When you open your mind, you open new doors to new possibilities for yourself and new opportunities to help and teach others

I attended a two-week course on using technology in language classes. The course took place in Dublin, Ireland from 15 October to 26 October 2018. The organizer, Alpha College of English, offered a high-quality programme that combined 44 hours of Using Technology in the Classroom lessons and 14 hours of Cultural Visits. Nine teachers from five European countries took part in the course. Besides Croatia, there were teachers from Poland, Bulgaria, Germany and The Czech Republic. Our tutors were Mick Leonard, Katie Grieg and Rachel Dowling.

The course focused on learning how to choose and use web tools appropriately and creatively. I found Piktochart - a simple web application for designing infographics very useful and easy-to-use. There are many ways primary school children can use it to present their ideas in a creative way. I think my favourite tool was a user-friendly cartoon maker - Pixton.

We also learned about digital literacy, being safe online and how to identify and deal with some technical issues that can cause big problems and paralyze teachers in the classroom. One of the tasks was to create a page in a gossip magazine using Google Docs. It was a team building exercise in which we all became aware of how important communication is. We also did a field trip to The National Gallery in Dublin. We got tasks to do before the visit. We were given 8 painings to focus on, write what we know about them (artist, period...), listened to stories about them in the Gallery, and then report on them at home (google the details if we couldn't remember). 

We spent three days learning about Flipped Classroom method. I think it is a good way to bring more practice time into our classrooms. The teacher shares a link and gives homework before the actual lesson. For example, we watched a video about Mick's childhood memories. In the video he told us a story about his favourite toys and friends. Most of the time he used would and used to. These are the language structures he wanted his students to learn to use. Clear grammar explanations follow with all the example sentences from the video. Then, students filled in the gaps with would and used to. All the sentences in that task  were from the video. Once in the classroom, homework is checked first and then the teacher monitores the speech production exercises. In pairs, students share their childhood memories using would and used to. 

Quizlet, lyricstraining, google forms, cloze generator, that quiz, puzzlemaker, powtoon, kizoa, animoto, audacity, screencastomatic, tourbuilder, geoguesser,padlet, flipgrid, plickers, storybird, canva, google classroom.... are the tools we had a chance to use. Today, when there are sooo many tools to choose from it is helpful to get some guidance on the topic. 

I opted for a homestay accomodation and it was a perfect choice. I could practice my English and gain an insight into Irish everyday life and culture that no book could teach me. 

                                                                                    Darija Klepec