Creating the ePerfect Textbook

Weeks 4 & 5

Week 4 Overview presentation

I feel proud! It's the end of week 5 and I managed to catch up and produce the first chapter of my eTextbook. It's been time-consuming but engaging. Once you have started, ideas keep flowing and new activities and tool come to mind. What seemed impossible at the beginning, it's now a reality. Maybe it's not perfect, but it can be used... at least by some of my students.

So here are the final main missions of the course

• the first chapter of my eTextbook
• the ebook cover

At the moment the course is on weebly, but in the next weeks I'll try to follow the community's and the moderators' advice and create a pdf or epub version.

Mapping it out

Creating the ePerfect Textbook

Week 3 

This time I started from the last mission and watched the recording of the Google Hangout where I could learn about some new interesting tools to use for this ebook or for my daily teaching activities.

Take a look at this fantastic Prezi presentation by André J. Spang, one of this week's moderators, who explained some of the tools in the Hangout.

André J. Spang's wiki for this EVO session

Mission 1, Days 1-3: Map out chapter 1

I posted my outline in the Google+ community but my ideas are not fully clear. I'm looking for new tools to diversify my activities.

As to the platform which I will use I am still struggling to find the one that can suit my plans. I'm going to postpone the decision to the beginning of next week. Reading other participants' posts and advice will surely help me.

Outlining my Table of Contents

Creating the ePerfect Textbook

I'm running late as usual. The missions of this course are quite challenging and my school duties haven't left me enough time to work on the ebook as I would have liked to.

But here I am, trying to catch up. I have finally decided that this e-book will be part of the material I am preparing for my 11-year-old students who are taking their first Trinity speaking exam in May. I would like to help them to get ready, be successful and have fun.

Week 2 Missions

Mission 2, Days 1-3: Create an outline for your e-textbook

1st.  For this mission, you will need to have a copy of your curriculum and/or textbook Table of Contents. Based on these outlines, create a basic outline/skeleton of what information and topics you'd like to include in your e-textbook. We recommend Google Docs for this mission, but feel free to use another tool as long as this is posted online for peers to view.

Here's a Popplet map of my Table of Contents.

Mission 3, Days 2-5: Participate in a discussion about visual design

• Check out resources about visual design. Choose at least 3 to investigate. 
• In the Wk 2 thread, answer any or all of these reflection questions. Use the hashtag #Wk2EbookDiscussion:
• Which visual elements do you think are important for your learners specifically? Why?
• What are your thoughts about the future of textbooks?
• How do you believe digital textbooks should be designed to best match learners’ needs?

Among the resouces provided by our moderators there is an article by Shelly Terrell and this inspiring presentation which you can't miss!

Motivating Students to Keep Learning During Breaks from Shelly Terrell


This is one of Shelly's tips that I am going to try sooner or later:

Set-up missions in an advent calendar

• Each day your students can find a new mission worth points. See this post on how to make an interactive calendar with Thinglink or Wix.
• Mix up the tasks to include various activities like visiting museums, attending a play, snapping a picture outside, playing an online game, completing a brainteaser, or creating with web apps and tools
• Optional: Provide a points system 

All missions of Week 2 have been accomplished! Great! 

Interactive exercises and quizzes

ICT 4 ELT

Week 4 Activities:

Task 1

• Read about the possibilities of the tools in the suggested reading
•  Choose one or two interactive exercise makers and explore them 
• Choose other ones if you don't like your first choice
• Make a short test exercise when you find a tool you like

I have chosen to create a crossword with Eclipse Crossword. It is an easy-to-use software that you can download and once installed it can help you to create crosswords that you can either print or publish on the Net.

I wanted to publish the link on my second-year students' Edmodo class so that they could revise vocabulary in a fun way. But unfortunately the link provided by the software doesn't seem to work outside my computer.

If you want to try the interactive version, click on the image below. I hope you'll be lucky.

In the following image you can see that my browser allows me to see the different clues when I click on the crossword.

Task 2

• Create an exercise for one-two of these skills: reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary or grammar
• You can also use the exercise makers for CLIL - e.g. teaching history or geography through English 
• post the link to your exercise in your slot of the Participants Productions Page.

Among the suggested tools there was also Photopeach which I used last year with some of my students to revise Present Continuous for their Trinity GESE exam.

Task 3

• Explore the software for creating online surveys and quizzes (from the table below)
• Create an online quiz or survey for your students or for participants of this ICT4ELT session

I used one of Edmodo's features to create a poll for my 11-year-old students. I created it yesterday and have already had 4 voters out of 18 students. I can assure you it's a lot for a class who started using Edmodo only two months ago.

