Iatefl Online

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/

Teaching English by The British Council

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/

EFL CLASSROOM 2.0

http://eflclassroom.ning.com

Wiziq Tutorial: The Next Best Alternative to Classroom Teaching

Through our VL platform, we can now add a Wiziq event, by choosing it from the ADD AN ACTIVITY menu. Wiziq allows us to teach a synchronous class in a virtual environment.

Wiziq has many advantages compared to other tools for online classes:

• It is fully integrated into our Moodle platform. Therefore, students and teachers do not need to download any software or create another username and password, apart from the one they need for the Moodle Platform.
• Teachers can thus schedule classes through e-Network or start them spontaneously if the student cannot be at the institute in time for the class but can take the class synchronously anywhere else where a computer is available. Teachers will need a computer with headphones and audio in order to teach the online class.
  
• Wiziq integrates audio, video, live chat, whiteboard, emoticons and content sharing into one online live classroom which is as interactive as a physical classroom.
• Whiteboard is a space where basic PAINT style work can be produced with drawing tools, quite similar to the software that we use for the IWB.
  
• The teacher can make students interact by swapping video and / or audio between presenter and attendees.
• Word Documents, Powerpoint Presentation, PDF files, flash files can be easily shared and teachers can annotate on these documents.
• You can also share your computer screen or youtube content through the embedded Media Player.
  
• Students can virtually raise their hand to speak. The teacher has privileged control over the class and can assign video and audio to different students at different times during the class. This is very important in language learning, when students clearly need to interact and use the language in order to learn.
  
• In small group classes, one or two virtual students can be easily taught even if there are one or two students present in the institute for the same class, provided a computer is available and ideally the IWB.
  

Watch the tutorials below.

What is WIZIQ?



Wiziq and Moodle



Read these pieces of advice from the Wiziq website on how to teach foreign languages using Wiziq. Click here.

Another article on Wiziq and Moodle here.

Now get together with a colleague and try Wiziq. One should take the teacher´s role and the other one, the student´s role. For this, you can use any of your courses at e-Network. You might need to give access to your partner teacher as a student if she is not one of the teachers in that class as well. If you have any problems, please get in touch with one of the coordinators. We will be happy to help.

Once you feel confident using WIZIQ, please try it in a regular class in the institute with your business English students, who are likely to cancel many classes due to commuting, so that they are ready for the online class on the event on a cancellation for which they can still be available for a synchronous class, though not in the institute.

Lyrics Training: Excellent Site to Practise your English through Songs

Lyrics Training is an easy and fun method to learn and improve your foreign languages skills like English, through the music videos and typing the lyrics of the songs.

http://www.lyricstraining.com/

The Changing Paradigms of Education

"Most great learning happens in groups. Collaboration is the stuff of growth. If we atomize our students and separate them and judge them separately, we create an disjunction between them and the natural learning environment"