Teaching Tool 2 - EverythingESL.net

Hello there!

Well we're onto our final blog post regarding 5 great tools for teaching and learning English/Adult Literacy.

The final tool I believe to be useful as a teaching tool is:

Everythingesl.net

This website is a good resource tool for Teaching because within it you are able to learn about new teaching strategies for English. A teacher has access to lesson plans, teaching tips and amazing resources.

The website is fitted with a search option so that if you are searching for a specific topic you will be able to find it very quickly. This is extremely helpful as it means you don't need to go through hundreds of lesson plans for example, in order to find one that you are looking to find ideas from on a topic.

I put adult literacy into the search when I was looking for ideas and tips to help me become a better teacher and below is an example of one page I received back. I found this very valuable and after reading I had many new ideas of how to create my own lesson plan.

The only downside I found to this tool is that is can be used for all levels of teaching the English language. Due to this it is harder to find a topic that suits the age ranges you are looking to create plans for. There also seems to be more topics for young children as opposed to the Further Education sector that I am interested in.

Although I found Everythingesl.net to be a useful tool for teaching, unfortunately I think it is better used for younger classes. I will still use it sporadically but it is not a tool I will be using everyday. 

Thanks for reading! 

Nicola 

Teaching Tool 1 - Socrative

Hello there!

This post is based around the Teaching tool:

Socrative

Since discovering this tool, I have been using it to create assessments that I hope to use in my teaching. It is a free resource and you can do an astounding amount with it. By creating an account, all of your class can join into your room to do exams, receive feedback as well as much more.

This is a valuable teaching tool as you can create any quiz, add in time frames and when the results come through you can choose how receive the information. With this tool any teacher can become organised with regard to assessments.

Quizzes can be made up of questions of multiple choice, short answers or true and false as shown below. The teacher has control over how many of each question is asked and also how many questions are in the quiz. These quizzes can then be saved for future use.

You can build assessments and see the results instantly, meaning that you, as an educator, can give feedback to students almost immediately regarding their level of understanding of a topic you have taught them. The use of feedback while teaching is very important. Feedback encourages the student to further their learning and also how to accept positive criticism while the information is still fresh in their minds.

The only downside to Socrative I have found is it can only be used for assessment. If there was an option to build up lesson plans in the same way as there is with assessments I believe there would be very little that this tool could not do.

This tool has by far been my favorite to discover and I will definitely be using it as much as possible in my future teachings. 

Thanks for reading!

Nicola

Learning Tool 2 - YouTube

Hello there!

Onwards and upwards as they say and we are off to our second learning tools for students. For this tool I have chosen to use:

YouTube

I'm sure most of us have heard and used YouTube on more then one occasion, but have any of you ever used it within a classroom scenario? You would be amazed with what you can learn on any topic you put in.

You can sign up completely free of charge and arrange your own channels with specific videos that interest you.

I put in Adult Literacy and below shows some of the results I found.

This tool is invaluable for students. To hear different accents through these videos shows that language barriers can be overcome within this subject. Students can listen anywhere at anytime through the website or the app from apple or android stores.

The video below, showed me exactly how valuable Adult Literacy. I found this video in the results I was given. Every student should have access to this kind of resource at their fingertips.



The only disadvantage I found to be within YouTube is that there is a lot going on. Sometimes it can be very hard to focus on exactly what you are watching before waiting to move on to the next. You can find yourself clicking through multiple videos in a matter of minutes and not learning much unless you have the willpower to keep yourself focused on what you are looking for.

Although it calls for willpower I think that YouTube is a very valuable resource for students of any age, studying any subject as it can be sometimes easier to learn when you are shown rather than trying to visualize it all in your head.

Thanks for reading!

Nicola

Learning tool 1 - Instagrok

Hello there!

So we are on to our second online resource tool of the day. This tool I find to be very beneficial with self-learning. 

The tool I have chosen is: 

InstaGrok

This can be used by the student in their personal learning.

With InstaGrok, you are able to sign up for free as a student. You are then able to create as many groks and journals as you like that will help with your learning. This is crucial in Adult Literacy as students need to be able to get creative and think for themselves. By using this tool, students are shown instantly what they are thinking which I have found influences students to think deeper easier. 

I created the below grok to demonstrate how useful this tool can be to any student. Each branch is full of facts that anyone would find very useful. Each branch will give you key facts, useful websites and a place to input your own notes on this specific area of the grok. By inputting your own thoughts you can add to the branches as you see fit.

This resource tool can be used for a variety of learning and is very easy to understand. 

The only disadvantage I have found for students using InstaGrok is that students are unable to link up together and share their work with their peers. I believe for students to learn, socialization and the sharing of ideas can play a big part and unfortunately I was unable to find a way to do this within a group setting without having to sign in as a teacher and group students into classes myself. 

I found InstaGrok very interesting and will definitely be recommending as such to my students going forward.

Thanks for reading! 

Nicola

Blended learning - Examtime

Hello there!

