A brilliant talk about TED talks

In this eight-minute talk, Anderson ... clearly [and concisely] spilled the beans about public speaking.

Reference

• Anderson, Chris. (2016, March). TED's secret to great public speaking [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_anderson_teds_secret_to_great_public_speaking 

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Humanizing screen time

Photo by Jabiz Raisdana, 2013.07.18, 
Some rights reserved (CC BY-NC 2.0)

In a recent post on The Principal of Change blog, George Couros highlighted recommendations for children's screen time (AAP, 2018.05.01), and posed three questions to frame thinking about ways to use technology both at home and at school:

When we look at how we are using technology, we have to ask:

1. Is the way we are using technology building connections or severing them?
2. Is this fostering deep learning as well as critical thought and creation, or promoting surface level thinking?
3. Are we modeling our learning, balance, and human connection through our use of technology so we can effectively guide our students?

(Using Technology to Humanize, 2018.11.20)

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Blended Learning and Technology Integration: What's the diff.?!?

In this seven and a half minute, video Jen Jonson (2014) explained and illustrated crucial characteristics of blended learning environments. If her delivery is too fast to follow, toggling on the auto-generated transcripts at YouTube, by clicking on "..." at the foot of the display frame, and reading along may help.

• Jonson, Jen. (2014.01.20). Blended learning and technology integration [YouTube video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/KD8AUfGsCKg

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David Ockert's slides on Self-Determination Theory (SDT)

Many thanks to David Ockert for visiting Kumamoto in September and leading a workshop on SDT for PIGATE! He granted permission to publish his slides not long after the PIGATE newsletter went to print. There are 16 plain vanilla slides (line by line builds) in the Google slideshow below.

If you have comments or questions about any of the topics in his slides, or reflections on any of the tasks that David presented last month, please feel free either to spell them out in comments on this post, or to voice them at the next monthly PIGATE gathering–this coming Saturday, 13 October, 2018.

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Coming soon: Self-determination theory—for young learners and the young at heart!

Creating and implementing interactive tasks based on self-determination theory—for young learners and the young at heart!

By David Ockert, Toyo University

David Ockert’s teaching interests are in critical thinking, reading comprehension, and academic writing. He does research on the influence of technology on affective variables (motivation, confidence, anxiety, and willingness to communicate). 

David also enjoys creative lesson planning for communicative purposes, using a task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach via the three pillars of self-determination theory [SDT]: competence (mastery), relatedness, and autonomy. 

For this presentation, David will focus on self-determination theory-based EFL motives interconnected with competence, relatedness, and autonomy. He will show how all three can be incorporated easily into any level of pedagogy, with a focus on the junior high school level in Japan.

[UPDATE, 2018.09.10: This presentation will be a participatory event with very little lecture. David will lead participants through hands-on tasks, with evaluation of each afterwards, to provide a real-world experience of how and why SDT-based lessons work.]

Date & time

Saturday, September 15, 2018; 13:30–16:30

Venue

Seminar room 10, Faculty of Administrative Studies office wing, Prefectural University of Kumamoto (PUK): Please see PIGATE Meeting Locations (https://goo.gl/h5DgbP) for details.

Attendance plans

Hoping or planning to attend? Please let us know by filling out an attendance form: 

• https://goo.gl/i4GvyN (select: 2018, September). 

If you'd also like to attend an informal networking event afterwards (tentatively 18:30–20:30), please ... add, "Post-function: Yes!" (without quotation marks) along with your email address as Additional info. at the end of the form [2018.09.13: ... ask Paul in person on Saturday whether a seat is still available].

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Does seat-time matter?

Kaichi School, Matsumoto, JP, photographed May 31, 2013,
by Paul Beaufait. All rights reserved.

How much time do students spend in school?

"There is no consistent pattern ... among top-performing education systems. / This suggests that when it comes to student performance, more important than the amount of time students spend in class is how that time is spent" (Craw, 2018 [emphasis in original]).

• Craw, J. (2018 February 22). Statistic of the month: How much time do students spend in school? http://ncee.org/2018/02/statistic-of-the-month-how-much-time-do-students-spend-in-school/

You'll know it when you see it!

Here's an interesting presentation on a language we all know.

• Niemann, Christoph. (2018 April).  You are fluent in this language (and don't even know it) [TED Talk]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/christoph_niemann_you_are_fluent_in_this_language_and_don_t_even_know_it

Vimeo video about what a blog is (Kelly, 2018)

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? START YOUR BLOG! 

from Berwick Lodge Primary School on Vimeo.

