Open-ended Tools and their Uses in

Teaching and Learning Language Skills

• Angelica L. Abella
• Instructor 1
• [email protected]

COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES Department of Languages & Literature

 Open-ended tools and their Uses in Teaching and
Learning Language Skills
• Open-ended tools or productivity software applications are ICT tools that help
teachers and learners make their teaching-learning together concrete, efficient,
encouraging, and meaningful. In any teaching-learning process, the use of these
tools plays a vital role as it help meet the demands of the learners in 21st-century
classrooms. As described by Palmer (2015), teachers need to demonstrate 21st-
century characteristics to be able to meet the demands of 21st-century learners.

COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES Department of Languages & Literature

These characteristics are briefly presented for teachers to:
1. create a learner-centered classroom and make instruction personalized
because learners have different personalities, goals, and needs.
2. facilitate the students’ productivity skills so they can produce when
assisted and given the chance, movies that are helpful to enhance their
proficiency.
3. learn new technologies since technology keeps on developing and
learning a tool once is not an option for teachers.
4. go global to allow students to learn languages, and culture and acquire
communication skills virtually.

COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES Department of Languages & Literature

These characteristics are briefly presented for teachers to:
5. do blogging. This will give teachers real experience to see the value of
what is taught for real audiences and establish their digital presence.
6. go digital to help promote the “go paperless” advocacy and to help
level up the learning experience of the students through digital
discussion and alike.
7. be smart and allow the use of devices as aids to learning.
8. collaborate with other educators and students to give opportunities for
the sharing of great ideas beyond a conversation and paper copy.
9. use web chats to share research and ideas and stay updated in the field.

COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES Department of Languages & Literature

These characteristics are briefly presented for teachers to:
10. connect with like-minded individuals through using media tools like social
media.
11. connect with like-minded individuals through using media tools like social
media.
12. build a positive digital footprint that aims to model appropriate use of
social media, produce and publish valuable content, and create shareable
resources.
13. innovate to expand their teaching toolbox for the sake of their students by
engaging social media for
14. keep learning.

COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES Department of Languages & Literature

 Using Word in Scaffolding Student Learning in a Language
Classroom
To appreciate the value of Word Applications in scaffolding student
learning, we have to explore how these are maximized by teachers. In education,
scaffolding is used to refer to various forms of support given to assist, guide, or
facilitate the learning process (World Links, 2008).

Examples of scaffolding for learning that are usually prepared using word
applications are learning plans, assessment tools, templates and forms, graphic
organizers, and others.
 Using Spreadsheets in Language Learning
• Spreadsheets are very helpful in introducing some lessons in language courses.
Through spreadsheets, one can teach with tables and charts, make a table and
a graph, and compute students’ grades.
• Spreadsheet programs are not only beneficial to business and mathematics
courses but are also beneficial to language courses.
• Apart from being built around a grid of cells that hold numerical data, it also
contains texts, dates, and other content that can be presented in language
courses for discussions.
 The following are essential ideas that teachers may consider
when employing spreadsheets in the language classroom:
1. Reinforce learning scientific and mathematical languages that

are also relevant in language learning.

2. Add well-designed charts and tables to reports to enhance

students' non-verbal reading skills.

3. Allow students to create their own charts, graphs, tables, and

the like, to develop and enhance their spatial skills.

 The following are essential ideas that teachers may consider
when employing spreadsheets in the language classroom:
4. Give students a completed chart and see if they can reconstruct the
underlying worksheet. This goes a long way toward helping them to
understand the relationships between the data and the chart.
5. Require reports and research papers to contain some type of chart to
help support their findings. Encourage them to look for samples
from the World Wide Web.
 The following are essential ideas that teachers may consider
when employing spreadsheets in the language classroom:
6. Let students explore websites that have table presentations for
teaching and let them discuss how these were used to facilitate
the acquisition of competencies.
7. Let the students look for charts in language learning materials
like textbooks, workbooks, and others and discuss why these
were used.
 The following are essential ideas that teachers may consider
when employing spreadsheets in the language classroom:
8. Teach the language and principles of financial literacy and
management as it is also important to learn these concepts in
the context of purposive communication and life skills.
9. Explain numerical concepts by showing the relationships
between numbers and their concrete representation in charts
and graphs.
 The following are essential ideas that teachers may consider
when employing spreadsheets in the language classroom:

