The tools, especially the 100 essential web tools are very useful for Media in FLE. We learned ways of creating lessons on the internet or with the help of the internet. Of course, therefore we also need some technical background. Before all, a teacher has to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of new media in order to decide whether and which opportunity of new media is helpful for the students and afterwards the students should be taught these advantages and disadvantages.

1. How many computers do you have?

- There are three different rooms with computers. Two of them are convetional computer labs, one is a learning room with a library and group tables with computers for older students and the other one is the “Lernwerkstatt”. It has a special architecture: It is one big room, where you find  a library and some small group-talking-rooms like cabins, upstairs are some computers and a printer. Roughly there are about 80 computers at school.

2. How do you finance the computers?

- The computers are financed by a “Bildungspaket” from the German government. 7 years ago the school got microsoft packages.

3. How often and in which subjects do teachers use the computers? Do they really integrate new media into their lesson plans?

- Teaching media tools is integrated into the subjects. In 5th grade the students have a crash course “introduction to new media” each week for 6-7 weeks. Depending on the topic teachers often use the computers. But unfotunately, there is not much time to concentrate on working with the PCs because of the G8.

4. Do you have any didactic courses for teachers which help them using new media?

- Luckily, there is no need for courses for teachers, most of them know how to handle with computers and to use them in their lessons. There are just some older teachers, who think they will not need to learn it in their last years as teachers. 7 years ago there was a training for the teachers, but today there is no need. For special questions there are informatics teachers.

5. Are there any volunteer teachers who offer computer clubs, or organize projects like email or Skype friendships?

- There were some projects in the subject English, but as said before, the students as well as the teachers have so much to do obligatory, so they cannot find room for these special projects.

6. Do the pupils have the opportunity to use the computer lab besides lessons or without supervision?

- No, they are not. Older students have an own account, the younger ones save their documents on USB sticks. They do not use the computers without supervision because the teachers have some bad experiences with letting the students alone in front of the computers.

7. Do you have further ideas or new plans to expand new media at your school?

- Media always develops and of course the school has to update the systems and the possibilities to use media. For example they change the equipment, they have a smart board. But they plan also new designs of computer labs like the “Lernwerkstatt” which seems to be more open; open to new social teaching and open to new media.

We wish the Alfred-Wegener- School success in their future plans with new media in school and thank them for the nice visit. It was a different experience for us because in our school years technology was not much integrated into the lessons and the future plans. It is a good example for us becoming teachers and other schools on there way to a modern education.

Here are some questions we prepared to get information about experiences with new media at school:

1. How many computers do you have?
2. Since when do you own them? How often do you update the systems?
3. How do you finance the computers?
4. How often and in which subjects do teachers use the computers? Do they really integrate new media into their lesson plans?
5. Do you have any didactic courses for teachers which help them using new media?
6. Are there any volunteer teachers who offer computer clubs, or organize projects like email or Skype friendships?
7. Do the pupils have the opportunity to use the computer lab besides lessons or without supervision?
8. How do the students like using new media at school? Do they appreciate this advantage and take it serious as a method of teaching?
9. Which problems did you have concerning the computer lab? Would you recommend it to other schools? What are the pros and cons?
10. Do you have further ideas or new plans to expand new media at your school?

Our post with the answers:

Field Trip- Answers

Enhanced English Teacher

Enhanced English Teacher is a blog about using technology in an English classroom. This blog was created by a 9th grade English teacher from the U.S. In her blogroll you find many links to other teacher blogs, she provides us with lists of books she recommends in general and especially for English teaching and gives us a list of helpful websites for English teachers for example:

Online Grammar practice quizzes

Literary Terms in Modern Media

Online literature games

ManyBooks.net – free ebooks

Short stories online

and many other links which help you setting up a lesson.

This teacher blog is very useful because there are many posts about different methods you can use in your classroom, for example “posting to the web with students” where she describes the lesson plan and explains why she chose the different ways of working .

Visit the blog yourself and discover the many rescources and ideas on how to integrate new media in the English classroom.

Teaching English BBC

“The award-winning global home for English teaching on the web brings together everything busy teachers need, from classroom materials to ideas for development.” [1]

TeachingEnglish is produced by the British Council. The organisation receives funding from the UK government for its work in supporting English language teaching.

The articles are written by a team of six English teachers. I like the page so much because here you can find many rescources for the classroom and all teaching material on the site is free to access. There are suggestions for activities, whole lesson plans you can download, quizzes and useful tips. The site does not give you just ideas for classroom activities but also the fitting material. Of course you can find links to other useful pages too, but the BBC page contains so much material to a  wide range of topics that it is not neccessary to visit other pages in order to set up a lesson. Visit the page and get your inspiration from it!

All in all, other teacher blogs can help you a lot when you set up a lesson and need inspiration. Of course, it is not advisable to copy every lesson plan without reflecting it or adjusting it to your class but if you want to integrate something new and diversify your methods, visit some teacher blogs and look at the activities other teachers did with their pupils and which experiences they made with the different methods. You can find the direct links to the two teacher pages presented above at our blogroll.

WebQuests can be used in class in order to improve a sensible dealing with the internet and its contents. They are activities based on research and contain information provided mostly by web sources. WebQuests can be created by groups and may differ in length. What is more, they can refer to a single topic or to several topics.

