DESIGNING A COURSE FOR SIGNIFICANT LEARNING

Our students’ learning experience and the long-term effect of our teaching depend greatly on how the course is designed and whether students succeed to develop their understanding and application of concepts and skills. This talk takes a look at the design of the course aiming to prepare student teachers to integrate ICT effectively across the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) curriculum. ICT have become an essential literacy skill for non-native teachers of English. But as teachers of English, they are asked to demonstrate not just a completion of a degree but a skillful integration of technology tools in their classroom practices. Student teachers are taught how to integrate technology into their teaching in various ways. I will demonstrate how active learning instructional strategies are used to afford exposure to a range of Web 2 tools and their uses in teaching and learning. I will share the components of the course and provide examples of the assignments. One of the objectives of the course is to design a unit on teaching digital citizenship putting an emphasis on fighting cyberbullying. Students collect suitable for relevant age group resources and create a database using Web 2 tools. The course gives the student teachers capability to plan, carry out and evaluate their own learning unit. The talk will focus on the tools and strategies that are used to create an engaging learner experience in designing a learning unit. This experience will be described from the perspective of a teacher trainer and student teachers.