Teaching Teens

1
Title
International Language Schools
Teaching Teens with Technology

• www.ef.com/teacher

www.ef.com
2
G.L.
Gordon Lewis

• Oxford University Press
• Teenagers (2007)
• Internet and Young Learners (2004)
• Games for Children (1999)

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
3
Welcome
Welcome to the lecture

• Listen to the speaker and use the buttons to
  interact.
• Saying yes and no
• Raising your hand
• Laughing and clapping
• Text messages
• Questions will be answered during and after the
  talk.

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
4
Teens get bad press!
International Language Schools
www.ef.com
5
Whos a Teen?

• 10-12 Tweens

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
6
Young Teens

• physical changes
• social pack animals
• longer concentration span than primary children
• abstract thinking
• think theyve figured things out
• black and white thinking
• believe what they think and what everyone else
  thinks is essentially the same.
• they have one foot in the adult world and one in
  the world of their childhood.

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
7
Middle Teens

• physical changes
• physically they are adults
• clear attraction to opposite sex
• more independent, less group behaviour.
• individual relationships grow in importance
• accept that there is more than ONE answer to a
  question.
• differentiated world view.

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
8
How do we motivate teens?Challenge them to think!

• Language Awareness Activities
• engage teenagers by creating language awareness
  activities which foster an understanding of and
  interest in how languages function.
• Critical and Creative Thinking Tasks
• encourage logical thinking and reasoning
• generate new ideas
• Teenager Topics
• focus on topics and themes that are important to
  teens
• set up contexts and let students provide the
  content

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
9
How Can Technology Help?
International Language Schools
www.ef.com
10
What is technology?

• CDs, DVDs, Podcasts, Digital Video
• More than the WWW
• E-mail, Chats, Blogs
• Online communities (social networks)
• Synchronous and Asynchronous environments

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
11
What technology is not

• It is not a separate reality- it mirrors what
  exists
• It is only communicative if you make it so.
• It doesnt do stuff- you do- especially on the
  Internet.

Internet a non-linear anarchic environment Which
you lend it contours through interaction
International Language Schools
www.ef.com
12
Instructional tool or motivator?

• Will the interaction with the Internet be part of
  the teaching process?
• Is language embedded in the online task, or will
  you use it to embellish offline activities
  (pictures, video, audio, games)?
• Beware too many bells and whistles
• Balance language goals and coolness factor

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
13
Goal Invisible Technology

• Forget about why or should we.
• Stop seeing technology as an add on.
• Remember for teens, technology is as common as
  the telephone.
• As one Italian writer wrote
• We dont have BALL and PALL

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
14
We Need a Model for the Internet

• Too often, information and teaching practice is
  simply transferred to the Internet as is (online
  exercises, reference sites).
• We need to rethink how we access and use
  information.
• We need new teaching frameworks if we want to
  fully exploit technology, especially the
  Internet.

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
15
One Way of Looking at the Internet
Communication
Web Search
Web Creation
International Language Schools
www.ef.com
16
Creating Communities

• Exchange sites such as Keypals, iearn
• Interest groups/lists- also yahoo and google
  groups- make your own
• Social networks myspace, facebook etcchats(?)
• Communities of Practice (teacher networks)
• Online training (moodle)

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
17
The E lympics (basic activity)
Goal To compare results of a competition Language
Comparatives, superlatives, simple past,
numbers

• Introduce the subject of the Olympic Games to
  your class. Ask them what kind of sports are
  played at the Olympics. Make a list of these
  sports.
• Hand out the E lympics worksheet. Explain to
  the children that you are going to hold an E
  lympics at school and the partner schools are
  going to do the same.
• the E lympics events. If possible take photos
  with a digital camera.
• Record the results of the events on the worksheet
  and send the sheet and the photos to your partner
  schools.
• As the partner schools send in their results,
  record them on a master worksheet.

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
18
The E lympics (differentiation)

• Step 1
• Research Olympic Games on the Internet.
• Share games with partner schools.
• Step 2
• Conduct a live chat with the partner school.
• Create a video or audio commentary.
• Step 3
• Create a Website or Yahoo group site.
• Work with partner school (s) to design and select
  content.
• Work in virtual teams to edit and post
  information.

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
19
Distances(web search activity)
3.11 Distances How far is it?
20
(No Transcript)
21
(No Transcript)
22
Potential Search Issues

• You can get lost!
• Clutter and advertising. Focus on specific aspect
  of site.
• How do you and students make decisions about
  information.
• To what extent you want to delimit activities,
  both in terms of language and thinking skills.

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
23
(No Transcript)
24
(No Transcript)
25
(No Transcript)
26
Internet as a Third Learning Space
International Language Schools
www.ef.com
27
Conclusions

• We need to understand that information is
  constantly changing, dynamic, and context bound.
• Students need higher order thinking skills to
  evaluate, prioritize information.
• Employ Constructivist principles to convert
  information into knowledge.
• We are still applying analog ideas to a digital
  world.
• Each student is now an actor on the Internet and
  contributes to its growth and future.

International Language Schools
www.ef.com
28
QA
International Language Schools
www.ef.com