'Zoooooom' the learner, not the teacher

                    Making online teaching a personalised learning experience. part 1 

Like we said earlier, with less than 24 hours’ notice, we were asked to start teaching online. Support came later. Many colleges, schools and universities hurriedly offered teachers help with teaching – to match textbook content with e-content, deliver lectures online, give homework and conduct exams.

Just like in a classroom, the teacher enters, opens the textbook, delivers a lecture, asks questions, gives notes, assigns homework and schedules tests. 

Do we see a pattern? We were repeating the very familiar pattern of the face-to face classroom in online contexts. That’s where we went wrong. 

We attempted to replicate the classroom model using tech resources. What we couldn’t replicate, we brushed under the carpet. What we should have done instead was adapt.

In this and the next few posts, I’ll talk about how technology can augment and better classroom teaching. How we can use technology to do what the teacher cannot do. And that's why we CALL it TELL. It's no longer computer assisted language learning, it's technology enhanced language learning. 💥     

The first couple of days of covid lockdown and live classes using Zoom, I observed my son’s teacher going on fervently about polynomials, and students in the class busy arguing about PUBG. Discussions raged on which is better - Kar98k or Vector; how to tame a zombie in Minecraft; who one can trade football cards with; who was whose latest girlfriend… anything except polynomials. And, in the midst of all these, suddenly someone pipes up, “Ma’am, there’s a bird on your window sill” and yet another, “Ma’am, whose picture is that on your wall?” and "Ma'am, is this white board in your house?"  

And the teacher struggled to get back to polynomials.  

Less than three days of live video classes, the school realised the dangers of allowing students to chat or use the microphone. So, they disabled student chats, videos and muted microphones. We silenced them. 

And, the students found other things to do; they went on to do things that interested them – some ate, some played music, some drew, some read storybooks, some played digital games, and yet others played with their dogs 😉 I saw this in my home too.   

                                          With Pretzel while a class is in progress  

Now, if we pause to think, we realise that replicating classroom lecturing using Zoom (or any other synchronous videoconferencing or meeting tools) does not serve the same purpose as face-to-face classroom lectures. Disabling students’ chat, video or audio is equivalent to stopping two-way communication that is the core of all face-to-face classrooms. Let me explain.

In classroom lectures, the teacher speaking to students is the primary channel of communication. There’s also a second channel from students back to the teacher. This is the feedback that the teacher receives. 

Face-to-face classroom lectures revolve around feedback of various sorts. We constantly look for signs of comprehension – a nod, a frown, a distant look, open mouth, crinkled eyes, furrowed brows, puzzled eyes, shaking legs, doodling, a smile, gazing out through the window… everything tells us if our students are comprehending or not interested. At times we also ask questions to make sure students understand what we teach.

Backchanneling is a part of this feedback. Backchanneling is a more active or conscious feedback that a listener (here the student) provides the  speaker (here, the teacher) to convey that they're following what you're saying. Backchanneling is often communicated through words, phrases and interjections like “right” “I see” “yes” “Ok” “uh-uh”, “hmm”, “alright” etc.  

Backchanneling is one way of sending feedback to the speaker Image credits 

The point is, backchanneling is essential and this is what we cut out when we disable the chat, mute the microphone, or stop student videos. 

What we need to do online then is adapt our teaching to newer models. Adaptability is an unsure word, right? It’s tricky, does adapt mean to let go of the original identity? 

To adapt is to modify to newer conditions.  It augments. It transforms.   

Here’s a recent example.

After reading my blog, a very dear teacher I admire hugely WhatsApped me an appreciation. It meant the world. I didn’t think before I texted back.

 

                                                         I blurted back, right? 😉

Now, imagine if I were to email the same person. 

There’s something dignified about emails. More sanctimonious than texts. I’d have sat down, and started:

Dear ma’am

Thank you very much for your kind words. I was really happy to hear from you.

How are you?

And so on...

Now think about if I were to give a speech, a vote of thanks, to the same person.

Ladies and gentlemen, honourable guests on the dais

And so on... 😂

What I’m pointing out is that, the potential of each medium is different. And so are the expectations. We choose a medium depending on the message and the receiver, and we adapt our language to the medium.  

