Another Half-term break over... I got some time to make some more adaptations of Skills for Life materials for the Interactive whiteboards at College. I personally think that it is a very useful resource for teaching ESOL. It allows for stronger visual presentation than printed materials. Students are then able to have a deeper interaction with these visuals than just having them on the pages of their notes. The ability to 'launch' the sound files from the board allows students to feel more in control of the lessons, and gives an alternative to the 'teacher as authority' model. I have produced some drag and drop spelling templates which help learners recognise letter patterns and gives them the opportunity to re-arrange letter to correct any mistakes or errors.
There are also benefits from the admin side of things - these material are relatively easy to use during classes. Also, while they take time to produce, once they're done - they're done and can be shared and re-used. They can also be posted and downloaded from the internet. There are a number of sites which offer Smart Notebook lessons for the primary and secondary sectors - especially in the UK and the US. However I have found little so far for FE sector ESOL. For this reason I have followed the Skills for Life materials. Despite their failings they are very widely used both in the college where I work and in ESOL classes in general, this means that they should be at least adaptable for other people to use. I have made them available (and findable!) to members of staff where I work and I have also posted them at www.talent.ac.uk, which is the best site for finding UK ESOL materials that I have yet found.
The materials can be found at the following locations:
E1 U.6 Neighbourhood - http://www.talent.ac.uk/dsearch_details.asp?DocumentID=1946
E1 U.7 Homes - http://www.talent.ac.uk/dsearch_details.asp?DocumentID=1945
E1 U.8 Friends and Family - http://www.talent.ac.uk/dsearch_details.asp?DocumentID=1967
E1 U.9 Shopping 2 - http://www.talent.ac.uk/dsearch_details.asp?DocumentID=2006
E1 U.10 Going to Work - http://www.talent.ac.uk/dsearch_details.asp?DocumentID=2027
E2 U.7 Changes - http://www.talent.ac.uk/dsearch_details.asp?DocumentID=2028
All these materials are very much work-in-progress I hope that through the talent website people can give me some feedback on these materials and I can then incorporate this into the materials which I have compiled and in a new sets which I try to make. So far I am pleased with the materials that I have managed to produce - It was a nice ego boost to see that some of the above materials come out as the first result in Google when you search for smart notebook esol (at the time of writing). However this is probably more a reflection of the scarcity of these resources, at least in easy to find locations than the quality of the resources. Computer technology takes a lot of the need to re-invent the wheel in teaching, websites such as talent allow people to build on each others knowledge and take things further - so we can start to invent the car, not just the wheels. This is especially true where there is a certain amount of national standardisation i.e. with the DFES' ESOL Core Curriculum.
I have noticed my progress in making these materials as I have learnt more about the SMART notebook software which I use. The spelling template which I have used in the later material I have made for E1 would be appropriate for all units. I need to work more on how to make content relevant for classes at levels above E1 - they seem to require more thought to put together. The latest feature which I have been able to use is linking pages to objects in order to automatically give feedback to students - this can increase engagement with the materials and I should extend this to other materials.
There are still areas which I feel I need to work on in order to improve my practice. I should be more diligent at creating files in class (possibly using templates) and saving them at the end to build up a base of vocabulary, difficulties, explanations etc - this should be fairly easy to do on a blank smart notebook page - or with a simple template, then I need to remember to 'tidy' these files up and keep them in an organised fashion - I think that's going to be my September resolution this year. I've just been looking at the new version of the smart notebook software and it has a few more functions which could be useful for this - by allowing more than one page to be displayed at a time. I also need to find more ways that the students can have access to the materials through the college VLE. As the program will import PowerPoint files, it might be better to use powerpoint as it is a much more widely used application.
Also I found these articles out in the big WWW which might be interesting:
http://www.evaluation.icttestbed.org.uk/files/fe21_access_a-level.pdf
http://www.evaluation.icttestbed.org.uk/files/fe10_plumbing.pdf
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