Becoming a Teacher. One Teacher = Many Roles

1. Controller - the person in control of class management.
2. Assessor – checking and deciding the method of giving feedback e.g. error correction.
3. A Resource – this is especially the case in developing countries, where there are limitations
4. Coach – encouraging class participation, especially for shyer students.
5. Tutor – in one-to-one teaching.
6. Organizer – instruction of students for activities and providing feedback.
7. Facilitator – for student interactive communication.
8. Counselor – solving any language learning problems.
9. An instructor – in the traditional sense on language points such as pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar.
10. A provider of experiences – in order for students to practice the four skills they require, as many language examples as possible are needed.
11. A model – particularly for pronunciation.
12. A motivator – balancing activities to achieve language targets and student interest.
13. An authority – students rely heavily on teacher pronouncements and so generalizations should be avoided/explained as such.
14. An arbiter – balancing fluency with accuracy in assessing error correction.
15. An examiner – continuous monitoring and testing.
16. A disciplinarian – essential to maintain class control.
17. A balancer – a sliding scale which constantly changes.
18. A mentor – giving language insight to another culture.
19. A prompter – without taking away the initiative from the student e.g. role-play activity vocabulary support.
20. A participant – e.g. discussion.
21. A performer – with suitable behavior according to the activity being undertaken.
22. Rapport builder – recognizing, listening to, respecting and being even-handed with students, in a professional manner.

What Other Attributes Must A Good Teacher Have?


The teacher has to exploit his/her talents as a visual teaching aid to incorporate mime, gesture and expression to convey meaning and atmosphere in the classroom.

Language modeling is important as students may find video and audio recordings difficult to understand.

Teacher Talking Time (TTT) should be used productively and the importance of our voices never under-estimated.

Observation skills in assessing student performance and progress are also vital.

Teachers must be culturally aware e.g. Japan has a masculine collective culture, virtually all classes are monolingual, long-term oriented with a high degree of uncertainty avoidance.

Some people are born to teach, whilst others must constantly strive to reinvent themselves and recreate their lessons in the perpetual pursuit of perfection. It is an ever evolving yet challenging and lifelong learning environment of which we are an integral part.

Teachers mold the students, touch their lives in one way or another with their utmost adherence to their passion..the passion to change..the passion to learn..the passion to TEACH.

Definition of Visual Aids

Visual aids are an important tool because different people respond to different learning modalities. Visual aids also add interest to a discussion. In order to effectively use visual aids, one must learn from experience what will and won’t work for an audience or group of students. Visual aids can take many forms and be presented in many formats. They may be used in different settings, from classrooms to board rooms, and anywhere that information is relayed to audiences on a regular basis.

Definition

A visual aid is an object or representation that may be used to clarify or enhance understanding of a concept or process. The best way to ensure success in learning is to present information in different formats for different learners.

Representational

Visual aids may take the form of graphs, charts, tables or photographs pertaining to the information being presented. In demonstrations and group discussions, visual aids may be projected onto a screen, pasted to a board on an easel or displayed on a television. Visual aids may appear in texts and in handouts.

Literal

Visual aids do not have to be flat or representational. They may also be the object of a discussion. For example, if a staff member at a zoo is talking to an audience about the different stages of a turtle’s life cycle, he may have different turtles on hand for the audience to look at and even handle. This type of visual aid can impact the audience by taking the subject out of abstraction and adding a dimension of reality that would otherwise be missing.

Preparation

To appropriately use a visual aid in a talk, a discussion leader, presenter or instructor must prepare far in advance. The discussion may be written verbatim or loosely outlined to allow for the discussion to flow organically. However, visual aids are ready, and the discussion leader knows when and how she will use them to carry the talk forward. A skilled presenter allows a discussion to take on its own direction while still managing to hit on all the points she planned to make.

Presentation

Interactive visual aids (such as the turtle at the zoo) often only work in group discussions of 20 or fewer people. In larger groups, the audience can become distracted waiting for their chance to handle, pet or hold the object. Likewise, it is important for the instructor to know the audience when making visual aid choices. Again in the example of the turtle at the zoo, if the audience is primarily composed of very young children, and if there are too many of them, touching a turtle may turn to chaos or arguments over turns. This would slow down the talk, thus detracting from the effectiveness of the aid. Meanwhile, smaller groups of the same age group may find the turtle engaging, making the turtle an effective tool that would extend the attention span of the audience and enhance their learning experience.

How to Use Audio/Visual Aids in Teaching

The teaching profession is filled with countless opportunities to enrich the academic lives of students. While some concepts and educational objectives will be easy for students to grasp, others will require you to think creatively to ensure that important learning objectives are met. Using audio/visual aids in teaching is one way to enhance lesson plans and give students additional ways to process subject information.

Instructions

1 Bridge the gap between the different types of learners by adding audio/visual aides to your teaching techniques. Since most people are visual learners, it's important to go beyond "spoken words" when educating students. Students are also more likely to learn material is they're exposed to it in a variety of ways. Always look over your lesson plans to find ways to inject different teaching styles.

2 Implement "show and tell" sessions to promote student involvement. This will also help you assess each student's overall understanding of the desired learning objectives. There are many ways to use show and tell sessions such as asking students to bring in modern items that still demonstrate colonial values.

3 Provide audio/visual aides to demonstrate mathematical concepts to students. This will help students learn to think of complicated material in a practical way. For example, concepts like fractions and proportions can be better visualized through the use of audio/visual aids such as marble representations and pizza models.

