Quizlet is a site that requires internet connection, namely you can’t work on it offline. It is an excellent tool to help students practice vocabulary and other types of matching exercises, create study sets and digital flashcards that can later be transformed into games. The activity I came up with is framed within soft CLIL framework and aims to link important events from Argentina's independence history to their dates.

TUTORIAL

The site is very intuitive and both teachers and students can create their own material easily.

This is the screen that you normally get after you have matched your Gmail account to the site or that you’ve created your own account. Registration and most of the features are free, but you also access more tools if you pay for the premium account, which I don’t think itis necessary. Section 1 is where you can start creating your material and section 2 is where you can see other’s work. This app helps creating a sense of community.

Once you have clicked in the "crear contenido" (create content) section, you can start editing the content.

As I said it is very intuitive and simple to use. You write the title of your activity and a short instruction (1). Then you start writing the dates and events in the corresponding boxes (2). You can also edit your text in a word processor tool like Word or GoogleDocs and then click on “importar” (3). This can be useful to prevent typos or language problems.

Once you are happy with all the items you’ve created, just click on “crear”.

Finally, this screen will emerge and you will be able to share it however you see fit.

BENEFITS

It is a dynamic platform, which proves to be beneficial for language acquisition, among other subjects.

1. CALL and Autonomy

Quizlet facilitates students with crucial opportunities for drilling and repeating vocabulary in an engaging and innovative way (like games, flashcards, and matching exercises). Gamification increases students’ motivation and helps students to remember lexical items in the long term. These features are key goals within Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) (Abdallah, 2021).

Furthermore, Quizlet supports student autonomy under the principles of Mobile Learning (mLearning). According to Younie and Leask (2013), mLearning allows students control when and where they study. Using this tool, students can access vocabulary practices on mobile devices like phones or tablets, adjusting their practice time to their personal schedules.

2. Creative Application and High-Quality Material

By applying Quizlet in our lessons, we are encouraging our students to the collaborative creation of study materials. This is a game-changer for students’ roles, since they go from passive consumer to active producer.

Creative Language Application: Teachers can guide students to create their custom-made guides, term sets, and digital flashcards. They can divide the units of work and share them later to the rest of their classmates. In order to complete this task, students are require to make intellectual efforts since they are asked to define, contextualize, and categorize terms. Thus, not only do they apply language creatively, but also this moves the task beyond mere memorization into a more challenging cognitive level.
Producing Electronic Materials: This collaborative content generation directly relates to the skill of "Producing Electronic Materials" (Hockly & Dudeney, 2007). This tool gives students the chance to learn the language while they structure and present information digitally.

3. Networked Learning

Finally, Quizlet helps students experience network learning and Connectivism.

What’s Connectivism? According to Bates (2022), it views learning as the creation and navigation of connections and networks. This is what students do with this tool and when they share their work across the platform. They profit from the knowledge of the class network by accessing resources curated by their peers.
Societal Shift: This approach is in sync with the idea that learning is not solely an individual activity. As Bates (2022) notes, citing Siemens, Connectivism "acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity". The fact that students can use Quizlet to share and collaborate makes this network learning noticeable and actionable for students.

Suggested Class Task:
Argentine Independence: dates and events

This task is designed to be delivered to 7th grade students in a bilungual primary school in CABA.

Task: students will use Quizlet to create, share, and remember English vocabulary related to key dates and events in Argentina’s history of independence. During this process, students will work both on linguistic aspects as well as historic facts. They will use this task to review the topic of “Argentina’s Independence” discussed in Social Studies.

Framework: TPACK Model (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) and Bloom’s Taxonomy (Analyzing & Applying)

Step 1: Research & Selection

Students will work in 2 groups: one will work with characters and the other with events. Students will select what they consider to be the top 10 events/characters related to the Argentine independence process and they will have to come up with a definition of the event or a description of the character or the role he/she played.

Example:

May Revolution May 25, 1810

San Martin Leader of the Army of the Andes

Step 2: Creation

Using Quizlet, students will create a new set titled: Top 10 events/characters of Argentina Independence.

Augmentation Requirement: Half the terms will also include a visual element help with memorization.

Share the Set:

Step 3: Competition

Once completed, students will create the link and share it with the other group for them to solve it to see who gets the highest number of correct answers.

This was framed by the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework explained by Claus Scheuer-Larsen (2023). This framework focuses attention on the interaction of three knowledge areas:

Content Knowledge (CK): in this case the historical facts, dates, and characters.

Pedagogical Knowledge (PK): in this case the use of matching, repetition, and practice.

Technological Knowledge (TK): in this case the creation of quiz and the chance it gives to apply gamification.

The application of CLIL matches the principles of TPACK and provides the students with the chance of not just using technology (TK) but applying some pedagogical methods (PK) to a specific content area (CK). They use target language to do so.

References:

Abdallah, M. (2021). Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) for 4th Year EFL Student Teachers.
Bates, A. (2022). Chapter 2.6 “Connectivism” in Teaching in a Digital Age: Third Edition.
Claus Scheuer-Larsen. (2023, June). AI literacy: from SAMR to TPACK to CoACT. Viden.AI. https://viden.ai/en/ai-literacy-from-samr-to-tpack-to-coact/
Hockly, N. (2017). ETpedia technology : 500 ideas for using technology in the English language classroom. Pavillion Publishing.
Hockly, N. & Dudeney, G. (2088). How to Teach English with Technology.
Ning, Yimin & Zhang, Cheng & Xu, Binyan & Zhou, Ying & Wijaya, Tommy. (2024). Teachers’ AI-TPACK: Exploring the Relationship between Knowledge Elements. Sustainability. 16. 978. 10.3390/su16030978.
Siemens, G. (2005) Connectivism: a theory for the digital age International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, Vol. 2, No. 1.
Younie, S., & Leask, M. (2013). Teaching with Tecnologies: The Essential Guide.