Phil Bird
I'm an improvement practitioner and ESOL lecturer at Lewisham Southwark College. I have also written and edited online and blended learning materials for clients such as OUP and the British Council.
Location London
Activity
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I think it can, it seems to help them understand the difference - it takes a bit longer before they can them correctly. It might also be useful bilingually, clearing up misconceptions caused by the inexact correspondence of words in different languages. I've always found the idea of componential analysis of words interesting - but we have to keep it fairly...
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Phil Bird made a comment
Planning definitions is important - because the definitions need to be clear enough to be understood. I also like comparing similar words and concepts - and then maybe using things like a Venn diagram or other graphic organiser to compare meaning.
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Phil Bird made a comment
If you want to find out which degrees help with particular jobs, you can use the job profiles on the Prospects website: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/
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Another organisation to look at is The Ruth Hayman Trust, who can provide small grants to support learners with their studies: http://www.ruthhaymantrust.org.uk/
For any other teachers here, they are a good organisation to arrange fundraising events for (like this: http://www.ruthhaymantrust.org.uk/student-fundraising/)
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Sorry... meant to post this on the finance page....
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Phil Bird made a comment
Another organisation to look at is The Ruth Hayman Trust, who can provide small grants to support learners with their studies: http://www.ruthhaymantrust.org.uk/
For any other teachers here, they are a good organisation to arrange fundraising events for (like this: http://www.ruthhaymantrust.org.uk/student-fundraising/)
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Phil Bird made a comment
I am an ESOL lecturer in London, many of the learners I work with are refugees, so I would like to get some new ideas to help support them prepare for higher-level study.
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Phil Bird made a comment
Sharing resources is great - but there are a few things we need to consider - how do we manage a possible deluge of content, and find the good and relevant content?
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Phil Bird made a comment
I've not really got a course that I can do this with - but I've got a couple of prezi presentations that I've used to support other people.
Moodle ideas for ESOL - things that I had used to make Moodle work with my ESOL classes (as it's a bit old, a lot of the links might not still work):...
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Phil Bird replied to Stanley Yip
That's a good point - do you think that it is realistic to ask teachers to become experts in data analysis, or should education institutions have experts to support?
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Phil Bird replied to Joanna Teague
It's notable to hear learners saying that about it being ridiculous to go back - why do you think they said it?
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What do you think are the most important benefits of e-textbooks? Do you think there are times when printed texts can offer an advantage?
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Phil Bird replied to Mark Willis
If it's hard to predict what skills people will need in the future, what do you think we can do to prepare them for this?
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Phil Bird replied to Jamie Denton
I suppose the key is finding which are the most appropriate for each mode, what do you think are the best things to do in class in a flippped model?
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Phil Bird made a comment
Definitely agree with keeping a reflective journal... I put notes down in Evernote that I can refer back to.
I like coming back to the unit content through the week, and particularly looking for the 'most liked' content to find interaction (which I can join in)
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Phil Bird made a comment
This looks like a great way to organise lesson planning - if I'm honest, I still prefer sketching out with a pen first.
What I do like is how it starts to automate things, like calculating totals and suggesting learning objective words.
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Phil Bird made a comment
Analytics looks like a really interesting area - with plenty of potential application.... but it needs the right data to be collected, and then for it to be used in the right way. The Educase video spoke about the dangers of making decisions based on bad data - and I think that's a real risk.
In language teaching, I am really interested in the possible...
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I'm really interested by that library-tracking example - I can see how it could be really useful to inform early interventions on HE courses (which traditionally probably didn't happen).
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What could you do for students who don't find it that useful?
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How could you make it more ethical? Would it be OK, if you had informed students what data was being collected, and what you were going to use it for?
What would you use it for?
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Have you made/planned any changes as a result of this learner feedback data?
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What would you do if some activities were not being accessed? What could it mean?
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Yes, that looks likes really useful information - what would you do with it?
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Phil Bird made a comment
Activity use time
If learners are not spending much time on an activity, we need to ask why - Is it appropriate? Does it work? Does it offer a good user experience?
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Phil Bird replied to Stanley Yip
I really like that idea - how would you compare the usefulness of student confidence data compared with 'harder' results data (ie. how many questions they get right)?
