Tools for Engaging the 21st-Century Students
By Professor
Jonathan Acuña-Solano
Wednesday, June 11,
2014
To
start with and put my professional life in perspective, I am an English
Language Instructor at Universidad Latina mostly working with students who are
enrolled in ELT (English Language Teaching) and whose professional goal is to
teach high school or adult students. And although I do not teach online courses
per se, I have tried to empirically
run courses in which I have successfully implemented the use of Web tools to
enhance student commitment to the class and learning of the subject-matter
studied in class.
Among
the different online tools that I have been using for about five years, I have
two –that combined with additional software or simple html understanding,
students can produce better results. On the one hand, I have my own channel on youtube.com along with videos I have
produced with the help of freeware to edit audio and videos, both by NCH
Software: Wave
Pad and Video Pad. Once videos
are produced, edited, and polished, they are uploaded onto youtube.com and/or
later embedded on the class Moodle LMS or on my personal class blogs for the
students.
On
the other hand, since I do not really like the layout and display of the forum
tool in Moodle, I have always been drawn to use Nicenet.Org to
host class forums and exchange of ideas. In Nicenet the threads of conversation
are visible and readable by students as soon as the conferencing rooms are
open. Learners can visualize the whole different threads of communication among
class members, but in Moodle the visualization or display of conversation
threads is “hidden” making students click more times to be able to read their
partners’ entries and to respond to them. Additionally, if students are trained
to use Nicenet with some simple understanding of html, they can include
pictures, presentations hosted in sites such as SlideShare.Net
and Scribd.Com, etc.
Because
you do not usually find tailor-made content for your class, I decided to create
my own English pronunciation videos to help students understand and visualize
vowel segment differences. The class explanation combined with the content
introduced and displayed in my class blog have helped students for almost five
years to better understand and assimilate subtle differences in American English
pronunciation. And because Nicenet has a better display and layout when
compared to Moodle forums, students find this other Web tool more appealing for
the amount of extra features it includes to share ideas, links, documents,
messaging, class members, and teacher contact information.
? To
fully comprehend the scope of this teaching reflections, it is highly advisable
that the following topics must be expanded further:
·
Freeware to edit audio and video
·
Forums on NiceNet.Org
·
SlideShare.Net
·
Scribd.Com
Professor Jonathan Acuña-Solano
ELT Trainer, Instructor &
Curriculum Developer based in Costa Rica
Contact Information:
Email: jonacuso@gmail.com
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Pronunciation
Development
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Reading Skills
Development
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Curated Topics
Online
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Article
published on Wednesday, June 11, 2014
How to quote this
blog entry:
Acuña, J. (2014,
June 11). Tools for Engaging 21st Century Learners.
Retrieved from
Reflective Online Teaching Website: http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/2014/06/tools-for-engaging-21st-century-students.html
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