A face-to-face course doesn’t become an online course just because all the course content – textbook, handouts, notes, worksheets, etc. are typed and put up on a website. Or when lectures are transacted through a videoconferencing tool. An online course is more than that. We need to learn to adapt our materials to suit the online medium. 

There are things that face-to-face courses can do that online courses cannot, and then there are things that face-to-face courses cannot do that online courses can.  I always say this, use technology to do what the teacher cannot do. 

And, what technology cannot do, the teacher does.

Teachers are burdened with online teaching; they say online teaching is three times the work. And students are disgruntled; they say they aren’t learning anything. This is what we can address if we do more than merely replicate in-classroom experience using tech tools.

In this post, we'll look at how teachers can deliver productive classes using synchronous videoconferencing tools – whether FB, YouTube, Zoom, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, Google meet, etc. 

How do you adapt your face-to-face class lectures to meet the demands and exploit the potential of live videoconferencing tools? 

How can we enable backchanneling in online lectures?   

I'm going to talk about two teaching strategies or techniques that can make online classes meaningful - two, nothing more. Chunking and Interactivities (interactive activities). These can help deliver effective classes without using additional web tools. 

Strategy 1: Chunking. This isn’t a new concept. It’s been a favourite with instruction designers for almost 70 years. Read more here

You want heavy-duty theory about why human working memory can’t be bothered with more information? Then visit this

For those who are still engrossed here, bottom line is this: human memory can’t hold more than 5 - 7 bits of information. (You can go up to 9, there is a 7 +/- 2 instructional design rule of the thumb that's got your back).

Anyway, the first thing to remember is students (even the most motivated adults) cannot listen to a 40- or 60-minutes lecture session in one go. So, chunk your lectures. It’s here that bulleting helps. Before you go live, convert what you want to teach into bullets. Write them down. The time you reach 5 - 7 bullets, chunk your instruction there. 

  Bulleting and chunking: Earliest evidence of sound instruction design. (And then he had to break it! 😅) Image credits   

If you cannot condense the text into bullets, you can still chunk your lecture into 15-minute sessions. Which means you pause your live lecture either after completing 7 bulleted points or at 15 minutes' timestamp. Such pauses are called interactive pauses because during this time you allow your students to do something with what they've just learnt.  

Once you pause, what can you do? Introduce interactivities. 

 Strategy 2: Interactivities 

1. Ask questions  

Questions are the most interactive technique available to us as online teachers. (Yes, I agree they're intrusive, nagging and damaging too. But remember Socrates?) 

Questions have always fascinated us. They still do, in webinars especially 😈 Source: A WhatsApp forward. 

Learn to build questions into your lecture. Ask frequent straightforward questions, rhetorical questions, brainstorming questions, leading questions, roadmap questions...all kinds. Such questions not only inform students, they also trigger prediction, thinking, organising, connecting, etc.  

Some things you can do are ask

• a quick recap question 
• students to mention something new they learnt 
• students to share a question that they have about what was taught
• them to state how they can apply what was learnt
• them to find something to support a statement you made  

Call a student’s name and ask them to answer your question. (Keep a list of student names next to you every time you start a live lecture.) Or ask students to type their response in the chat box. Use the chat function of the tool you're using for live lectures. Believe me, if you don't use it, they will. 😆

Make this a game, ask students to choose the best response from peers.    

2. Share notes  

• Share your notes with students and ask them to write it down. Give them time for this.
• Skeleton notes – create a handout with key points of the lecture on the left margin, leaving space for students to fill in notes during lecture. 
• Systematic note taking - provide a template like the following to encourage taking notes during lecture  

        Share templates for while-lecture note taking Source credit

Book: Representing important facts, Light Bulb: Representing new ideas, Tick: Representing actions, Question Mark: Representing doubts

Such templates can be shared as word docs before class. Once completed, students can share their notes as pictures on class Facebook page or WhatsApp group. Or, if you want this to form a part of your assessment, ask them to be emailed to you. 

