Welcome to our blog!

Welcome!
This is our first post for our blog 'Teaching persuasive language with technology'.
We would like to introduce ourselves before you explore our blog.
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JESS

Hi! I'm Jess this is my fourth and final year of bachelor of Secondary education/arts.

My major is English and sub major is history. My goal at the end of this year is to gain a full time teaching position within my two teaching methods.

BREE

Hi! I'm Bree, also in my last year of preservice teaching.

My two methods are Psychology and English. I have a passion for psychology as it is a hands on subject. I hope to get full time employment in teaching after university.

LUCA

Hi! I'm Luca aka Mr Di Stefano.

I have finally come to the end of my teaching degree majoring in Psychology and English. I either plans to teach full time or travel the world .

Our Blog!

We have designed our lessons to you in the space of a blog to enable a space for communication and open discussions.


we have desinged this blog to share activities with fellow pre-service teachers, teachers, university lecturers, and students on using ICT in the English classroom to teach issues from year 7-12. The activities we have designed can be adapted and redesigned to suit any classroom, teaching and learning style.

Please feel free to explore our blog and have a go at designing your own version of the activities.

Please leave comments to any post!


Learning styles:



Colour = Visual learners












Video = Visual and
auditory learners














Computers and mobiles = Kineasthetic







Information technology is becoming essential to teachers' continued ability to their jobs well, and to students' future success in a world where computer literacy is becoming as universal and essential as print literacy. ( Heide & Henderson, pg 7, 2001)

Lesson One- Introduction

"Teachnology can be used to enhance instruction and expand the limits of existing curriculum. A an information tool, it can be ised to obtain, organise, manipulate and communicate knowledge and information. It can help to adress the range of differning learning styles and the different modalities of individual learning strengths. By tapping into it's power, students can expand their access the world around them." ( Heide and Henderson, pg 5, 2001)


When teaching persuasive language in English classes it can often be mundane and repetitive, especially when teaching students persuasive devices in language, such as alliteration, tone, rhetorical question, and expert opinion.

One way to introduce content of persuasive language and devices to students which enables opportunity to arouse interest from students is by using interactive multimedia such as the internet, Power Point presentations, real time polling, and Youtube.

We have designed two English classes using the concept of using technology to engage students in learning. The two classes we have designed are centred around introducing students to newspaper articles and the contention or the main viewpoint of an argument, and furthering students knowledge of persuasive devices and revising prior learning on devices.

ENJOY!...

Lesson one- Wordle

Our first lesson is introducing the persuasive device CONTENTION to students.

We do this by selecting a newspaper article from an online newspaper site, such as The herald sun http://www.heraldsun.com.au/

From here we start to get CREATIVE by designing a Wordle activity to teach students about contention.



By using the Wordle http://www.wordle.net/ to teach students contention, we are moving away from the text book and using an online environment to engage the students in their learning.

We have given the websites that we believed were best to introduce and engage our students by using internet websites, please refer to upcoming posts for information on implementing your lesson.

Wordle the new technology

"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends." (Feinberg, 2009)

Instructions to construct your own wordle:

1. Select topic/issue from advised website http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ to be used to teach and engage students about contention.
2. Go to http://www.wordle.net/
3. Select CREATE on wordle then copy and paste your chosen article in box provided.
4. Select GO
5. You can select edit options to indivdualise wordle eg: add more words to manipulate size of words, font and colour
6. Save to public space to access
7. Print or view wordle on laptops

We have created a Wordle on the topic 'Should the Hijab be banned in Australia' using the following article from the Daily Telegraph http://xrl.us/bhk6py (Link to www.dailytelegraph.com.au)

Please click on the following link to view our created Wordle http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2020316/EET330_issue

Lesson plan:

Introduction:

Introduce students to topic of issues in the media. Students have previously learnt persuasive devices in English in prior lessons. From their knowledge of newspaper articles such as letter to the editor, opinion piece and feature article, students will now look at contention (the main point of an argument). Instead of presenting students with a traditionally written article, they are presented a representation of an article through a 'word cloud'

10min

Body:

1. teacher to explain Wordle activity to students and arrange them into pairs to complete activity
2. give students print out copy of created Wordle (so they have a copy to paste into their workbooks
3. students will work together and collaborate their ideas regarding the word cloud article. They are required to peice together the limited informaiton to formulate the contention of the article
4. after formulating the contention, students will write a short 200 word piece (individually) on what they believe the article is about
5. after writing time teacher will run class discussion to collaborate whole class ideas, writing student's ideas as a mind map (or other visual representation on board)
6. following discussion, teacher reveals contention of article and hands out photocopied original article to students to paste alongside Wordle

50 min

Conclusion:

After students have completed work in pairs, teacher collects student's work book with the finished work which will be marked satisfactory/not satisfactory. Pack up classroom

10 min

The importance of Wordle

When visual technology is used well, it can have a marked effect in improving childrens learning. (Gordon, pg20, 2003)



Having powerful visual stimuli in new technologies is extremely beneficial for engaging student in the classroom especially catering to the different learning styles. (Heide & Henderson, pg 10, 2001)

Assessment of Wordle

The students will be assessed against the following criteria:

1. The ability to identify the main contention L M H *
from the Wordle

2.Ability to negotiate, listen and engage L M H
in class discussion

3. Ability to engage in class discussion L M H

4. Inferring information from limited data L M H

5. Correct spelling, grammar, punctuation. L M H

*L= Low, M= Medium, H= High

Lesson Two- Introduction

Welcome to lesson 2!

