. In this unit, we will explore some myths about vocabulary learning and look at some web-based tools and sites we can use to analyze texts that we write or find to use in our materials.

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Designing and creating text-based materials on paper

Paint by numbersFor the forseeable future, most of us teachers will be dealing with paper and pen in the classroom. This week, we'll look at some simple tools like the word processor, and how we can use it more effectively to make our lives a bit less hectic and at the same time improve the quality of the materials we design for our students.

Resources

  1. We'll be using WORD in Microsoft Office 2003, and macros in Teacher's Pet. The same things can be done in OpenOffice.

Skills Practice

Follow the tasks below as instructed.

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Data-driven learning

data driven learningThis week we'll delve deeper into the world of data-driven learning using corpora and concordances to help students discover for themselves the nature of the English language.
    1. We'll look at some online resources for using published corpora.
    2. We'll look at some games and activities that we can use to create situations where students can build their own knowledge map of English.
    3. We'll also look at tools you can download and use with your own corpora.

GOOGLE WonderWheel as a language learning tool

solar systemHave you ever used GOOGLE WonderWheel? Let's try it out by exploring the topic of 'planets'.
  • Go to GOOGLE (If you end up on the Turkish page, click "Google.com in English") and search for 'planets'.
  • Then selection 'Options' and choose 'WonderWheel'
    • How is this different to the traditional search view of GOOGLE? Could this way of searching help students in learning English as a foreign language?
  • Also view the 'timeline'. Note the 'spikes' around the years 0 AD and 1600 AD.
    • How might timelines be used in a language teaching situation?
GOOGLE SQUARED http://www.google.com/squared/ is another exciting new twist on the standard search engine.
  • Try it out with the search term 'planets'.
  • Can you think of ways that 'squares' could be used with students?

Does the Internet 'think'

Everyone has an opinion, and nowadays most people publish their opinion on the Internet. As such, we can think of the Internet as the 'global consciousness of humanity'.
  • Visit http://www.whatdoestheinternetthink.net/ and see what the Internet thinks about Turkey, The Pope, Islam, The Catholic Church, bankers, and stock brokers.
  • Could this be a useful language teaching/learning tool?

Collocation tables

Knowing English well means knowing when to use which words together. For example, with WonderWheel, we can see that 'planet' collocates with 'orbit', and there are 'tight' collocates of adjectives describing orbits (circular, elliptical).
  • This can be especially hard with polysemous words (that have more than one meaning.) The CoBuild Bank of English has a collocation table sampler that is a great place to start looking for semantic sets of collocates.
  • Let's take a look at one word, VOLUME, in detail in the task below.
  • Resource Volume

  • Published corpora

    Two of the largest corpora freely available are the BNC (British National Corpus) and the COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English).
      • While these may not be useful to lower level students, they do provide English language teachers with an in depth look at 'real' English. As such, they are indispensable tools for materials development.
      • Let's take a closer look at the BNC at http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc
  • Resource Using the BNC

  • CHALLENGE TASK 1: Mind the gap - using local corpora

    The 'prep school' English that we teach students is often different to the 'real' English that they are expected to understand and use in real life.
    • As teachers, we can use free tools to give us a better understanding of the language our students are exposed to in our language lessons, and the language they will encounter in 'real' life.
    • The most common and useful tool is the 'concordancer'.
  • Resource Using a PC-based concordancer
  • file Local corpora

  • CHALLENGE TASK 2: A way with words...

    In the old days, teachers were powerless and had to rely on the teaching notes in course books, or struggle with complicated specialized dictionaries.
    • Neither really helped prepare the students for the task at hand.
    • Nowadays, we can take a corpus-informed approach as individual teachers, and use the power of linguistic computing to help us.
      • How do you deal with a new topic in your course?
      • How will you help guide your students to cope with the readings?
      • What will be your focus in terms of lexis and lexico-grammar?
    • Let's see how creating our own corpus can help us be better informed and better equipped to guide our students.
  • Resource Baseball: the all American sport

  • Extension task

  • Forum Mindmapping
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5

Designing and creating text-based materials for the web

HotPotIn the not-to-distant future ;) most of us teachers will have the opportunity to take our class into cyberspace. One skill we will need develop is the ability to upgrade our materials design expertise from paper-based to web-based.
  • This week, we'll look at some simple tools that let us develop interactive web-based activities.
  • While it takes a bit of effort to learn, in the long run we can use web-based activities to reduce the amount of paper we waste, and create multi-media materials that will be more motivating and appealing for our students.

Resources

  1. We'll be using a Canadian product called Hot Potatoes, to create our interactive web pages.
  2. At home, download the software from the Hot Potatoes website link in our course del.icio.us page.
  3. The program has been installed in the lab.
  4. When you use the program for the first time, you need to register it to use it without limits. Registration is free for non-commercial use--you can get a key under ABOUT in the main toolbar.

What is the difference between online and paper-based?

Is an online material just a paper-based one that has been converted to be viewed in a browser?
Are there any features of online material that are different?

Look at the links provided in the chat rooms below, and share your ideas with three of your peers.
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9

"Shaken or stirred?" Blended learning with the MOODLE

In this session we will look at how we can 'blend' online learning with face-to-face language instruction. By the end of the session, you will have analyzed an approach used with a Year 7 English class (in terms of CEFR, A2 or B1 level), fromed a group for your "Integrated Skills" assessed project work, created your own MOODLE, and started to produce your own blended learning for a unit from a commercial EFL course book.

Why blend learning?

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Blended learning with Blogs and Wikis

This week we're going to explore the world of blogs and wikis.
  • What do you know about blogs and wikis?
  • Do you have your own blog or wiki?
  • Have you ever thought about using this with your students?
 Blogger.com
wikispaces
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The purpose of this course is to develop an awareness of the characteristics of various instructional technologies and their place and use in English language teaching. The development and evaluation of teaching materials prepared with instructional technologies will be the focus of study, encompassing a range of media from paper-based and in classroom instruction to web-based.

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