‘Natish’ means ‘native speakers teach English’. The project started at the beginning of 2023 with the support of the municipality of Tel Aviv. Their focus is to bring exciting activities led by the Natishes – native speakers all around the world. The Natish methodology is based on full language immersion that leads to effective learning. They involve their students in a gamified interactive group experience that develops critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, collaboration, creativity, and student leadership. Natish relies on relevant and engaging content that corresponds with the student’s knowledge, interests, and personal experience.
Natish Hybrid Model with VEDAMO Virtual Classroom
Natish works with students (5th- 8th grade) in the physical classroom. They have a teacher on-site and a native speaker online through VEDAMO. The students use laptops and during the class, they work both in the main classroom and in VEDAMO’s breakout rooms, where they have small-group (3-5 students) activities.
The unique approach of Natish is that they take the best of both worlds – online teaching allows them to have the best teachers from all around the world and to bring very creative content, and the physical classroom provides the energy of the students working together and interacting.
The teacher is on-site and the online teacher, “the Natish”, work together. The teacher in the classroom maintains discipline, supports group work, and contributes to the class when there is free speech. The ‘Natish’ leads the activities and operates the VEDAMO platform.
Natish uses VEDAMO as a class tool with a media player, whiteboard, and breakout rooms. They also use many other technologies to create learning content, and LMS to manage the whole process.
Their top 3 benefits from using VEDAMO as an organization are:
- The response rate – Natish is experiencing fast growth and VEDAMO’s team quickly responds, when there is an issue with the system, or when a certain feature is in need, giving Natish the ability to customize and improve their product.
- The breakout rooms – One of the most valued features of VEDAMO is its ability to create rooms with different content. Natish uses this feature to create engaging games and activities in which the groups complement or rival each other.
- Easy-to-use flexible solution – both for the teachers and the students. The students’ feedback is highly positive. The teachers share that it is technically very easy to create a virtual classroom setup. They appreciate the whiteboard functionalities, and the option to predefine the breakout rooms’ permissions
The Natish team shared some of the activities they conduct during the hybrid classes:
- Crime investigations – the students are introduced to a crime – there was a burglary in a house. They are divided into small groups and put in separate breakout rooms. Some of the students go into breakout rooms where they see the suspects, the witnesses and need to remember them. They learn English in order to describe them. The others go to breakout rooms, where they have to be sketch artists. When all the students gather in the main classroom, one of them describes the suspect and the other does the sketch.
- Movie dubbing – the students go to breakout rooms and practice dubbing a movie or animation in English. When they come back to the main room, they go in front of the class and dub the movie for the online teacher and their classmates.
As a next step, Natish aims to expand its work in Israel – to more schools in Tel Aviv and to other municipalities. They are also working to create content for various age groups and involve more grade levels. Afterward, their efforts will be directed to expand the project overseas.
Avshalom Komissar, CEO:
One of the most important benefits to us is VEDAMO’s flexibility, which allows us to implement our interactive approach and involve students in creative activities. The best thing is the speed with which the team is advancing to get things done when we need a certain feature.
