We continue our talk with an on-line teacher Marina Petrović (see Part I).
BRITANNIA: You make your own activities for Serbian lessons. What about English?
MARINA PETROVIĆ: For English some of my students send me their textbooks, so I prepare the teaching materials based on their preferences. On the other hand, with some students, I prepare activities based on the links which I add to my Vyew virtual classroom and then we surf the Internet while having a lesson. There are so many great materials online, starting from Sean Banville’s Breaking News English, Business English Pod, or simply 360Cities or NY, City of Characters.
BRITANNIA: And what about “face-to-face” English – don’t you use any coursebooks?
MARINA PETROVIĆ : There are so many EFL coursebooks and I’m afraid the school owners waste so much time and money trying which one suits their learners best. I’d rather buy 5 laptops and solve the problem 🙂
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I’d ask my students to search for information – in English, of course. I would make web quests. Use video/audio materials, language games. Students would make short films, like I did with XtraNormal (see “an interview with a teacher“). [See an article on XtraNormal at a Russian web-site “NuffStuff”. – Britannia.] They could record audio at Voxopop, Audioboo, etc. And make posters on Glogster. [An article on Glogster at the web-site of School No. 1277, Moscow. – Britannia.] We would have Skyping lessons… |
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My students love RSA Animate videos, e.g. Changing Education Paradigms [The RSA Is an organization the aim of which is to develop and promote new ways of thinking about human fulfillment and social progress. One of the RSA projects are the RSAnimates: the talks which where held at previous RSA Conferences have now been turned into animations. Not only do these talks provide an insight into some of the worlds leading minds and of course are very educational, but they also are incredibly beautiful in the way they are animated. From http://manychefsbroth.co.uk/rsa-animate. – Britannia.] You can also use RSAnimate lectures to create all kinds of activities – see e.g. my activity CAE Parts of Speech Race. |
BRITANNIA: Thank you for so many useful links! But are you saying that each student needs to bring their own ipod/laptop?! Or is the school supposed to equip the classroom with a laptop/i-pod for each student?!
MARINA PETROVIĆ: I-pods/laptops/netbooks would allow them to become “creators”, and there wouldn’t be much talk “about the language”, but they will use the language with a purpose, which is a beauty of teaching English.
Let me get back to your question: Instead of buying a complete coursebook set (Students’ books, a Teacher’s book, CDs, Workbooks, additional materials for each level), I was thinking it would cost the same if I bought a laptop for each student (ideally). In reality, these could be second-hand PCs, but the Internet connection is the vital part of the story.
BRITANNIA: Unfortunately, a classroom with a laptop for every student is not a very common thing yet, so nowadays a lot of our teachers could probably make use of all these tools only for Internet teaching. And online courses of Serbian, as it is a “rare” language, might be in demand, but with English it rarely is purely online…
MARINA PETROVIĆ: It only used to be so. But let me give you a link to Myngle [Global system of online language teaching. Teachers can apply, go through selection and training, after which their profiles appear at the website, where their future students find them to order a course. – Britannia] – the top star teachers now have had thousands of lessons a year. My colleague from Greece is teaching English and Dutch – 2 855 lessons in two years! And she is not the only one.
BRITANNIA: Do you really believe that more and more teachers will switch to running tailor-made online courses? Creating your own digital materials seems exciting but extremely time consuming.
MARINA PETROVIĆ: This is something that keeps bothering me, because it’s not easy, it’s not standardized; it requires many different skills; it doesn’t pay off at the present moment.
But the situation is changing. I have a friend, an EFL teacher in Obninsk, whom I introduced to online teaching. I showed her WIZIQ first [pronunced /΄wiz – ai-΄kju:/ – Britannia.] and later on all the virtual classrooms, but she likes WIZIQ best. Now she has got used to using online classrooms, and she tends to switch to them with her private students. It saves time and energy, and she can take students from other towns as well. And she impresses her clients with her advanced teaching methods and computer skills! Maybe it’s a good idea to make an interview with her, so that your readers can learn how fast one can learn new skills when we are learning from our colleagues.
По желанию наших читателей, мы можем опубликовать перевод интервью на русский язык – пишите свои пожелания и отзывы в комментариях или через форму обратной связи.
Вверху: фото “Британии”.
Комментарий консультанта по мультимедийным программам компании “Британия”, представителя издательства CUP И. Путро:
Новые технологии стремительно врываются в нашу жизнь, и многие преподаватели успешно используют в процессе обучения уже готовые продукты. Самые распространенные – CDROMы и программы для интерактивных досок. Вы можете ознакомиться с продуктами Cambridge University Press и найти интересную информацию, как лучше использовать интерактивную доску и продукты для нее, на сайте издательства .
Также очень популярным становится смешанное обучение (Blended Learning). На сайте CUP можно получить подробную информацию об одном из лучших курсов данного направления – Touchstone.
Для тех, кто интересуется готовыми online-курсами, можно порекомендовать: Cambridge B1 Course Online, Cambridge Financial English, English360.