Open Software and Educational Resources

Given the great opportunity of living nowadays, teacher/educators are granted with so many opportunities for self-develop. Exploring such Open Educational Resource platform as http://orelt.col.org I would highly recommend English teachers in Armenia to spend some time, go over the modules, as they provide very useful and plausible material that can be easily adapted to a particular proficiency level. To be competitive in this rapidly developing country, teachers need to go beyond the methods that were used in teaching back in 1990-2000. Nowadays, we/teachers have so many open free resources that can empower us as educators of the 21th century. Instead of finding a book published many years ago, this open resources provide teachers with most up-to date information in teaching English: methods, ways. Open resources not only provide some food for teachers' thinking but also give ready-made activities to be used in the classroom. Because the material is free and accessible from everywhere the teacher decides when and where to read and reflect on the information. It can help teachers within the same organization, be it a public or private school, teaching centre or even a kindergarden to collaborate, to discuss, to connect to Armenian reality. It may happen that older teachers feel suspicious about these resources, but once they get involved, I really hope, they will use it to benefit for their own sake.

Parents Concerns about the Effects of Media nad Digital Games

Nowadays, children are exposed to media and to digital games more often then our generation when we (now already parents) were children. Digitalization has become an inseparable part of everyone's life. Thus, instead of rejecting and struggling with it we need to use it to benefit from it. Being a mother by myself I would recommend parents to have informal everyday routine discussion on the flow of information, especially games played from little members of the family. Children must not be deprived of information flow, but the parents must always monitor the process, must filter very carefully information appropriate to the children's' age. Before banning something for your child remember you at their age; what was your reaction? Because this or that was not allowed to you, you wanted to explore more, you even tried to do the opposite of what you were told, didn't you? I, personally, did.
Based on the readings done for this particular topic parents need to monitor the children, as they can not distinguish what is real and what is fantasy (C. McCarthy, Harvard Health Publishing).
According to a group of research psychologists, people who play violent video games are more aggressive as compared to those who don't.
Other researchers point out that "even though more people have spent more time playing violent games in recent years, violent crime rates have decreased" (B. Azar, American Psychological Association).

Online learning

Online learning can be synchronous; through applications like WhatsApp and Skype, or asynchronous through e-mail, video, and podcast. Before the start of the online teaching in remote areas of Armenia for young adults, I need to find a teacher in the target area who would be interested to test cohort-based distance learning. To find that teacher I will use my professional as well as friends' network. Once I find the teacher 🙋 who will agree to collaborate,  I will design a curriculum in collaboration with the teacher in the remote area.🚉🚗 Thus, we will go through instructional design, which requires appropriate learning theory with the corresponding methodology, objectives, activities, and assessment (D.Gonzales & R. St. Louis).  This will be a blended classroom learning; part of the teaching will be done by the teacher; face-to-face; I will join the class the last 15 minutes of each class during the period previously agreed with the teacher. To bring something new to the class every last 15 minutes will be only games, to bring some fun to the learning process. This is an important part of the learning process, something that is really missing in our public schools, be it in Yerevan or in remote areas. I will just instruct the learners with the game's rules and the teacher will monitor the game. The main objective of the course will be the development of particularly 2 skills: speaking and listening. Activities, in this case, games will be designed following the objectives.

LessonsLearnedfromTeachingOnline

PLE vs. LMS in EFL Learning

Exploring two platforms for Virtual Learning Environment/ Learning Management System - Moodle and Edmodo, I would prefer using Edmodo for learners aged 12 and lower, as the platform was rather user friendly, more eye catching. Besides, students do not need to create accounts to be enrolled, an important factor we need to take into account in case of teaching English to youngsters. Being a student myself and using Moodle as a University platform for all my courses, in case I teach to 18+ students I would integrate it into the learning process. Moodle seemed to me much more complicated  from the teacher's perspective, but as a student, I have not encountered any obstacles so far. 👍Moodle can be a great platform for University students as the teacher posts on Moodle and the students get notification emails. Thus, instead of writing separate emails to each student, the instructor makes a post and all enrolled in the course are notified. Comparing VLE and PLE I would note that VLE is limiting the student as compared to PLE. In case of VLE, if the student is not enrolled or invited he/she can not access any course, while, in case of PLE the student is the one who makes his/her own choices.
 

