Blended learning course appeared in Akelius application

The Akelius Languages has launched a blended learning course designed for school teachers. It will allow teachers to understand the features of teaching in a digital environment and improve the effectiveness of classes.

The Akelius Foundation develops language courses that allow you to learn a foreign language from scratch. In Kazakhstan, one of these joint projects of UNICEF, Akelius and IITU is being implemented in 9 pilot schools in the country. Digital laboratories have been created there, where classes are held in groups of children who arrived in the Republic of Kazakhstan. They are of different levels and different ages and do not know the Russian language. As a rule, these are children who are in a difficult life situation.

Now, in addition to language courses, a blended learning course is available in the application. According to the project coordinator, Head of IITU Languages Department Zhannura Manapbayeva, the course is currently only available in English. It consists of 5 modules:

• The first module is "Introduction", which provides an overview of the course content.
• The second module is "The Language Application", which explains the concept and principles of the course, as well as the features of the Akelius Languages ​​application.
• The third module is "Blended learning", which shows the benefits of new technologies in education and provides guidance on creating such an inclusive environment.
• The fourth module "Teaching with Akelius" provides ideas for planning and delivering lessons that include course materials hosted in the application.
• The fifth module is “Classroom Management”, which explores classroom management strategies to help teachers create an inclusive, blended learning environment.

The modules contain lessons, videos, use cases and quizzes. The user can follow the learning path or choose any module of interest to him. At the end of the training there is a section for self-reflection.

The teacher can view his progress on a special page in his personal account and access the library with additional teaching material. In addition, the course developers have made a selection of links to external sites with additional information about language teaching in the digital environment.

As the creators of the course note, the concept of blended learning combines traditional learning with distance and online methods, which gives great prospects. In blended learning, full-time and electronic models merge together: the first develops communication skills and socializes, the second disciplines and accelerates the process of obtaining knowledge. That is, blended learning allows you to take the best from online and offline formats.