So here you go, this is my last post. I can’t believe how fast this semester has gone, and looking back at my first post I realise how much we have gone through.

In my very first blog post I mentioned that I am not a very wordy person and find writing on a blog extremely hard. To my surprise, however, over the course of this module I have written over 15,000 words! I truly found the topic of material design fascinating and as a result found the writing on this matter a lot easier than I thought at first.

I met so many amazing and talented people on this module. I remember being slightly annoyed that the class has 21 students as opposed to an average of 7-8 people that are doing a Dip course. But I was wrong. The mixture of teachers of different nationalities from  teaching contexts made this class very special. I enjoyed  networking with my colleagues,  working on various tasks, and reading and commenting on their blogs. This is exactly the kind of knowledge sharing I was advocating in my first blog. It is a pity, however, that some colleagues didn’t open their blogs and didn’t get involved in the discussions.

I also looked at the notes I made at the beginning regarding my expectations of this module. This is what I wrote:

1.To gain a deeper understanding of materials and materials design
2. To get better at evaluating and choosing ELT materials
3. To get better at catering for needs of students and teachers
4. To explore the future of ELT materials
5. To create my own education product
6. To get involved in EdTech

Did I achieve any of them? I’d say so!  I have definitely got a much better understanding of materials and materials design. To illustrate, I have learnt how to analyse a coursebook and its tasks, created and evaluated my own materials, and worked with images and video in a completely different way than before. I have got a much better understanding of the world of ELT materials and its future trends. I am particularly thankful to Paul Slater for the talk delivered by Paul Driver who inspirited me to use augmented reality in my material design.  Finally, as I wished, I developed my own materials: augmented reality jigsaw puzzle and the vocabulary app exPLAYn. Both of them based on the use technology and I feel these materials are my little step towards getting involved in the Ed Tech revolution. I am also giving a talk about recent developments in educational technology which is organised by Sussex DoSA on 20^th July.

But most importantly, this module has taught me who am I as a teacher. In fact for the entire nine months I have been discovering, changing and rediscovering my role.  Regarding this module, I realised I am not a material writer. I don’t have a talent and frankly desire to do so. I am, however, pretty good at selecting materials and incorporating technology into the process of material design. And this is where I see myself heading in the future.

exPLAYn app is the second example of materials that I developed.  In this post I am going to evaluate the app. As I was approaching the end of this course, I felt that it was a great opportunity to apply the knowledge I obtained. I wanted to analyse my app from different angles: pedagogical, second language acquisition and material design.

 The fist check-list I used was for evaluating systematic vocabulary development by Julie Nortom (2014). Since the app relies on the teacher inputting selected vocabulary items, the first couple of questions can’t be answered. However, I feel that the app is particularly useful when it comes to practise, revision, and studying this vocabulary outside class.

1.Can you easily identify the target vocabulary in the lesson?
2.Why are students learning this vocabulary?
3.Is it useful and appropriate for their level?
4.How much new vocabulary is taught in each lesson/ in each unit?
5.Have students been presented with enough information to use the new vocabulary? (e.g. context; collocation)
6.How many opportunities do students have to use the new vocabulary in the lesson/in the unit? Is this enough?
7.What opportunities do students have to revise and study this vocabulary outside class?

Similarly,  Gairns and Redman (1986, cited in Mishan & Timmis (2015) provide a useful set of evaluation criteria for vocabulary work in a coursebook . The exPLAYn app can be a useful tool in facilitating recycling and consolidation stages.

• Is there a lexical syllabus? And a rationale for vocabulary selection?
• How are vocabulary items grouped?
• How many items are introduced at once?
• What learning approaches are selected? Are strategies taught?
• Does the teacher’s book suggest teaching procedures?
• Are practice and testing activities provided? Is vocabulary recycled?
• How are learners encouraged to consolidate and widen their vocabulary outside the classroom?
• Does the coursebook contain useful visual material?
• Does the coursebook anticipate vocabulary needed for skills activities?

From the SLA point of view, using technology to can be used to lower students’ affective filters.  According to Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis (1982), putting students on a spot could result in their affective filters raising and causing a ‘mental block’ due to negative emotions such as fear and embarrassment that prevents comprehensible input from being used for acquisition. The study by Ritter (2003), for example, reported  that:

‘92% of the students preferred learning new vocabulary using technology, because they considered it ‘good fun’ and 88% regarded it as a good addition to more traditional ways of vocabulary acquisition.  Students’ anxiety levels were reported to be lower when they used technology; also when their anxiety levels were lowered, students became more active participants in the learning process ‘ ( Ritter, 2003, cited in Liu, M. et al 2014)

Moreover, Sweeney & Moore (2012) point out that behaviourally, we also know that the combination of social interaction and gaming provide opportunities for multi-sensory learning (Pacansky-Brock, 2012) and social language learning experiences (Clarke, 2010; Schmidt, 2012).