NLP Technologies in ICALL

In a rapidly growing world of new technologies and based on the researches done on their effective usage in language learning, Natural Language Processing Technologies must be first considered whether they help meet pedagogical goals and students' needs. First chatbots were mostly constructed around pattern matching, while current ones seem to be more sophisticated, with some natural processing strategies, but still, pattern-matching is predominant. Based on my first-hand experience of chatbots I must say, that my expectation from it was more then what I received. Most probably I overestimated chatbots' ability and creativity as I thought it would interact like a homo sapience. When I wrote my very first question and received a nonsense reply I realized that this could not be a platform where I could get answers to my questions as compared with a google search, this could only be a platform I could practice English with no sense. The sentences provided were correct, can not deny this, but no logic was in any of the replies. In case of wrong or misspelt words, it would either not understand what I meant or did not just answer my inquiry. I would recommend using chatbots to my intermediate level 18+ adults just to make a little fun. They could practice conversation but because of chatbot limitation in the case of multi-clause units, the virtual participant of the conversation may confuse, not get a logical answer, etc. As a teacher, I would first find the best chatbot, which could at least make correct grammar utterances and only integrate those into the curriculum.
To practice some everyday English nouns, as well as key words for the fashion industry an app chatbox called Mona (Shopping Assistant Chat) can be used. The learner can communicate through written messages. She will ask questions and give a lot of information through menus and messages.
I really liked ok google voice speech recognition as it not only provided grammatically correct answers but the replies were logic as well. This can be a great alternative to google search, as instead of writing you just say what you want and get the answer. It handles not grammatically correct inquiries but has limitations: long utterances are not handled.

MALL Activity or Project

As a part of my New Technologies course I was to look for mobile-assisted language learning activity that could be integrated into teaching English. I came across an interesting app called English Grammar. The app can be used in a class of schoolchildren aged 7-8 years with elementary proficiency level. As defined by Kukulska-Hulme, "MALL is defined as the use of mobile technologies in language learning" (Kukulska-Hulme, 2013, p. 3701). What I really liked most of the app is that it has multi activities within one app, it has no time limitation, it contains: fill in the gaps, match the action with picture, choose the correct form, rhyming words. The app does not have mobile device limitations (Principle 1) as it is displayed all over the device. Match the action with picture activity can be used in a classroom, in small groups of 2-3 with only one mobile (Principle 4). Those who do not have mobiles can be paired with the ones who have, thus maintaining equity. The activities are short (Principle 7), e. g. fill in the blanks part contains only 7 parts, 2 sentences on each page, activities are divided into smaller parts. As our children nowadays are mostly familiar with mobile devices no specific guidance or training is necessary (Principle 9). Using this app during a class can be a good fit of the technology and environment (Principle 8). This will be part of the class, but because it will be done by mobile phones, learners will be more pleased to use their routine devices in the classroom. Being a mother of a boy of the age I mentioned above, I would not mind mobile use in the classroom settings (Principle 10). But the teacher must be able to monitor the process and not spend most of the class time on MALL activities.

DGBL

According to Jean Piaget's theories, game integration into learning is a process referred to as "cognitive disequilibrium" (Van Eck, 2006, p. 20). It includes assimilation and accommodation, the former is the attempt of fitting new information into the existing categories, while the latter is the modification of the model in accommodating new information that does not fit into the existing category (Van Eck, 2006).  If a game creates a continuous cycle of cognitive disequilibrium, it strives as teaching tools. (Van Eck, 2006). Being a mother of a schoolboy I chose a game cLLED "Influent" designed for a beginner level learner. The genre of the game is gamified language learning. I tried to play the game by myself but couldn't as I had to pay an annual fee for subscription, but as I went through the description of the game, I am more than sure this can be a great alternative to vocabulary learning activities. The game is designed specifically for those who think that language learning could not be adventurous. This is an apartment where everything is clickable and through scanning the player hears the name of the object in English. The game uses native audio pronunciations and tests the memory through quizzes. Through the game the player comes across over 420 nouns, adjectives and verbs that come along with their synonyms. Because it is a common apartment,  it helps the player to learn the names of the objects that are used in daily life. The game gives the players an opportunity to start listening native pronunciation as well as develop speaking skills. In my opinion this game could be a very adventurous alternative to classroom vocabulary learning activities making the learning more realistic from the students perspective. Since nowadays students are mostly stuck to their digital devices why not integrate and use those gadgets in classroom settings. In case the game is used in the classroom the teacher must be a good observer to notice the errors made by the students. I would not recommend to use this game as a main tool of assessment but rather complimentary to the traditional assessment. Once the teacher decides to integrate games into the curriculum he/she must also consider the psychological aspect of the digitalization: students with low digital literacy may feel uncomfortable using the gadgets during the class. The school must also be equipped with appropriate gadgets.
Most importantly once teacher chooses a game and analyzes it for content, he/she has to decide on the missing and inaccurate content. "Some think this is the teachers' responsibility , some suggest that the more students are responsible for their learning, the more they will learn" (p. 26).