• Promote collaborative note-taking. You and your students can summarise the lesson into bullet points together. Google docs is wonderful for this. Keep adding important points to the same doc as the class progresses. (Google docs is such an integral part of my life that I almost don't count it as a technology tool, hence pardon its mention here. It's like saying Pretzel isn't a dog.) 

3. Link lecture with text 

If you use a textbook, always link your lecture with the textbook. 

• Before you start your live lecture, give explicit directions, say, “open your book, page no. 18, paragraph 3” etc.
• While lecture, keep connecting your lecture chunks with the corresponding paragraphs in the textbook. Stop every fifteen minutes and give students time to read. 
• Keep linking your lecture with previous chunks and lessons 

4. Post-lecture interactivity  

At the end of your lecture, you can use exit slips to conduct  informal assessment to measure students' understanding of the topic taught. They can be collected as  written responses to questions that can range from factual, reflective, evaluative or application-oriented. 

Did I say anything new here? Not a thing! All of us do these every time we teach, don't we?  

All I’m doing is reminding us how to do these consciously via live lectures since we don’t “see” or “hear” our students anymore. 

Go on, zooooom the student. 

Three of my favourite web 2.0 tools

                                        Voicethread, Spiderscribe, Padlet 
Fi.na.lly!!!! 
I've been dying to write about these three web 2.0 tools. Truth be told, I started the blog for them. They've been my constant companions these last 5 or 6 years. I confess I've spent more time with them than with Ramakanth (the husband). 
These web 2.0 tools were also huge hits in every workshop I conducted. Most teachers went on to use them quite successfully in their classrooms. (In fact, you can access most teacher accounts on these tools with combinations of kshemamadam or kshemaeflu as passwords. Just kidding :))   

Joking aside, there's a large amount of research conducted in the use of these three tools in the ESL classroom. 
Do you need more reasons? I could honestly go on. By the way, did I mention that these tools are free?  

A quick recap: The advantage of web 2.0 tools is that they make communication collaboration, critical thinking and creativity (4Cs) more possible in a learning setting. Read this post for details. 
Let's get down to using these tools. 
But, before that a word of caution: All, or most web 2.0 tools ask you to "register" or "create an account" before you can use them. (Just like Facebook does.) When you create an account you'll be asked for an email and a password. Take a look at the screenshot of the page for opening an account to use Voicethread. 

                                     Screenshot of register page of Voicethread

Please enter your email id, but DO NOT enter the password of your email account here. What they want is a password you'll use to open the voicethread account once you create it. So, please do not share the password of your email account here.     

Voicethread: Would you like to look at an example first? Here's a voicethread to develop speaking skills. Here's another one to teach giving directions. (You might have to register before you can view them.)   

Okay, here goes. 
A Voicethread is a free web 2.0 tool that allows you to create tasks to teach, practice or test all the four language skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing. 
First upload your material to the slide. Then type or speak your instructions. 
Once a task is created, you can share the Voicethread with your students. Students can post their responses in spoken or written format. 

Here's another sample Voicethread to teach direct speech to young children. On the first slide I uploaded a picture from my computer. Then I spoke a few sentences as an introduction. On the second slide I uploaded the story as a Word document. I gave instructions in both spoken and written formats. The last three slides are created for three groups of students who will record their responses on the corresponding page.  

If you want more information on Voicethread, please Google. The web has loads of resources, or visit guidelines to create a Voicethread. 
Here are some sample ideas for using the Voicethread web 2.0 tool in the ESL classroom.

I have also used this tool to make my students create multimedia assignments and to hold group discussions.   

Spiderscribe: Mind mapping or drawing web diagrams or spider graphs has always been every teacher's favourite activity for brainstorming, teaching reading comprehension or as a pre-writing exercise. 

A mind map created by Dr Arul Nehru, my PhD student using a digital tool called imindmap (extracted from his thesis) 

Now, instead of gathering information from your students and putting it up on the blackboard, what if you and your students can create a mind map together? A colourful one? One where you can easily make connection among different points? Where you can justify your view with additional images or texts or videos? Spiderscribe allows you to do all these.  

A warning: You might be asked to download flash. Please do. Click on Get Flash.
Or your system might prompt you to run flash - Allow or Block. Please choose Allow. 

