Hello everybody,

At the end of this month I will be back in Indonesia for workshops for Young Learners teachers. I am very much looking forward to this.

One of the things we 'workshopped' in my last trip was the concept of the "21st century flipped classroom" where the teacher is no longer simply a conveyor of information as a "sage on the stage", but has a dual role as a "guide on the side" helping students navigate through their own self-learning path. With the advent of course materials using technology in the language classroom and the students' homes, it has never been easier for the teacher to serve as a guide or coach, encouraging and monitoring progress rather than simply "teaching" the students the language, and giving tests to make sure the students 'got it'.

In the video attached from the Our Discovery Island pilot program, we see Ron in the online world interacting with a virtual teacher and completing a vocabulary task during his level 1 adventure. Normally this would be homework, but in this case a computer lab was used to observe the students at "work and play." In a typical 'guide on the side' activity I would use the main computer in the class and ask students to 'teach' other students how they completed certain parts of the online world/game and what language they met there. 

How much technology is in your classroom, and your students' homes? How much teaching do you do on the "stage" and how much do you do on the "side"?

Happy teaching,

Aaron Jolly.

Our Discovery Island Author.