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| The Melià, Milan: great setting for a "cool" event |
It was a blessed relief to step from the sweltering June
heatwave engulfing Milan into the cool and spacious Melià Hotel last week, the
setting for “Digital Transformation in the English Teaching World”, an event
co-hosted by Pearson Longman and the British Council. Informative and inspiring
speakers opened up the possibilities offered by integrating new technology with
more conventional approaches to language teaching in a series of engaging
presentations. The sizeable audience was made up mainly of teachers and other
language professionals from universities, private language schools and the
swelling ranks of freelance English teachers. (I was one of the very small
minority of token men in the audience: ELT is obviously a woman’s world.)
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| Delegates at the Pearson / British Council event "Digital Transformation in the English Teaching World at the Melià Hotel, Milan, 20 June 2012 |
Joint effort
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| Co-hosts of "Digital Transformations in the English Teaching World" |
As you might expect from a conference co-hosted by Pearson,
there was quite a large emphasis on the products and platforms they have
developed, in particular the My EnglishLab learning management platform, as
well as the materials Pearson has produced for this system. But there were also
contributions from the British Council on how it is increasingly employing
digital technology in the vast undertaking of providing testing and
certification for the many thousands of candidates who take IELTS, Cambridge
exams and other tests every year.
Digital literacy: what native digital speakers know
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| Nicky Hockly |
Nicky Hockly, Director of Pedagogy at The Consultants-E, a
Pearson Longman author and a renowned international teacher trainer talked
about the importance of understanding digital literacies in today’s web-enabled
learning environment: these literacies affect how we perceive, interpret, judge and use online content. With examples of how to use existing material from the web as a way of encouraging students to
understand how material is presented, as well as the language itself, she also
explored the use of video and even texting in the classroom. (We were
all intrigued by the case of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, which Nicky used to show how context can impact on credibility)
She introduced techniques such as subtitling video and using
“literal videos” to engage learners (particularly younger ones). One of the
themes of this conference was the wide gap that exists between teenagers who
are “native digital speakers” and older people who have had to learn (rather
than acquire) their web skills the hard way. Typically, it is the students who
are more web-savvy – with teachers lagging behind (although there are exceptions). One of
the benefits of this situation is that both teachers and students have
knowledge they can both bring to the party and share – making the teacher-student
relationship less “asymmetrical”.
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| Txt: the way we communicate is being transformed by technology |
Using authentic video with English learners
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| Antonia Clare |
Antonia Clare, one of the authors of Pearson’s Speakout
series, presented “Effective learning from authentic video content”. A collaboration between Pearson and the BBC, Speakout enjoys the huge advantage
of incorporating video and other material from BBC Worldwide and BBC Learning English.
The coursebook content dovetails with the MyEnglishLab platform and provides some very
impressive features, such as the ability to watch a video and access the
complete transcript in a scrolling panel underneath. (Each sentence is
highlighted as the language is spoken.) Antonia talked about using video as a
springboard to encouraging students to talk about their own lives and
experiences. Speakout (intermediate) includes voxpop conversations in the
street with people from both Barcelona and London. She pointed out that
students could make this kind of video themselves using readily-available
consumer technology (flip cams or camera phones) and post it on a video-sharing
site where it could be used as the basis of further language activities, such
as subtitling (with the corrected text appearing at the bottom of the screen).
Again, while this event was a showcase for Pearson’s platform, the speakers all
provided examples of how (largely free) social media sites and services can be
combined with professionally-produced classroom materials (books, DVDs – as well as the
online content in systems such as MyEnglishLab).
Blended learning – something
of a buzzword currently, but not always understood or appreciated in practice –
can therefore be seen as a way of bringing many different strands together:
online content, material produced by students themselves as well as more
conventional tests and exercises. While blended learning increases the
opportunities it also brings new challenges, such as keeping activities focused on learning rather than the technology becoming
an end in itself.