Since teaching students contention with Wordle, one class has lapsed where students where introduced to different persuasive devices that they will be required to use to annotate feature articles from newspapers. Following on from their intorduction to persuasive devices such as pun, rhetorical question, statistics and exaggeration, students will be testing their knowledge of persuasive devices by completing an interative quiz to guage their knowledge.


Students will complete an online interactive quiz through http://www.polleverywhere.com, where they are presented examples of persuasive devices from newspapers, and are given multiple choice selections of persuasive devices; only one being correct.

Persuasive devices using Polleverywhere

Instructions to create your own Polleverywhere:

1. go to http://www.polleverywhere.com/ to sign up to your free account (polling under 30 people)


2. opening page provides information on who and why people use polleverywhere


3. once you have signed up for your free account you can start creating your polls


4. put in information, then customise your graph/chart

POLLEVERYWHERE INSTRUCTION SLIDES (available on website)


Lesson Plan:

Introduction:

As students will be learning different persuasive devices that they will use to annotate feature articles. The way the students will be learning different persuasive devices and revising them will be through interactive quizzes using Polleverywhere. Instead of using traditional written multiple choice questions on printed paper, students can see real time polling in the classroom anonymously.

10min

Body:

1. Teacher explain Polleverywhere activity to students and the importance of revising persuasive devices and being able to recognise examples
2. set students up with their mobiles to they are compatible and go through polling instructions with students
3. present the online polling questions to students, where students will answer what they believe is the correct response to the example- this is an anonymous process and information is updated in real time; shown in a graph
4. after polling each example teacher and students are involved in discussion about the selected device eg: why was it the correct answer? why not?
5. students will then fill out information regarding persuasive device the definition (written on board collaboratively) and the example given; students will also have to create their own definition

50min

Conclusion:

after students have completed work in their book teacher ill go around and mark books off with satisfactory/ not satisfactory, ensuring students have completed work. students will be assessed on their involvement in class discussion and interactive polling. Pack up classroom

10min

Below are links to our created Polleverywhere questions

http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/LTcxNjYxMjQ5NA

http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/LTE5OTQxNDA2ODk

http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/LTEzODA2ODA5NjM

http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/LTE5MDgxODgwNTc

Importance of Polleverywhere

Using technology in the classroom can; improve students acquisition of math, reading and writing skills; motivate students; broaden curriculum objectives; enable teachers to strengthen their own preferred approaches; better prepare students for the workplace; and update education for the 21st century. (Gordon, pg 9-10, 2003)

Assessment of Polleverywhere

Students will be assessed to the following 4 criteria:

1. Ability to identify the persuasive L M H *
techniques (contention, tone, analogies, etc)

2. Relevant & Valuable contribution L M H
to class discussion; including
suggesting Ideas or strategies for
improving analytical skills

3. Ability to demonstrate reflection L M H
on task; including areas of improvement
and aspects of enjoyment

4. Ability to use the technology L M H
appropriately

* L= Low, M= Medium, H= High

Pedagogies for teaching with technology

Specific types of software can be used to engage each of Gardner's multiple intelligences:

The following are relevant to our lessons;

Linguistic:Word games and prompted writing programs.

Logical mathematical: mobiles phones

Spatial: Reading programs that use visual cues.

Musical: software programs such as youtube.

Kinaesthetic: Software requiring alternative input devices.

Interpersonal: Group games, online communication.

Intrapersonal: Self paste programs (Heide & Henderson, pg11, 2001).

One of the main pedagogical inputs for the above two lessons was constructivism. "Constructivism is probably the dominant learning approach in teaching with technology. The philosophy behind constructivism is that learners construct their own knowledge, based on their experience and relationship with concepts". (Weller, pg65, 2002).

Constraints of using technology to teach

The main implications teachers may face teaching with new technologies:
-Restricted or Internet access (crash)
-Cyberbullying
-Students not staying on task
-No access to computers
-No access to mobile phones
-Printer not working
Despite the implicit implications, there are many benefits of teaching with new technologies:
-Caters for all learning styles
-reach a wide audience
-Engages students
-Information easily accessed

Thank you and good luck... a final chapter

Thank you for reading our blog. We hope you have gained a sense of the way different technologies can be used to teach persuasive language in English. During the process of

creating this blog we have learnt a lot about ourselves as future educators. We engaged

in many discussions regarding the versatile and ever changing nature of technology. We encountered many difficulties, however we acknowledged that using new technologies would become easier with practice. The process of creating this blog was like building a house. We set firm foundations and put in a lot of work, and now that it is finished, our work is here and accessible. So, while it took a lot of time and energy to complete, we, and other teachers and students, can easily access this and implement it at any stage in the future. And that is pretty amazing.

References we used to create our blog!

Abrams, P & Lockard, J. (2000) Computers for 21st educators (5th ed.). Northern Illinoise University, Longman, New York.

Gordon, D. (2000) The Digital Classroom- How technology is changing the way we teach and learn. The Harvard Education Letter, Cambridge, MA.

Henderson, D & Heide, A. (2001) Active Learning in the Digital Age Classroom. Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.

Roblyer, M, Edwards, J & Havriluk, M. (1997) Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching. Prentice-Hall, New Jersey.

Weller, M. (2002) Delivering Learning on the Net- the whu what and how of online education. Routledge, Abingdon.

Wong, R. (2008) Web-based learning and teaching and its educational worth. Equilibrian Books, Mandurah, WA, Australia.