The tool I found most successful at blended learning is:

Examtime

When I first found this tool I made myself an account. You can choose whether you are a teacher or a student and also which exam level you are at. I was able to fill out a profile stating my particular subjects and was then taken to the next page which showed me what the site recommended as some of the best resources for my subjects.

With this tool teachers/students can create mindmaps, quizzes, flashcards and notes. These can all be saved so you will not lose out on your work. Below is a quick one I put together earlier on in the week.

 

Students using this tool would find these items beneficial to their learning as it means they can create their own notes as well as making flashcards specific to what each student believes they need.

A disadvantage to this resource tool is that it took a while to be able to navigate around so took longer to be able to use this to any advantage. However, now that I have it figured out I look forward to using it more.

In my opinion the good easily outweighs the time spent getting used to using this tool.

The best part of this tool I found was that you can create groups to start discussions and share resources. Having this as part of the tool showed me that it is hugely helpful towards blended learning. It can be used for self-learning from a students perspective and teaching from an educators perspective.

This tool gets a thumbs up from me and I hope you check out it and find a way to use it within your classes.

Thanks for reading!

Nicola

The Assignment - 5 great tools for teaching for learning English/Adult Literacy

Hello there!

In my last post I spoke about some lovely things I was going to talk about within this blog. I also mentioned that although I intend on keeping this blog up going forward I did in fact start it for an assignment for college. I know the title looks a little scary and no one really likes to hear the term "assignment" but I have found that I thoroughly enjoyed this one as I got to look and think about different tools of teaching that I have never even heard of before, let alone tried to understand. 

There will be 6 posts as part of this assignment, this is of course the first, An introduction to what I will be talking about. 

The assignment guidelines stated that we were to write a blog titled 5 great tools for learning and teaching. Thanks to permission from my lecturer I have been able to include the posts from that blog within this current blog. I am hoping that if even one person reads these posts, and learns some new information regarding any of the 5 tools I put up, that I will have done the assignment justice. 

The subjects I hope to teach will be English and Adult Literacy. Drawing from those subjects the tools I have found the most helpful in my teaching and that hopefully my students will find most helpful in their learning are as follows: 

• Examtime.com
• InstaGrok
• YouTube
• Socrative
• EverythingESL.net

I will take each one of these and explain the pros and cons as well as giving my opinion on how I have found they have helped or hindered over the last number of weeks. 

I hope you can take something valuable away to any of your own students from them as I have. 

Thanks for reading.

Nicola

An Introduction to me and my dreams

Hello there!

So where to begin is the real question?

I began to dream about teaching when I was 8 years old. I knew I always wanted to become a teach of English. Other then that I hadn't a clue. I held onto this dream for many years and completed my undergraduate degree in English and History in UCD in 2011. I wanted to go further and complete a Higher Diploma which would see my dream come true.

However one thing I had forgotten to take into account was life. Life doesn't make anything simple. In fact life throws up barriers at every turn for many people. I was one of those such people. But, I believe if you really believe in something and you really want the dream then anything is possible.

Since 2011, my dreams have changed slightly. I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. She unfortunately did not have the best start in life. She suffers from many heart conditions and has undergone one surgery with a minimum of two more to follow in the next few years.

Suddenly I was 21 and a single mum to a gorgeous little girl. My dreams didn't seem as important as taking care of this precious bundle.

Roll forward to today.

Today, my beauty is a strong, stubborn little girl who is just shy of 3 years old. She is still my life but I began to find I had a small bit of time on my hands all of sudden and WOW did my dream reawaken with a bang.

However, it was time to adapt. There was no way I could go out and do a full time college course as well as teaching placements while going to hospital appointments etc on a weekly basis. That was when I found NCI.

NCI offered me a place in a course for further education teaching, something I had not even considered until now. I still had all the passion for the wanting to teach from years ago but maybe it was time to look in a different direction. I spent the whole summer considering whether or not I could adapt my dream and pursue further education teaching as opposed to post primary teaching. they are two very different sectors. Could I just change it? Sure I can. I want to teach to make a difference in peoples lives whether they be thirteen or thirty three.

Since starting in NCI I am slowly regrasping the love I had for education. Don't get me wrong it is hard and at times I have wanted to throw in the towel at 1am when my darling daughter is up with temperature spikes and unnatural heart rythums but when I enter the campus every week I am reminded that NCI is what I have chosen. It has reawakened a part of me that I had forgotten over the last 3 years.

It has given me a glimpse of what I will become. A confident, more then likely extremely stubborn, teacher of Adult literacy in a Further Education setting with the added bonus of being able to show my daughter as she grows that she can do anything, accomplish anything once she puts her mind to it.

So I have started this blog, partly for personal reasons, as I thought it would be a nice idea to be able to document how I get on from day one and also partly as an assignment. If you are reading this over the coming days you will see a range of posts from theorists I have come to like, assessment procedures that I find interesting and also something innovative technology based blog posts that I think you will find very interesting.

So here we go, teaching from the beginning and a little introduction to me :)

Hope you enjoyed reading

Nicola