Our Educational Message

Hi, and welcome to our blog. This space is designed to share ideas and methodologies that we use to teach Turkish teenagers. In particular, there is a strong focus on ICT-ELT, which means if you like visual and technological support for your style of teaching, this blog is for you. My colleague, Brentson Ramsey, has been working alongside me for three years. He is also a big proponent of the ICT-ELT Paradigm, which means he will also be posting from his own teaching perspective on the blog.

2010 was the beginning of this new journey, and although there is no definitive ICT-ELT road map available for everyone to follow, it is exciting to explore the technological means to make teaching more fun and affective for students. Our main message is for teachers to ADOPT & ADAPT the paradigm shift for their own needs, and remember that
ICT-ELT is a TOOL, NOT a SOLUTION.

Thursday 3 November 2011

Engaging students in EDMODO


Engaging students must surely be the most talked about subject in ELT these days.  Everywhere I go and there are teachers around, I hear complaints of how students won't get involved, that they couldn't care less and that standards are dropping.  This, does seem to be the case and it is all very sad.  However, one little flicker of hope has been lit in my class, and it involves this marvellous platform, the internet, and in my opinion, the best LMS/PLN site currently on the web 2.0.  May I introduce you to EDMODO .  I have been using this every day this year and I am now starting to see the effect on the students and their engagement with the course.  It is not 100% of the students, but out of 22 I can safely claim that 18 use it daily and interact, with the other 4 opening the site for important information.  I have made three videos below that explain what it looks like, how it works and for the me the best video is where I show the students interacting and engaging in the course materials and sharing ideas and helping one another ALL IN ENGLISH.  There isn't a Turkish word in sight and this must surely be a first! for a Hazırlık class.  So, no more waffling, here are the videos, and I hope they can encourage you to try it out
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warmly, affectionately and edmodo.comly

DavidM