Workshop: Mix & Match - how tagging and playlist-courses can create personalised blended learning paths for BE students
January 30th 2010
2:00pm to 5:00pm
Venue: Telecom ParisTech
Presented by Cleve Miller and Valentina Dodge
The first decade of the 21st century has already seen some strong web 2.0 features emerge. Web users can easily create, network, personalise, share and self-organise. So language-learning content also needs to be co-created and not just delivered by 'experts' but by teachers, school staff and learners. With English360, a whole new approach to materials development and course design is now available. This method involves mixing and matching material from learners, their company, authentic web resources, mp3 or pdf files, and other shared resources from teachers worldwide. Teachers can also integrate their own course material seamlessly with 25 Cambridge University Press titles that have recently been repurposed for online/blended delivery within the English360 platform. This new generation of content creation (which is entirely free for educators) moves beyond the traditional book, photocopier or scissors-and-glue approach. It enables teachers to create tailor-made activities that are uniquely relevant (real-world) performance-based.
The workshop will start off with an overview of the web today, and will outline the rapid shifts now occurring in publishing. It will address Business English needs assessment and the issues involved in blended course design, as well as offering advice on materials development. It will illustrate tags and tagging and show how digital tools can make the needs analysis process fast, accurate and ongoing. Tagged material and cross-referenced resources mean teachers can pull content from as wide a range of sources as possible to create individualised 'course' books much as you can shuffle playlists on an mp3 device.
The easy-to-use English360 self-authoring tools, which can be used to create a wide range of activities, will be demonstrated during this hands-on workshop, together with the course management features of the platform. The session will be entirely interactive and involve open discussion with participants.
The three-hour workshop will cover:
Trends
- Web 2.0
- Blended learning
- Personalising training programmes
- Shifts in publishing
- The English360 philosophy
Business English
- Needs assessment/analysis
- Existing systems
- English360 tagging
- Finding content - CUP cross-referenced content
Using English360
- Creating courses
- Self-authoring activities
- Mixing & matching CUP content
- Sharing content
- 'Managing' learners
The workshop will be co-run by: Cleve Miller
Since 1989 Cleve has designed, managed and taught business English
programs in 11 countries to thousands of students in over fifty
Global-500 companies. He has been named a 'global expert' by the
American Society of Training and Development and, since about 1998,
has had a single-minded obsession with effective use of the web for
learner-centred language teaching. Originally from Kansas, he is
currently based out of Cambridge, UK.
Valentina Dodge
Valentina is Teacher Community Coordinator for English360, where she
helps educators provide personalised Business English learning
programmes to meet their student and customer needs. She collaborates
with, and supports, Business English language teachers all over the
world to help them publish and share lessons and courses for blended
or online delivery. She organises training sessions and support forums
on instructional design and blended course organisation, to allow
educators to combine their own materials and lesson plans with high
quality course material from Cambridge University Press.