Photo by Nico Cavallotto

A few years back my daughter (then aged 14) told me she was going out. To meet a friend at lunchtime. I asked who. A Facebook friend she didn’t know. Someone who had befriended her as they were the same age, lived in the same city, and had the same (unusual) first name. Apparently. I was appalled.

I’m not the only parent who’s experienced this. Social networks bring the world into our children’s lives. They open opportunities for contact that were far more limited before. Many teens have hundreds of Facebook friends they don’t know. And lots they do know. Press coverage of the negative aspects of social networks can make parents paranoid: cyber-bullying, stranger danger, blackmail… We’re all worried it might happen to our kid.

But we need to keep things in perspective. Although bad things do happen, they are not the norm. And rather than endlessly worrying, trying to snoop on our kids’ Facebook accounts, or policing their every move, shouldn’t we be educating them in the appropriate and inappropriate uses of social networks? Shouldn’t we be helping them consider the benefits but also the dangers? Come to think of it, shouldn’t their schools be doing this too?

Although digital literacies are now present (on paper at least) in  educational curricula around the world, I don’t see much evidence of it being operationalised in the classroom, at least not in the state schools where I live. And this is part of the problem: although most teachers would agree that digital literacies are core 21st competencies, very few are clear on how to bring them into the classroom in any meaningful or engaging way.

As English language teachers, we are very well placed to help develop our students’ (and our own) digital literacies through the medium of English. It can help enhance our classes by making them more interesting- and crucially, more relevant- to today’s plugged in kids.

How? Well, here’s one activity to get your teen students thinking about how they use social networking sites such as Facebook. It’s a simple discussion activity to carry put in small groups. No technology needed- just a set of cards you can donwload and print out here (click on ‘Social Network Discussion Cards’ to download these in PDF format, print them out and cut them up. Includes an answer key.)

Activity: Online scenarios – Teens & social networks

1. Ask your students what social networks they belong to. What do they like about these networks? What are they not so keen on?

2. Get students to brainstorm some of the pros and cons of social networks (such as Facebook). Get feedback and create a list of pros and cons on the board. Here are some ideas:

Pros:

• keep in touch with friends
• meet new people
• share links, photos, videos, news
• practise English
• …

Cons:

• people post too often
• people post photos or videos of you without permission
• malicious gossip or bullying
• misunderstandings can easily arise
• unknown friends may not be who they seem
• spam and viruses
• …

3. Ask students if they have ever experienced (or know about) uncomfortable situations which can arise on social networking sites. How did they/would they react or protect themselves? Tell students they are going to discuss a number of online scenarios and consider what they would do in each.

4. Put students into pairs or small groups, and give each group a pack of cards describing the various online scenarios here (click on ‘Social Network Discussion Cards’). Students should keep all the cards face down on a desk, and turn them over one at a time to discuss. They should note down the card number and their possible solution. Start by discussing the first card as a group, and add useful language on the board if necessary (I would…, She should, If I were her, I would…etc.). Give students about 20-30 minutes to discuss all the cards.

5. Conduct feedback with the whole class. Look at each card again and ask what solutions or advice the students came up with. Refer to the card answer key and ensure all the main points in that are included at this stage.

6. If you have time, or in a subsequent class, get students to create a Digital Safety poster on appropriate behaviour on social networks. Pairs or small groups can do this on paper, or with an online multimedia tool such as Glogster (use the free Glogster Edu version for educators). Share the posters with the class, and also with other classes in the school. You can even share the posters with parents – and then use them as the springboard for a parent-teachers evening on digital safety.

And my daughter and her lunchtime meeting? She was adamant she wanted to go, and the meeting was in a public place during the day. I told her to phone me when she got there. The meeting turned out to be what she had expected- with a girl of the same age, with the same first name. She made a new friend. I can’t say it was an easy choice to let her go, but putting some measures in place, and going into things with eyes open seemed  more effective to me than prohibition and punishment. She’d simply not tell me the next time.

What about you? Do you teach your students (or your kids) about the dangers as well as the benefits of social networking sites? Do you think it’s important? Or do you think it’s not really our job? Let me know in the Comments section below…

Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
May 2013

Related posts:

Digital literacies 1: The what
Digital literacies 2: The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
Digital literacies 3: Book giveaway

Whether you are thinking of dipping your toes in the waters of VLEs, or whether you are already confidently swimming around in Moodle, you may find the Moodle tutorial videos below helpful.

The tutorials are for the latest stable version of Moodle (version 2.2) and are narrated by Moodle trainer extraordinaire Andrei Tarassov. Click on each video image to go to the Moodle tutorial page. We hope you find them useful!

