“Empowered Educators” Workshop for Teachers
27 & 28 August 2012
Crown Plaza Hotel
As part of the component "Professional Development for Internationalizing Education", the British Council organized a 2-day workshop delivered by Dr. Baldev Singh from Imagine Education UK. Attendees were teachers from different Lebanese schools; I was presenting Makassed Khalil Shehab School.
This workshop provided support to teachers to understand how technology impacts the classroom dynamics (pedagogy), motivate students and develop creativity in both the teaching and learning process.
*Workshop Outcomes:
• Create learning activities to support development of 21st century skills (Collaboration, Knowledge building and assessment)
• Increase knowledge of meaningful applications of Information Communication and Technology (ICT) tools in the classroom
• Engage students with professional learning communities through Web 2.0 tools
We were introduced to a set of new tools which allowed us to understand how to develop learning activities which are effective to support learning and development of 21st century skills. A number of Web 2.0 tools were used in the workshop to get teachers think creatively and enhance the learning process. I found it very useful to share with Makassed teachers some new web 2.0 tools presented in the workshop.
- Symbaloo:
It is a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) for teachers to visually organize and share the best of the web with students. Symbaloo allows you to create your own pages with your favorite websites, videos, images, word documents…
You can also access your “Symbaloo” account through your smart phone by downloading Symbaloo App.
- Answer Garden:
Plant a Question, Grow Answers... Answer Garden is a new feedback tool that can be used in your classrooms to motivate students and trigger their prior knowledge.
-Wall wisher:
An online wall that is built for students to write their wishes, feelings, thoughts… Students will post sticky notes on the wall. Create an account www.wallwisher.com
-Online Tests through Your Google account:
Access your Google account → documents → create → forms (in this form you can create several forms of tests such as choose best answer, true or false, open ended questions…) → more actions → embed code ( to embed the test that you just created on your blog or wiki)
- QR Code:
A QR code is a barcode which can be read by webcams and smart phones. When the barcode is scanned, information appears on the phone screen or computer. This information can be text, a web address, an email address or a video. You can generate your own QR codes
You could create a puzzle-solving lesson out of QR codes or you can use these codes as secret messages to the parents. These codes are newly used in books... Example of a QR code:
Download the QR reader App to read the code!
-Educational Games:
Super new educational games www.classtools.net
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.You can create your own Wordle gallery to share with your students especially in English Language sessions.
-Infograph:
A useful tool that sums the lesson up, it can be created using word, PowerPoint, and paint.
Google → cool infographic gallery
