<\/p>\n

Nick Bilbrough, the founder of the Hands Up Project, which has just recently been granted charity status, has been teaching English through Skype to children in refugee camps for the past two years. It all started with a group of children in a library in Gaza, but has by now expanded to include camps in other parts of Palestine and even into Jordan.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things we\u2019re concerned with is developing global citizens\u201d, says Nick. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about learning a language; it\u2019s about enabling people to communicate with other children in other countries and, by that, the idea of becoming a global citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of his course relies on storytelling. As the students\u2019 access to English resources is limited, they haven\u2019t had many opportunities to talk with people outside their own country. Thus, as Nick explains, storytelling is \u201cone of the most effective ways \u2026 of exposing learners to natural spoken language.\u201d This is especially true for low-level learners, as they can still get involved in the process despite their lack of language skills.<\/p>\n

Teaching via Skype has been a fairly unique experience for Nick. \u201cIt\u2019s very different working in an online environment because you feel that there is a distance between you and the student. You almost want to jump out of the screen\u201d, he jokes. Power cuts and other interruptions are common in the Gaza strip, but he\u2019s used to it by now. He also thinks that there are advantages to this approach, as there are a lot of opportunities for creative teaching, like using puppets or zooming on twigs so that they \u201cshowcase trees\u201d when he\u2019s telling some particular story.<\/p>\n

Though \u201cthe students in refugee camps often don\u2019t have the opportunity to use English naturally to communicate with people who don\u2019t speak their own language, the Hands Up Project is an extraordinary way of connecting people who would otherwise never be exposed to each other\u201d, concludes Nick.<\/p>\n

“Exploiting Digital Tools to Teach Languages to Refugees\u201d, Nick Bilbrough. Cambridge University Press<\/em>, 5 April, 2017, P4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Bilbrough, the founder of the Hands Up Project, which has just recently been granted charity status, has been teaching English through Skype to children in refugee camps for the past two years. It all started with a group of children in a library in Gaza, but has by now expanded to include camps in … Continue reading Using Digital Tools To Help Teach Refugees<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5765,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1925,35,2014],"tags":[2012,2010,2011,196],"class_list":["post-5764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-studentnews-didyouknow-facts-interestingwords-interestingpeople-onthisday-interestingwordsandexpressions","category-teacher-resources","tag-digital-tools","tag-hands-up-projct","tag-refugees","tag-teaching-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5764"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5767,"href":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5764\/revisions\/5767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishbookgeorgia.com\/blogebg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}