Written by: Desislava Zareva desi2602@yahoo.com
Maria Momchilova momchilovabg@yahoo.com
Those of you who are curious (or if you prefer resourceful) must have already clicked on the website in the title and found nothing. Before you give up thinking there is a break down in your Internet connection or the link is too slow to download, you must know that not everything that poses as a website is one. In other words, there is no such website yet. What you really need is to hit www.createIT-bg.net and join in the creative team.
What is the www.createIT-bg.net website?
It is one of the outcomes of a partnership project between the British Council, Bulgaria, The Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at Plovdiv University and a team of ELT professionals from various Bulgarian educational institutions.
CreateIT stands for Creating Activities for Teaching English through Information Technologies – a project that aims at bringing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at the fingertips of teachers of English who design materials for the classroom, as well as of students who wish to create activities for their peers or for themselves.
More about the CreateIT project
CreateIT (Creating Activities for Teaching English through Information Technologies) as the title suggests, is all about the effective application of modern technologies in the ELT classroom. It blends ICT and ELT materials design. It provides an intuitive interface specially designed to enable motivated teachers of EFL to develop and produce learning materials suitable for a variety of levels, age groups and purposes.
The web content is aimed at promoting good teaching practice in task design and lesson planning on a national/regional level.
How does the create IT environment work
The website www.createIT-bg.net is EZ to use and FUN to work with. Is has been designed and ‘tried’ on teachers so that its final version is both teacher and student – friendly.
In order to benefit from the website you need a computer (a must!) and access to the Internet.
In terms of required computer-and-word processing skills, you need to know how to switch the PC on and off, how to type, copy and paste a text and how to ZIP a file. As you can perform these actions off-line, speed does not matter provided the job is properly done. When/if you have prepared your materials in advance what is left to do is log in and follow the instructions for creating your own activity/lesson plan online.
Below we offer you some easy steps for designing and uploading your own learning materials and lesson plans using the createIT web environment.
CreateIT lesson / activity planning steps
- Go to www.createIT-bg.net
- Go to DESIGNERS MODE
- Register as a user with the email and password you’re given by the administrator
- Find Lesson plans / Activity section
- Click on ‘Create a Lesson Plan’
- Fill in the required information
Hint: you DON’T HAVE to tick all the boxes you see, just the ones that you consider relevant)
- Click on step 2 / 4
- Fill in all the relevant information
Hint: once online you will see that hints are available to guide you through the content of each box you need to fill in
- Click on step 3 / 4
- Fill in the required info
Hint 1: time spans will not be allowed, e.g. you are expected to write 5 min, 10 min, but not 5-10 min for the duration of each stage of the lesson / activity;
Hint 2 – the description of your procedures is as detailed as you want it to be;
Hint 3 – if you want to have 10 procedures each time click on ADD PROCEDURE button)
- Click on step 4 / 4
- Fill in all the relevant information
Hint: if you are planning to attach a file, you first need to ZIP it, WINRAR will not work)
- Click on FINISH when you’re ready
- Preview your plan
Hint: you can make changes or delete your own activity / lesson plan, but you CANNOT edit other people’s materials)