Flash will keep threatening you that it will shut shop in December. Don't worry. Keep using it till December. I love the tool so much. 

Okay, let's get back to the tool. As a teacher, you can create one bubble that is the central concept. Take a look at a spider graph I created for my students to discuss 'how can use of technology enhance classroom teaching'.  The bubble in the middle in red is what I wrote. After that I shared it with a batch of postgraduate students. Eight students in the batch drew eight branches and added their ideas. As a second step, I asked each student to respond to a peer's idea. And after this, I added a language trainer from the corporate sector who commented on each student's response.  

Given below is a screenshot of another Spiderscribe created to teach students use of Wh-words. Each student is asked to draw a branch and write a sentence using a specific Wh-word. 

                  Spiderscribe created by a BEd student, screenshot from my collection 

My digital native students find Spiderscribe too ancient. So, here are newer alternatives and these don't require flash

https://www.mindmeister.com/

https://coggle.it/

https://bubbl.us/ 

Honestly, there a 100 more! 

Now to the last web 2.0 tool in this post. (Which means I'll talk about more tools later :)     

Padlet: Aren’t we all familiar with post-its? Some of us call it sticky notes. Usually yellow in colour, they now appear as digital versions on our computers too. 

                                                 Sticky notes or post its Image credits 

Now, imagine a digital whiteboard or a notice board where every student can post a sticky note? That’s Padlet. 

Take a look at an example.  I created this for my students to share their opinion on 'why do we need to teach digital literacy in the ESL classroom.' Each student was also asked to share a related web resource and explain its relevance to the topic. Four batches of students (from 2015 to 2019) have contributed to it already. Look at the wealth of resources I have!  
This Padlet works like an inside-classroom library for us now. The fourth batch consulted these resources to make their presentations and write their opinion papers. Imagine the time we saved! That's the beauty of web 2.0 tools.   

Padlet can be used not only for students to share their ideas and resources they find, but also to post their responses to a question. Here's an example. 

A final recap on how the 4 Cs are delivered through these tools: 

• Communication - all three tools allow students to communicate with each other 
• Collaboration - all three tools allow collaboration with a larger community of users    
• Critical thinking - is facilitated when we open up discussion with a large community and make available multimodal resources 
• Creativity - these tools 'tickle' students to come up with new ideas by giving them multiple options to write/doodle/ share an image or video/ speak, etc. 

Before I wind up, I'd like to share this resource of web 2.0 tools from Nik Peachey.  

A handsome chap, Nik Peachey, he's worth an entire post, not just for his earring that I fell in love with. (I was a young girl then, around 40 I think, when I met him and was too shy to ask for a picture :)) 
But seriously, he does a lot of amazing stuff with digital tools. And, more importantly, he writes about them. Download the free resource from the link I shared above. The book lists 11 web 2.0 tools and explains how to use them in the classroom.  
This, we like. Right? A big shout-out to Nik Peachey. 

The 4Cs of Digital Literacy

                              Web 2.0 tools and the 4 Cs of Digital Literacy 
By now I must have bored you to death about how bringing in websites into our teaching-learning-testing activities can help build digital literacy (DL) skills in our students. So, after using websites, then what? This post discusses how teaching DL can be taken to the next step. 

Do not use technology just because it's there. Nor because it motivates or creates a flutter of interest in the class. Bring a puppy or a parrot instead 😂

Or a 🐪 or 🐘 or 🐳 or...okay I'm getting sidetracked here, I got these in because I can't find emojis for puppies and parrots.   

We must not use technology for the sake of using technology in the class (as a former colleague said with her nose in the air, "using tech to s** up a class"). Use digital tools to meet DL standards/ performance descriptors / benchmarks, so that teaching DL becomes meaningful and productive.   

The International Society forTechnology in Education (ISTE) sets benchmarks for teaching digital literacy around six standards: creativity and innovation; communication and collaboration; research and information fluency; critical thinking, problem solving and decision making; digital citizenship; and technology operations and concepts. 

To make it easy for us, the National Education Association identified 4 Cs out of these as most important – communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. 

