A different way of learning: Blended learning

The simplest and most precise definition of this new way of learning is that which describes it as an education which combines the traditional face-to-face learning and e-learning. This new approach to teaching has emerged as a response, especially in universities, to provide necessities and facilitate certain aspects in face-to-face teaching institutions. As Pascual (2003) claimed, blended learning emerged out of the necessity of attempting to solve problems of high costs when studying. 

A question that always is raised is whether it has some benefits on the whole process of learning or not. One of the most significant advantages that this approach offers is the possibility of uploading great amount of material available in the Internet and sharing it with all you learners. Many critics claimed that it transforms the learning process into a more active one, centering things mostly on the students rather than on the teacher. It is considered as a method which is time-saving and more practical as a great number of students prefer to study at home rather than travelling long distances to be present in a short-time lesson. 

Another justification for implementing blended-learning in universities or high schools is that it justifies the effort that institutions make so as to incline towards new methods of learning. This inclination is based on deep changes the society has suffered in relation to communication and information, which undoubtedly is affecting the education context. 

The combination of Humans and Technology

Reference:
PASCUAL, Mª PAU (2003). El Blended learning reduce el ahorro de la formación on-line pero gana en calidad. Educaweb, 69. 6 de octubre de 2003. http://www.educaweb.com/esp/servicios/monografico/formacionvirtual/1181108.asp 

The concepts of TIC, TAC and TEP presented in a conference held by Dolors Reig

We were invited to attend a university conference which was held by the Spanish social psychologist Dolors Reig in Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Santa Fe, Argentina. She is a well-known author in the fields of Social and Psychological media, 2.0 Education, Game-based learning, Sociology of the social networks, and the like. Among many things, she explained how the concept of TIC (Tecnologias de la Informacion y Comunicacion) has no longer meaning in the present world as the concept of TAC (Tecnologias del Aprendizaje y el Conocimiento) has established within the educational, social, and working environment. She highlighted the appropriate usage of both terms (TIC & TAC) in the educational context and how to take advantage of either one or the other. Last but not least, she included and developed in depth the acronym TEP (Tecnologias del Empoderamiento y Participacion) which being put in practice in all kinds of learning environments would be extremely effective and lead to a powerful growing learning. If you feel interested in these acronyms and its implementations in learning context, I strongly suggest you have a look at Dolor's website El Caparazon. 

Dolor Reig

The inclusion of presentations in the EFL classroom

One of the things a 21th-century EFL teacher has to be acquainted with is the inclusion of visual presentation in the English lessons. Why? Because they easily get the students' attention and they help teachers, in different ways, to innovate their repertoire of activities. Within the software world, teachers are able to choose from a big number of programmes that had been specifically developed to create visual presentations. Undoubtedly, it is up to you whether you can fully exploit them. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that teachers are well-acquainted and keep themselves up-to-date in the topic. Two of the most popular software that can greatly help teachers create presentations are Microsoft PowerPoint and Prezi. After having been checking them both, I can fully recommend them to be used in class. Personally, I think that the differences between them lies in the time available to develop a presentation. Prezi is more complicated, yet outstanding, as it requires a great amount of time to get used to its tools. Nevertheless, the final product is really eye-catching for both you and students! As regards PowerPoint, it is not difficult to get used to its using. The possible problem I found is that many regard its final outcomes as following a linear structuring. This is not the case as you can guide the presentation to your liking with certain tools that the programme proposes. The good thing of PP is that, sometimes, presentation can be 'changed' by students and that is where one can develop an activity that includes them. To sum up, in either of the choices, teachers count with fantastic presentation software to be included into the English lessons. Again, the choice depends on the amount of time you have and on the type of lesson and activities that you want your students to engage in. Here I post a Prezi Presentation we have developed together with two of my classmates. The imaginary topic was 'Night Out'. This an example of how teachers can create a 'guidance' presentation that would help students warm-up with the new topic. 

Prezi Presentation

Website analysis

When searching for an advantageous website to either profit from its activities or directly use it online in classroom contexts, it is better off to have a website analytical competence within our teaching knowledge(s).  Basically,  our first task was to analyse some web pages with the aim of acknowledging new aspects that occur when analysing X website. Before carrying out this work, we had taken into account only physical aspects such as website templates, fonts, structures, advertisements. After having finished reading some articles related to this sort of analysis, we noticed other aspects such as authenticity, up-to-date data, purpose (for instance .org - .edu - .gov), responsibility, accessibility, appropriateness, among others. All in all, I consider it is essential that this new competence prevails over our knowledge(s) as much of our daily world takes place in Internet. Therefore, we will browse through the net with a beneficial 'insurance'.

Website analysis

33 skills a 21st century teacher should have

While browsing through some websites I came across this excellent article (taken from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning) that suggests 33 '21st century' skills that a teacher, at least, has to aware of. If interested, the following points are part of some of such suggestions:

• Use of social bookmarking to share resources with and between learners.

• Use blogs and wikis to create online platforms for students.

• Exploit digital images for classroom use. 

• If you are interested in knowing them all... please check it out here!

Source:
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/06/33-digital-skills-every-21st-century.html

Google Drive and Google Docs

Here it goes a useful Youtube video that proposes a simple how-to-instruction of Google Drive and Google Docs which I consider very useful when working online with somebody else. 

My advice is that if you want to get organised within the 'net', I fully recommend that you choose all applications that come from Google, namely Google Drive or Docs among many others. Nowadays, the company provides many applications and widgets that are really helpful for students and teachers. For instance, you count with an online calendar in which you can create new events, and if you run the possibility of having a smartphone with Android (Google Operating System), Google coordinates this online calendar with that of your mobile and delivers a message whenever a programmed event is near. 

For teacher, this applications, and many others, can be of fantastic help and time-saving. 

Digital natives

Digital natives are meant to be those kids raised and surrounded by technology that belong to the new digital generation. To add something more to my ECO II classmates’ opinions, Prensky’s (2001) conceptualization of those terms together with the YouTube video (at the bottom) awake into me an idea that those digital-immigrant teachers will have to be aware of this change on those who will be in front of them: the students. The sign in the K-12 video that calls for engagement from the part of the kids plays a key role in current learning difficulties.
Therefore, if teaching principles, techniques and methodologies are digitally carried out, there is no doubt that the learning atmosphere is going to be an enriched experience both for teachers and students. 
I'd like to comment of two extracts from Prensky's work: one that I agree with and another I don't. 

‘’As Digital Immigrants learn – like all immigrants, some better than others – to adapt to their environment, they always retain, to some degree, their "accent," that is, their foot in the past. ‘’ (Marc Prensky 2001)

 Unfortunately, I quite agree with this author’s opinion on the concept of digital immigrants. Cases of people that have changed from digital immigrants to digital natives leaving aside the so-called accent are countless. Anyway, this develops awareness that we – teachers- should never stop learning from new technological advances that may present to us as a difficulty in our future teaching career. 

‘’Digital Immigrants don’t believe their students can learn successfully while watching TV or listening to music, because they (the Immigrants) can’t. ’’  (Mark Prensky 2001)

I don’t think that technology-foreign teachers don’t believe in those digital learning techniques. They’d rather support old techniques and principles that may guarantee them against failure; obviously these teaching methods will be left aside sooner or later.

K-12:



References:
PRENSKY, Marc. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. MCB University Press.