Create Content for Online ESL Lessons – Webinar

Off2Class recently held a Professional Development Session for the itaki teacher community covering “How to Create Content for Online ESL Lessons”.

The webinar session was very well received by a group of online ESL Teachers from various corners of the world. In the session (James Heywood – Head of ESL Content Development for Off2Class) shared his strategies on how to create content for online ESL Lessons.

How does content for an online classroom differ from content for the traditional classroom? Where do you start? What tools do you need? Where do you find your images?

The Off2Class team runs webinars covering a variety of topics. If you’d like a similar professional development webinar run for your school, startup or team, please feel free to get in touch and we’ll see if we can organize a session!

If you are looking to create content for online ESL lessons – take a look at the Off2Class lesson library. The Off2Class lesson library has over 500 ESL lessons that were designed from the ground up to be taught in an online ESL lesson environment.
The online ESL classroom presents some challenges for content creation. Content designed for the traditional classroom is not necessarily transferable into the online classroom. Here are some key difference that you should keep in mind when you create content for online ESL lessons:

• Because content in an online classroom (such as on Skype video chat) takes up more of your student’s visual field, it plays a much more central role in the lesson
• Because many students are now joining online ESL lessons from small mobile devices, do not try to fit too much wording, imagery or concepts onto any one slide (or page) – keep things uncluttered!
• Try to develop a synchronous set of Teacher Notes (that your students don’t see) for each of your slides, with additional ideas on how to elicit and concept check the target language – this will help you keep the slide content uncluttered!

If you haven’t yet, register for your free trial Off2Class account and take a look at our content designed for the online ESL classroom for inspiration!

Do you create content for online ESL Lessons? Do you have any tips from your own experiences? Let us know in the comments section below!