USING AI IN TEACHING

 Hello, forest dwellers!

Today we will talk about a very popular yet controversial topic: Artificial Intelligence. Some love it, some hate it. Either way, AI is there to stay and we need to learn how to incorporate it into our teaching practices.

For this activity we needed to create an assignment where students would utilize AI and learn from it. We chose a storytelling activity that will teach them how to utilize ChatGPT but also foster their own creativity.

We first made a material that included the elements of the story. After that, we thought of the activity itself and lastly, we wrote the questions students should answer after the activity.

Overall it was a bit hard to think of questions that would aid students but we managed.

Here is our lesson plan for the AI task and

Here is our material

Feel free to share your thoughts! Did you like our AI task? Would you use AI in your assignments or do you think students should not learn AI prompting at all? 

See you later, forest dwellers. Hope you have a wonderful winter break!

OPENING OUR EYES TO NEW REALITY

 Hello and welcome back forest dwellers!

Have you ever wished you could wake up in another reality? I think all of us must have, at some point. While we cannot actually do that, we can come close with AR/VR technologies !

AR stands for "Augmented Reality" while VR stands for "Virtual Reality. AR mixes the real world with the virtual/digital while VR is an entire world by itself.

AR/VR technologies are very useful in teaching effectively. Which is why we have been assigned to design a lesson plan and materials using these.

We chose our topic as touring a city and chose Japan. We first tried to think of the attractions a tourist might want to see and which have 360 tours. After that, we thought of questions to go with the places we have picked.

We also chose a museum and repeated the process. The museum had a virtual tour which would help students answer the questions.

Here are our  materials and here is our lesson plan! I hope you check it out and share your opinions : ) What do you think? Do you think AR/VR technologies are the future of education?

See you soon, forest dwellers!

LET'S FLIP

 Hello dear forest dwellers!

Today, we will talk about the Flipped Classroom Approach. What does "flipped" mean? 

In the Flipped Approach, we do what is traditionally "classroom activities" at home and what is homework at class. Students take responsibility of their own learning and watch recorded lectures and do various activities. When they come to the class, they already know the content. In class, they do what would be homework in the traditional approach.

Our assignment was to create a grammar focused lecture video that can be used in the flipped classroom. We first made the graphics and wrote our sentences after deciding our topic (should/must). Secondly, we voice recorded ourselves teaching and reading the activities. Lastly, we added our voice to the video and made our video interactive with Quizziz. The process took a long time however it was very educational and sometimes fun too. Here is our video/quiz. You can try it out to see how well you do!

QUIZ/VIDEO

 Let me know how well you did if you checked our video out. What are your thoughts on the flipped approach ? Do you think it is helpful or a waste of time?

See you again soon, forest dwellers!

CORPUS-BASED TEACHING

 

 Welcome again, forest dwellers!

Today we will talk about corpus-based language teaching and how we managed to create materials and a lesson plan based on corpus.

First of all, what is corpus? Well, it is a collection of texts and sometimes multimedia that is used to aid in education and research. Corpora can be very helpful when teaching things like collocations, common phrases etc. 

Our task this week was to create a lesson plan following the ASSURE principles and corpus. We first decided on which grammar item we wanted to teach. We landed on "because/so". We also had to base our plan off of the MEB prep school units. We chose Detective Stories because it made a lot of sense with the grammar topic. We brainstormed various activities and decided on activities we thought would be cognitively challenging and still enjoyable. After our decision, we designed our materials on Canva. We then completed our lesson plan according to the template.

Here are our materials:

Our lesson plan

Our materials

The design process was a bit challenging. We had to include both teacher-mediated and student-mediated corpus use. We had to not make our materials too hard but also not to make them too easy. We had to make them worth the effort of corpus use. It took us some time but I think we managed to create good materials.

Although, of course with everything, there is always a risk of problems occurring in the classroom while using these materials and doing the activities. Firstly, the students might think what they are doing is a waste of time and not find it enjoyable. We should ensure that they understand why they are doing these activities and using these worksheets. Secondly, students might have trouble understanding corpus even with our video and worksheet guides. If any students are still confused we should guide them. On the contrary, some students might think the activities are too easy. We can try to challenge these students by giving them new tasks.

In conclusion, corpora use is a great way to integrate technology, language and education. But we need to be careful when implementing in our classrooms.

What do you think, forest dwellers? Do you like using corpus? Have you ever tried it before? Do you think it is helpful in language teaching? Let me know!

HERE IS TO ANOTHER START...

