I have been chatting to Don Taylor about the upcoming Learning Technologies conference. Via the wonder that is Twitter, I have discovered that some of my tweeps are coming along to what will be their very first conference and they're feeling a little apprehensive.Of course, screeds of stuff has been written about conferences and how to make the most of them and and and, so this is just me adding my twopen'orth.So many of us attend online events these days, even if it's just a tweetchat. So we've grown accustomed to swooping in for the designated hour or two and swooping back out again to return to life-as-usual (which may even involve going back to bed, if the time difference was unkind). Since the technology exists to attend conferences online, I would suggest that it is very important to home in on the value-added of a face to face event, and capitalise heavily on that.You can attend presentations in an online conference. You can take part in the group-wide back channel text chat. Sometimes, you can fire off a private message to an individual attendee (depending on the platform being used and what the moderators are doing with it). You can raise questions.But now you're travelling a few miles, or a few hundred miles. As well as your travel costs, you may be running up a travel and subsistence bill. You are also (if it isn't too indelicate of me to point it out) increasing your carbon footprint. So, I suggest, you put in a little effort to make it a worthwhile exercise.So what can't you do (readily) online?During/after sessionsIntroduce yourself to the people who sit on either side of you. Exchange business cards/v cards.Go up and introduce yourself to the speaker.Take note of the person who asks the question/shares the anecdote that resonates with you, and go and exchange business cards/v cards at the end of the session.Participate in the small group discussions. Don't deprive the rest of the group of your perspective - you might just provide someone's lightbulb moment.Ask questions/make observations. While you can do this online, my experience is that people are more reluctant to take the mike, and will make almost exclusive use of the back channel (although some find that distracting and disable it)Use breaks/evenings toPut faces to names. Discover that the person you consider lofty and exalted is just human.Get eyeball to eyeball with the person/people with whom you've had a long running exchange of views online... or the person you've been following from afar (don't be shy, you may never get another chance).Hole up in a corner with a few people who face similar challenges to your own.Have a tweet up.Introduce yourself to presenters of sessions you're not attending. There is usually a speakers' room, so if they have work to do, they'll take refuge there - if they're in the common area, they're fair game. ;o)Go out for lunch with someone who can serve as a sounding board for your latest wacky idea.Take a stroll around the exhibition (if the conference coincides with one).Take in local sights - especially if you've travelled abroad - preferably with someone local.I'm sure there are several more things you can do. But those are my 'starters for 10'. And if you're coming to Learning Technologies, come and find me and say hello!

Handwriting CaptureI explore several ways to capture your voice and handwriting for that learning module you want to create for your flipped classroom or MOOC. Here are links to the solutions mentioned:Solution Comparison SpreadsheetiPad SolutionsAirsketchPenultimateShowMePC & Mac SolutionsLivescribe Smart PenSmartpodium MonitorWacom TabletAutodesk SketchbookRecording and SharingMyLivescribePanoptoShowMeAlso mentionedCamtasiaGiMPGoSmart Stylus for iPadInkscapeiPadJot Touch 4 StylusKahn AcademyScreenFlowPodsafe Music Selection "Fuzzy Freaky" by David Byrne from "The Visible Man" CDDuration: 19:30

Interview: Dr. Jim Brown of Ocean County CollegeDr. Brown & LabPaqsWe discuss how faculty can teach lab courses online.LabPaq by Hands-On Labs - kits for online lab coursesSoftChalk - create, manage and share eLearning contentDr. Brown recommends these resources:Presentation at USciencesCapstone "Field Trip" ExperienceTeaching Science Totally OnlineUsing Skype as a Tool to Teach OnlinePodsafe Music SelectionDrive Away by Matthew EbelDuration: 27:05

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on this subject. Quite the contrary, in fact! But my son's school is in the process of considering Academy status, and they're currently holding meetings with parents who want to learn more. I confess that, since my son is already in sixth form, I feel somewhat remote from the whole business and haven't given it too much thought. However, for parents with kids lower down the school, there are a lot of questions - particularly in the light of the fact that ours is a faith school.I came across these materials on teachers.tv which I thought might shed some light for teachers and parents at schools considering going down this route.I have heard positive reports from struggling schools that have switched to this model. But I have no idea what happens in the case of schools that are not struggling. I guess only time will tell. And my inner cynic (yes, even I have one) tells me that we will encounter problems no-one has thought of or catered for beforehand, some of which may prove to be showstoppers.

