Gavin Dudeney

New Literacies, Teachers & Learners

This talk examines how the traditional 'three rs' (reading, writing and arithmetic), long considered the cornerstones of basic literacy/numeracy, have changed as we advance into the digital age. We will discover what it means to be digitally literate, explore the new types of literacy that have emerged alongside the advent of Web 2.0 and analyse why it is important to work with these literacies on a daily basis in our teaching.

Gavin will also be running a workshop:

New Literacies: From Theory to Practice

In this practical workshop I will be taking the theoretical framework from my plenary and looking at how teachers can put it into practice in the classroom. Taking real-world examples of classroom techniques and mapping them on to easy-to-use technologies, I will show how teachers can easily address the new literacies of the younger generation without relying too heavily on technologies themselves, or significantly changing their current methodologies or teaching approach in 2012.

Prithvi Shreshta

Enhancing teacher professional development using mobile technologies in a large-scale project: a case study of Bangladesh

Mobile technologies have been influencing the field of education including language learning for almost a decade. The literature on mobile technologies for education reports a number of case studies that examine various aspects of mobile learning. However, the use of mobile technologies for teacher professional development, particularly in developing economies, is rarely reported. This talk will present a case study of the English in Action (EIA) project, a UK government funded English language development project in Bangladesh, and its use of mobile technologies which not only provides teachers with the ‘trainer in the pocket’ that helps them achieve pedagogical changes in the classroom but also serves as a tool for improving their own English language competence.

In this talk, I will show examples of how EIA as a large-scale language development project has successfully employed mobile technologies to promote more communicative language teaching practices in primary and secondary schools in Bangladesh, taking into account the socio-cultural context of the country. A particular focus of the talk will be on the design and implementation of audio and video teacher professional development materials for MP3 players (Phase II) and mobile phones (Phase III). I will demonstrate how EIA has innovatively used mobile technologies for English language teacher professional development by meeting the needs of classroom teachers. I will also present implications of the EIA project for English language teacher development projects intending to deploy mobile technologies in both developed and developing countries.

Vance Stevens

Learner-centered do-it-yourself Learning Management Systems

As the conference theme is on Opportunities, challenges and practical solutions for the integration of ICT in education I will talk first on the challenges of preparing young learners for jobs that haven't been invented yet in an age where accelerating change in knowledge and how we acquire it through networked learning require that we not just teach, but model for them, how to learn. Second, I will discuss the many opportunities we as teachers and role models have to learn from one another in a digitally connected world. Finally, I propose the solution below as one example of how learning with others in a PLN can suggest ways that tools used in learning from one another can be applied in the classroom.

I have been teaching research writing to NNS with NYIT on the ADMC campus as well as Academic Composition at HCT/CERT Naval College.  Both contexts have required me to develop or adapt viable courses quickly, effectively gauge learner response and interest, and adjust materials on-the-fly to better meet learner needs. Flexibility, creativity, and organization beneficial to both instructor and student are achieved using DIYLMS (do it yourself LMS). Components include a wiki portal for course information, links pertinent to course content and management, and screencast and other tutorials. Google Docs are used for student collection of assignments. Teacher feedback can be given in-class directly on real-time, interactive instances of student writing for all to see via in-class projector, and for individual students to follow right there on their laptops, whereas effective feedback can be given between classes via a medium where it can be immediately seen, day or night, when students are revising their work.  Another component, blogging, is used to showcase student work. I also use etherpad clones for certain classwork and Jing to create annotated screen-capture and screencast tutorials.  All of these tools are free and work through institutional firewalls. In this presentation I will share anecdotal data gathered through writings from both sets of students.