Workshop: Creating a digital educational environment as an effective tool for language education

 

Creating a digital educational environment as an effective tool for language education

Veronika Bebekh,

EFL Teacher,

State educational institution 

"Secondary school No. 4 of Soligorsk"

Our lives are rapidly changing, and so is education, adapting to the demands of the information society. The Internet and information technologies provide opportunities for creating a unified digital educational environment that allows teachers, students, and parents to combine their efforts to develop the creative potential of students.

Creating a digital educational environment includes the use of websites, blogs, electronic services, various online programs and applications. Even social networks and communication platforms can be used to create and manage a digital educational space. It empowers students by making them more interested in their studies and broadening their horizons. Digital learning tools and technologies are filling the gaps where traditional classroom learning is lagging. Digital learning is a step up from traditional teaching methods.

What is the digital educational environment (DLE - Digital Learning Environment)? It is a learner-centric digital environment where learning opportunities and access to educational resources are available anytime, anywhere. Its components include:

1) 21st Century Skills - communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking

2) Digital curriculum (Digital Curriculum) - learning management system, electronic resources, etc.

3) Mobile Devices - laptop or tablet with Wi-Fi and battery life of more than 6 hours.

4) Personalized Learning – the usage of multiple resources and assessment data to customize learning.

Why is it important? This creates opportunities for:

1) Collaboration - students can communicate and collaborate synchronously and asynchronously

2) More timely feedback - digital assessments can provide immediate feedback to improve learning.

3) Differentiation - different learning and teaching styles to meet the individual needs of students.

4) Closing the digital gap - providing equal technology opportunities to all students

5) Engaging all students in high-level learning – students can work at their own pace.

How to implement this?

It is important to understand that successful digital learning environments focus on teaching and learning, not technology. The device or program is a tool for learning, and the teacher facilitates the process and guides each student along the path of individual learning.

Based on my own experience of creating and operating an educational blog, I can say with confidence that maintaining a pedagogical website or blog allows you to create a single information and educational space within all participants in the educational process, accessible anywhere in the world provided there is access to the network.

After analyzing various blogging platforms, I chose the Blogger service on the Google platform.

The goals and objectives of creating a blog are the creation of a unified school and interschool information and communication environment within the framework of blended and distance learning, the presentation of modern information technologies and educational platforms to improve the efficiency of the educational process, the creation of a tool for public interactive discussion of school issues and problems in English to involve students in the process of foreign language communication.

Educational blog ( https://superenglishwithveronika.blogspot.com/ ) , created using the Blogger service on the Google platform, within its operation has acquired regular readers, has feedback and already has more than 800 publications of original materials: author's tests, multimedia assignments, audio and video materials, lesson plans, announcements of international conferences, comments, methodological recommendations for teaching English.

Structurally, the blog consists of pages (Home, CPD, Online Video Conferencing, The English Language Olympiad, 10th grade, 11th grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade English Traditions&Amazing Facts, ExamTopics, Exam Cards, Students’ Projects, Functional English, Grammar, Listening, Speaking и т.д.), which are constantly updated and used both in training sessions in the blended learning format and for repetition at home as part of distance learning.

To learn new vocabulary and language units, flashcards are created on the educational platform Quizlet and embedded in the blog, so students do not need to register on another platform. In this case, the “flipped classroom” approach is used, when students learn new grammar or language material at home using multimedia files embedded in the blog, and are ready to use and reinforce the learned material during the lesson.

Ability to embed tests (Microsoft Forms, Quizlet, GoConqr, Google Forms, Learning apps, Wordwall, H5P, Udoba, Opinion Stage и т.д.) allows you to consolidate material and check it remotely in a fun way. 

The comments feature built into the blog is used by students to develop writing skills, gives students a real audience to whom they can write, and, when optimized, a collaborative environment (built-in Padlet and Jamboard for sharing text messages, photos, links, app on creating online Google Slides presentations) where they can give and receive feedback. 

Based on my own experience using an educational blog, I can confidently say that students' English improves and they become more attentive in web publications as a wider audience (including peers) can view and read their work.

Over 5 years, the blog was viewed about 450,000 times, which shows students’ interest in the blog’s content and confirms the correctness of the chosen approach to create a digital educational space and, as a result, to increase students’ motivation to learn English and improve the quality of learning.

Based on my own experience, I would especially like to note the advantages of the digital educational environment for users (students, parents, teachers, colleagues):

• the first and most important advantage of the educational space is its use as an e-learning tool. In this way, the teaching-learning process can continue outside the classroom;

• ease of setup and administration, unlike other technologies;

• simplified publication of all types of resources (text, images, videos, hyperlinks, etc.) on the Internet compared to traditional sites;

• instant one-click publishing: Blogs are easy to create and maintain, unlike traditional web pages, which are labor intensive and require at least some web design knowledge (HTML, CSS, JavaScript);

• update from anywhere without worrying about web development software, etc.;

• reaching a large audience without losing the quality of information;

• 24/7 (anytime, anywhere) access to information posted on the blog;

• no special software is required to create a digital educational space, which allows the teacher to create and maintain a blog without knowing HTML. Moreover, the teacher can focus on the content without worrying about periodic archiving or the exact recording time;

• use of other platforms together. For example, using Wikipedia as a tool for group writing and knowledge sharing, etc.

What does the digital educational environment give to the student? First, such a system helps to establish connections between students with different opinions and interests. This encourages critical thinking and teaches respect for other students' points of view. The digital learning space makes it easier to share knowledge and information, and comment discussions encourage higher-level thinking because students can think before responding or writing, support teamwork and group learning, and encourage informal communication, creativity, and self-expression. The final assessment is faster and easier: the teacher can evaluate how students participated and developed during the course. The digital learning environment created is also attractive in the sense that teenagers in general want to be able to share their experiences and feelings, and this digital learning environment gives them the opportunity to do this in a simple, interactive way. Leveraging the digital educational space through new technologies better prepares students for the current job market. Teacher and students teach and learn together.

In conclusion, I would like to note that the creation of a digital educational space has become a way of self-expression and one of the methods of realizing one’s own professional competence, as it opens up incredible opportunities for self-education and development for participants in the educational process.