ICT as a Tool for Student Centered Classroom
Florence is known as being a historical must see. Founded over 2000 years ago, the centre is very old, with the majority of architecture being over 600 years old. With designs that have lasted the test of time, ICT isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when thinking of Florence. The famous Dome alone took 140 years to finish. Despite this, I came to Florence to learn some IT skills.
The five day course helped with all manner of issues relating to administrating a classroom and creating materials. As a teacher of adults, it is often important to find ways to summarise information in the most concise manner for later recall. They are busy and don’t have time to look through print outs. A good working knowledge of google classrooms or interactive note boards like Trello will really help in keeping an eye on what has and hasn’t been done. It will also be a fun way for group classes to interact with collaborative projects.
It wasn’t just administration tools we delved into. Making exercises using video editing apps will be a really fun and cheap way to develop in class work, or homework tasks. Taking a Youtube video for example, you can choose to add some questions or further explain what just came up. This is great for listening skills. But beyond that, the quiz and flash card websites (quizlet for example) will be a valuable tool in helping students drill skills they learned in class.
The course itself was not simply for language learning, but also to allow people of any subject to better distribute and manage their subject’s information. These general skills would be transferable to people running community projects, small businesses or clubs as well. One of the positives is that none of the apps were so complicated they couldn’t be learned intuitively.
We also had a look at the theory of the classroom, and investigated what possibilities a “flipped classroom” would provide. This was a strategy to make the most of in class time. One method is giving students a video/pre-task to be done at home before each class. This could be watched as many times as needed, whenever necessary. Therefore, it would be valuable for test revision. In class, students could be put into appropriate groups to allow them to thrive at their level of retention. The groups would be in general gradated by skill, with pods of skill levels doing the same exercises. Students with high ability will have harder materials, and those with less current skill easier tasks. This will ultimately give students in multi-level classrooms (such as those wanting to take a general exam like CAE) to get the best quality of education in the shortest amount of time. No one will feel they have bitten off more than they can chew, or that they are waiting for the rest to catch up.
Not only did we learn how to use these apps, but we were also given advice on how to elicit student engagement and making them stakeholders in their learning journey. In practice it will streamline the learning of both long term and short term courses. It will easily allow students who have the desire to take more exercises from the note boards/online classroom. Those students with less time/ability will still progress with the core exercises, and no matter how long later, have the freedom to attempt the harder exercises.
Evan Burgess
Erasmus+ info