Video 1 – Exploring Themes

Video 2 – Adding Courses in Moodle

Video 3 – Adding & Editing Users in Moodle

We are adding new tutorials regularly to this page, so keep your eye on it. You can also subscribe to our You Tube channel.

I blogged about the five most fabulous Moodle 2 features (imho) a while back. What about you? If you already use of Moodle, what do you think of it?  Let me know in the Comments!

Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
April 2013

Digital Literacies Book giveaway 4
Duration: 22-30 April
What to do: Choose one digital literacy and an app that helps develop it – how would you use it with students?
Post your ideas in the comments section of our Blog, or on our Facebook page.
The winning idea will be chosen on April 30th.

If you need to brush up on what digital literacies are, and why they’re important, see the other blog posts in this series:

Digital literacies 1: The what
Digital literacies 2: The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
Digital literacies 4: Teens & social networks

Other anniversary goodies

Keep your eye on our anniversary page, which is updated monthly with new goodies:

• There’s a fully funded scholarship on the online Cert ICT or Cert IBET (both validated by Trinity College London). Deadline for submissions 30 June.
• There’s a free ’10 best ICT lesson plans booklet’ for teachers keen to integrate some technology into their language classes.
• And coming up in May – a free e-book on ICT in ELT
• Coming up in June – a free 10-day online mini-course about teaching with technology…

Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
April 2013

To celebrate the publication of our latest book Digital Literacies (with Gavin Dudeney and Mark Pegrum), my last blog post looked at the what and why of digital literacies. The next few posts will look at classroom activities designed to help your students develop these. Although our book is primarily aimed at English language teachers, these activities can be adapted for other types of classes, and are especially relevant to teenagers and young adults.

The Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is a popular website. It describes the rare and elusive tree octopus. it’s habits and habitats, and suggests ways in which you too can help save this endangered species. There is even some video footage of the octopus in action (in a tree). One snag – it’s all a load of nonsense. It’s a spoof site.

We’ve developed a lesson around it. The lesson can help your students develop information literacy through a focused evaluation and analysis of the tree octopus site.

Watch the video (from the British Council Teaching English website) to see how to run the first part of the class with students. The complete lesson plan can be downloaded in PDF format here.

[Click on the image above to go to the video]

If you try out this lesson with students, let me know how it goes. Did they enjoy the lesson? Has it helped develop their critical faculties when searching for information on the web? Will they be so easily fooled next time?

If you need to brush up on what digital literacies are, and why they’re important, see the other blog posts in this series:

Digital literacies 1: The what
Digital literacies 3: Book giveaway
Digital literacies 4: Teens & social networks

Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
March 2013

At last! 2 years, 9 months! 2 years of work, and 9 months after submitting the manuscript, my advance copy of Digital Literacies has arrived.

Written with Gavin Dudeney and Mark Pegrum, it’s one of a new series of methodology books from Pearson Education called ‘Research and Resources’, combining research with practical classroom ideas.

To celebrate this latest book (number 5), my next few blog posts are going to be about digital literacies.

So, to kick off the series, here’s an interview I did for the British Council Teaching English website.

In it I talk in general about technology and my own teaching experience, but there is a short bit on digital literacies from 7:30. Feel free to jump ahead to that. It explains what digital literacies are through the example of ‘hypertext literacy’:

[Click on the image above to go to the video]

There’s also an article on the site  – Digital literacies: What are they and why should we care?

My next few posts will include practical classroom activities for teachers to help their students develop digital literacies in the (language) classroom.

I’d love to hear your views. Do you think digital literacies have any place in your classroom? If yes, why? If not, why not?

If you need to brush up on what digital literacies are, and why they’re important, see the other blog posts in this series:

Digital literacies 2: The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
Digital literacies 3: Book giveaway
Digital literacies 4: Teens & social networks

Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
March 2013

Photo by shutterhacks

Would you like to read e-books from Amazon but you don’t own an e-reader? No problem. In the last few weeks I’ve received several queries from readers wondering how they can read my e-book Webinars: a Cookbook for Educators, without a Kindle e-reader. Here’s the bottom line:

• You don’t need to own an e-reader to read e-books from Amazon.

• Download the Kindle app for PC, Mac or tablets, and you can read any Amazon e-book on your computer.

• If you can’t (or don’t want to) buy e-books via Amazon, there are alternative sites such as Smashwords, where you can choose to buy an e-book in a variety of formats. Here’s the Smashwords link for my Webinars book.

