Articles in the ‘Technology Matters’ Section
Does the thought of adding more tech to an already full teaching and/or managing plate make your stomach churn? As full-time teachers who run the educational technology systems and liaise with the director on educational management, we see the future has finally arrived and have some tips to help bring more exploration in the classroom ...
* Please note this article was written at the end of 2014. I’m writing this at the time of year when media sources start to compile their ‘best of’ lists. Therefore, inspired by that theme, I bring you the three apps I have enjoyed most this year from an educational standpoint. That is not to say ...
Sometime in 2009: “Emma, you’re young, you use computers, do you use this Facebook thing?” (My boss to me) And that’s how it all started. Fast forward to 2013 and I’ve been Online Services Manager at IH San Isidro for over 4 years. I’ve spoken at the last two DoS Conferences about getting your institute ...
Listening is one of the hardest skills to master for the ESL/EFL learner (Chang, Tseng et al. 2011; Leveridge and Yang 2013). Learners in authentic situations struggle to decipher native-speaker speech in real time, as speed of verbal delivery, local accents, lack of contextual or visual cues (telephone English) and lack of vocabulary knowledge impede ...
“You don’t need to use technology to be a great teacher”. I agree. Unfortunately however, aside from decision makers grappling with how many interactive whiteboards or tablets to purchase for their school, or teachers in specific and uncommon circumstances, this argument has already passed us by. The consensus, supported by growing statistical evidence, is that ...
I have the sometimes challenging but always rewarding job of training English teachers. I don’t train them how to be good teachers, though. I train them in how to use an online platform called Macmillan English Campus (or IH Campus to you). As you can imagine, I come across all ranges of teaching experience, IT ...
It’s 5.30pm in Buenos Aires. For most of the city, this means that the sun is finally letting up and people are leaving their offices to go and have a beer. For my colleagues and I, this means we have a maximum of 15 minutes before the evening classes start, and it is in this ...
Digital stories By Digital stories are created by weaving together images, music and voiceover narrations into engaging two to three-minute movies. The stories, told in the first person, are inspired by significant events, people or places in the narrator's life and/or can be based on a certain theme. First developed in the 1990s at the Center ...
Livemocha and the power of social language learning by Clint Schmidt Like many great innovations, the premise seems obvious in hindsight. Shirish Nadkarni, the founder of Livemocha, was traveling with his family in Spain and was discouraged to find that years of solid marks in high school Spanish classes had not adequately equipped his teenage kids to ...
by Jeff Stanford Following on from Roger Hunt’s enthusiastic article ‘Online Teacher Training’ in the IH Journal, Spring 2007, this article looks at the experience of five teacher training centres that have used Moodle to run a virtual element on their CELTA teacher training courses. It’s not all plain sailing, but most centres agree that using ...