This is a professional development project to support interactive approaches to language teaching with technology. It takes a collaborative action research approach with researchers, teachers and learners of all ages to create open educational resources to support language teachers in integrating a variety of new technologies into effective communicative and task-based language teaching. It aims to: a) involve project teachers in in-depth and ongoing collaboration and reflection on how language teaching can promote language acquisition; and b) create e-resources including technical manuals and examples of technology-mediated teaching practice, developing an online community of practice to explore and record innovative practice in language teaching using technology. This project builds on the highly successful 28-month project iTILT (interactive Technologies In Language Teaching) funded by the European Lifelong Learning Programme (KA2 Languages), focusing on the interactive whiteboard (IWB) for teaching foreign languages. The consortium of 7 educational institutions and companies produced teacher education resources (training manual and pedagogical materials), trained teachers of 6 languages in four educational sectors (primary, secondary, higher and vocational), filmed classes of 44 teachers using the IWB, and developed an open educational resource which includes over 250 video clips of IWB-mediated language teaching in 7 countries (http://itilt.eu). The iTILT project scored 9/10 in EU evaluations covering deliverables and project management. With this background, the new project builds on: a) a well-designed open educational resource whose platform meets stringent technical standards and is immediately available for extension; b) solid research results which derive from classroom contexts closely related to the classes in the new project, and c) an experienced team with complementary skills and a successful 4-year collaboration in hand. It is our belief that a project which develops and extends our existing work can further support language learners and teachers in making the most of the acquisitional opportunities offered by educational technologies. The new three year project will move beyond the IWB to focus on developing effective teaching and learning of second languages with a much wider range of new and emerging interactive technologies (such as iPads, tablet PCs, learner response systems, and videoconferencing software) both independently and in combination. The data collection/professional development cycle will include extensive teacher development involving researcher input and peer collaboration using face-to-face and online spaces, followed by two iterations of classroom filming and participant interviews. The data collected will be integrated into an extended version of the existing iTILT website, and involve new professional development e-resources for pre-service and in-service language teachers and teacher educators. The project team will use the approach developed and refined during the first project based on collaborative action research involving video stimulated reflective dialogue (VSRD) to include teacher and learner perspectives and ensure that the project is grounded in current classroom practice but also reflects the research team’s expertise in effective language teaching with technology. The data collection carried out by the partners covers three sub-programmes: tertiary education (TK, FR, DE), primary (UK, FR, DE) and secondary (BE, FR) schools. We will cover the following languages: English, French, Welsh and Turkish. The web portal, the tags, the professional development e-resource, the references to external IWB-related language and educational materials will available in English, French, German, Dutch and Turkish. We will collect data from language teachers for English, French, Turkish and Welsh.
Context/background of the project This professional development project supports interactive approaches to language teaching with technology. It took a collaborative action research approach with researchers, teachers and learners of all ages creating open educational resources to support language teachers in integrating a variety of new technologies into effective communicative and task-based language teaching. The project: a) involved project teachers in in-depth and ongoing collaboration and reflection on how language teaching can promote language acquisition; b) used on this work to create a new multi-lingual open education resource [OER) website portal (www.itilt2.eu) with videos of real classroom practice; c.) created associated e-resources and library including examples of technology-mediated teaching practice, d.) piloted an online community of practice to explore and record innovative practice in language teaching using technology. The iTIL2 project built on the highly successful iTILT (interactive Technologies In Language Teaching) funded by European LLPs (KA2 Languages), which focused on using the interactive whiteboard (IWB) for teaching foreign languages. Extensive resources, including videos from real classrooms, were hosted on the original project website (www.itilt.eu). With this background, iTILT2 built on a well-designed open educational resource and an experienced team with complementary skills & a successful collaboration. The iTILT2 project developed and extended our existing work and further supported language learners and teachers in making the most of the acquisitional opportunities offered by educational technologies. iTILT2 moved beyond the IWB to focus on developing effective teaching & learning of second languages with a much wider range of new and emerging interactive technologies (such as iPads, tablet PCs and videoconferencing software), both independently and in combination. The data collection/professional development cycle included extensive teacher development involving researcher input and peer collaboration using face-to-face and online spaces, followed by two iterations of classroom filming and participant interviews. Objectives The objective of iTILT2 was to promote effective foreign language teaching and learning by supporting teachers in their integration of a variety of interactive technologies into communicative classroom practice. This was achieved by producing a multilingual web site, hosting videos and other project resources for the professional development of primary, secondary, and higher education teachers and lecturers. Number and profile of participating organisations There were 6 partners (2.1 below), all of whom had worked together previously on the first iTILT project. The team had a very wide range of expertise, including university teaching, research, teacher-training, consultancy and skills in dissemination. Description of undertaken main activities We used an approach developed & refined during the first iTILT project based on collaborative action research, involving videoing classroom teaching and video stimulated reflective dialogue to include teacher and learner perspectives. This ensured the project was grounded in current classroom practice, but also reflected the research team’s expertise in effective language teaching with technology. This collaborative approach was used throughout the project & was a strong feature. We organised 3 multiplayer events to promote the project, findings & resources. Results and impact attained The project successfully developed, promoted and disseminated new and innovative practice in supporting interactive language teaching in diverse European languages using ICT. We produced an open educational resource multilingual website (www.itilt2.eu) to host O1-4: 117 video examples of the use of interactive technologies in second language teaching; a professional development e-resource; 3 mini-guides; online library. In collaboration with teachers, classroom activities were planned, videoed, edited & tagged to produce video examples of real teaching situations. Teacher and learner comments were used to help illuminate the video resources in primary (UK, FR, DE) and secondary (BE, FR) schools and tertiary education (TK, FR, DE), with resources in five languages. In addition, we worked with teachers to produce a professional development e-resource, pilot an online community of practice and produced three mini guides in e-book format. The web site also allows users to search a wide range of videos from the different sectors and to the ability to download our resources and find a range of other technology-related language teaching materials in the selected languages. Evidence form the multiplayer events (4. below) shows the positive impact on the teachers involved. As the resource is web-based it provides a resource which can be freely accessed anywhere with an internet access.