Using English360 to Create Personalized Web-enhanced Learning

[Heike Philp]

Friday, 8 October 2010 - 5pm GMT

RECORDING: http://lancelot.emea.acrobat.com/p80436547/

In this workshop, we will look at how adding blended or online learning components to the lessons we deliver can make our courses more dynamic and ensure that they are more relevant, and therefore more motivating, to our learners. We will outline features that are integral to English360, a web-based learning platform, to illustrate ways of achieving this, and we will discuss broader blended learning pedagogical issues points we look at will be relevant .

The workshop will give you an opportunity to consider:

• the merits of using authentic content provided by your learners (e.g. telephone conversations, emails, company reports and PowerPoint presentations)
• issues raised best practice when sourcing authentic content from the Internet (i.e. respecting fair use and intellectual property )
• how you can motivate learners by encouraging autonomy (e.g. joint monitoring of progress, moderation of forum contributions, providing instant feedback)
• supplementing course content with tailor-made activities created by you or your colleagues via the easy-to-use authoring tools that are freely available for educators.

About Valentina Dodge
Valentina Dodge is Teacher Community Coordinator for English360 www.english360.com – a free web-based platform for teachers. She helps educators provide personalised Business English learning programmes to meet their student and customer needs. She collaborates with and supports Business English language teachers all over the world to help them publish and share lesson and courses for blended or online delivery. She organizes training sessions and support forums on instructional design and blended course organization to allow educators to combine their own materials and lesson plans with high quality course material from Cambridge University Press.

About Emma Watson
Emma has been teaching general and business English, and ESP, since 1993, and holds a Trinity Diploma in ESOL. She is also a qualified teacher of French, Spanish and Italian. Additionally, she has worked in publishing, editing and proof-reading magazines and reports on the computer industry in Europe, French and Spanish AS-Level text books and related interactive activities. She is thrilled to be working with the English360 team; having personally scoured the Net and adapted myriad resources to meet her own teaching requirements, she sees the advent of English360 as very timely, enabling teachers to personalise courses to cater for specific students’ needs, whilst embracing the benefits offered by technology. Her role at English360 involves proof-reading, editing copy, and re-purposing activities for blended learning.

About Brian Anderson
Brian is an educational consultant who helps publishers develop online courseware. An experienced business English instructor and student of languages, he spends most of his time thinking about the role technology can play in catalysing the language-learning process. Brian oversees the conversion of Cambridge University Press titles to the English360 platform and is based in Istanbul, Turkey.

[Valentina Dodge]

Thanks for uploading the recording and for holding this brilliant event.
Great to have taken part and looking forward to more comments from the super educators who came along to our workshop.

Thanks everyone,
Valentina