Off Line Tools

Choose Your Own Adventure

To start with, I would like to mention one of my best experiences using Off-line tools inside the classroom. The project is called "Choose Your Own Adventure" and it only requires several Word documents and hyperlinking. (If you want to learn how to hyperlink, visit: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUTOkWK8Xec&t=20s

The idea in this lesson is to guide students through the process of writing a “choose your own adventure” story. This type of story is interactive as it allows the reader to make choices for the characters. The format of this text would generally consist of a page of events in which characters come to a point that they can make a choice as to what to do next (i.e. which door to go through, continue or go back, open a chest or leave it alone…). In this type of story, the reader makes the choice for the characters by turning to the appropriate page. For example, to go through the blue door turn to page 29; to go through the red door turn to page 17. In this way, the reader is interacting with the text. This type of story has a variety of endings; the ending that is read depends on the choices that the reader makes for the characters. In this lesson, students will be exposed to this type of story first, then they will go through the steps of writing one of their own. Of course, this story can be printed out and set up similar to a printed book. However, using Microsoft Word, the pages can be hyperlinked, which creates the added thrill of reading the story on the computer. I learnt of this tool attending Multimedia at UTN and Marina Falasca, our teacher, taught us how to work with it. I myself created "The Story of a Tree," which I will soon UPLOAD for you to have a look at. I am quite comfortable with the final product and how my own students reacted to it. 

CD-ROMs

YES. I still use CDs in some of my lessons. Eventhough everything seems to have evolved as regards technology, books still come with a CD attached to them. 

For the typical listening activity, I resort to this "old" tool. I know it is much better to save all the recordings in a flash or, even better, in a cloud but, unfortunately, I don't know how to do that and I am always afraid of losing it all in the cloud. I think that the CLOUD gives me this sense of having things out of your control.


FLASHCARDS

Flashcards inside the classroom increase the students' memory and reduce the effort it takes to study and learn new concepts. They are a naturally-effective, super simple and super-cheap system that all serious hugh-school students should have in their study arsenal and they should practice it regularly any time they need to memorize specific bits of information. https://www.lovethesat.com/flashcards-high-school

Personally, I make them do their own flashcards  at home. I subdivide my classes at the very beginning of the year and, each week, a different group of students is in charge of collecting lexical items covered in class. They have to create their own flashcards using cardbox


POWERPOINT 

This program is uses to prepare presentations. Personally, I encourage my students to prepare their own presentations using this program or any other off line tool so that they can successfully deliver their presentations even when there is no internet connection. 

I have also used it to prepare my own lessons. Sometimes, it is much better to prepare the explanation of a topic on a more dinamic way by delivering  the lesson with a powerpoint presentation that contains loads of visual material and videos, which arouse motivation and prevents apathy and lethargy.

When used effectively, PowerPoint can really enhance teachers and students presentations and it also improves the overall comprehension of students since you can include as many examples as you like.

I also gives you the possibility of saving time in class since the teacher can focus on the class and interact with the students istead of writing on the board, because the text and the entire presentation have already been written. 

Here are some great websites and resources that can give educators great tips on how to use PowerPoint in the classroom effectively and continue to expad the role of presentations in keeping classroom lectures interesting:



https://www.investintech.com/resources/freetools/freepowerpointtemplates/

http://www.actden.com/pp/

https://www.slideshare.net/paulwill/powerpoint-for-teachers

http://www.sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/cte/index.php


BOARD GAMES

I really enjoy introducing board games into my lessons since they make a change from the normal routine and can be easily adapted to cover any grammar topic you are teaching.  They require little preparation (adaptation) 

In my lessons, I use UPWORDS: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1515/upwords

 This game is very similar to Scrabble. Students use their collection of letters to build words on the crossword style grid. Unlike Scrabble, in Upwords players can place letters on top of existing letters to change a word that is already on the board.