English as an international language: What difference does it make?
This presentation is from Penny Ur. She is a pretty big name in the TEFL word, here's a pretty succint summary (again copied from the biodata): "Penny Ur has thirty years’ experience as an English teacher in primary and secondary schools in Israel. She teaches courses on aspects of foreign-language teaching methodology at Oranim Academic College of Education. She has published a number of articles on the subject of foreign-language teaching, and several books with Cambridge University Press, including A Course in Language Teaching (1996) and Grammar Practice Activities (2nd ed.)(2009)."
Per the abstract it was about: "English is today used predominantly as a tool of international communication between people who speak another language as their mother tongue, as distinct from its use as a mother tongue in the English-speaking countries. I will suggest in this talk that this development makes substantial differences to both principles and practice of our teaching."
Penny starts by discussing the prominence of English today (about 1/3 of people on earth speak English at a level where communication is possible). She mentioned kachru's three inner circles
English has such a large scope (academic, entertainment, political, tourism, etc.)
Competent speakers are no longer just "native" language speakers. Penny therefore posits that the circle be redefined: with the inner circle being named full competent, the next circle be named competent and the final circle being named limited competence
She talks about three different types of English we could teach. We talked about this a lot in my most recent Spanish course. What type of Spanish should be taught? There are so many lexical differences and even some verbs changes.
One of the native varieties
+Traditional and more conventional
+Has the reputation of prestigious
+Plenty of authentic material and coursebooks (which makes it easy)
-Not used by most competent speakers
-Difficulty deciding which one to teach (British/Australian/American)
-It is difficult for a non-native to reach a competence of native speakers
Diverse flexible models
+Ideologically acceptable (its very politically correct)
+Allows for local variation (since it is flexible the local model can always be included)
-No clear model
-Difficult to design syllabus and materials (and thus hard to teach and assess)
A standard variety
Derived from one of the main varieties/combination that eliminates local idioms, vocabulary, pronunciation spelling, grammar (omit fortnight, cheers: meaning thanks, etc) and adding more international words (like zee not zed)
+Range of acceptable forms
+Based on usages of fully competent speakers (which are not necessarily native!) Thus giving learners a realistic standard to reach
+Acceptable worldwide!
-Existence is questioned
-Not very P.C.
In the end Penny basically talks about how we can incorporate more of this into our classes.
MY TAKE?
My friends and I have talked about this quite a lot. Most of my collegues in Spain learned British English. I am American. I can navigate British, Australian, South African and most other Englishes without problem (although prepositions do sometimes mess me up). So what do I teach stduents? I try to teach the least offensive word. For example, I would not teach rubber for eraser since it means condom in America. I also prefer to teach trousers instead of pants since pants means underwear in British English.
An interesting reminder, though not very applicable to preschool at the moment :)
Herbert Puchta was very entertaining. He is clearly a talented speaker and one who is used to have an entertained audience. That being said, I am under the impression that most of what he said is already known by most people who have experience with teenagers. Nonetheless, here's the gist:
His presentation was, "Ideas that work: Teaching teens to speak" This is a lot of theory with not many activities, but I do think it had things I should keep in my head as I go back to teaching teenagers.
Per the abstract it was about: "Folk wisdom has it that language learners need to 'think in English' in order to be able to express themselves fluently. In this session we will look at how the brain processes language when we speak, and concentrate on what we can do to help our students overcome some of the most frequent problems we encounter in our daily work."
About him, copied from the biodata:
Dr Herbert Puchta is a prolific EFL author and teacher trainer. He has written numerous textbooks and resource books for the teaching of English as a foreign language to young learners and teenagers. Herbert is currently President of IATEFL International. His latest coursebooks are English in Mind 2nd Edition and More!, both published by Cambridge University Press.
First let's cover the basics. Communication required more than words. I can string together a whole bunch of words in Korean, but if there is no intention (no reason to communicate) I won't be saying anything. It requires that I know what words to say, and how to say them!
To do this we (English Language Teachers) should be able to have meaningful tasks with a purpose to practice speaking. Not just dialogues, role plays and Q+A activities which focus on accuracy rather than communication skills. We want activities that force students to communicate!
As with everything in life ATTITUDE IS ESSENTIAL! Make sure to have a classroom where your students have a joy of communicating in L2, that they are willing to take risks, they can accept errors, and they have a positive image of themselves now and in the future (communicating in the L2).
Some ideas:
Remember Kieran Egan and his thoughts on classroom culture. Students need to feel comfortable to gossip and want to be a part of the class.
The use of humour in the class and the activities is priceless.
Use relevant content in the classroom (stories that students can connect with).
Prediction games (give them an unknown text with gaps and see what they can fill in)
Give them a line "I am sorry but can you help my cat" and have them develop a reoleplay or story.