                                     The 4 Cs of Digital Literacy Image credits  

If we’re to build advanced digital literacy skills in our students, we should design tasks that require them to communicate, collaborate, think critically and create using digital tools. 
You might argue "But I've been doing these always", or "We don't need technology tools to teach these." True.

But technology tools make it easier.  Take a look at some sample classroom tasks. (This source explains how some teachers delivered the 4 Cs of DL using technology tools in their classrooms.) 

There are three very good reasons to teach the 4 Cs through digital tools in the ESL classroom: 

the 4 Cs is easier to teach when you use tech tools to deliver them 

developing the 4 Cs build language proficiency in our students, and 

it builds their workplace readiness   

Let me explain these with a couple of examples. 

Take a look at developing critical thinking. To facilitate this skill, we need to help our students analyse a problem and look at it in new ways; teach them how to connect information from several disciplines while attempting to solve the problem; explore alternate solutions available, etc. The picture below is a real-life example for solving a problem by looking at it in new ways. Read to know how people wore masks to escape being killed by the Bengal tigers in the Ganges Delta.   

                                An example for critical thinking and creativity. Source.  

In a face-to-face classroom, we teach critical thinking by bringing in a lot of information in the form of books, newspaper articles, videos, images, etc. Developing critical thinking also requires a lot of constructive discussion and reflective thinking. All of these are time-consuming and resources-consuming activities. 
Now, think about the benefits if we convert the resources to an online sharing site, hold the discussions on an online platform, and permit reflection outside classroom hours. The amount and type of information available is huge, students have access to them any time, discussion becomes productive because students can respond any time convenient and whenever they're ready, reflection becomes meaningful because there's no one breathing down their necks...    

This is what I meant when I said using technology tools makes teaching the 4 Cs easier. With the added advantage of making our students technology literate. 

Let's look at another example for developing communication skills in our students. For facilitating communication with peers - within classroom, within school, outside school, and global; with adults; with experts; with community elders; and others, where do we stand as a teacher in a face-to-face classroom as opposed to a WhatsApp group or a Facebook page? When connected through the internet, our students have access to more people, more knowledge and more skills. 

 Communicating via tech tools gives us access to a larger audience Image credits

What about the C of creativity? I'm sure you don't need me to tell you about the immense possibilities to create that digital tools gives us. (But will that stop me from talking?😁) 

Starting from Instagram or Facebook posts, tweets, to tiktok videos, the internet is a treasure trove for intelligence to have fun. 

                                                                             Image source

As opposed to the pencil, crayons, paint, pencil, paper, stencils, etc. available in a non-tech class, a tech-enabled class allows easier ways to express oneself artistically.  

The task of the ESL teacher then is simple: What we need to do is design digital tasks that encourage our students to communicate, think critically, create and collaborate. This way we exploit the information and communication potential of technology. 
How do we design such digital tasks? Enter Web 2.0 tools. 

I'll give you a simple definition of web 2.0 in this post and discuss it in detail in a later entry. Or, maybe by the time I write up a post, the world would have already reached web 7.0. The last I checked we were at web 6.0. Read a blog post here. Or a paper here.  
Or better still, take a look at the image below. Does anything in the image sound familiar?

                       A list of web 2.0 tools commonly used by teachers Image credits  

Right now, it is enough to say that web 2.0 is the second stage of web development. And all it means is that the web is not static, but dynamic; and this makes it easier for users to collaborate, create and share web content.

For example, search for Starling on the Encyclopaedia Britannica website www.britannica.com 
Now search for the same word on Wikipedia. 
Which page can you edit and change? Wikipedia. This is an example for a page that is dynamic because it accepts user-generated content. 

Here's another example. Look at your Facebook page. You write something on 'create post' or upload a picture of the dosa you had for breakfast, and the changes are there for everyone to see. 
On the other hand, open a website like my university's, www.efluniversity.ac.in 
Now type and type and type all you want, the page won’t change. That’s the difference. The EFL-U website does not take user-generated content. It is static, not dynamic. 
The EFL University website, like the Encyclopaedia Britannica website, is an example for web 1.0. Whereas, Facebook, like Wikipedia is an example for web 2.0.

