KML

The course titled “Authentic Learning in the 21st Century – Technology Integrated Educational Design Course for Language Teachers” was given to secondary education level English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers working in the public and private sectors in April-May 2021. The course was given by Department of Foreign Languages Education (Education Faculty, Eastern Mediterranean University) in collaboration with Karpaz Vocational High School. As part of this course the participants were given two tasks: the holiday task and the task below. So, the task below is an other example of authentic learning activities.

Script:

The EU Commission in collaboration with the Ministry of Education in the Northern part of Cyprus have identified that there is a need for an educational reform in our schools. After extensive research, it is evident that, even though many schools have benefitted from the EU Commission Grants in the last decade, their attempts have merely been at the level of purchasing equipment. Although, we cannot say that our schools are not in need of equipment, however; without investing on the teacher and curriculum, equipment serves little use. Karpaz Vocational High School (KML) has realized the value in investing in teachers and grounding equipment with pedagogical knowledge. Thus, in line with the EU Commission Grant Scheme and the Ministry of Education policy, Karpaz Vocational High School has been granted the opportunity to modernise the English Language curriculum with the project entitled ‘SMART CALL’. As it is evident from the project name, pedagogy grounded technology is aimed to be integrated into the English language curriculum.

As you would all appreciate, it is not possible to talk about the modernisation of education without the integration of technology and inclusion of the 21^st Century Skills. This has become more evident with the COVID-19 outbreak where online learning has become the new norm for which we have had to adapt to so abruptly.

In this respect, with the initiation of Karpaz Vocational High school’s ‘SMART CALL’ project, the Ministry of Education and the EU Commission are in need of your support and invaluable knowledge and experience. Therefore, you are required to prepare a task which incorporates the Authentic Learning (AL) principles to be used in modernising the English Curriculum in schools in the Northern part of Cyprus. You will also present your task to both the Ministry of Education and EU Commission representatives in Cyprus.

In this agenda, you can also find video clips on the education systems in other countries such as Finland and Singapore. For example, the first video clip is from the film “where to invade next” by Michael Moore on the Finnish Education System. It was to my surprise that Finnish people learn 2 or more foreign languages without doing traditional school exercises that appear in a course book or a workbook or the type of the questions we use in our exams, such as fill in the gaps, multiple choice and matching exercises. I hope you enjoy watching them. Good luck.