A short kinetic typography video that explains what a blog is. 

Please use. Full Creative Commons License. 

Written and Produced by Rob Kelly, 2018

Reference

Kelly,  Rob. (2018). What are you waiting for? Start your blog! Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/258904090

ASCD Express 9.02 - The Why, What, and When of Assessment

ASCD Express 9.02 - The Why, What, and When of Assessment (Tomlinson & Moon, 2013b)

That newsletter article caught my eye this morning in a list of website bookmarks after discussion at an English Café gathering yesterday, in which participants ... considered ... [among other topics]: 

• Assessment practices in elementary school English-as-an-additional language learning activities slated to become mandatory coursework in the next few years (GU, n.d), and 
• Roles of assistant or partner classroom teachers in occasional or routine team-teaching. 

The article is an adaptation of Tomlinson and Moon (2013a, pp. 19-21), in which the authors described assessment of, for, and as elements of differentiated instruction. Tomlinson and Moon argued for assessments to identify differences in: 

• Individual learners' readiness to learn, 
• Their individual interests or passions, and 
• The learning modalities that individuals prefer (2013b, What to Assess, ¶1).

Tomlinson and Moon also outlined various types of assessment to use before, during, and after instructional units, namely: 

• Pre-instructional assessments,
• Formative or ongoing assessments, and
• Summative assessments (2013b, When to Assess, ¶1).

The article concluded with examples of, and purposes for, combinations of formal and informal assessments. Regarding informal assessments in particular, Tomlinson and Moon asserted:

Informal assessments are useful in giving a teacher a sense of what makes a student tick, providing a big-picture look at how the class as a whole seems to be faring at a given moment, and amassing a growing sense of how specific students work in particular contexts (2013b, When to Assess, ¶2).

The first few examples of informal assessments that Tomlinson and Moon mentioned in their article resonated with remarks that the English Café convener made yesterday with regard to what a team teacher could do when not directly involved in instructional activities.

References

General Union [GU]. (n.d.). MEXT's 2018/2020 "New Course Of Study In Foreign Language Education" Plan. [Retrieved 27 March 2018 from] https://goo.gl/sBjXpo

Tomlinson, C. A., & Moon, T. R. (2013a). Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson, C. A., & Moon, T. R. (2013b). The why, what, and when of assessment. Assessment and Differentiation, 9(2). http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol9/902-tomlinson.aspx

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Personal and professional language development

This post displays Google slides [and references] from part two of the PIGATE gathering on March 10, 2018. The presenter's blurb for the program that day read:

In this workshop, participants will make, share, and refine self-assessments, then project and reflect on goals and resources for additional personal and professional language development.

(PIGATE meeting agendas, 2018.03.10)

To find out about what ensued, please ask one or more of the language teachers who took part, ...

... or post questions in comments on this post, where all of the participants can respond.

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The PIGATE Blog's new look

Wondering, you may be, ...

... what happened to the PIGATE Blog. 

Well, it got a facelift today—a new theme chosen for simplicity and readability, and vetted with contributors.

We hope you like the new look, and welcome feedback in comments or reactions on this post.

Clicky Wishes You a Happy Safer Internet Day 2018

A couple days late, but still worth sharing!

Source: https://youtu.be/4hTapDlrP5g (ConnectSafely.org, 2018.02.02)

6 Tips for Going Gradeless (Sackstein, 2018)

Can we do some or all of this?

Sackstein, Starr. (2018.01.30). Six tips for going gradeless. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/F56hTKUk8j4

New presentation resources on the LTD Project Wiki

Here are two of three of today's additions to LTD Project Wiki, SpeakingPresenting page:

Prezi. (2017.07.05). Harvard researchers: Prezi is more engaging, persuasive, and effective than PowerPoint [weblog post]. Retrieved January 17, 2018, from https://blog.prezi.com/university-study/

• This weblog post summarised Harvard researchers ... findings (Moulton, Türkay, & Kosslyn, 2017; above).

Prezi. (2018 [n.d.]). The science of effective presentations [webpage]. Retrieved January 17, 2018, from https://prezi.com/the-science/

• This infographic-style web page represented Prezi-related findings summarised in Harvard researchers ... (Prezi, 2017.07.05; above).

The third addition was the research paper by Moulton, Türkay, & Kosslyn (2017).

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