In the next post, I’ll introduce you to three web 2.0 tools that are my favourites – Voicethread, Spiderscribe and Padlet. 

Teaching digital literacy. part 2

                                               Exploiting the I and the C of ICT

Why do we call it Information and communication technologies (ICT)? 
ICT provides us access to a lot of information and gives us opportunities for unlimited communication. These are what we need to tap into when we use ICT tools or digital tools in the classroom – their potential for providing information and facilitating communication.

The web has a lot of information. Think about the innumerable websites. Information overload, actually. 
The web also gives us countless ways to communicate with others. Think about email, chat, twitter, Facebook, discussion boards, YouTube, etc. 
Sadly, the only thing lacking on the web are learning tasks that make use of the potential of both. This is what we'll discuss in this post. How do we create tasks that make use of the information and communication potential of technology tools? 

To make it easier, we're going to break this up and narrow it down - we'll first look at creating tasks that make use of the information potential of websites. (Needless to say, we'll look at tasks that utilise the communication potential of technology tools in a later post.)  

                        Bring information and communication into classrooms through tech tools 

                                                                                                                     Image credits 

Think about the textbooks we use in our classrooms. They aren't written exclusively for our class, are they? Websites are like textbooks, they're written for a general audience. 
What do we do when we teach a lesson from the textbook in our classrooms? We match the textbook content with our students' levels and interests. Sometimes we simplify a lesson, bring in a picture, share an experience, introduce a related concept, mention examples, brainstorm to connect a concept with students' prior knowledge, give additional activities as homework, etc. - all to make the lesson 'right' for our class of students.     
Same is the case with using websites. Instead of using websites as they are, we should scaffold students to learn better from websites. There are many ways to do this. One such is creating navigating support documents discussed in an earlier post. 

I've said this before and would like to say it again, using websites is the best way to build foundational level digital literacy skills in our students. Don't be misled into thinking "my students can do wonderful things with the computer, so what is there for me to teach them?"

          Digital natives do not mean digital literacy savvy (a WhatsApp forward)  

Our students, to the digital born and called digital natives, still need to be taught digital literacy (DL) skills. The best way to start facilitating DL skills is through tasks that make use of websites. 
Ten years ago I stumbled on Tom March who tells us about five types of tasks that can be created using resources on the internet. In 2020, he is still relevant. 

                                                       March's task types source 

March discusses five tasks to build digital literacy skills: topic hotlist, multimedia scrapbook, treasure hunt, subject sampler and webquests. They are graded easy to difficult from left to right – topic hotlist being the easiest and webquests being the most difficult. The number of web pages to read for each task reduces from left to right while the complexity of tasks increases. (Do visit his page for samples for each task type.)

For those of you who are so engrossed here and refuse to visit Tom March, here’s an explanation: (I've linked each task type to March's examples.)

Let's start with the topic hotlist. It’s just a list of web page or website links (visit for a brief explanation of websites vs web pages) you have collected to save students’ search time. A hotlist is like a library - unless you give your students a topic to study, list the books they should refer to, or give them a writing task, what will they do in a library? Nothing. They'll browse aimlessly and waste their time. 
Same is the case with hotlists. Not much learning can happen using a collection of web pages unless you create a task using them. The navigation support document (NSD) can help you create a learning task for use along with a hotlist. 

A multimedia scrapbook is almost like a hotlist, except that it has not just reading (verbal) resources, but also multimedia resources. If you create a list of web page links that is a collection of reading, audio and video materials, your students get to see and learn a lot more about the topic. After visiting the links, you can ask your students to create a multimedia scrapbook.

Let me give you an example. For the lesson "Nelson Mandela", (English, Class 10, NCERT) you can share links to an encyclopedia entry, an interview , a museum, related newspaper clips, a video of a TED talk, a song on Mandela, websites on South Africa, an interactive map, a timeline of Mandela's life, photographs, speeches, letters, charity foundations...the resources are endless. Also, remember to share dissident voices – people who spoke against or do not approve of Mandela.     

Imagine the wealth of information the students get from such a rich collection of resources. 

