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A flipped classroom reverses traditional teaching methods: The learners get the topic and recorded material online at home, while class time is devoted to doing exercises and discussing the topic. This will enable you as a teacher to devote more time to problem areas.

they use their comfort and skills with social media to connect students with the content area on a deeper level.

help students keep tabs on their upcoming assignments and assessments

I use Twitter as a way to provide practice during the days leading to macro-assessments, by providing sample test items, as well as study tips.

Orientation experiences support students' transition to the first year of college, which is essential for student success.1 This support is particularly important for those students from historically marginalized populations.

hould be holistic

course design features and

7. Virtual study session — Add your top 10 most important things to remember for a quiz or test as snaps in your Snapchat story. Students can watch your story and it becomes an instant study session.

8. Movies — Tell a story 10 seconds at a time. Add short video clips to a story with each video as a scene in the “movie”. If students follow you, this could be a great, fun way for students to engage in content. They could craft their own Snapchat movies incorporating what they learn in your class. Teachers can create fun content that students will want to watch. Schools and school districts can do the same to tell about a sporting event or other community event.

MovieTalk works because it links meaning between the language used by the teacher to the images on the screen. In other words, it makes the linguistic input comprehensible to the student. “Comprehensible” of course, is a bit of a gray term—meaning that something is reasonably able to be understood by the audience—and it is up to the teacher to employ skills such as teaching to the eyes and using comprehension checks to guarantee that the comprehensible language is actually comprehended.

Sometimes, I select MovieTalks because of their topic: the content relates to something that we are studying or discussing in class. Other times, I select MovieTalks because of the vocabulary: I know that I can talk about the video using the same words that I am working with in class with my students. And still other times, I select MovieTalks because they are just so dang fun and easy and I plop them into the middle of a unit for no reason at all!

social media can also be used to enhance teaching and learning and it includes varied online technology tools that allow people to communicate easily via the internet to share information and resources.

demonstrations focused on contrasting cases help students achieve expert-like differentiation

Start small. Find one movie, song, or news source and incorporate it into your class. Expand once you are comfortable. Provide a clear link between what you want your students to learn and the media. Care must be taken provide the proper learning context. It takes time to integrate media effectively into a course. This is not edutainment, it is the conscious use of media to enable students to learn more. Use the subtitles feature for visual media. This is especially useful in focusing student attention on the words being said. Be prepared. Technology does not work 100% of the time so have a back up plan. If the media equipment does not work, go to plan B and continue on with your class without missing a beat. Evaluate student understanding. Students respond to incentives. If you require them to write a reaction paper, take a quiz, or place questions on your exams that relate to the media content they will pay more attention and learn more in the process. Stay legal. View the copyright information on the cautions page.

Studies

have concluded that collaborative and cooperative learning methods improve students' time on tasks and motivation to learn. Language teachers are finding that group activities and conversational pairing have distinct advantages over individualised tasks. Students enjoy interacting with each other, particularly in speaking activities, and opportunities to do so are relished. The prospect of school exchanges, making new social links abroad, and exploring new cultures is another powerful motivator. The pairing of language students with counterparts abroad is the next logical step. Working effectively online with native speakers is a challenging and alluring proposition.

The evidence to show individual progression achieved directly from paired or group interactions is hard to quantify. Monitoring, recording, and properly assessing individuals' performances in collaborative tasks is more difficult to achieve than the correction and grading of individual tests.

They create a blended environment where teachers and students engage in both physical and online conversations so that learning is no longer confined to a single means of communication or even an arbitrary class perio

But true authenticity comes from the activities we use during class time, leaving an impact on the communicative skills of our students.

Use the language proficiency site developed by UTexas to gain access to native Spanish speakers talking about a variety of themes. These are conveniently divided into proficiency levels.

Screencasting is one of the most dynamic tools educators can use to transform their classroom in a dramatic fashion without investing a tremendous amount of time learning a new software piece or app.