Gareth Davies, an experienced teacher and teacher trainer gives his thoughts on the second of our Solutions Speaking Challenges: ‘My students don’t want to write’. I was sitting on the tram this morning watching at least three teenagers talking to each other. I didn’t know the exact number, why? Well there were two girls standing in front of me but the conversation was taking place in two ways - one was a face-to-face conversation and one was a text message conversation with person or persons unseen. The texter was revealing information that was making the girls giggle and laugh and then they were composing replies together, carefully choosing the right words. After pressing send they would chat to each other while impatiently waiting for the next text. When I got home I started looking at the responses of the survey that OUP ran regarding writing in the classroom, the comments from around the world had a similar theme, ‘they don’t even write in their own language’, ‘pace of life is very fast and they don’t have time to write’, ‘writing is a bore’.  This created a curious paradox in my mind. The written word is becoming more and more important in terms of communication - emails, texts, tweets, Facebook updates, YouTube comments all require writing skills. Yet students don’t see a link between these and what they are doing in class.  So what are the differences? Possibly in class or as homework writing is seen as a solitary task, a task to do alone, but as the girls showed on the tram writing became fun when they were working together, crafting the perfect line to send to their friend. So can we make class writing a collaborative task and would this increase motivation? The girls were writing on a screen, maybe pen and paper seems old fashioned to teenage students, they probably never write a note or a letter. So can we save writing activities for our hour in the computer room or allow students to do their writing tasks on their mobile phones or tablets? The girls on the tram were communicating but do classroom writing tasks feel like a communicative activity or just a chore, an exercise to be marked? For writing to have meaning it needs an audience. So can the students write to each and reply to each other in class? Or do we as teachers need to reply to the content of the piece of writing as well as assess it and correct it? I like to reply with a list of questions that the text left unanswered, this might encourage the student to write back or rewrite the text. Are students too worried about the mistakes being there in black and white for the world to see? I think it is important for teachers to set criteria for the writing assessment and not focus on every little mistake. So for example, for this task I will be looking at your articles. Also calling the writing ‘a draft’ helps students to understand that they can make mistakes as long as they are willing to redraft and improve. Even worse than mistakes for teenagers might be that they are writing their hopes and feelings down in black and white for the world to see. One of the benefits of asking students to work alone is that they might open up and share things, but they won’t do that if they fear the teacher will make their writing public. The girls on the tram knew exactly who their audience was, so let the students know who the audience will be - other students, the whole school or just the teacher. Maybe allow them to choose themselves whether the writing is public or private. So we can see that a few changes to our classroom management techniques can help to make writing a more enjoyable activity but we still need to show students how important writing is. An easy way to do this is to do this quick 5 minute activity. Write the following on the board - Whatsapp message, Facebook comment, text message, phone call, tweet, email, face to face. Call each one out and ask students to put their hand up if they’ve communicated with that tool in the last 24 hours. Then ask students to categorise if they are writing or speaking tools. This shows them that writing is something they do all the time in their own language whether they realise it or not. So it might be a skill they want to practise in English too. Filed under: Professional Development, Teenagers Tagged: Professional Development, Solutions writing challenge, Teacher Development, Teenagers

Interview: Max James, National Sales Manager for Education at Citrix Online We discuss their various web conferencing products:GoToMeetingGoToWebinar "Online Meetings Made Easy"GoToTrainingNew features and functions:HD FacesBlackboard and Moodle integrationRecording and HostingOther Citrix products:GoToSchoolPodioShareFilePodsafe Music Selection New Age Piano: "Lines Build Walls" by Ehren StarksDuration: 22:31

The second episode of The Brain: A Secret History explores the issue of emotions: what they are, what role they play, etc.It was interesting to note the conclusion that even 'rational' decisions are based upon emotional response, and that our ability to rationalise is impaired when we lose the ability to feel emotional responses.But I was particularly interested in the area of empathy. Probably because I have a tendency to feel the emotions of others so powerfully, that it can have a disruptive effect on my own life. Michael Mosley was tested for empathy and found to be far from as empathetic as he had believed. But I would question the results of the test, and here's why.The test involved exposing Mosley to a series of video clips of people being subjected to mild-to-moderate pain experiences (mainly being pinched on the back of the hand), and then being subjected to a comparable experience himself (he was smacked on the back of the hand with a ruler). His brain activity was measured during both activities and then compared. To what extent was the brain activity of his own pain replicated when he witnessed someone else's pain?One major flaw in the experiment for me is the following: during the video clips, he did not seem to be shown the faces of the people being hurt. Just the physical act of the pinch. If empathy is about emotion, I suspect the replication sought would be more obvious if the subject were to see the manifestation of pain on the faces of the filmed subjects.Furthermore, if empathy is about emotion, it is far more likely that an empathetic response would be exhibited when observing a subject experiencing emotional, rather than physical anguish. While I don't think I'd be terribly impressed to see one person pinch another, I can be utterly incapacitated by someone else's emotional trauma. The episode began with Mosley climbing into a small, dark, underground space, where he experienced genuine fear. I found my own heart rate and anxiety to be significantly elevated while watching him.Of course, the tricky part here is that in order to assess the level of empathy, the subject has to observe someone else in emotional distress, and then be subjected to emotional distress him/herself.This brings an issue of ethics into the story. One can hardly publicly humiliate people or give them news of a fictitious bereavement in the name of science. But perhaps it would be possible to ask for volunteers to enter the 'fear cave' after watching others do so. Perhaps one might also be able to establish a benchmark of the brain areas activated after a bereavement, and then to record brain activity of people watching someone who has been bereaved. It would be difficult, but surely not impossible to obtain suitable data and material without being unethical.Just wondering....