Once again, I looked at principles for meaningful technology integration by Vicky Saumel (2016) to check if I am integrating technology effectively.

 Principles for meaningful technology integration:

-focuses on the learning task and not the technology (yes)

-involves the students (as opposed to just the teachers) actively using the technology (yes)

-works well for your specific context (yes, it’s BYOD classroom in my case)

– addresses 21^st century skills’ issues and digital literacy training (yes, skills such as collaboration, negotiation of meaning)

– facilitates learning activities that would be more difficult or impossible without the technology

– breaks down classroom walls  (yes, the app can be used outside the classroom)
Finally I used a learning app design framework by Sweeney& Moore (2012).

• Allows for personalization (yes, both teachers and students can add new words)• Provides visible progress indicators ( yes, point system at the end)

  • Covers relevant language (yes, as it is the teacher who adds the words)

  • Covers more than one skill (not just revision, but speaking)

  • Maximizes exposure to target language ( yes, as the app facilitates revision of target language)

  • Appropriate for the device in terms of content, activity and user interface (yes, simple layout, focus on one feature)

  • Encourages learning behaviours which correspond to what we know about general mobile-enabled behaviour patterns (includes social and gamification aspects) (yes, it’s a game and it’s played in groups).

Overall, I feel  that the exPLAYn app can be an effective tool in ELT classroom.  When it comes to learning vocabulary, students need to memorise a certain number of words and there is no way around it. Technology, however, can help to motivate students to revise, get learners interested in the language and  make the process of learning more enjoyable.  But technology is not going to ‘fix’ learning because learning is not fundamentally about technology. As Nicky Hockly (2016) notes, effective education has always been about good teachers, motivated learners and a strong rapport between them. Good teachers can very quickly see how to make the best use of available resources. Basic pedagogy needs to be in place, and then the technology can form another layer on top of that. At end of the day, good educational design is about knowing how to use the technology as a tool within the learning experience, instead of getting hung up on the technology itself.

Bibliography

Godwin-Jones, R. (2011) Emerging technologies – Mobile apps for language learning. Language Learning & Technology 15 (2): pp.2-11.

Hoclkly, N. (2016) The miracle language cure.  Fact or Fiction: report by Person & ELT Jam   Available from: http://dbxmrk3ash14o.cloudfront.net/englishfiles/Fact-or-Fiction.pdf  accessed 28/04/2015

Liu, M. et al (2014) A look at the Research on Computer Based Technology Use in Second Language Learning , Journal of Research on Technology in Education,34(3), pp250-273

McCarter,S. (2016) Reflection on publishing a language app. Modern English Teacher 25(2), pp 11-12

Mishan, F. & Timmis, I. (2015) Materials Development for TESOL. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Norton, J. (2014)  You’ve got to have a system: vocabulary development in EFL. Available at https://oupeltglobalblog.com/2014/08/07/youve-got-to-have-a-system-vocabulary-development-in-efl/ accessed 28/04/2015

Saumell, V. (2016) Principles for meaningful technology integration. Modern English Teacher 25(2), pp 15-17

Sweeney, P. & Moore, C. (2012) Mobile Apps for Learning Vocabulary: Categories, Evaluation and Design Criteria for Teachers and Developers. International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching 2 (4): pp. 1-16.

Walker, A. & White, G. (2013) Technology Enhanced Language Learning: Connecting theory and practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

In this last session we were looking at materials for vocabulary and grammar, particularly in digital forms. Also I was given an opportunity to present a vocabulary mobile app I have been working on together with my husband.

Here is the reflection of my little journey.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, I have always been interested in educational technology. So the idea of creating an Ed Tech product has been in my mind for a while now. But my biggest inspiration, however, was Nick Robinson’s talk we watched in preparation for one of the sessions for this module. In the talk he mentioned the Start Up weekend they ran in Cambridge where people could compete by presenting their Ed Tech ideas, with the winner receiving funding for their project. What struck them (and me) is that out of 65 people who attended the event,   only 5% were from ELT and only one was a practising teacher. And she won. Which is not surprising since we, practising teachers , see our students day in and day out, we see their problems and we can come up with effective solutions how to solve them.

I can also see, with the advent of technology, more and more teachers developing their own apps and self-publishing their own books. I wanted to engage with Ed Tech too.

With this in mind, I decided to build a vocabulary app. Why another vocabulary app you would ask?  It’s a good question. There are hundreds and hundreds vocab apps available. The problem is all of them are designed for the students so they can work individually. There is hardly anything the teacher can use in class for the whole group. I wanted an app that:

– personalisable and allows me to use vocab that I covered with my students in class

-saves my preparation time and comes to my rescue when I run out of things to do in class

-engages my students and increases their talking time (and consequently reduces mine)

So I started looking at the current trends regarding vocabulary app design and came across two major trends. First is spaced repetition – a presentation method that gives you the information before you would forget it.  The idea is based around the Forgetting Curve – a term coined by German psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus.

