And yes, although it has almost been a month since the TESOL France 2012 Colloquium, I’m still flicking through my notes and testing the little ‘nuggets’ that I found there. This post is about Springpad, a tool I discovered in Hakan Senturk’s presentation that you can read more about here. As a teacher who is enthusiastic about technology and its potential to increase student autonomy and connect them when they are outside the classroom, I thought that this was something I should try. I have always had a tendency to find many different online resources to use in class with students. What appeals to me about Springpad is that it allows me to bring it all into one place and create a ‘Scapbook’, if you like, allowing students to access, comment on and contribute to resources. I had toyed with other tools like evernote before, but found them less user-friendly.
I am currently using Springpad with one student who is following a general English course. So far I have only used it for online resources, although I think it would be useful for me to upload the class notes into the same notebook to encourage my student to access it more often.
And so with any great teaching tool that endeavours to maximize student autonomy and online interaction, I believe the challenge lies in getting students to use it. So far we’ve looked at it together in class and I’ve added extra resources that are related to what we’ve covered together. Perhaps it would be a good idea to set some specific homework tasks. I would love to hear from any other teachers who have experimented with Springpad and what kind of feedback they’ve had from students.
Check out Hakan’s Blog here
ESL Teaching Tales 