After reading these links, give your students a topic (or topics) and ask them to create a scrapbook of related images using Microsoft Word. 

To make the multimedia scrapbook task cognitively challenging, the "Nelson Mandela" task can be linked with the lesson on "power sharing and types of governments" (Civics, Class 10, NCERT). Or it can be linked with the lessons on "climates", "water resources", "agriculture", "energy resources", "manufacturing industry" (Geography, Class 10, NCERT). Or history... 
Your imagination is the limit. 

I'm not saying you must do this for every lesson. Do this for just one lesson this year. 

Alternately, if you think your students have good search skills, you can ask them to locate web resources themselves and share them on the class Facebook page or WhatsApp group so that everybody can access them. Your multimedia scrapbook is ready!   

The third task discussed by Tom March is a treasure hunt. It works just like a treasure hunt. You choose around 10 web pages that you’d like your students to read. Create one question from each resource that they have to answer after reading each link.  Once they complete reading all the resources and answering individual questions, students have to answer one BIG culminating question that requires them to combine information from all the web pages they read.    

A subject sampler, the fourth task, offers fewer web links to read when compared to the other three.  However, the questions are cognitively challenging because they ask for students' personal opinion.  After reading each set of sites/ pages, the student is asked to respond to questions like 'what do you believe?' / 'what do you think?' / 'what is your opinion?' / 'comment on the writer's view', etc. 
You see why it is challenging? The questions are not factual. Students have to read, understand, think, analyse, connect the new information with what already know or with their experience, and then form an opinion. Such questions help avoid rote learning, copying of answers and plagiarism. These questions usually appear in open book exams.   
March's fifth task is the webquest. Ah! Now that is a task and a half! 
There’s nothing to beat a webquest when it comes to optimal use of websites in the classroom. Webquests are collaborative and integrated skills development tasks that develop higher order thinking skills in students. Now, that’s for another day!  
Here are two webquests I have always liked to share with teachers: 
http://questgarden.com/126/41/7/110512074451/index.htm
http://questgarden.com/52/41/5/070613164641/index.htm  

Do take a look. I’d like to do a video class on webquests. Let's see. 

Meanwhile, start slaying with the other four. 

Teaching digital literacy. part 1

                                             Navigation support documents 
There are many ways to teach digital literacy in the ESL classroom. One is using navigation support documents.   

Effective pedagogies for promoting digital literacy (now on called DL, I'm tired typing) start with using websites in the classroom. That’s it! It’s as simple as that. 
Bring websites into your teaching practices. Whether your students are young or old, experts or novices with the internet, start teaching DL by bringing in websites. Why? Because they're the most ubiquitous, accessible, available and easiest of all stuff digital,  and working with them efficiently is the most basic yet essential aspect of Digital Literacy.  

Bringing websites into your teaching is the first step to digital literacy Image credits

You’d have noticed that every time a discussion comes to using technology in the classroom, the first things the naysayers point out are electricity and the internet. 

Using websites in the classroom helps us win this argument; websites can help us beat the vagaries of electricity and the internet. Websites can be saved; several websites can be opened at a time and kept ready for later use; websites can be used for offline work; they can be downloaded or copied into a document; they're accessible for students with disabilities... the reasons are many.

The following are some things we can do as teachers to use websites to start building DL skills in our students:  

1.     1. Bring in website content to support textbook information. For example, using images or videos to illustrate or explain a teaching point.   

2.     2. Use websites to provide additional information   

3.     3. Produce worksheets with a limited number, but a variety of websites to practice what was taught  

4.     4. Allow students independent search for websites

5.     This post talks about how you can use websites in the classroom by creating Navigation Support Documents. (Other tasks that you can create using websites are discussed in later posts.) 

So here goes. 

External Documents or Navigation support documents (NSDs)

I got this idea from Craig, an ESL teacher who called them external documents. And oh boy! My students took it to another level! 

                   My first batch of students who indulged me and my experiments  

For the ESL teacher and learner, the internet is an abundance of resources. There are millions of websites already created for learning and teaching English. But these remain useless if students do not know where to locate them, when to use them or how to use them. Many students spend long hours searching for websites and once they find them, realise they have no idea how to use them. 

