MAKING YOUR COURSEBOOK COME ALIVE WITH TECHNOLOGY

This workshop is aimed at teachers who have to use a coursebook with their classes and find it hard to motivate their learners or find little evidence of real progress in their pupils’ ability to communicate effectively despite the numerous exercises they cover on a daily basis.

Technology can come to the rescue but technology without sound pedagogy behind it can be a problem rather than a solution.

In this workshop, we will look at coursebook materials critically, evaluate their overall effectiveness as well as the effectiveness of individual lessons and activities and learn to make good decisions about ‘points of teacher intervention’ which will increase effectiveness, motivation and engagement in our learners.

A variety of tech tools will be used during the workshop, from simple applications such as using Word and Powerpoint, to making use of free online tools such as

• Picture editors
• Voice tools
• Audio recording tools
• Animation applications
• Word cloud tools
• Videos and video channels
• Screencasting tools
• Blogs for students
• …and much more…

Teachers need a variety of options to make their lessons come alive and even if they can’t adopt all these ideas in their current context, they need to develop their own digital literacies and those of their students.

Many will be able to make use of them for privately tutored students as well as if they are trying to learn the skills of online teaching.

Workshop participants should bring their laptop, ipad or tablet, or arrange to go with a colleague who can bring their own machine to the workshop.