AAWC Students Inspired to Participate with Clubs Festival Day

The HCT-Al Ain Women’s College (AAWC) hosted a Clubs Festival Day to advertise existing clubs to students and to provide the opportunity to promote new clubs.

Representatives from each club discussed their main activities and displayed objects of interest to students who could sign up on the spot.

The college clubs have always provided invaluable opportunities for students to practice extra-curricular activities during their common hours developing their skills and broadening their cultural awareness.

In addition to AAWC’s Ambassadors and Student Council Association being present to discuss their roles, the following nine clubs participated in this year’s festival:

• Korean Club
• Art Club
• Media Club
• Music Club
• Emirati Slang for Faculty Club
• Board Games Club
• Book Club
• Organic Farming Club
• Arabic Business Communication Club

As always, the student-initiated clubs are greatly encouraged by the students and organisers alike.

The Flipped Classroom Models

What follows is an explanation of the Flipped Classroom Model, a model where the video lectures fall within a larger framework of learning activities. It provides a sequence of learning activities based on the learning theories and instructional models of Experiential Learning Cycles – http://reviewing.co.uk/research/learning.cycles.htm and Bernice McCarthy’s 4MAT Cycle of Instruction- http://www.aboutlearning.com/what-is-4mat/what-is-4mat.

The Flipped Classroom Model

Experiential Engagement: The Activity

The cycle often begins with an experiential exercise.  This is an authentic, often hands-on learning activity that fully engages the student.   It is a concrete experience that calls for attention by most, if not all, the senses.

Conceptual Connections: The What

Learners are exposed to and learn concepts touched upon during Experiential Engagement.  They explore what the experts have to say about the topic.  Information is presented via video lecture, content-rich websites and online text/readings.  In the case of the flipped classroom as it is being currently discussed, this is the time in the learning cycle when the learners view content-rich videos.  This is where and when videos such as those archived by Khan Academy, Neo K-12, Teacher Tube, or other video services are used to help students learn the abstract concepts related to the topic being covered.

Meaning Making: The So What

Learners reflect on their understanding of what was discovered during the previous phases.  It is a phase of deep reflection on what was experienced during the first phase and what was learned via the experts during the second phase.

Demonstration and Application: The Now What

During this phase, learners get to demonstrate what they learned and apply the material in a way that makes sense to them. This goes beyond reflection and personal understanding in that learners have to create something that is individualized and extends beyond the lesson with applicability to the learners’ everyday lives.

TACON 2015 | The 21st TESOL Arabia International Conference and Exhibition | Dubai, UAE

Welcome Message from the 2015 Conference Co-Chairs

Dear Colleagues, Members and Supporters of TESOL Arabia,

Welcome to the 21st International TESOL Arabia Conference and Exhibition – the biggest conference and exhibition of its type in the region – and welcome back to all those who are regular attendees. Over the years the TESOL Arabia International Conference and Exhibition has become the “must-attend” event in the ELT field for delegates and exhibitors alike.

The 2015 theme, “Theory • Practice • Innovation • Teaching and Learning in the Digital World,” seeks to explore the myriad ways in which we pursue the goals of our profession. To this end the conference will present once again a wide range of international speakers, all outstanding in their fields. These presenters will provide excellent sessions both in the main conference itself and also on the Certificate Courses taking place on Wednesday 11th March as well as  Saturday 14th March. Details of the courses will be available in September. On offer will be a Young Learners course, a teacher preparation IELTS course, and a hands-on iPad training course.

We are returning to the Hyatt Regency Hotel for the third year running because we anticipate that our annual conference will be priced out of hotels the closer we get to Expo 2020 and may have to be held in educational institutions for two or three years in a row. We again look forward to benefiting from the friendliness and efficiency of the hotel staff and have taken some strategic initiatives to ensure an enhanced food and parking experience for conference attendees.

2015 Program Co-Chairs

Konrad Cedro

Christine Coombe

Naziha Ali

TACON 2015 Program

proposals@tesolarabia.org

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The 2014 Conference received a record number of break-out session proposals resulting in a quality program of speakers from within the region and further afield. We fully expect Conference 2015 to live up to and even surpass the high standard set last year. In line with that, we are accepting proposals for 5 different types of break-out sessions, regular paper presentations, short interactive workshops, shorter moderated sessions on research, teaching ideas, or app sharing themes, and 2 poster break-out sessions, one for regular presenters and one especially for student teacher projects and teachers in training. We also hope to offer several 90-minute practical workshops led by educational professionals in our field such as: Classroom Management and Behavioral Issues in the Classroom, Designing and Distributing Digital Badges, MOOCs, and Writing Successful Thesis.

There will be free Wifi Internet access for all participants, more and larger break-out rooms (some with improved soundproofing), as well as improved facilities for the Job Fair. We are also going to introduce for the first time, a complete one-stop downloadable conference app. Another exciting initiative is the introduction of TESOL Arabia digital “badges” for presenters, attendees, and organizers.

The conference will of course include all of the usual features for which TESOL Arabia is known: the Job Fair, Exhibition, PechaKucha (20×20), Discussion Forums and the Showcase Strand, as well as our very popular conference bags which we hope to outsource to a community trade project in Nepal.

Finally, we would like to extend a very warm vote of thanks to all our Sponsors, Exhibitors, Recruiters, Advertisers, Speakers and Presenters, as well as all other participants and supporters for making the TESOL Arabia Conference the major event it is today.

Managing Education in the Digital Age

Download a sample of the book to see if it may be of use to you – if you are thinking about running online courses, or if you already do, but would like some advice, suggestions and guidelines on how potentially to do it better

Anglo-American Conference For Academic Disciplines, London, England. November 3-7, 2014

My presentation at London University.

Digital native and digital immigrant teacher talk in a mobile classroom The Abstract: https://prezi.com/9xo6ouvzjvf7/digital-natives-and-digital-immigrants-in-a-paperless-classr/

As the variety and importance of IT continues to grow, the educational institutions try to look up-to-date by utilizing technology educationally. A tertiary level college in Al Ain, the United Arab Emirates was one of the sixteen colleges to implement Apple iPad tablet in Foundations language learning program in 2012, hence turning the traditional classroom into paperless. This change was experienced as a threat by majority of college teachers, whereas; it was welcomed by majority of students. Prensky (2010) would explain this phenomenon by classifying today’s teachers as digital immigrants as opposed to today’s students who are supposedly digital natives. The aim of this study was to explore the nature of technology oriented classroom language, focusing specifically on the linguistic repertoire between teachers and learners in a language learning classroom. To identify common or unique features of speech accommodation in a paperless classroom and to show how they affect teachers’ speech behaviors, case study was used as a qualitative enquiry.

 

Free Apps for Vocabulary Learning

The opposites – Students need to pair up antonyms appearing on their screens. Presented with the written and spoken forms of a word, they need to scan the screen looking for its opposite.

Hidden Objects –  Students need to locate a list of items in a crowded picture. This works well if a theme such as Home Sweet Home or Summer Escape matches unit or writing themes. Students can produce their own picture dictionaries by taking a screen shot of a scene and annotating the pictures in Skitch.