Theories:
Well., Alan Paivio has the Dual Code Theory. Part of the theory suggests that we think in words (language) and picture (images). When thinking planned out thoughts (making plans, considering words) we think in words, but for faster interaction, we tend to just think in images. This goes against the concept that you have to learn to "think in English"
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is most known for his theories on flow. Have you ever had a class where you're pulling teeth the entire time? Compare this to a class where everything just goes perfectly! That's what we want in our classes! We want flow. He gives 7 main aspects of flow:
You are completely involved in the activity.
You have a sense of not actually being there (you "forget" you are in class).
You have an inner clarity (you know what needs to be done and how to best do it).
You know the activity is doable
You have a sense of serenity. There are no issues with ego or concerns about getting something perfect.
You don't track the time. Students are just focused on the present and the class time flies by!
You aren't doing it for a sticker. Students involved in flow aren't doing it for the good grade or the sticker. They are doing it because they are motivated by the project!
Herbert Puchtea has some more activities to implement in classes with Here's another example from him on working with teenagers when they struggle with the third person s. You can keep listening to the rest of the videos for another idea from him!
I think most people reading this know that I am also working on my Masters right now. It just so happens that my Didáctica para Heritage Learners class is doing a webquest on Tuesday so when I asked Stephanie what exactly the Internet-based projects were and she replied webquests I sat down to listen :)
Stephanie Williams graduated in Modern Languages at Portsmouth University in the United Kingdom. She has over 15 years’ experience in English teaching, both in the UK and in Spain. She is also a teacher trainer and is currently working in the languages department of Vicens Vives.
The title of her presentation is "Language Learning with Internet-based Projects"
Which per the abstract should be about, "why and how to use Internet-based Projects in the language learning class. We will see how varied Internet resources on topics of interest to students can motivate them to carry through an assigned class project, and help improve their language skills and build their confidence, self-esteem and learner autonomy in the process."
First she went over the basics, what an internet based project is (and the different types, but since this was mainly webquests I'll skip that part), how to search the internet, why to include the internet, what you need to do it, examples, how to assess a webquest, and the benefits of a webquest.
To summarize her presentation:
WHY
A WEBQUEST is based online (aka uses stduents enthusiasm for the internet to complete a task)
It is student led (students follow teacher's written directions but it is still mainly led by students). Basically: learner autonomy!
They need to figure out what information is missing and how to find it and make it make sense. Students use critical thinking!
It encouraged cooperative learning.
HOW You need a:
feasible topic
time limit (keep in mind pug ins and what not take longer to load)
appropriate resources (static pages that the student will always find)
clear objective (students need to know EXACTLY what they are doing)
Then we all did a Webquest about Webquests! (created by an Aztec btws!) We all went through and completed our own webquest (in a group) with the objective of choosing the "best" one.
Sounds great? But you have a problem? No internet in the classroom? That DOES sound like an issue! You can try WebWhacker 5.0 it essentially downloads the sites so you can browse offline! I haven't tried it but you may want to try it out.
This is older, but if you like her style and want to know a bit more about technology I found this old slideshare that seems to be by her.
Karen was one of my FAVORITE presenters! She presented on "Collaborative Writing Activities".
According to the abstract, "Participants will have the opportunity to experiment with a variety of collaborative writing activities (non-composition based) and to discuss briefly the aspects of writing practised. The objectives of the activities include such areas as considering the target reader, building complex sentences, discourse management, focus on grammar / lexis, peer teaching, peer correction, developing classroom rapport and considering culture."
Karen Einstein has been working in TEFL for twenty years, the last seven of which she has been with the British Council in Barcelona. She’s taught on and designed various teacher training programmes over the years and has a special interest in encouraging learners (particularly teens) to experiment with different ways of expressing themselves through writing.
With Karen we first discussed why collaborative was useful (less stress on the student, the chance to communicate with someone else takes pressure off of you, peer correcting etc.)
One example is to give the students a picture. Karen used art (which I may do to try to bring culture in, but in this case I'll stick with one of mine).
Give the students time to write the following things.
1. Who is he? 2. Where is he? / What does he see? 3. What did he do before this? 4. How does he feel? 5. What is he doing?
Make sure they talk to each other first and just jot down words (not complete sentences). Monitor the class as they do this and give the questions out one by one to track time.
Now (again in pairs) have the students write a diary entry that the man will write about his day.
The students have already brainstormed their ideas and now just have to try to make things flow.
But are you getting a lot of sentences like: I was outside. I saw a goat. I looked at the goat.
No worries!
Karen gave a game to get students to make bigger sentences. On the board we right a simple (but slightly odd) clause "I climbed the tree"
Have the students write it in the middle of a paper. Then give them a linker like although Use easier linker for lower lever students and higher linkers for higher students. Some A1 linkers: so/then. Some B1 linkers: however/despite. C1 linkers: furthermore/nevertheless.
In groups they need to change the sentence (their addition can go before or after)
Although I am afraid of heights, I climbed the tree. OR
I climbed the tree although it was very tall.
If your students are at a high enough level give them one more linker, let's say, because
I climbed the tree although it was very tall because I was being chased by donkeys
Easy, simple and effective
How often do students post pictures on facebook to go with a status? Give them two photos (aain Karen used art, I am going to find random pictures in my computer)
With a partner look over the pictures and choose one. Then decide how it makes you feel.