You’ll find more resource e-books for English language teachers on The Round, with new titles being added regularly.

Another question I frequently get asked: Is it worth buying an e-reader?

That depends. I find that owning a convergence device like my iPad with e-reader apps means that I read more on the iPad. But you can’t beat an e-reader in the summer, when you’re reading in bright sunlight on the beach. And you so wouldn’t want to take an iPad to the beach. But if you already have a tablet where you can read e-books, I’m not sure it’s worth buying another gadget to have a separate e-reader. And now that there are much cheaper tablets on the market (such as the Kindle fire, or Google Nexus), the price difference between an e-reader and a tablet is not as big as it was a year or two back.

Bottom line? Well, let me ask you. If you own a tablet and an e-reader, do you find that you favour reading on one device over the other? If you already own a tablet, would you buy an e-reader? If you own neither, do you think it’s still worth buying a dedicated e-reader device, or would you go for a (cheaper) tablet instead?

Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
January 2013

It’s a new year, and we have a new series of free webinars starting on 20 January.

At The IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG we are kicking off our 2013 webinars with a debate on interactive whiteboards, or IWBs (see below). Pete Sharma will be defending IWBs, and Gavin Dudeney opposing.  Pete is author of ’400 Activities for IWBs’, while Gavin is author of articles about IWBs with titles like ‘Interactive, Quite Bored’, so the fur is sure to fly! This will be structured debate, with plenty of time for the audience to also voice and share your opinions on IWBs.

We also have a line up of speakers talking about a range of projects using technologies with their English language learners, every month. The webinars are free and open to everyone – you don’t need to be a member of the SIG to attend.

Check out the links below for specific information about each of the webinars, including links to the exact time in your country, talk descriptions and speaker bios. And don’t miss The Great ICT Debate on IWBs, on the 20th of this month!

IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG webinars January – June 2013:

• The Great ICT Debate
  IWBs: a fantastic teaching tool or non-interactive white elephant?
  with Pete Sharma and Gavin Dudeney
  Sunday 20 January at 15h GMT/UCT

•  Curation tools for students and teachers
  with Kristina Smith
  Sunday 17 February at 15h GMT/UCT

• Rethinking the Language Classroom – From Mobile to Learning
  with Carla Arena
  Sunday 17 March at 15h GMT/UCT

• Embodiment, Technology and Locative Play
  with Paul Driver
  Sunday 19 May at 14h GMT/UTC

• Using smartphones in the EFL classroom
  with Karin Tiraşin & Çigdem Ugur
  Sunday 16 June at 14h GMT/UTC

So – mark these dates in your calendar, and look forward to seeing you there! Please also feel free to leave any comments with suggested topics or ideas for future Learning Technologies SIG webinars, in the Comments section below.

Nicky Hockly
(IATEFL LT SIG Online Events Co-ordinator)

January 2013

2012 is drawing to a close, and 2013 lies ahead of us. Time to take a look at some of the educational trends that have emerged over the last 12 months, and that are likely to dominate the educational technology scene in the coming year. Here are five trends that I think will still be getting plenty of airtime in 2013.

Photo by rosemarie sw

Trend 1: The flipped classroom

Although the notion of the flipped classroom has been around for more than 12 months, 2012 has seen it at the apex of Gartner’s hype cycle  – namely at the ‘peak of inflated expectations’.  One could argue that EFL teachers have been flipping the classroom for years  (language exercises for homework, and language practice in the classroom), and it’s all simply a matter of common sense and good teaching. But we expect the hype to continue into 2013. (If you need to get up to speed on exactly what the flipped classroom is, check out Ana d’Almeida’s excellent article on the topic, from April 2012).

Trend 2: MOOCs

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have also been around for a number of years, but with the likes of MIT, Stanford and Yale offering MOOCs, they appeared in the mainstream media in 2012. (For a quick refresher on MOOCs, read my 1-minute guide to MOOCs blog post). In the field of English language teaching, MOOCs have been around for a while as well, providing teachers with excellent free opportunities for online professional development. Two sources of MOOCs that I particularly recommend for 2013:

• The Electronic Village Online MOOCs start in January 2013
• SEETA (South Eastern Europe Teachers Associations) regularly offers MOOCs for language teachers – keep an eye on their website for their free ‘online courses’ in 2013.

