When it's blended well together

After almost two years of distance learning, both teachers and students have been pleased to return to face-to-face education. However, having developed so many interesting digital resources, many educators realised that the in-person teaching can be combined with delivering material in a digital way to create “blended” learning. Bringing these two approaches together can be challenging because creating blended resources could be hard work. Nevertheless, once the skills are mastered and resources developed, teachers can finally deliver on the eternal demand for doing more with less while also addressing the needs of our learners.

 

What is it?

 

In my previous blog post I started talking about blended learning while introducing content creation tools. Another interactive tool, that I would like to talk about today, is a must have for blended teaching and is called H5P. It allows the creation of interactive content for teaching and learning. 

 

screenshot

 

Just have a look at the result of my 3-hour work session, which included getting my head round some basic features and elements. Yes, it is a time-consuming business (varies individually 🤔), but I think that the content delivered in such a way is very different from how we usually present material to students and potentially is more likely to attract their attention.

Follow the link to see a short course presentation I have created:

H5P course presentation 

Microsoft stream H5P

How useful is H5P for language learners?

🤝Engaging – for learners who can collaborate both formally during the lessons and informally outside the classrooms 

 

✅ Accessible – benefits for all with wide variety of resources available for learners any time, including learners with disabilities

 

🤼‍♀️ Interactive – stimulating to involve learners in becoming active participants in developing materials for blended learning

 

Any concerns?

 

🤔 Blending learning requires IT literacy and this could be a challenge for the students with limited access to the Internet or devices.

 

🤔 It also takes away a good amount of direct contact with the teacher, which could increase some learners’ struggle with self-directed learning.

 

🤔 Moving towards blended learning is not a one step process. It requires time, training and material preparation, which could be difficult to achieve alongside other teaching responsibilities and add extra workload. 

 

Overall 

 

Blended learning approach opens endless possibilities for using tools and techniques that complement both teaching and learning. For the teacher, it offers flexible options for working with students effectively and for the learners it offers an enhanced learning experience. It’s all about teaching and learning any time – any place by providing personalised accessible education.

The Power of Voice

Although we like to say that actions speak louder than words, we humans can’t replace spoken communication with just gestures and movements. Speaking is a major part of our lives and so teaching and learning speaking skills in a foreign language is vital.

 

The secrets of speaking competence 

How to speak well? Well, the number 1 secret is – speak as much as you can! And while you are doing this, don’t worry about your accent, your vocabulary shortage or your comprehension limits. It doesn’t matter because secret number 2 is - be relaxed and don’t be too critical about yourself. You will start moving in the right direction towards fluency when you feel comfortable to express yourself and understand what others say.

Returning to secret number 1 and the idea of practising a lot of speaking, start from speaking to yourself! Yes, it is not as mad as it might sound. There could be reasons why you want start practising your speaking skills without a conversation partner. For example, if you would feel more confident by doing some speaking practice before getting into real conversation. 

What is it?

So, this time I am going to check some tools that offer learners speaking practice that they can do on their own. Don’t worry though, I haven’t forgotten all the pedagogical principles about interaction and social nature of language learning. These are very important concepts to remember for the next step of speaking skills’ development as ultimately, speaking is important for connecting with people. Let’s just allow those for whom speaking a new language means fun and fear at the same time, to have a gradual gentle beginning of the learning journey towards the unknown.  We can do this by showing them a useful step – speaking and recording yourself and the devices that are designed to help with this.    

One of them - Flipgrid - is a web-based platform that allows to record and post videos with or without some instructions. It is perfect for recording yourself speaking as you can play it back and not only hear your pronunciation and possible mistakes, but also see your body language and facial expression during speaking! Moreover, you can improve and re-record your speech until you are happy with your expected result. No wonder this platform became very popular with educators who use it for setting up video discussions and exchanges. 

                    

https://knowledgequest.aasl.org/using-flipgrid-for-face-to-face-asynchronous-student-interactions/

How it works

Students respond to the topics set by the teachers in video clips, and it can be shared with the whole class for peer feedback. The grids (that’s why the platform is called Flipgrid) can hold countless number of topics and responses in all sorts of formats, such as: videos, text-based, GIFs, attached files, emojis.

https://knowledgequest.aasl.org/using-flipgrid-for-face-to-face-asynchronous-student-interactions/

For more tips and tutorials, follow Flipgrid blog link.

Some of the uses in the classroom I would suggest are:

 

👩🏼‍🏫 versatile for every learning situation – distance learning, blended learning and even the classroom with limited number of the devices

 

👥 particularly useful for discussions and practising critical thinking skills

 

💻 presentations or informal short responses

 

🗣 opportunity for teachers to hear students’ voices individually!

 

🏠  a catch-up solution for supporting absent students

Any concerns?

🤔 Students can spend too much time playing with interactive features of the tool and get distracted from the main purpose of assignment

🤭 If working in 'no image' mode, students can simply read out the written/copied text instead of producing an authentic response   

Warning!

Once you have practised your speaking skills with Flipgrid, you can test them with your home devices like Siri (Apple) or Alexa (Android). This is a great challenge because Siri and Alexa will test your pronunciation and it can be entertaining. When I used to ask Siri to play Classic FM radio on our AirPod, it did it most of the time to my great satisfaction. However, occasionally it heard it as Crime and Suspense FM (one of quite rare American radio stations😱) and it is quite difficult to make Siri change her mind!

https://www.theverge.com/22704233/siri-apple-digital-assistant-10-years-development-problems-why

Overall,

Tools like Flipgrid help language learners, either individually or as a part of the classroom, to practise articulating their ideas and they can do it at the comfort of your own home rather than being put on the spot in front of the class. It can be a real eye opener (or shall I say ear opener👂😊) when it comes to self-awareness of your pronunciation, body language and expressive skills!

If you wish to explore more tools for speaking practice with the option of recording your speech, please check these:

Speechling                                  Vocaroo                               Screencast-o-matic