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Phil Bird replied to Craig Wilson
Thanks for sharing this, are there any features of iSpring that you think make it stand out above over quiz-making tools? Are there features that you think that we as teachers should look for in particular when choosing a tool?
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That's interesting, do you think there are ways that we can support learners to evaluate and use data from activities like socrative to direct their learning?
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Phil Bird replied to Tran Nguyen
That's an interesting thing about extracting and manipulating data - I wonder if this is becoming a new teaching skill!
What things do you particularly look out for in the data?
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Phil Bird replied to Jackie Carter
What do you think is the most significant benefit that you have seen from the blended induction module?
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Phil Bird replied to Julia Graves
Having time for development us clearly very important - I wonder if anyone has had any success in lobbying for development time? What points do we need to be making?
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Phil Bird replied to Mónica Ríos
... I used to teach English in Córdoba - it's a small world, no?
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Phil Bird made a comment
As a general point, it's really important for memorisation - whether we are talking about language or concepts.
I've recently come across the 'Learning scientists' who have put forward some study strategies, based on cognitive psychology research, and they talk about the importance of retrieval practice and spaced practice for memorisation. Reviewing...
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Phil Bird made a comment
Sharing learning objectives is a really important part of assessment for learning - it helps learners to be able to see what they need to learn to succeed, and to measure their own progress. It helps them to interpret teachers' feedback, and give them reasons to act on it. It shows the purpose of what they are doing.....
The challenge sometimes (and...
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Would you split the objectives into content and langauge objectives, or keep them together?
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Phil Bird made a comment
I definitely agree with all the suggestions in the video - I'm interested to know how people think they particularly to CLIL, because I'd suggest that they are good practice for any lesson -
I often work with teachers who teach classes where students are a mix of first-language English speakers and second-langauge/additional language English speakers, so...
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Phil Bird made a comment
I work more with teachers than learners, so what I'm looking for are strategies and approaches that I can share, or adapt to my context.
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Phil Bird made a comment
Hi, I support teachers in an FE College in London, we have many students whose first language is not English, who need support on their vocational courses (delivered in English), I'm hoping to pick up some tips and frameworks that I can help people to implement.
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Reflection is really important - does anyone have any good suggestions for helping learners use feedback from instant assessment in reflections?
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Phil Bird replied to Phil Benaiges
Thanks for the shout... have ordered :)
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Phil Bird replied to Diana Mounayer
That's a good point, there's more space for learners to try new things and 'fail safely' if they can do it while not-on-display.
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That's a really good point - do you mean how will learners transfer 'clickable knowledge' (must be a better term for this....) from the computer test to actual work (whether in a college or the workplace)?
Could it be that the key here is in how the teacher manages the link between the different components? To make sure that learners reflect what they have...
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I like your point about interaction - how do you think a blended approach will impact on the interaction in the classroom, compared to a traditional approach?
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That sounds like it could work well, what benefit do you think the online modules would give you?
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Phil Bird replied to Mark Banks
Do you think these comments were surprising, would you change anything about your approach as a result?
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Phil Bird replied to Jeannie Daniels
That's interesting - do you mind sharing what the reasons not give here are? Do you think they may not be valid?
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Phil Bird replied to Stanley Yip
What challenges are you hoping to address?
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Phil Bird replied to Jeannie Daniels
...of course revisiting is a great advantage of blended learning / Moocs...
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Phil Bird replied to Astrid Wilches
Has anyone ever used Trello (https://trello.com/) with learners? I use it a lot for project management, but haven't used it with learners yet - I'm sure it could be really useful for helping learners develop organisational skills. There's a possible example here: https://trello.com/b/PB9Cr94M/student-research-project-board
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Phil Bird replied to Inna Dergunova
I don't know of anything, but wonder if EPALE could be a good place to start looking: http://www.erasmusplus.it/adulti/epale/
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I've always been interested to know what 'Digital literacy' really means - and what the different aspects are that make it up and I think Oliver's point about developing ICT ethics and a critical approach are a really important part of that - and I'd definitely agree that many of the younger learners that I teach don't have this - their social IT skills may be...