The job of the teacher here is simple: teachers need to be able to identify websites for students to access in order to achieve a learning objective. Once the teacher identifies websites that align with the learning objective and match the levels of students, he/she should be able to explain to students how to use those sites. This is what a navigation support document (NSD) does. 
If you would like to see an example before reading the description, please click here.  

So, how do we design a NSD? 

First step: Keep the objective specific and focused. (For example, I want to teach the use of reported speech. That's my learning objective.)

Second step: Identify websites or web pages** that help learners learn, practice and test this specific item. (To start with, choose around 3 sites for each activity of learning, practicing and testing reported speech.) 

** Note: Let me explain the difference between a website and a web page. Let's use the example of teaching reported speech. One website we can ask our learners to visit is 
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/  This is a website. 

But how do the students locate 'reported speech' on this site? How do they know which lesson is right for them? 
So instead, you give them the exact location where reported speech appears on the website.  
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/intermediate-to-upper-intermediate/reported-speech-1-statements This takes you to a web page. 
The web page is located inside a website. Web page links are easier for young or novice learners since it takes them directly to the lesson they're supposed to do. 
You can share links to websites if you want your students to acquire additional skills of searching and retrieving information from websites. End of note**  

Third step: Once you identify websites or web pages, copy and paste these links on a Microsoft Word document. (Remember, the links need to be clickable.)

Fourth step: Write clear instructions to guide students to move through these links – what should they do first, second, third, etc.  

Fifth step: Share the document with your students via email or WhatsApp or class FB page.  

The NSD is a Word document that lists links and also gives instructions on how to use these links. Here is an example for an NSD for teaching simple past tense.  

Here's another NSD for reading and use of linking words. 

Note: All the NSDs I shared above are open educational resources (OERs) uploaded on www.oercommons.org You're free to use them as and how you want. Though I've modified and updated all of them, many of them were originally created by my student teachers who I've acknowledged on the resource.  

                                          We'll talk about OERs in another post.  

Take a close look at the NSDs I shared above. You'd notice that they use multiple web pages as

1.        Warm up activity
2.         Presentation
3.        Practice
4.         Application/ Evaluation/ Wrap-up

I usually ask student teachers to choose web pages following roughly the present-practice-produce (or test) model. 

For teaching the skills of reading, speaking or writing you can follow the pre- while- post model. Take a look at an NSD to teach reading. This follows the pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading model. 

Here’s a summing up: 

• A navigation support document (NSD) can be created using MS Word. It is an electronic document that is a collection of web page/website links. 
• NSD helps you to collect and send to your students web resources that can help them acquire a specific learning objective.
• NSD makes web content relevant for students by delivering clear instructions on how to use each link.
• NSD helps learners navigate through multiple sites in order to achieve a learning goal/ objective.
• Using a navigation support document (NSD) can promote digital literacy in our students. 

Read on if you'd like to know how we can also go beyond an NSD. You can enhance the value of NSDs by adding your own activities to it. 

So, at the end of an NSD, you can add  

• a "Handout" you put together of points to remember, 
• a "Worksheet" created by you for students to practice, or 
• a "Test" designed by you that you want them to complete and return. 

This way, the NSD becomes a complete learning package. Or a learning object.**

** Note: A learning object is a collection of digital content that includes teaching items, practice items and assessment items, combined to deliver a single learning objective.

1. A learning object is an entire module that has a clear objective and can be used for self-learning. 
2. It is self-contained since it is a complete package that includes instruction, practice and assessment. 
3. A learning object is made of authentic materials. 
4. It is reusable. Many learning objects can be put together or aggregated to form a complete course. 
5. It can be cross linked with other modules, courses or even subjects. 

Learning objects are of relevance to the online teacher because they are made best possible through technology. End of note**  

An example for a learning object would be an audio or video of live/ recorded lecture + a navigation support document + a task using a web 2.0 tool.

Take a look at the following reported speech activities on oercommons. 

https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/65816 - NSD
https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/65819 - Handout
https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/65822 - worksheet  

Together they create a fantastic learning object to learn reported speech.   
    

Go on, slay it! 

Cheers.