Magali Trapero Turrent is an ELT Editor at Oxford University Press, Mexico. She is the author of several series published by OUP as well as a teacher and former OUP Educational Services teacher trainer. In her post, she shares her ideas for using Web 2.0 tools to develop learner’s language skills. Having the opportunity to expand the horizon of my traditional EFL classroom has been just as exciting for me as for my students. However, I must admit that, as a digital immigrant, it was not simple at the beginning. It took many hours of focused as well as playful hours of dedicated inquiry to find the link between the learning goals of a CLIL lesson and the potentiality of different Web 2.0 tools to support them. I also had to determine how much scaffolding learners would need before engaging in web-based activities and how to integrate elements of the outside world that could enrich our lessons. In preparing a science lesson, for example, the integration of international celebrations, such as the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Health Day or the United Nations Observances, can bring the real world into the classroom. This, along with Web 2.0 tools, becomes a way of integrating the world of our learners with the real world—right there in our classrooms or as a home-school link. Using Voice Thread for speaking activities The typical classroom has learners that gladly engage in communicative activities and those that, given the chance, will avoid the task altogether. Creating speaking activities in Voice Thread, besides adding novelty and variety to lessons, can provide a formative assessment record. Voice Thread is a user-friendly tool that can integrate audio, video, images, text, documents and presentations—providing a multisensory, non-threatening environment where collaborative learning can flourish, even for learners that would otherwise not take part in communicative activities. Voice thread can be accessed using tablets, computers and mobile devices. Once you have made a decision about the speaking function to focus on (performance, transaction or interaction) and given the language support needed by your learners, you can upload models for the speaking activity directly into your Voice Thread page for your students to view prior to doing the task. In setting up activities, give learners an opportunity to personalize their experience. After all, that is what students do in the real world through social media, such as Facebook. The following example presents materials for a science lesson. In the exploration stage of the lesson, learners can talk about what they think a healthy meal is. In a Voice Thread activity, learners can do the following using computers, tablets or their smart phones: Take pictures and create a healthy food poster to present in the recording. Make a video of healthy foods found in vending machines while they narrate. Take selfies next to healthy food street stands and describe why it is healthy. Make a video of their favorite home-made healthy meal and talk about it. Take a picture of their refrigerator and describe its contents. Additionally, students can ask questions based on classmates presentations or add information to a previously posted presentation before they move into the next stage of the lesson. As learners get more knowledge on the topic—healthy food, in this example—they can then work with information from international organizations, such as the World health Organization, to learn more about healthy or unhealthy food and its impact on other communities throughout the world. Using again the science example, and to celebrate International Health Day 2015, a question is added to the activity to activate students’ previous knowledge on food safety—the focus of the celebration. Students proceed to record their current knowledge. Examples of activities that can be created in Voice Thread to activate previous knowledge are the following: Create a cloud with the words you associate with food safety and explain to your classmates the ones you think are the most important. Record an acrostic poem using food safety. In pairs, create a video for a community announcement on what you think food safety is. These activities, of course, can be adapted for other core subjects. The advantage of creating speaking activities in Voice Thread is that you can choose the type of speaking function to focus on (performance, transaction or interaction) and monitor each learners’ skill development as well accuracy issues that may arise. It also provides you and your learners with a form of digital portfolio or formative assessment record. Furthermore, it gives learners a reason to communicate in English in a way that it is used in the real world—as much of today’s communication happens through the use of digital tools. In the next article in this series, we will explore the use of Web 2.0 tools for listening activities. Please note that not all titles are available in every market. Please check with your local office about local title availability.Filed under: CLIL, Multimedia & Digital Tagged: apps for class, CLIL, Digital, Discover Science, EdTech, Multimedia, Science, Skills, Speaking, Technology in the classroom, Web 2.0 tools

iPad/Apple TV Pilot Program (What Apple TV brings to Education)Rod presents an abbreviated version of a talk given at the International Association for Medical Science Educators (IAMSE) at St. Andrews University in Scotland on June 8 and 10, 2013Learn how iPad and Apple TV can be used in innovative ways in class to facilitate the "flipped" classroom.ReferencesAirSketch  - www.qrayon.com/airsketch/ Apple TV - www.apple.com/appletv/DropBox - www.dropbox.comKeynote - www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/Learning Catalytics - learningcatalytics.comPanopto - www.panopto.comReflector - www.reflectorapp.com ShowMe - www.showme.comTurningPoint - www.turningtechnologies.com

iPad/Apple TV Pilot Program (What Apple TV brings to Education)Rod presents an abbreviated version of a talk given at the International Association for Medical Science Educators (IAMSE) at St. Andrews University in Scotland on June 8 and 10, 2013Learn how iPad and Apple TV can be used in innovative ways in class to facilitate the "flipped" classroom.ReferencesAirSketch  - www.qrayon.com/airsketch/ Apple TV - www.apple.com/appletv/DropBox - www.dropbox.comKeynote - www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/Learning Catalytics - learningcatalytics.comPanopto - www.panopto.comReflector - www.reflectorapp.com ShowMe - www.showme.comTurningPoint - www.turningtechnologies.com