 Hello and after a long time, welcome back to the forest, forest dwellers! 🌱🌲🌳

It has been a while since we explored the world of technology and education together. I am excited to start another year of my education and learn all about different technological advancements. 

This year, I will be using this blog for the "Current Issues in Education" class. We will learn about various tools to make education more enjoyable and enrich English learning. I hope it will be just as fun as the last time. 

That being said, I haven't asked about you, forest dwellers! How have you all been? Has summer been good to you or did you just want to go back to school/work ? I hope it has been a fun summer for you.

See you again very soon, forest dwellers : )

 

A RECAP OF A WONDERFUL YEAR

 Hello for the last time (for now), forest dwellers!🌱🌲

 

Yes, I am sad to announce that this will be my last blog post for this semester. We've had a year full of interesting assignments, some hardships and some fun moments. Today I will recap my experience with the course and share it with you :)

Before I took this course, I knew of technology integrated teaching and even experienced it as a student. So I wasn't completely ignorant. However, I had some personal assumptions and judgements. For example I thought relying on it could make students lazy or not help them. However my thoughts changed a bit after this course. I see now that it can be integrated in a way that's not too much, and it can help foster English learning. 

We completed a lot of assignments throughout the semester such as creating a podcast, writing using collaborative writing tools, creating a digital story video, and conversing with AI. Many of these tasks were things I had never done before, like AI conversations and creating my own podcast. Doing these myself helped me understand how they could be used in ELT. I also realized my shortcomings and things I am good at such as coming up with ideas and creating digital comics. 

My favorite tasks were probably podcast and digital story creation. I loved making a podcast because I am a huge podcast fan and it made me excited to create my own! As for the digital story, it was a lot of work but it paid off at the end and it let me use my creativity.

I honestly think the course is great as it is, but maybe there could be more individual tasks because I am personally more comfortable working alone. Other than that, it was great and taught me a lot.

I hope to see you forest dwellers soon, and I hope you have a wonderful summer holiday! Remember to take care of yourself and engage in your hobbies 😁

THE FUTURE OF TEACHING: AI

Welcome back to my humble forest, forest dwellers 🌱🌲

I hope you are all doing well since I last posted on here. Today, I will be talking about a very hot topic not just in ELT but in general: Artificial Intelligence.

AI is a rising field of technology that gets further development every single day. In such a short time, it has become a part of our lives, or if you are a skeptic like me, it will soon become a part of yours.

The new AI tools can do almost anything: write, draw, make plans, edit videos, create music...and we don't even have to lift a finger!

 

For our AI assignment, we were instructed to use a site called MagicSchool AI which is for students and educators. It has many tools that can provide feedback, summarize videos, plan lessons, write stories etc. But the one we focused on was Character Chatbot which allows students to converse with any historical figure or known fictional character. We were to ask the bot questions and write a report first. I had a lot of trouble trying to think of someone...At the end, I chose Dr. Henry Jekyll from the famous book, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"; because the real life bots seemed a bit ridiculous to me (no offense!) and contained false information. (Marie Curie isn't native to France...)

The bot was a good conversation partner and in character, although it did make up things that obviously didn't exist in the book to keep me going. That did not bother me though. The biggest issue was just how long the replies were! Summarize button exists but I didn't want to use it. It also repeated some sentences over and over again. But overall, it was good.

After writing our report, we submitted it to the feedback tool. I asked for feedback on cutting some parts since my report was very long, and asked for criticism. It said my general paper was great but too long, and gave me some tips to reduce word count. It was actually quite helpful and I easily edited my paper.

Personally I am bit of a skeptic about AI, and if I integrated it in my lessons I would do it in a fashion that would foster my students learning and make them do most of the work. For example it could be something like an assignment where they talk by themselves to a chatbot and try to find out some repeated or wrong parts, and  then write a report on it. I could also see myself encouraging feedback AI for when I am unable to  be around or when students do homework. I think it can be beneficial because students will be able to receive detailed feedback anytime, anywhere! They will also improve their AI literacy which is crucial.

As a setback, I believe AI can cause demotivation to study or do work, because it already does everything for us. Even today, we see students using AI to pass classes (or attempt). I think AI use is tricky for that. We need to teach AI literacy and use it as a SUPPORT SYSTEM, not as a substitute for actual learning and exercise.

What do you think, forest dwellers? Maybe you disagree with me and think my ideas are outdated, or you agree. Do you think AI will be helpful in ELT or just a tool that will make us lazy? Please give me your ideas below.

Oh and also check out some excerpts from the feedback I was given, and my reports:

First Draft / Revised