10. Demonstrate how spreadsheets are useful in preparing

assessment and evaluation tools for students’
performance.
MICROSOFT WORD
ALTERNATIVES

COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES Department of Languages & Literature

1. DROP BOX PAPER

ü Dropbox paper is a free online word processor offered by

the online cloud storage provider.
ü Dropbox paper also allows you to access apps that let you
embed Trello Cards, YouTube videos, or SlideShare
Decks.
ü Other collaborative features include document link-
sharing, creating, and assigning checklist items to
members, or embedding one of your Dropbox documents.
ü Dropbox paper, overall, does an excellent job at creating
dynamic documents you can share and access online.
 2. OFFICE ONLINE
ü For Microsoft Word and Office aficionados, the best
possible free online alternative for their document
editing needs is Word Online, which comes as part of
the Office online suite.
ü Although the Office free-MS Word Web app is not a
full-fledged version of its paid counterpart, it allows
you to open, create, and edit Word documents online.
ü It enables you to access and see updates from co-
authors literally from anywhere in real time with only
an Internet connection and the latest 2016 version.
3. GOOGLE DOCS
ü Google Docs allows you to create, collaborate, and share
documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and even
forms.
ü Google Docs is packed with features, which can be further
extended with various add-ons.
ü While it automatically saves the file online and stores it there,
you can also have the documents published as a web page,
downloaded, or emailed as an attachment in Word, ODT,
PDF, plain text, or RTF formats.
ü You can invite collaborators to work on the document with
you or only allow others to view it without the ability to edit it.
 4. ETHERPAD
ü Etherpad is an online document editor primarily intended For
collaborative editing in, as the site claims, “really real-time”
ü It’s an open-source highly customizable tool for online document
collaboration with friends, fellow students and classmates, or
colleagues at work.
ü One of its advantages, especially appealing to users who are reluctant
to use services that require email registration, is that there is no sign-
up with Etherpad.
4. ETHERPAD

ü All you need to do is start a new pad and share the link
to it with your collaborators. You can also invite them
by email if you prefer.
ü After that, you can start working on the planned writing
project together, in real time, even if you are miles apart.
 5. OPENOFFICE
ü The OpenOffice package includes six programs that use the same
engine making them inherently the same and extremely easy to learn
and use.
ü The 6 applications included in the OpenOffice suite are: Writer (word
processor), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (graphics), and
Base (database manipulation), Math (mathematical equations).
ü Writers can even natively do some things that Word cannot do, like
open PDF files without the addition of a plug-in or commercial add-on.
 5. OPENOFFICE
ü As the software is open source, it is maintained by a large

community meaning help and bug fixes are freely available and
quickly created.
ü This is perhaps the leading free desktop alternative to Microsoft

Word/Office.
ü You can install this suite on Windows XP to Windows 10,

MacOS (OS X) , and Linux.

 6. WPS OFFICE 2016 FREE
ü WPS Office 2016 Free is a free document processing suite whose
WPS Writer app will serve you well as a Microsoft Word
alternative.
ü WPS Office 2016 Free can open and save to a long list of popular
file formats native to applications like docx, doc, and more.
ü You can get the application in languages other than English:

French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Russian.

 6. WPS OFFICE 2016 FREE
ü The suite has the same familiar look and feel of MS Office with one
exception has a tabbed viewing window, so you can open more than one
document at a time.
ü Also worth mentioning is WPS Cloud, the company's cloud document
storage service that offers up to 1GB of free storage that you can use.
This is perfect if you're trying to find a free Word alternative that's not
only scalable for teams but can also be as collaborative and seamless as
its Microsoft counterpart.
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