ELT adviser, Simon Bradbury, has written a review of The Digital Teacher. The site helps you to explore your digital skills and find a starting point for your digital professional development using The Cambridge English Digital Framework for Language Teachers. So, let’s find out what he’s thinks…
What’s the deal?
Many teachers are comfortable with the new world of digital tools in their personal lives, however they are less comfortable when using them to teach.
Up to now, teaching with technology has been a patchwork job. The process of cobbling together an eclectic mix of tools and resources, then getting our heads around the latest hardware and software has been a bit random! Individual teachers have to piece together their teaching with digital processes as best they can.
Now, Cambridge English Language Assessment have come up with a way of codifying the labyrinth, and it’s all taking shape on their new, smart, free website.
What’s it about?
Cambridge have created The Cambridge English Digital Framework for Language Teachers. By breaking down the huge field of ‘digital’ into 6 different areas, they’ve set up a system that helps teachers to progress from having an awareness of technology, through to having a thorough understanding.
What features on the website?
There’s an Online Assessment Tool with 53 questions covering the 6 divisions of the Framework. For each question, teachers read 4 possible descriptions. Then, they see how they correlate with the topic in hand. The topics covered are: awareness, understanding, habit and mastery.
The richest section of the site is ‘Training’. It’s populated with 25-minute training modules and each module follows a logical structure. It features videos and text that lead the trainee through a given topic. There are also detailed, structured, printable lesson plans. These link to relevant websites, sign-up advice and full-colour PDF resources for classroom use (these can be copied into a PowerPoint, printed, or just beamed onto a screen). A ‘need more help’ section then provides cross reference to the appropriate bite-sized training video.
The same ‘Training’ section features tips for using various types of technology. These range from Artificial Intelligence, through to speech-recognition and writing tools. Each tip is a 5-minute blog-type post with links to the relevant tools, apps and/or websites.
The two other main areas of the site are ‘Blog’ and ‘Reviews’. Both of these are still in their early stages, but we can already see promising signs of things to come. Blog posts are written by in-house authors, experts and teachers finding their own way in technology. This is great, because expert advice is often just as valuable as reading the experiences of someone who is still discovering new things – like you and me. The ‘Review’ section is dedicated to selected websites and tools.
Is it any good?
All in all, the scope and vision behind this website is pretty exciting and is definitely worth checking out. I congratulate our partners at Cambridge English Language Assessment for clarifying an otherwise nebulous field, for the quality of their content and the generosity in pointing teachers to tools outside of Cambridge. Most of all, the feeling I get from this site is one of inclusion and community. Site users can contribute, suggest and share. A genuine helpful little patch of discovery and collaboration! Make sure you visit The Digital Teacher.
If you’ve enjoyed this article about all things digital, you might also like our article about using technology with young learners!