Trend 3: Mobile & BYOD

A quick look at any of the statistics showing mobile penetration in developed and developing countries confirms significant growth. Here’s part of an infographic showing mobile phone ownership around the world in 2011:

[Click on the image or here to see the original infographic]

 And education is well placed to harness this potential as the debate around issues such as BYOD (bring your own device) shows. Assuming of course that schools unban the use of mobile devices in the classroom. Meanwhile, entire school districts have been trialling BYOD, and early adopters in our own field of English language teaching have been experimenting with netbooks, tablets and mobile phones with their classes. Watch videos of EFL teachers talking about their mobile learning projects, their successes and challenges, and their advice to other teachers planning to do the same. We hope mobile will be making more of an appearance in ELT classrooms in 2013 -and indeed my colleague Gavin Dudeney and I are writing a book for teachers on mobile learning (due out in 2014) that we hope will help this process along!

Trend 4: Augmented reality

Augmented reality has moved from the realm of sci-fi movies into our own mobile devices. 2012 has seen the advent of augmented reality apps that allow users to easily – and freely – create their own augmented reality layers. Although some apps (such as String) require markers to be printed out, apps such as Junaio allow you to create your own augmented reality info. With the development of the Google’s Project Glass, wearable augmented reality is becoming an increasingly probable part of our future wardrobes as well. Check out the Project Glass video for how that’s going to look!

Trend 5: Digital literacies

Digital literacies, new media skills, digital competences … Whatever you choose to call them, they are now in mainstream schooling curricula around the world. Part of the core competences that make up so-called 21st-century skills, digital literacies are being discussed within English language teaching as well, and teachers are asking themselves exactly how to bring them into the classroom.  ‘Digital Literacies’, the book that Gavin Dudeney, Mark Pegrum and myself have written, is due out in the next few months…. So digital literacies is  going to be on the ELT educational landscape for 2013, we hope! And if you need a quick refresher on what digital literacies are, here’s my attempt to summarise them in a 3-minute video.

What other edtech trends do you think will continue into 2013? I’d love to hear your take on this, in the Comments below

Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
December 2012

Photo by Civilon

I’ve attended a lot of conferences this year. Attending talks and plenaries is a wonderful opportunity for my own professional development, and I often get to see excellent presenters in action.

During the past few months, I’ve been keeping notes on what makes some of these conference presentations so engaging (and others less so). Here’s a 1-minute guide to being a good conference presenter.

Good presenters…

…pitch their talk at the audience
If the presenter is talking about blogs, they first find out who in the audience already blogs. If their talk is pitched at teachers of young learners, they first check how many young learners teachers there are in the audience (and therefore how many are not). If they are talking about specific mobile devices, they check who has (and hasn’t) got these devices. Knowing who the audience is, is the first step.

…grab the audience’s attention from the start
An audience is most receptive during the first 5 minutes of a talk. Starting with an anecdote, story or joke can keep the audience with you, whereas starting with inconsequential rambling will simply alienate them.

…include a variety of focus
It’s extremely difficult to engage an audience in a 60-minute lecture, no matter how talented the speaker. We have short attention spans, and in the age of Twitter, our attention spans are getting shorter. Good presenters provide a variety of focus by including video or other media, or pair work, or a Q&A, or a story/anecdote part way through, so that attention is not continually focused on the presenter.

…include examples
Good presenters don’t assume that their audience automatically knows what they are talking about. They provide concrete examples. So if they are talking about class blogs, they show an example. If they are talking about PLNs (personal learning networks) they give examples from their own PLNs. If there are talking about literal videos, they show one.

…focus on student learning
I get to see a lot of talks with teachers showcasing (usually web 2.0) tools. Unless this is related to what students actually learn, it’s pointless. Good presenters highlight both how the technology enhances student learning, and possible challenges (with suggestions of how to overcome these).

…pay attention to body language
An obvious one. Good presenters use body language to communicate confidence, and also an appropriate degree of formality or informality. A presenter may think that sitting barefoot and cross-legged on stage during a plenary looks cool and confident, but it is usually inappropriate and off-putting for the audience. Unless, perhaps, you are in Southern California.

…take tech issues in their stride 
Things can go wrong. PowerPoint may crash, sound may not work, the projector bulb may blow… indeed, in some cases the electricity make go off. Good presenters have strategies for this e.g. they put the audience in pairs for a quick task while things are repaired (if possible). They are also able to continue their session acappella if necessary.

…present offline
No matter how wired up the venue, good presenters don’t rely on an Internet connection for their talks. At the very least, they have an off-line version of the talk in case the connection is unreliable, or non-existent. Instead of showing a site live, they have screenshots prepared. Instead of streaming video, they show it off-line (respecting copyright).