The curve hypothesizes the decline of memory retention over time and shows that our newly learned knowledge and made memories are halved in a matter of days unless the information is reviewed. The more we review such information, the stronger we make the memory, the longer we can remember it.

The second trend  is gamification  which is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts to maximise engagement through capturing the interest of learners and inspire them to continue learning.

Baring these trends in mind, I needed an idea for my app. However, with the limited budget and time (a full time job plus a full time university course) I wasn’t going to reinvent the wheel. Instead I was going to improve a proven old-school method. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Robert McLarty, the editor of  Modern English Teacher journal points out in the latest issues how ‘ many of our basic pedagogical ideas, acquired on teacher-training courses and professional development workshops over the years, underpin the new technologies’.

So I built my app around my favourite  classroom activity – Back to the Board.  I love this activity for many reasons:

• it’s communicative
• it’s a fun way to consolidate new vocab
• it lifts testing off the page
• and it’s a great warmer or filler

It does, however, have some major disadvantages.  Firstly, only limited number of students can talk at the same time. Secondly, some students don’t like to be in the spotlight. The aim of my app was to avoid such disadvantages.

This is how ExPLAYn was born. The idea of the app is that after the lesson the teacher can create a set where they record the vocabulary items that have been covered in the class. The app then sets a time limit and displays a word from the set. Students work in pairs with one holding a mobile device displaying words and trying to guess them and the other explaining the words. If the student who is guessing gets the word right, they tilt the screen and the app displays the next word. If, however, they struggle to remember the word  or their partner cannot explain the word, students could tilt the screen in the opposite direction, pass that word and continue the game. After the time runs out, the app shows the score based on the number of correct answers. It supplies students with a reward system and keeps them motivated to get a better score next time. The app also displays the words that were incorrect, informing the students what vocab items need more revision.

Having been testing the app for a couple of months now, I can see some great benefits for both teachers and students. Regarding the students, they now can work in pairs that makes everyone in the class involved.  The app can also be used in groups, individually or outside the classroom. It gives students the sense of ownership, with them relying on each other, rather than a teacher. It increases student to student interaction and helps them to develop strategies to cope when they don’t know the word.  For the teacher it provides a system for keeping a record of previously taught vocabulary, reduces their talking time and gives greater opportunity for monitoring and delayed error correction. But most importantly, I could really see that my students enjoy using the app. And as we know, motivation is an important part of language learning.

With all this in mind, I headed to our last seminar. Prior to my presentation, we had a task of discussing what makes a good vocabulary app. I was very interested in what my colleagues would say as they are my target audience.  First thing they mentioned is that an app should be a support tool for the teacher. Aleks made a point that most vocab apps are designed as a self-study tool for students and she simply doesn’t understand how they can be used in the classroom. As I mentioned earlier, that was exactly my problem with the currently available apps, and exPLAYn was designed to solve this problem. Stuart commented on how often apps try to cater for so many different things that in the end they don’t do any of them properly. In his opinion, instead of being ‘all –signing, all- dancing’ apps should focus on one feature and have a simple and clear interface. Funnily enough, that’s exactly what exPLAYn does.  Finally, we all agree that a good app should be fun and students need to be motivated to use it. My group suggested that to achieve this, an app should have a reward system and be more like a game – exactly the features of gamification. Stuart also suggested that it should be free to use, however, Aleks disagreed by saying that free apps usually mean they don’t have good quality and if you pay for it, it’s a better product.

All these comments gave me a lot of confidence as I felt that my app is meeting the needs of the teachers. My actual presentation went well and I got many comments and positive feedback from my colleagues. It was great to see how during a short demo when teachers were using the app they were extremely involved in the process and were having fun.

I was also expecting the obvious question: Why bother with the app if you could do this activity in other ways without the use of technology? I was asked why not tell students to write the words on bits of paper and they can ask each other in pairs. I’m sure we all have done this before, my personal issue, however, is that I tend to lose these bits of paper. Logging the words in the app provides a better and more systematic way of keeping a record of new vocabulary items.  Other teachers also mentioned that the handwriting of the students can be an issue, which I agree with.

What I was trying to demonstrate, however, is that instead of fearing and avoiding Ed Tech revolution, we, teachers, should get involved. I am lucky to have my husband Alex who is extremely interested in Ed Tech and brings his web development expertise to the table. However, we shouldn’t forget that Brighton is a digital hub and for every language teacher living and working here there are at least two developers. Brighton University runs various digital development courses and I’m sure you can find someone who will be happy to work on the project with you.   So if you have what you think a successful idea, the lack of your digital skills shouldn’t stop you. Make EdTech revolution work to your advantage!