Task 5 

• Embed the exercise (if you used Learning Apps) in your wiki or blog.

I have chosen to use LearningApps to create a cloze test with a text that I have used in class this morning with my first-year students. It's a really interesting tool. I will test the embedding possibilities to check if I can easily use it inside our virtual classroom.

Task 6

•  Join us for Arjana Blazic presentation about "Tools for online testing" 

Online testing from Arjana Blazic

Very interesting presentation! Arjana has given us a lot of interesting tools that can be used to create interactive or printed quizzes or tests. 

Vocabulary games with Zondle

Wonderful Words

Week 4:

One of the activities of this week is designing a vocabulary project using one of the suggested webtools or planning a classroom-based activity.

Among the suggested tools there is Zondle which I already knew but had never tested. So I created a teacher profile and started creating my first topic and game.

My first attempt is a simple multiple-choice exercise/game to revise vocabulary related to shops.

Advantages and disadvantages of Zondle:

> you can create customized games to suit your teaching goals;

> you can create a class, add your students and monitor their learning process;

> you can reward your students with certificates or badges;

> there is a Zondle Support community in Edmodo ready to help you;

BUT

> at the moment Italian students cannot use the Connect to Edmodo app which would allow me to have my students use Zondle directly inside our Edmodo class. This app is available only for the USA. 

Teaching & Learning Vocabulary

Wonderful Words

Week 3  - Food for thought

One of the readings proposed this week is the following infographics which I find particularly clear and concise:

Wiki Wiki - Let's get started!

ICT 4 ELT

Week 3 Activities

One of this week's activities is starting a new wiki or blog and post a presentation or a video using one of the suggested tools.

Inspired by last week's readings and discussions, I had already decided to try and use a wiki to showcase my students' productions. So this was a good opportunity to start. 

Instead of using one of the tools suggested by our moderators, I chose to try a new one which I had discovered only a few days before, Haiku Deck. That's the final result, which I embedded in the wiki.

And as it will be a class wiki, the logo I decided to choose was created with tagxedo.

It will be an evolving logo: it will change each year, depending on the names of the students involved.

Useful resources:

> making a pbworks space
> clearing pbworks pages

New and old strategies to teach and learn new vocabulary

Wonderful Words

When I first created this blog three years ago, it was just one of the tasks/missions required by one of the EVO courses I was following. Only now can I fully realize how useful it has become for me to keep track of all the things I am trying to learn.

I am an avid reader and learner and this could cause insanity if you don't get organized. Even if I try to put all my things in good order, I sometimes forget where I put files or I get distracted by other daily activities. Writing down what I did and going back to past activities and revising is something that has helped me a lot.

This is probably one of the most important things I have learnt in these three years: organizing content on the Net. I am not an expert, of course: I still have to learn a lot but I can improve.

I think organization when working with vocabulary is fundamental; otherwise our students will get confused by the huge amount of words we want them to learn as quickly as possible.

Week 1 Activities

I have...

• joined the Wonderful Words Yahoo Group
• introduced myself to the group
• added my introduction to the Participant's Wiki Page
• completed a survey
• posted my comments in PBWorks to the two discussion questions
• replied to posts from peers
• listened to the recorded session (even if it was problematic - I kept getting error messages...) and had the chance to virtually meet our moderators, Jennie, Brenda and Anne
• answered the Week 1 questions

Week 2 Activities

I have...

• read the three research articles on Second Language Vocabulary acquisition and retention
• posted my comments to the three discussion questions
• replied to a post from a participant (interesting point)
• chose to explore further English Attack for Week 3 Review
• chose not to join English Central because it's not free

These are my comments to the readings:

First article: It is interesting to read that low-level students tend to learn new vocabulary by translating into their own language because that’s something we have always been told to avoid as much as possible in order to have them speak and think in English.

Second article: my students are elementary to pre-intermediate learners and pre-adolescents. Some of the techniques mentioned cannot therefore be used (note-taking strategies, dictionary strategies) because they are not motivating for them and we should concentrate on task-dependent strategies or guessing strategies. I agree with the author that there are many variables which could alter the learning process and negatively affect the results of a teacher’s efforts. One of the most relevant in my case is the context.  

“The ear assists the eye in the long-lasting retention of vocabulary” writes Mr Langhoff. One of the reasons I like Quizlet is that my students can see the new words written and spoken, the other is the need they don’t stick forever to a mispronounced word.

Getting started with wikis and Twitter

ITC 4 ELT

Week 1 activities

I have....

