Tag Archives: online learning

Creating Dialogues Remotely

Image taken from: Unsplash

Over the pandemic, several instructors have commonly requested assistance with recording dialogues for PBLA activities, assessments, reading practice or listening activities. In this post, I have detailed the steps. These steps focus on preparing a listening dialogue for a class activity. I am sure that many instructors and students have devised their own hacks for this issue, so if you have invented better methods, please add them to the comments below. 

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H5P Power Tools

Image Taken By: John Allan

H5P has become a buzzword since we adapted to online learning.  It has been touted as a way to integrate interactive, self-assessing, and media-rich learning objects into an online course. This is true, but many instructors quickly learned that even though H5P presents a relatively intuitive authoring method, the number of tools and associated options make this process overwhelming. 

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Advanced Moodle Activities

Image source: Pixaby by janjf93

Since the pandemic learning management systems have become a common means of hosting online content.  Beyond content, LMS provide security, accountability, feedback and various opportunities for collective and individualized learning.  The Avenue project is hosted on the Moodle learning management system.  Moodle arrives with a set of core activities that include:   Continue reading

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Personal Reflections on Online Teaching

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Going back to class can be daunting. I feel sad to leave my online classroom and excited to interact with students in person.

I learned many lessons during this unprecedented coronavirus period. Returning to in-class teaching, I can reflect on my experience. Continue reading

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SAMR Says

Have you been asking yourself what technologies you could- or should- use to deliver your online courses? Maybe you’re looking for some guidance as to what to use and when. Online teaching challenges us to try a lot of new things, but we don’t have to imagine what functions well and when on our own. Instead, we can refer to the technology and learning pedagogy models which are out there to assist us in making informed decisions about technology in our lessons.

Puentedura’s SAMR model is used to describe the integration of technology into learning pedagogy. This model is sometimes viewed as a staircase, as depicted here, but the levels are not necessarily sequential. Each can be chosen independently to suit a lesson (H.L., 2017). The SAMR model aims to capture how technology can be used in teaching and learning practices.

In this article, I will discuss the first two steps in the SAMR model and how they can be applied in your teaching. Continue reading

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Accelerate the Feedback Process

Image by Volodymyr Hyrshchenko from Unsplash

How do you provide feedback to your students? Do you send them emails with feedback? Do you fill out a report card with descriptive feedback? Here’s a final question and I’ll get to my point! How fast is your typing? 

Typing down all the comments in any application can be time consuming for teachers and perhaps frustrating if your typing speed is below average. According to a study done at Cambridge University, the average typing speed is 52 words per minute (Dhakal, 2018). If our speed falls below this number, why not use a shortcut?

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Social Presence in Online Learning

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In a virtual or distance learning environment, social presence is essentially the feeling of being together. It can be quite challenging for both learners and instructors to project emotional and/or physical experiences in online learning, and this is a much-studied phenomenon. However, if we as instructors can consider this dimension of online learning in how we conduct our courses and interact with our students, we can help mitigate the stress and uncertainties of the sudden changeover to online delivery. Continue reading

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Summary of the #EdTech discussion with John Allan

September 4, 2020 marked another successful and fruitful discussion on Twitter, through the #teslONchat hashtag. We discussed #EdTech with John Allan – @mrpottz

This chat explored the topic of education technology in terms of instructors and administrators rethinking their previous choices of edtech for online teaching. Continue reading

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Coping with COVID-19 Using Online Instruction

These are unprecedented, uncertain times, and many students and educators are trying to find innovative ways to keep learning and stay engaged. Virtual learning has become an essential tool for many learners and educators, but there’s so much more to it than your traditional discussion boards. Fortunately, our Guest Blogger, John Allan, has created a thorough and informative webinar to share with the ELT community about virtual learning. Coping with COVID-19 Using Online Instruction is now available to TESL Ontario members and the public.

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Keeping Online Language Learners Engaged

Photo by Emma Matthews Digital Content Production on Unsplash

Most of us are teaching our students in online mode.  As the weeks pass, learners and instructors will experience emotions associated with their isolation.  This will manifest as fatigue, boredom, depression, and apathy.  In order to combat these, we, as instructional professionals must rise to the challenge to ensure that learning endures.  Our efforts will provide our students with a sense of normalcy and purpose, and routine to make these troubled times less arduous.

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