Online Language Learning Session 10.00-13.00 pm

Facilitators Nicky Hockly and Vera Bobkova started the session with an ice breaking activity. In groups of three the participants were encouraged to talk about three things

1. Things that are important for you in your life
2. Things you like about your job
3. Thing you've always wanted to do

As a feedback the participants told wonderful stories from their own experience, about their dreams in childhood.

After that the facilitators passed over to the topic of the session and suggested the participants think about their expectations of the session, write them on stickers and put them on the wall. Then there was discussion mini-sessions (2 min) on the issues:

1. Modern text-books have all the resources a teacher needs, why use online?
2. Why would people prefer face to face
3. I was trained as a face to face teacher, how can I start teaching online?
4. What different skills should an online teacher have compared to a traditional educator?

While the participants were discussing the questions the facilitators arranged the responses on the walls into three groups:

1. Resources
2. Skills
3. Processes

After that there was a brainstorming. In groups the participants were encouraged to brainstorm their favorite sites for Learning vocabulary

• Learning Grammar
• Training pronunciation
• Listening
• Learning Writing
• Learning Reading
• Websites for teacher resources

Vera told about social bookmarking, how to group resources from the Internet you use in logical order. You should go to www.speedtile.net, then log in e-mail: bcreboot@mail.ru password:bcreboot. All the websites that the teachers marked as their favorites will be will be available on www.speedtile.net. If you are interested, you can find all the details in the attached presentation.

Fishbowl

This activity has been describe in my previous post about mobile learning, I want to stress here that this is a very good speaking activity for large groups, when four people sit in a circle and start the discussion, there is one empty chair, other participants are standing and listening, if anybody want to have a say, she has to take a chair.

The participants shared their experience in online teaching, what to begin with when teaching online, what to consider while teaching online.

To sum up the session the participants prepared posters on "tips how to start teaching online, advantages and disadvantages of teaching online, how to teach via Skype, how to learn online, you can find the pictures of posters attached here.