Unfortunately, my Google Alerts did not come up with any good results for me this week, so I had to do a little adapting and digging. I came up with a blog post on Animoto featuring tips from Larry Ferlazzo, who is well known for supporting teachers who are looking for ways to help their English Language Learners (ELLs). He is one of the first people I stumbled upon when I began my journey into the world of ESL teaching 9 years ago. This post, written by Moira West, is titled Tips for Using Technology with ELL Students.
According to the blog post, Mr. Ferlazzo teaches English and Social Studies to blog ELLs and native speakers, and has for 12 years. This post focuses specifically on his tips for using technology to teacher ELL students. He always uses some form of technology in his classes for ELLs because of the audio/visual nature that helps support language development. While it can be overwhelming to try to determine tools are best to use, Larry recommends five tips for finding technology tools for the ELL classroom.
1. Make sure it is relevant - Don't just use a tool because it seems like a cool one. Determine
what you want to teach, and then find a tool to fit that.
2. Keep it simple - use tools that are easy for both students and teachers to learn
3. Look for cheap or free options - not only does this help our meager school budgets, but it
also allows students the option to practice at home without worrying about paying for a
subscription.
4. Consider mobile options - While many students do not have computers at home, more and
more have access to Smartphones. There are several websites that also have mobile apps
that students can use to practice.
5. Have students produce something - Having a final product for students to work on provides
motivation and is a great piece to use to assess learning.
Some of the tools recommended in this blog post are the Simple English Wikipedia, Lingohut, Duolingo, and the Animoto app. I would also highly recommend following Larry's edublog, Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day. He shares a wealth of websites to help in teaching ELLs, and this has definitely been linked to my delicious site!
What a great list of tips and ideas to think about when integrating technology in the classroom. I especially like the tip of making sure it is relevant and not just a cool tool. I think it is so important as teacher we make sure our tools have a purpose within the classroom and are used effectively and efficiently.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post and I agree with the tips outlined in Larry's article. The most important in my opinion being to "keep it simple". Since students are already using working memory to learn a new language, simple technology will prove to be more beneficial than a more complex technology that is too hard to use, therefore potentially inhibiting results due to technical issues.
ReplyDeleteI've had a similar issue with the alerts not providing many options ("English second language technology" was a bit too narrow a scope it appears), so I added other topics that created a crossover of subjects and it helped to provide more options. This is a very good list of things to keep in mind when implementing any type of project based technology assignments. The provided links are very useful.
ReplyDelete