4 Watch videos and movies that reinforce lesson plans. Authors such as Shakespeare may be easier to understand when the material is seen as well as read. Use film clips to highlight historical events and to provide expert analysis of current situations.

5 Invite guest speakers to help students learn concepts. The use of real people can make subjects such as social studies seem more relevant to daily life. The visual and auditory information conveyed to the students can make a lasting impression. Ask guest speakers to bring in items for the class to pass around or to tell stories in their native languages.

What Are Audio-Visual Materials?

Audiovisual materials are instructional materials that present information to students in ways that do not involve the use of paper and pencil. Audiovisual materials are useful in instruction because they take learning away from a textbook-only approach. Many students find their classes more enjoyable when the teachers use photographs, films and music to bring the content to life.

Audiovisual Materials Used in the Past

Two of the most traditional audiovisual materials are films and filmstrips. While films are still used in the classroom setting, filmstrips are almost unheard of these days. A filmstrip is a series of still images projected onto a screen, accompanied by a recorded narration. A beeping noise on the narration tells the person controlling the filmstrip when to advance to the next image. More advanced filmstrip projectors automatically advance themselves.

Traditionally, films for educational use were displayed using a two-reel film projector, not a DVD player. For decades it was standard practice in teacher's college to learn how to thread a film projector. Few K-12 schools in the United States still have a film projector on hand.

Audiovisual Materials in Common Use Now

Today's teachers still show films in class, but it has become more common to use a DVD player. In many classes a separate player is no longer even needed, as up-to-date computers have DVD drives. To use a computer to play a DVD for the class, a computer projector is required, but many classrooms are increasingly equipped with this latest forms of audiovisual equipment.

Some classrooms still use television sets instead of a projected image. Some teachers still use VHS video casettes to show movies on TV sets, but DVDs are more common; most new instructional videos aren't released on VHS any longer.

The Digital Revolution

Audiovisual materials now often take the form of a computer file that is played using software installed on the teacher's computer. Instead of purchasing a DVD to use in classes, schools sometimes now subscribe to digital video services such as United Streaming, available through Discovery Education. These services provide Internet access to tens of thousands of videos, far more than any single teacher could hope to amass in a classroom collection. Access is immediate; there is no need to wait for items to be shipped.

Subscription video services allow teachers to download videos for permanent storage on school computers and also permit videos to be streamed through the Internet. These services have significant additional benefits. They often offer coordinating materials for videos, such as tests, worksheets and teacher's guides, which teachers can download for immediate access. They also have divided long videos into logical segments, making it possible to download just one portion to show. In addition, they include other audiovisual materials besides video. Most services also include audio clips and still photographs, all in downloadable digital format.

Best Practices for Audiovisual Materials

Although audiovisual materials can help make the classroom a more lively and engaging instructional environment, they are most effective when used with care. Best practices for teachers include following some basic guidelines, including not showing an entire film or video unless all portions of it are relevant. Teachers should show only the sections that relate to the learning objectives they have established for their students. Teachers should also preview all video material completely. Even instructional videos can contain graphic images that are not appropriate for certain grade levels. No teacher wants to see these for the first time when students are present. Finally, if your school's Internet connection is unreliable, it pays to download digital content in advance instead of streaming it. You are less likely to have an interrupted lesson if you play the content from a local computer.

The Uses of Audio-Visual Aids in Teaching

Audio-visual aids in the classroom can enhance teaching methods and improve student comprehension. Today's technology offers many choices to the informed educator who wishes to capitalize on a new generation's appetite for multimedia presentations. Lesson plans that incorporate the use of audio-visual aids should be consistent with curriculum objectives and not segued improperly.

Auditory Learners and Aids

·         Auditory learners focus more on the spoken word rather than the written one. Taped recordings of lectures or movies are helpful to auditory learners because they pick up on speech nuances such as tone and pitch. Computers with speech-recognition devices will also help auditory learners to process and retain information better than just reading from a textbook. Students with hearing disabilities will also benefit from teachers who use microphones while lecturing.

Visual Learners and Aids

·         Slide projectors have given way to PowerPoint presentations in the modern classroom, but the concept is the same. Visual learners understand meaning through graphic portrayals such as charts, illustrations and diagrams. Teachers that take the time to compose or find visual supplements to accompany their lectures help to greatly augment learning potential. The old adage that "a picture is worth a thousand words" still rings true, especially in today's image-submerged society.

Movie Clips

·         Incorporating a YouTube moment or any other instructional video clip into a lesson plan can greatly increase understanding as well as enjoyment during the learning process. If an interactive white board with Internet capabilities is not available, many video clips from the web can be downloaded and embedded in a PowerPoint presentation for classroom purposes. Be sure to prepare students before watching the clip by telling them what to expect or what to look for and then following up with discussion questions that tie in to the lesson plan.

Special Education Students

·         Students with special needs often require information to be presented to them in several different formats before they can adequately understand a concept or process information. Playing a book on tape while simultaneously reading together in class is a good way to reinforce material. Videos that deal with the targeted subject matter can be shown afterwards to further augment learning.

Don't Overdo It

·         Audio-visual technology has an important role to play in the modern classroom, but teachers who rely too much on technology may actually inhibit learning. It's the law of diminishing returns: you can only get so much useful enjoyment and assistance from a machine. The personal relationship between teacher and student is ultimately more valuable and rewarding in a brick and mortar classroom environment. This is not to say that there aren't some students who are quite capable of learning by themselves through interactive technology, but if that were true in all cases, then schools wouldn't need teachers, would they?