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I suppose it's practice.... it's not really that different to what we usually do - but it can feel that way!
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Phil Bird made a comment
I love this point about flexibility vs elasticity of time - think it often gets overlooked.
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Yes, this is a really important point - I sometimes think we talk about IT skills as if they were one thing - but there are lots of different aspects to it - how do you get learners to see this different aspects?
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The issue around information mining is a concern - but recent news shows that any of our information can be sold, leaked, spied on, etc - the only real way to be safe is to stay offline - so do we need to teach learners to use the internet as if everything was public?
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I'm late to this debate - but it's a really interesting one.... The potential of social media for learning, collaborative working and professional development is huge. Likewise there are risks...
Most social media platforms seem to allow interaction at a more 'professional level' - by that I mean more distant that the 'friend' model that they started out...
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Phil Bird made a comment
Just wondering - does this mean that some of the skills needed for teachers are changing? Do we need to become more like actors or presenters? Are we that already? Will we have to learn new techniques for the cameras?
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A corpus is a collection uses of real uses of language that can be searched to find patterns, contexts, etc (some more information here: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/what-is-a-corpus).
There are a lot of different corpora - I've used this site quite often: http://corpus.byu.edu/
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What activities would you get learners to do with the corpus? My linguist-geek side loves them, but I haven't really used them much with students - I'd love to give it a go though.
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What do you think the effect of having an audience can have on students' writing?
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I really like the teamwork aspect of getting learners to produce a media product - also as a language teachers, both the production process and the product gives them a chance to develop their skills
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Phil Bird replied to Carina Bois
That's one of the real benefits of technology - it's so easy now to make resources with production values that would previously have cost a fortune to make.
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If you fancy adding some BBC Micro style emojis, just google ASCII Art
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Phil Bird replied to Astrid Wilches
Thanks for this comparison - it's really useful!
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It sounds like your learners really engage with these tools. What have you found most useful in getting them involved?
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That's interesting - when would you use it in class? I can see it being useful as a learning check
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I love that - so relevant to the skills we need to use when finding content on the net!
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This is a really good questions - writing good Multiple Choice Questions is an art - have a look at the checklist in the post and see what you think: https://eltgeek.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/mawsig-pce-at-iatefl-2015-workshop-summaries/#sk
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If someone were to ask you about Kahoot and the Cambridge platform, what would make you recommend them?
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Do you think there's anything that you need to do to make it work, or will people be motivated by the fact that it has all the really important information on it?
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*picks up owl and sits with the cool kids at the back of the classroom*
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(o,o)
< . >
--"-"---So, how important do you think the social dimension is to online learning? Should we make sure people feel free to have a a laugh on our courses, is there any way we can help it happen?
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Yes, I think this is a key challenge to work on - how can we show learners the developmental potential in their own devices, and also develop in them the discipline in being able to work online without distractions - there are plenty of adults, of all ages, who struggle with that.
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Resources are definitely an issue, and any project needs to take that into account. Have you read about lower-tech blended learning projects such as the Janala project in Bangladesh: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction/where-we-work/asia/bangladesh/bbc-janala
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/29/english-in-action-mobile-learning-in-bangladesh/Does...
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That's a really good point - it's also something that you can fit into a flipped model. Most VLE platforms have their own question functionality, but I wondered what people's favourite quiz applications are?
I know of:
Quizlet - (I blogged about it here: https://classroom201x.wordpress.com/2016/09/30/quizlet-quick-and-flexible/)
Kahoot
SocrativeAny...
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Phil Bird replied to Sheriff-Deen Ayodele-Oja
You can watch a recording of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05rUWzQYDAE - that's another advantage of blended learning - catching up on things that are at the wrong time.
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Phil Bird replied to Jekan Adler-Collins
It can take a bit of getting used to, but I love twitter as a CPD resource - if you're looking for people working in vocational/further education have a look a this list: https://twitter.com/pysproblem81/lists/uk-fe
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Phil Bird replied to Vaidehi Kavthekar
Have you seen any ways that OERs can be used efficiently?
