Week 6 and its engaging assignments

        Engaging students has always been a topic dear to me. It is even one of the main reasons why I registered with this course. I have made very clear from the beginning of this course that my students get easily bored with memorizing vocabulary and learning structures. It is true that our masters at the Teachers Training College taught us ways for engaging students: they taught us that we should avoid “one man shows” (this is how we ironically call teacher centered lessons); that we should vary stimuli; that we should challenge students with summary questions through the course; encourage debates among students; alternate be between the course and worksheet for activities.

        However, reading the articles submitted to us this week allowed me to learn that we can also engage students through technology. I was skeptical at the outset because I found that some of the many suggestions in the articles were just not implementable in my teaching environment because of the lack of time and resources. Interactive PowerPoints for instance require long hours of preparation, though they have a very engaging potential. Besides, slide projectors are not available in my school for using PowerPoints in my large classes. Even in the event of my contriving to purchase my own projector, I can’t rely on electricity supply in every classroom. However, I have just seen on the internet that some smartphones are now fitted with built-in projectors. I am very eager to explore this solution because, after reading the article Bestpractices in presenting with PowerPoint and Howto create an interactive quiz using PowerPoint Masters I have understood that I should no longer overlook PowerPoint If I want to increase students’ engagement in my different classes.

        I learned how to design PowerPoints two years ago through tutorials on line. Unfortunately I have never had the opportunity to use my presentations in class because of my particular teaching situation. Creating myinteractive PowerPoint game this week gave me the opportunity to rediscover my lost reflexes.

screen shot of my interactive powerpoint game.

Today, many websites offer free downloadable PowerPoints for teachers. My favourite is ESLprintables.com : It offers powerpoints about almost any topic. You can search by level, age or content. What I like with ESLprintable is that it is a contribution based site: you need to contribute your own PowerPoints if you want to download others’. If your contributions are not liked, you won’t have points for downloading other teachers’ presentations. As a result, ESLprintables is constantly supplied with quality and original presentations. Besides, new comers are offered tutorialsfor creating attractive presentations. A teacher who has basic skills at creating PowerPoints but who is tight on time can find ideas and inspiration on this site for creating presentations adapted to his own needs.