• read the Getting Started Page and explored the wiki
• introduced myself to the group
• posted my intro and picture to the Participants Page
• joined the Edmodo Group  
• attended the live session/listened to the recordings
• commented on the Live Session using the Edmodo Group
• commented on the readings using the Edmodo Group
• explored these tools: the wiki and Yahoo Groups

I must admit I find Yahoo Groups very confusing and not useful. There are many more better tools to keep conversations organized. On the contrary, I like wikis. Last year, thanks to BAW13, I created my own wiki but haven't used yet. My New Year's resolutions (is it too late?) include using wikis as digital portfolios of my students' works.

The article I appreciated most is therefore Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom by S. Pixy Ferris and Hilary Wilder.

Week 2 activities

Synchronous and asynchronous communication tools: Text/Audio/Video

I have...

• attended the live session/listened to the recording
• commented on the Live Session using the Edmodo Group
• explored Twitter

I have already Skype in my computer which I've been using for personal and professional purposes for years. Next week (when the fever's gone) I will talk (via Skype) with a teacher trainer who's doing a research on the use of digital tools.

In the next few days I will

• explore audio and video tools for sending messages
• comment on the readings using the Edmodo Group
• take part in a tweetmeet

Saturday's live session with Michael Coghlan, Blending Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning Environments, was very interesting. 

Synch AND Swim - Blending Synch and Asynch Learning Environments from michaelc

In the chat we discussed about the importance of using safe digital platforms when you teach pre-adolescents and some teachers agreed on the opportunity of using Facebook for learning only with teenagers and adults.

During the session one of the teachers posted a link toTeresa Almeda d'Eça's presentation about working well even if you have only one computer in your class with an IWB and Internet connection. That's still one of the luckiest class situations in Italy. 

One-computer classroom_May2013 from Teresa Almeida d'Eca

It is important to know how to use ICT to enhance learning but also to have a plan B when it doesn't work.

Teaching English to Young Learners

Young learners & teenagers SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP

This course has a beautiful program of webinars featuring some of the best and most experienced ELT authors and teacher trainers. 

The list of webinars can be found here.

Yesterday afternoon a very busy Shelly Sanchez Terrell (she had been the host of a Google+ Hangout just a couple of hours before) gave us some Survival Tips for Teaching Young Learners English.

If you don't have time to watch the whole recording of the session, you can visit her website page on the same subject or take a look at her clear and useful presentation:

Survival Tips for Teaching Kids English from Shelly Terrell

This is an example of a wiki she used for a course in Germany where she not only taught English to very young learners but she also had them connect with peers from two international countries.

Doubts in the kitchen... how to bake an ebook?

Creating the ePerfect Textbook

Week 2 is over and these are the missions I could complete:

Mission 1: Ebook Design Presentations

As in Italy it's end of first term, all teachers are busy so I arrived late as usual but I tried my best.

I watched the other presentations and began to be scared: my ideas are not clear yet. I know how I would like it to be, but it will take me a lot of time to plan the contents of the book in details. I rely on the moderators and the other teachers and teacher trainers all over the world who are really inspirational.

Have you ever baked a cake that ended up as a real disaster? I have and I don't like that feeling. 

That's my culinary presentation expressing my doubts.

It took me a while to embed my presentation. It was not the first time I had used Prezi but I certainly need to practise more to become a more proficient user and exploit all its possibilities.

Mission 4: Attend our Live Online Session

After posting my ebook design recipe, I took part in yesterday's webinar. Yes, you're right, I still have to accomplish mission 2 and 3 but I will catch up when my ideas are not so confused anymore.

Anyway, the session was fabulous and Shelly Terrell was inspiring as usual.

P.S.: I have to apologize in advance if my posts today may seem a little bit confused. I have been stuck at home for two days with a high fever and a headache and I think it will last for at least a couple of days. Please be patient!

What is CLIL?

CLIL: Using Technology for Content  and Language Integrated Learning

I have been taking part in CLIL courses for two or three years and I am fascinated by this new methodology, even if it is not and probably can't be (at the moment) fully implemented in the school level I teach.

The first webinar of this EVO course provides a clear presentation on CLIL in Italy by Gisella Langé, Inspector at the Italian Ministry of Education.

Here are the slides of her presentation:

Click here if you want to learn more about the European Framework for CLIL Teacher Education.

Digital Responsibility

Crafting the e-Perfect Textbook

Mission 4: Create a Creative Commons License for your E-Textbook

After reading the simple but clear presentation illustrating the various types of licences available for publishing on the web, I decided to choose the following:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The presentation can be used in class to underline how important it is to respect copyright when working on the web, especially for students who are so used to sharing pictures and music.

Italian version (for my students)

Creative Commons:Condividere le proprie creazioni from roberto marcolin