In order to set up a well structured WebQuest, it should include an introduction consisting of some background information and the description of a problem that is to be solved, a comprehesible task and a list of information sources the students can access in order to solve the given problem. What is more, a description of the process the learners should go through is needed in order to guarantee a guided learning and working process. Furthermore, a guidance is required which helps the learners to organize the acquired information. At the end of the working process a critical review should take place in which the students, as well as the teacher, get the chance to evaluate the process of working on a WebQuest. In a final step, the WebQuests should be presented to the class. This might be implemented, for example, as a power point presentation or a word document.

Why is this any good?

This teaching method can be very useful, since it most probably will arouse the students’ interests and lead to a creative and student based working process which is guided by an outline, information and a structure that has been created by the teacher beforehand. This means for us as teachers that we need to be aware of what we want to achieve by using WebQuests and to search for appropriate material in terms of interenet resourses on the topics that are to cover which the students can use in order to gain good results. During the working process the students will then have the chance to work in groups on the given topics, use their creativity in producing the content of their weblog, and in the end will have a complete WebQuest as a result of their work.

The following page may serve as an inspiration for possible WebQuests:
WebQuests

What is more, published WebQuests can be used as well as self-created ones. There are already many WebQuests existing on a variety of topics. Instead of creating a new one, you may also choose one of those which, by the way, may save time.

Where can you get it from?

–> Medienzentrum-Kassel

In our last in-class session we had to do a webquest which guided us through some websites that deal with the topic “edutainment” and some interesting educational games for the English classroom.

In the following, you will find some key aspects that are relevant when evaluating educational software and four examples of “edutainment” including an evaluation.

Key aspects that are relevant when evaluating educational software for your classroom

Before using educational software in classroom, it is necessary to be reconsidered.

First of all, the design should be clearly laid out, the navigation should be easy to handle for both, teachers and pupils, and the software should be motivating for students/pupils. The website should be well-structured in order to be adaptable to all different age groups and learner levels.

If you consider including computer games into the program you have to make sure that skill and knowledge training is offered and learning has to be ensured.

Furthermore, the quality of the content should be appropriate for the classroom. It should be related to the content that is dealt with in class.

Evaluation of online games for the English classroom

1. Irregular Verbs

I have tried the part of the program which is designed to practice all forms of irregular verbs. Firstly, the student is supposed to tick the right answer similar to a memory game. In the second part the learner has to fill in gaps of the missing irregluar form. The difficulty level is increasing throughout the program.

The design of the program is not stirring, not for me and especially not for children or teenagers. Moreover, I do not really see the necessity of using the computer for this kind of excerices. Copies would fulfill the same effect. Additionally, the whole kind of practice is not really made interesting for the students.

All in all, I would not recommend to use this game in English classroom.

2. BBC-CBBC- Games

Unfortunately, the games on this webside do not have any effect on school work at all.

In one game you have to remember some weird signs in a special order which is not usefull in any sense. The goal of the other game I have tried is to shoot at some kind of aliens.

Concluding, I would say the design might be striking for some boys but it does not make up for missing learning effect.

3. Learn English Free

This website offers different English wordgames, e.g crosswords and battleships. The good thing about the provided crosswords is that they are allocated to different topics. Therefore, students and teachers can choose a suitable topic which fits the learing content. On the other hand, it does not provide age-specific tasks. The battleship I have tried is about English slang words and if you hit a ship you are confronted with a slang word and have to choose its meaning. Therefore, you are given 3 possible synonyms. If you choose wrongly, you are not offered the correct answer. That is a disadvantage as I think.

Since I have not even tried half of the games, I cannot judge the website completely but from what I have seen I can say that there are advantges and disadvantages. All in all, I feel it is suitable for the English classroom as long as you choose the right activities which are most effective and which are linked with the content of the teaching unit.

4. Gamezone

Though the design of this page is not very interesting, it is clearly arranged and its content includes theme specific games. I have played the Garden Game and found it good as a vocabulary game. It involves vocabulary concerning the topic garden and its contents and it offers pictures and explanations of the English word that is searched for. If the students do not know the answer, they can click on the help button and receive help in terms of three possible answers.

To conclude, it seems as if the composition of pictures and explanations is useful in order to store the information that is learned.

Conclusion

As the examples obove show, there are many learning games online but that does not mean that each of them has the quality that is necessary to use them in classroom. So, be careful choosing the right “Edutainment” for your students!

Equipment:

• a laptop or a desktop computer
• a VGA cable
• loudspeakers
• a video projector
• power cables for all devices
• a medium that contains the presentation (e.g. USB pen-drive)
• if internet access is required: a LAN cable or the access data for the Wireless LAN

How to connect a device – Steps:

1. You need a computer and a power cable in order to setup a beamer.
2. Plug the power cable into the computer.
3. Plug the network cable into the computer.
4. Plug the VGA cable for the video information into the projector and the other end into your computer.
5. Plug in the power cable of the beamer.
6. If you want to use sound, plug in the speakers into your computer.
7. After you have connected everything, turn on the beamer.
8. If necessary, adjust the feet of the beamer.
9. The position of the projected image can be lifted by raising the front of the projector.
10. Press Fn+F5 to activate the VGA output.

Important: When the presentation is over, you should NOT unplug the computer straight away. You have to switch it to standby first because the fan is required to run little longer in order to cool the light bulb, which might otherwise break.

Best regards,

Gloria & Jana & Nermin & Sofia