And finally, good presenters …

…watch out for cables!
The tangle of cables from the laptop, projector, sound and ADSL connection create a nasty birds nest for presenters to trip over. Believe me, I speak from personal experience. Good presenters ask the tech team to tape tables to the floor, and then keep well away from them. On the other hand, one can make a talk more memorable by taking a headlong dive caused by tripping over the cables.

What do you think? This list is by no means exhaustive (it’s to be read in 1 minute). If you present, or attend talks at conference, what do you think makes a good presenter? Please add any thoughts to the Comments box below!

Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
December 2012

Other 1-minute guides:

• The 1-minute guide to MOOCs
• The 1-minute guide to the mobile classroom
• The 1-minute guide to integrating technology into teaching
• The 1-minute guide to teachers’ concerns about mLearning
• The 1-minute mLearning panel summary

Photo by Mavis

If you’re wondering what MOOCs are about, here’s a brief overview. All in 1 minute. For fast readers.

What is a MOOC?

A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course. It’s free of charge (‘open’) to whoever wants to sign up (often a massive number of people) and it’s run online. MOOCs have been around for a number of years, notably via a bunch of connectivist educators in Canada. However, they have recently started to appear in the mainstream and educational press, with free online courses being offered by the likes of Stanford and Harvard universities or MIT through companies such as Udacity, Coursera  and edX. (More on the history of MOOCs on Wikipedia)

How does a MOOC work?

MOOCs are free, with a handful of tutors/facilitators, and possibly thousands of students. Depending on the MOOC you take, the learning materials may take different forms:

• The more connectivist orientated MOOCs – or cMOOCs - tend to have little or no ‘content’ as such. Instead, there may be a few suggested weekly online readings or videos to watch, and learning develops through participants discussing the contents or collectively solving issues, with particular emphasis placed on the online conversations that can develop via forums, blogs, weekly video-conferencing sessions, and social network channels such as Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
• Other MOOCs may have more formal learning content, such as access to recorded lectures and specially created content, with automatically graded exercises and quizzes, and the online conversations may not be the main focus. These so-called xMOOCs may offer certificates of completion.

Typically any MOOC will have a core of active learners, and a larger body of ‘lurkers’ (passive onlookers). The xMOOCs may offer some sort of (usually automated) assessment. What one doesn’t get though, is a university ‘degree’ from any of these MOOCs.

Why the fuss?

Given the high percentage of lurkers and dropouts on MOOCs, there is some debate around whether participants actually ‘learn’ anything, and how (or indeed whether) this learning should be assessed. Typically, one will benefit from a MOOC to the extent that one is prepared to contribute, so a certain amount of self-discipline is needed to get anything out of a MOOC. I blogged about my own experiences as a participant on the PLENK2010 cMOOC here.

There is also some discussion about how these MOOCs can sustain a long-term business model – or indeed whether they should. The xMOOCs can be seen as thinly disguised marketing by institutions offering samples of their traditional course content online for free, and the word ‘bandwagon’ surfaces. But the fact is that there is a wide range of free online courses being offered by reputable educational institutions and educators – whether they are xMOOCs or cMOOCs – and we can take part in courses for free.

What MOOCs are on offer?

Recent offerings include the MobiMOOC on mobile learning, the Games Based Learning MOOC looking at educational games, and EdFuture, a MOOC looking at how technology is transforming higher education. These last two are still running at the moment. Stephen Downes’ Online Daily site highlights upcoming MOOCs in education, and is a good place to keep up on the press coverage and (sometimes heated) debate surrounding them.

What about MOOCs for EFL/ESL teachers?

The closest we currently get to MOOCs in ELT are the open online courses offered by SEETA. These short facilitated courses (or ‘mini-MOOCs’) last a week or two, are offered by well-know ELT educators, and can attract several hundred teachers. Not exactly the cast of thousands Coursera gets, but not bad for ELT. Nor are they ‘true’ MOOCs in that the conversations usually takes place within the course VLE with less dissemination and discussion of ideas via social media. But hey, it’s a start. Past offerings by SEETA include courses on mobile learning, using video, using digital games, and digital literacies. I blogged about my own experiences of running an ‘Introduction to mobile learning’ mini-MOOC for SEETA in 2011 here. All of SEETA’s past courses are archived and available on their website, where you can also keep an eye out for upcoming free courses.

If you’ve taken part in or run any MOOCs, please feel free to share your experiences – positive or negative -in the comments below!

Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
October 2012

Other 1-minute guides:

• The 1-minute guide to the mobile classroom
• The 1-minute guide to integrating technology into teaching
• The 1-minute guide to teachers’ concerns about mLearning
• The 1-minute mLearning panel summary