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| What's occurrin'? Antonia presents "Gavin and Stacey" from Speakout |
One of the most well-received sections of Antonia’s presentation was
the video from the award-winning BBC TV series, “Gavin and Stacey” (where Gavin’s first day at work is
unintentionally sabotaged by a succession of well-meaning calls and visits by
relatives and friends). The Pearson-BBC tie-up is obviously a huge coup in
terms of bringing this type of genuinely entertaining and engaging material
into the classroom in such a way that Intellectual Property (IP) rights are
respected. The crossover between mainstream media and language teaching is
something that Pearson in particular has exploited by means of the media
giant’s existing holdings, such as the Financial Times (which provides the
content backbone in the widely-used Market Leader series), as well as its
Economist-branded Intelligent Business textbooks for language learning.
Technology to empower but not replace the teacher (MyEnglishLabs)
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| Chris Morris |
Chris Morris, a Pearson
international teacher trainer on new digital initiatives showcased
MyEnglishLabs with the theme of “Informed teaching and personalised learning”.
Chris flagged up further the divide between “digital natives” and “digital
immigrants” that was something of a leitmotif throughout this event. Despite the “brave new world”
of digital technology and all the benefits it has to bring to the classroom
some teachers are suspicious – if not downright terrified – of the impact it could
have. Chris pointed out that technology will “empower not replace” the teacher:
in fact, it can be liberating, by doing away with routine tasks such as endless
marking and correcting of textbooks. In his presentation of MyEnglishLabs Chris
showed how the platform can allow the teacher to assign online homework which
students can complete at their own pace – and even on their mobile phone, if they
download the app. Exercises can be selected for an individual student giving the teacher "fine-grained" control over their personal syllabus. MyEnglishLabs contains over twenty activity types, including
various types of exercises (gap-fill, word search, etc), tests and
comprehension practice linked to the course content. From the teacher’s
perspective, perhaps the main benefit of this system is that it gives you an overview
of all the material students have completed as well as their progress and
scores. The teacher can “zero in” on those areas of a student’s language that
require particular attention. This can also help in planning future courses by
showing those areas where students in general are having difficulty (a point that also featured in the British Council section of "Digital Transformations" in the context of exams - technology is reducing the random element in ELT materials and activities, which can only be a good thing).
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| MyEnglishLab live and direct during Chris's presentation |
MyEnglishLabs is an impressive platform that certainly
reduces the drudgery of routine activities such as assigning and marking
homework, testing and providing additional practice – and it’s always a joy to
see someone demonstrate technology which they are genuinely enthusiastic and
even passionate about. However, I personally have always been slightly
underwhelmed by these systems when I have actually tried to base a complete course
around them. MyEnglishLabs seems quite similar to English360 – the
newly-independent course management system that features ELT material from
Cambridge English (in particular). I suppose that both these systems and other similar
products are of most use to large institutions where administration and the
ability to monitor the performance of large numbers of students is critical
(i.e. schools, colleges and universities). These “large customers” (who will inevitably produce the bulk of the revenues for providers of learning management systems, such as MyEnglishLab and others) work on a
more industrial scale – and the automation at the heart of these management
systems can produce not only savings in terms of teacher time, energy and even
costs (especially as regards photocopying and printing), but also produce
benefits for the students – not least by allowing a high level of individual
customisation. With smaller schools, specialist training companies and
freelancers, there is less need for this kind of “enterprise” technology.
The other key factor is that while these systems are often described as “intuitive” by developers and vendors, they can actually impose quite a large burden on the teacher who must add “system administrator” to their ever-lengthening list of roles. I haven’t really explored MyEnglishLabs in depth yet – but while the presentations were impressive, especially in terms of content – I would like to know more about the training and support that goes with the system. I often find that a “social” approach works best in these situations: an active online community is usually the best source of knowledge and support when you get stuck or are seeking inspiration.