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Phil Bird made a comment
I'd like to add another one - ELTpics, which grew out of a group of English Teachers sharing and categorising Creative Commons images which can be used in class, etc. Photos here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eltpics/ More about the project here: http://www.eltpics.com/
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Phil Bird made a comment
I suppose I've got a couple of questions around OERs, that are somewhat related. How do we ensure that resources produced and published through non-traditional means are of the same quality? What do we need to look for when selecting them?
Then on a related question, what are the 'digital literacy' skills that we need to develop in our learners to be able...
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The intellectual property debate is huge in general - on the one hand so much education and culture is relatively easily available - on the other hand, is it getting more difficult to fund the production of these resources (at least from a cultural point of view, not sure about it education).
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I think reflective journals fit very well with the problem-based approaches that we looked at last week - it's an important component in making sure that practice is developmental.
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YouTube has got some nice video editing tools, and you can keep videos private - so it could be a very useful tool for production. Obviously there are issues around privacy and classroom management to think about.
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What aspect do you think is the most important in making Prezi more engaging?
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There is a free personal version (see post above about public/private issue),. and also a free educational version.
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Phil Bird replied to Marco Bertolini
Yes, that's an important point - there is an educational version though, which is free and private. If you have an educational email address (.ac.uk, .edu, etc.) it's easy to set up - but there might be other ways to prove that you are a teacher - it'd be worth checking.
Another key point about public/private is around copyright - if things are publicly...
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Phil Bird replied to Fernanda Santos
I think it might also be good to look at Soundcloud - learners (and you) can add comments at different stages of the recording - think it would be good for feedback.
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Phil Bird replied to Paula Pedrosa
I was delivering a training session to some music lecturers where I work, and they told me that they like to use Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/), because learners (or the teacher) can add comments in at different points of the recording timeline - "I really like that guitar", "love these vocals" etc - I wonder if you could use that for getting learners to...
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Phil Bird replied to Janette Davies
What do you think is the biggest advantage to thinglink? It's one I've been meaning to try out for ages.
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Phil Bird replied to Emma Kennedy
Yes, I agree - I think the key to making Prezi more than just a swirly Powerpoint is in getting learners to use it in a self-directed way. I also wonder about getting learners to use it to make summaries of what they have learnt - which they could then stick a path on to present - I think that's a really interesting aspect to explore.
I've got a few more...
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Do you think there is a need to teach learners about the implications of how their course data could be used at the start of a blended course? Is there any advice that you would want to give them around this area? I get the feeling it's something where we haven't completely worked out the full implications yet...
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I think you can embed (or if not, certainly link to) Quizlet quizzes from Moodle - I agree Moodle quizzes can take some time to do - though you might be able to share the load (and questions) between team members if there are a few of you.
I've written a bit about quizlet here: https://classroom201x.wordpress.com/2016/09/30/quizlet-quick-and-flexible/
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That point about forums is really important - good interaction on forums won't just happen - you have to create a space that allows it to happen :) - This is a really old post that I wrote with some ideas for using forums with language learners: https://classroom201x.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/moodle-forums-for-esol-students/
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How do you find the VLE helps with this?
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Do you think there are any strategies which could help increase learner participation?
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From your experience as a student, what do you think is most important for teachers to think about when using a VLE?
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Hi Wojciech - that sounds a really great approach - you could use something like Google docs and get learners to comment on each other's writing - it's easy to annotate and comment on specific things.
There are some potential issues, so you might have to establish some ground rules, or make a descision based on learners' maturity first.
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Sure blended learning is about how technology can best faciliate learning - sometimes that will be in the hands of learners, and sometimes in the hands of teachers.
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I'm not that familiar with Edmodo - by informal communication, do you mean comments and forum threads etc? It can be tricky to get learners contributing in these - it can help to ask clear questions, and to use 'weaving' comments - see more here: http://russellstannard.com/category/e-socialisation and here http://webmarginalia.net/pedagogy/moderation-guide/
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Definitely agree - video is great for developing anything related to speaking - and it's so easy now!
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Phil Bird replied to Vaidehi Kavthekar
What do you think the advantage of Prezi is over other presentation tools (PPT etc.)?
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Looks like we all agree about Duolingo - are there lessons for blended learning in general that we can take from it?
