So, what is this ‘cloud computing’? What can we do to help us plug into the digital revolution and engage with Web 2.0 technologies and share cyberspace with our students? The cloud computing concept can be shown thus:

Nowadays, software applications, data and even goods can be stored in cyberspace on a server connected in the ‘cloud’ instead of being stored on our computer or in our home, thereby freeing up our system and saving space. A good example of this, which is very popular with our students, is YouTube. You watch the videos on a server; the video is not stored on your computer and you don’t have a copy on your shelf. Other current examples are ebooks. Users have access to a library of books to read and they pay for a licence, but the books themselves are not stored in their ebook computer. They’re in cyberspace. Perhaps the best commercial example, related to ebooks, is the online retailer Amazon, which sells us products without us having to leave our homes or download any proprietary software, except for the Internet search engine.

The downside of cloud computing services is that sometimes we want to have a copy of something. For most ‘digital immigrants’, ie those of us who grew up in a non-digital environment and are relatively new to the technology, the idea of not physically possessing something we have paid for is anathema. We like to have something to show for our money. In terms of education the importance of this is even greater, the individual textbook that allows revision and consolidation of learning is a must.

However, we can have the best of both worlds. In teaching, digital course material can provide a solid base linked to traditional educational methods, while also providing a connection to the multimedia world inhabited by our digital native students.

Before we look at some examples of digital books, let’s first outline some of the different ICT set-ups that are commonly used in the classroom. The basic element is a digital textbook projected onto an interactive or non-interactive whiteboard, either with or without Internet connection. Apart from that the most common variations are as follows…

• The students have traditional paper copies of the book to work with (while the teacher projects the digital book onto a screen or interactive whiteboard).

 
• The students have digital copies on mini PCs or PC tablets which are connected to the school’s server.

Clearly, the set-up to which we have access determines what we can do with our digital book in class, but I decided to look at some ideas to exploit them that can work with most set-ups, using examples from different educational levels.

At Primary level, for example, we can use the book to focus the whole class on interactive tracing activities related to a listening. In this activity, pupils have to trace the word they hear and write the number in the box. It doesn’t obviate the individual tracing of words in the coursebook - it just facilitates and enhances the activity. It allows the teacher to model what is required from the pupils and provides a single focal point on which to concentrate pupils’ attention. It also allows the possibility of rubbing out incorrect attempts. The teacher has praised the pupils’ tracing work on the interactive whiteboard by writing ‘Well done!’ with a smiley-face ‘creative pen’.

The teacher’s copy of the Activity Book contains the answers, which provides us with a reference for spelling which we can project on the board when going through the activity to check it.

Moving on to Secondary, we can use the new Voices ‘digibook’ to enhance skills work. Let’s look at a really simple example. We have blocked out the title of this reading text by simply writing over it in white, the students focus on the screen (with books, or mini PCs, closed). To focus on the gist of the reading we’re going to do a dictation activity. We dictate three titles for the text: the correct one, a distracter that is similar and one that clearly isn’t correct. Then the students read the text with a time limit and decide in pairs which is the correct answer, justifying their decision with evidence from the text. The reading has been enlarged with a zoom function to make it clearly legible from any part of the class.

Hiding, revealing and annotating text are features of the digital format which offer numerous pedagogical benefits. Predicting the content from key words and gradually revealing more text to revise those predictions can generate a lot of language. You can also create a cloze from any text you like.

Finally, let’s take an example from the New Inside Out digital course (for older teens and adults). The videos are embedded into the digital book which means we can show them with or without subtitles or sound at the click of a button, and, unlike a DVD, we can exploit the images using all the interactive tools at our disposal.