The other key factor is that while these systems are often described as “intuitive” by developers and vendors, they can actually impose quite a large burden on the teacher who must add “system administrator” to their ever-lengthening list of roles. I haven’t really explored MyEnglishLabs in depth yet – but while the presentations were impressive, especially in terms of content – I would like to know more about the training and support that goes with the system. I often find that a “social” approach works best in these situations: an active online community is usually the best source of knowledge and support when you get stuck or are seeking inspiration.
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| Teachers can see progress through course material and grades at a glance on MyEnglishLabs |
Going online: how the exam process is going digital (British Council)
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| Margaret Fowler talks about digital technology and the British Council |
Margaret Fowler of the British Council spoke about the
impact of computer technology on the exams that the BC administers and manages
in Italy and worldwide. With many exams now available in either paper- or
computer-based versions, students can choose which form to take. (Currently, only ESOL exams e.g., PET, BEC, FCE, CAE and KET are available in computer-based format. There is no computer-based version of IELTS yet.)
There are some
slight differences. In the computer-based exam (and others), students use
headphones for the listening section, for example. (Interestingly, while this
can increase confidence when compared to listening to audio output from loudspeakers,
it doesn’t actually affect grades.) The test takes less time as there is no need to
transfer answers to another sheet for marking. Basic word-processing functions
such as copy and paste and word count are also available for the writing section, although some candidates may find it uncomfortable to scroll through the reading passages.
Exam security has gone high-tech too. All candidates are
photographed on the day of the test and the images are stored in a central
database in the UK: these can be used to verify someone’s identity
in the case of doubt about a "dodgy" certificate or someone's claim to be the awardee. Digital technology is
also crucial to the development of exams run by the British Council: for
example, the Cambridge Learner Corpus, a database of exam scripts (completed papers) that incorporates a treasure-trove of student errors,
can be plundered to help exam writers understand which areas of the language students need to focus
on. And any so-called “jagged profiles” or anomalies between language skills
(e.g. an unusually low mark in a reading or listening paper for an otherwise strong
candidate) will be immediately picked up by the analytical software used to
crunch all the exam results.
The British Council’s exams service is increasingly in
demand. There has been a 20% rise in the number of people taking CambridgeProficiency (CPE) - currently celebrating its 100th anniversary - this year. Margaret’s presentation included some striking
images of the (truly) industrial process that underlies this success: warehouses
stacked full of completed test papers and high-security printing, for example.
With the increasing use of computer-based exams, however, these could
eventually become a legacy of the “dead tree” age of information (and it would
help the environment a bit, too).
The secret to a successful conference on digital technology: expert hosting
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| Russell Lewis thanks Antonia Clare |
The whole event was kept moving along at a brisk pace by the
very capable Andy Barbiero and Russell Lewis of Pearson, who wove the various
sections together with both wit and veuve. (I’d like to see more of these guys
presenting Pearson’s materials: they’re obviously both great at winning
professional audiences over with their enthusiasm, knowledge of the products
and sensitivity to what classroom teachers need.) Both Pearson and the British Council had stalls well-stocked with books, brochures and leaflets covering a range of issues of interest to English teachers. Helpful and informative representatives from the two organisations were also on hand to field queries and provide details of new products and services. The event was a welcome opportunity for some useful networking in addition to the excellent presentations. (And, by the way, it was all free. Not bad!)
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| Andy Barbiero of Pearson in the hot seat during a simulation of a classroom activity |
So, following this
brief introduction to how digital technology is transforming the English
teaching world, it was back into the cauldron of the Milan heat (happily weighed down
somewhat by a free copy of MyGrammarLab, which all the delegates received).
But as I left the air-conditioned oasis of the Melià I certainly felt that I
had gained a good insight into how Pearson and the British Council – among many
other companies, organisations and individuals working in this field – are helping language teachers and
students to benefit from the many advantages that technology can bring to our
profession.
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| Pushing the right button(s): Longman Pearson's "MyGrammarLab" |
