EVO 2015: let's get going!

Here I am again after a year. Many things have happened: I have had the chance to take a few interesting MOOCs but I could never miss the opportunities provided by EVO.
So, after considering the list of courses available, I decided to follow two new courses: Flipped Learning and Moodle for Teachers. Then I decided to "meet" two old friends: Information and Communication Technology for English Language Teaching and Teaching EFL to Young Learners & Teenagers. I took these courses last year and I am sure there is still a lot I can learn.

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: