TEACHERS

Introduction According to Ramachandran (2004), nowadays it is very important to integrate technology in teaching practices for several reasons. One of them is that we live in a digital world. Technology has benefited individuals to get a better understanding of literacy. This is not all individuals have the necessity to develop digital skills for communicating, investigating, computing, etc. An important point of integrating technology on second language teaching processes is that human beings need digital skills not just for scaffolding their own knowledge, but instead for thinking critically about the information they will be in contact with. Throughout the technology use, it is easy for ELL teachers to promote and encourage collaborative learning activities which constitute the basis for Negotiation of Meanings. According to Nogués and Pais (2017), the creation of knowledge depends on the realistic representation of the world derived from our minds to give our own interpretation. That is, meaning construction depends on the interaction of the individual’s context and background with other people. Hence, the outcome form such an interaction is the negotiation of meanings that plays a fundamental role to establish communicative competence. Therefore, human beings create meanings of their own reality and it is subjective. Consequently, comprehension is also built by assimilating the real context through interaction. Students can create comprehension by connecting their prior knowledge of the world so that knowledge needs to happen in real environments where students can negotiate with meanings; therefore, students’ learning experiences derive from activities about their real world. Technology-use is one learning resource from this real world that can effectively be used to make the English learning process continue to happen. Teachers can also experience learning by doing following the constructivism pedagogical approach; that is, they live learning experience, negotiate with meanings so that they can also teach this to their students using technology as part of their teaching methodology. It is expected from teachers to use IPads, tablets or cellphones in this training to be engaged in the design of vocabulary learning activities. The importance of doing so is that most of ELLs spend many hours communicating by this kind of electronic devices. Furthermore, using devices such as IPads promotes a helpful opportunity to keep on learning the second language at the time that students are available. In this way, students can also learn out of the classroom at any time thanks to technology-use. (Brand and Kinash, 2010). The Internet is a necessary tool for the development of these activities every time both activities, vocabulary and blog creation, involve the use of Internet. In both, teachers need to have authorized images to be published in the proprofs slides or in the blog as well. There is a dramatic increase in the English Language Learners (ELLs) in all parts of the world, Mexico is not an exception and this increase also impacts students in public schools. That is, students need to develop the English language communicative competence and to do so teachers need to be updated and trained with effective learning tools like technology to achieve communicative competence. (Coronado, J.M. and Lewis, K.k. 2017) English Language Learning Activities (ELLA) are an important part of the learning process to develop communicative competence derived from meaning negotiation. In addition, social constructivism can be taken into account to achieve communication competence since it emphasizes the value of Social Interaction and cooperative learning in the process of scaffolding images of the real world. One of the most relevant concepts in the Socio Cultural Theory (SCT) is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD is the distance that exists at the level of developmental situation for solving autonomously a problem without any guidance, and the problem solving under adult or more experienced guidance. (Patten and Williams, 20015) Technology has taken an important part in human lives and students live with technology, that is why some researchers have driven their attention to the interaction forms by using technology, as a result, it cannot be denied the fact that through technology there is interaction, even though in this moment it is not relevant to distinguish diversity of technology interactions, it is undeniable technology prompts cognitive interaction, and nowadays teachers have adopted more technologies use in teaching. Furthermore, this project will also review some investigation studies of NM as evidence for communicative competence development in ELLs Rouhshad and Wigglesworth, (2015) conducted a comparative study with the intention to analyze and compare the frequency and quality of efficacious endorsement and modified output. The comparative study was accomplished by means of using two interaction forms: Face to face (FTF) and Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (SCMC). Twenty-four intermediate adult English language learners from a five week intensive course in Australia, from a college, were included in this study. Contributors’ proficiency level was equal to an overall International English Language Testing System (IELTS) score of 5.5. Examiners were focused to answer how happen the incidence of negotiations for form and meaning compared amongst the FTF and written SCMC types with equal-proficiency pairs. The researchers tried to explain too, how the quality of negotiations occurs (positive uptake, and modified output) compared between FTF and written SCMC modes with same proficiency pairs. According to Sadikin and Saleh (2016), teachers can encourage ELLs to engage more in the target language process incorporating the use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) such as media technology – a blog- in their teaching practices. The creation of blogs to learn English can be a more exciting and meaningful experience for ELLs. A blog develops more positive attitude towards ELLs. Besides this, the teacher is also taking into consideration students’ real world along with its demands such as learning through technology. The use of a blog calls students’ attention and heightens their curiosity as the teacher posts a message. In this manner, the inclusion of a blog becomes one of the technology-use learning resources for students to master the English language. In this sense, the use of a blog can help ELLs develop language skills and it represents a great opportunity for teachers to constantly get updated with technology-use and make it part of their teaching practices. In addition, Franklin and Peat (2016) state that using a blog to learn English is one of the innovative alternatives of E-learning which is web based including online course content. Finally, including a blog, as a part of the English language process, is advantageous for ELLs since it is an effective way to exploit and interact with authentic online materials for helping students to learn English from different possibilities in their real world. • Goal: Teachers will develop technological competences to promote English language learning online through the design of digital activities. • Objective 1: Teachers of ELLs will design an English Language Learning activity to enhance vocabulary building using cell phones or tablets. • Objective 2: Teachers will create a web page as part of their teaching process for ELLs and will design a sample activity to enhance the English language learning. Activities: Objective 1: Teachers of ELLs will design an English Language Learning activity to enhance vocabulary building using cell phones or tablets. Activity 1: a) Trainers will organize the teacher of ELLs to work in CLGs. b) Teachers will work on blogger.com to create their own teaching blog. To do so, teachers will be asked to follow the next steps: • Create a Gmail account. • Access to www.blogger.com • Click on create button. • Edit an entrance by headlining it. c) Teachers must create a guessing word game for building vocabulary to upload it in their blog by accessing to www.proprofs.com/games/ using their tablets or cell phones. d) Select jigsaw activities and click on the Create jigsaw puzzle button. e) As a first step, teacher must write a description per each word. Then teachers insert an image for each word. f) Afterwards, teachers verify by solving each image puzzle to guess the accurate word from the corresponding image. g) Once, teachers finish the creation of all puzzle images, they must pick up the URL and insert it in the open window for this activity in the blog. h) Using the cell phones and tablets, teachers will play the role of ELLs to give a practical demonstration of this building vocabulary activity. i) Teachers will be asked to share their strengths and growing opportunities that they could detect during all the process in this training for the interaction to take place. j) Teachers will post their reflections on the Facebook academic group. Activity 2 a) Teachers will be organized in CLG. b) Teachers will see the PPT images and fill in the pre reading section of the reading comprehension worksheet. The teachers will post these comments in “The Cask of Amontillado” window which they will open in their blogs. c) Teacher will read other CLG commentaries. d) Teachers will go to the following link: https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/the_cask_of_amontillado.pdf e) Teachers will restate the sequence of the story in three sentences: • S1: The starting point and rising action. • S2: The climax • S3: Falling action and resolution. f) Teachers will post the three-sentence previous activity in their blogs. g) Teachers will comment about the differences that they found from the sequence of three-sentence activity on the blog. They will provide feedback to the participants for a better comprehension of the story. h) Teachers will share examples of verbal irony and situational irony from the story. To do so, teachers can learn about the definitions of verbal irony and situational irony from the following link: http://literarydevices.net/irony/. They can use their cell phones, tablets or laptops. i) Teachers will write on the post reading section of the worksheet and comment about what they learned, how they learn it and how it will be useful in the future. Resources: Cell phones, PCs, laptops, Internet, Blogger.com, Proprofs, Facebook Personnel involved: Teachers of ELLs and an external agency in charge of conduct the training. Evaluation activities: Blog rubric, interactive activity rubric, reflections post on FAG, reading comprehension worksheet, reading comprehension rubric, PPT rubric, three-sentences plot sequence, blog post, examples of verbal irony and situational irony, and reading comprehension worksheet. Outcomes: Ten blogs for building vocabulary in English, ten Gmail accounts, five sample activity designs for building vocabulary in English from www.proprofs.com/games/, a Facebook academic group, and ten reflections from their partners about the activity on the Facebook academic group. Timeline: A Total of 8 hours during October 2018. Objective 2: Teachers will create a web page as part of their teaching process for ELLs and will design a sample activity to enhance the English language learning. Activity 1: a) Teachers will access to blogger.com and click on the Create tu blog button. b) Teachers will provide their Gmail account to access to the first step of the blog creation. c) Teachers will give a title and presentation for the blog and create an address for the blog. d) Teachers create a new entrance by clicking on the upper left Crear entrada button. e) Teachers must copy and paste the URL of the proprofs building vocabulary activity explained in the objective 1. They must paste it in the corresponding window that is being created specifically for this activity. Each CLG will answer the other CLG created activities in their blogs. h) Teachers will elaborate a reflection of this learning experience including feedback on the strengths and growing opportunity areas. i)Teachers will be asked to post their reflections on the FAG. Activity 2: a) Teacher will be organized to work in CLG b) Teachers will create a web page by accessing to the following link: http://es.wix.com/freesitebuilder/900es?experiment_id=wix%5Ep%5E60445134715%5E1t2&gclid=Cj0KCQjw1dDPBRC_ARIsAJZrQfopo_BZTTIx15b3Ejk_g1AcAkp43Q2j0BNyI7-nzTr15T8KAH2UbogaArp_EALw_wcB&utm_campaign=161792515%5E7957059955&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google c) Once teachers finish the web page, they are asked to design an vocabulary building activity using the word web technique by following the next steps: • Teachers will click on the following link: https://en.islcollective.com/resources/printables/worksheets_doc_docx/at_the_airport/travel-airport-tsa/9350# • Teachers will select a list of twenty words form the text on the link related to airport key vocabulary. • Teachers will design a Power Point Presentation with the selected words from the previous activity. They will include an image for each word to explain its meaning. d) Teachers will create an interactive activity for practicing airport vocabulary. e) Teachers will access to the following link: https://www.educaplay.com/en/registrar.php • Teachers will create an account. • Once they access to educaplay.com activities generator, they will click on the New Activity button on the upper right corner. • They will select Riddle activity and create it by providing the description of each word or concept and a hint or clue for each of them. f) Once teachers finish, they are asked to insert the link in the web page. g) Teachers will play other participants’ game in their web pages. h) Teachers are asked to open a window for Riddle activity comments in which they will post a feedback about the other participants’ activity design i) Teacher will go over their given feedback. Resources: Cell phones, PCs, laptops, Internet, Blogger.com, Proprofs, and Facebook. Personnel involved: Teachers of ELLs and an external agency in charge of conduct the training. Teacher’s feedback. Evaluation activities: Blog rubric, screenshot, refection of this learning experience, teacher’s post feedback on FAG, web page rubric, Power Point Presentation rubric, interactive activity rubric, educaplay.com, screenshot, and web page link Outcomes: Ten blogs for building vocabulary in English, Ten Gmail accounts, a Facebook academic group, and ten reflections from their partners about the activity on the Facebook academic group. Timeline: A Total of 8 hours during October 2018.