Now make a brief explanation (140 characters or less) that you would post with the picture to tell people where you are. So perhaps for the first one, "Eeks! A little too close for comfort! I am heading away from the lions now."
She had some more but overall it was a great way to grab some ideas on incorporating more collaborative writing into my classes!
Nickly Hockly started the convention off by speaking about "Teaching the Mobile Generation."
This abstract says, "Learners are coming to class increasingly wired up: iPods, MP3 players, mobile phones, digital cameras... Many of our learners already use these mobile devices in their daily lives. Instead of banning them from the classroom, shouldn't we be taking advantage of devices that learners are already very proficient users of? This plenary considers how we can integrate this mobile (or handheld) technology into our teaching."
Nicky Hockly is the Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E (www.theconsultants-e.com), and has been involved in EFL teaching and training since 1987. Co-author of How to Teach English with Technology ,Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies, and Teaching Online, she specializes in online teaching and training via virtual learning environments such as Moodle, and is interested in the use of technology in the language classroom."
So all in all the presentation was pretty basic. Nicky gave a review of why students are drawn to technology (they already do it, it is more creative, allows them to express themselves etc.) and the different types of mobile technology there are (PSP, Notebook, Smart Phone, MP4 player etc.)
Personally I found her presentation a bit unnecessary, but perhaps this is because I am part of the generation who grew up with a computer in the other room. While technology has not always been a part of my life I have grown up to it evolving (I remember dial up AOL, I remember getting a scanner, etc.). It was a nice reminder however that technology is out there and that many of our students would like us to use it!
You can see her presentation (or something similar) on youtube (I left out part 1 as it is mainly intro but you can find it if you like)
If you are interested in hearing more from Nicky about the basics of incorporating technology into your classes you may want to search for her quickly on youtube to find even more videos!
There were quite a lot of choices but in the end you just can't see them all! I could have seen 12, but I figured 2011 would mean 11 :)
So, over this weekend, I got to see 11 different presentations. Some were very applicable to me where others not so much, but I took something away from each one!
I don't have a chance to jot things down now, but in short I managed to see:
If it is a quick read or a fast read? Do we say fast food or quick food? Jo Millar gives some hints and tricks for working with collocation in "Increasing Students Awareness of Collocation."
and
Bouncy Teresa Bestwick give some advice on making teenagers speak more in class with, "There are no wrong answers! Encouraging Communication in Teens"
As I get some free time (I have two papers to write by Thursday)I hope to give a brief glimpse of what I gained from each of these sessions.
Basically you put in what you want to find articles about (Halloween)
And then the level (basic, intermediate, etc.)
When an article pops up you can select the analysis and get a rundown of the sentence structure of the text (for example: passive, and then all the passive sentences)
A Great way to discover authentic material, it is in BETA now but I recommend you check it out
(EDIT 2012 the site is out of BETA now and charging, btu I think you can still get a free month trial)
There's an TOESL convention coming up in Spain! I am pretty sure I am attending (my pre-registration hasn't been confirmed yet) with my roomie Katie. Looking forward to it (yep, I am a nerd :P)
Hugh Dellar Heinle Cengage / The University of Westminster Activating Memory in Class Gavin Dudeney The Consultants-E New Literacies, Teachers & Learners Adrian Doff Cambridge University Press Keeping it Real: Speaking English in the Real World Mark Hancock Freelance Pronunciation Games for Spain David A. Hill Helbling Languages The Essential Nature of Creativity Ceri Jones Freelance You've got Mail Geoff Jordan Vidreres, Girona Whatever Happened to CALL? Jamie Keddie Freelance The Authenticity Trap Nina Lauder OUP Exploring the Real World in the English Classroom Andrea Littlewood Hyland Language Centre Ready, Steady…Speak: Steps towards Better Speaking Herbert Puchta Cambridge University Press Ideas that work: Teaching teens to speak Carol Read Freelance Picture Books and Cross-curricular Themes Pete Sharma Freelance Teaching in the Digital Age Russell Stannard University of Warwick Gems on the Web Penny Ur Cambridge University Press Teaching Large Heterogeneous Classes
This is for a Spanish class for native speakers, while I MAY in some circles be considered a native speaker, I certainly would NEVER want to teach Spanish to native speakers! If a Korean school asked me to give a class to students in basic Spanish I would feel confident, but this is never something I would feel qualified to do.
So anyways, the
Ficha de la actividad
1. Objetivos
a.Trabajar la comprensión lectora.
b.Refuerza la importancia para ser bilingüe.
c.Usa del pensamiento de mayor nivel
d.Para aplicar el información del texto a la vida de la estudiante.
2.Nivel especifico recomendado: B2
3. Tiempo: 1 hora
Antes que leer 25 minutos
El gran olvidor 8 minutos
Luces Camar Accion 6 minutos
I am working on a project for a SNS (Spanish for Native Speakers) class right now and we need to create an hour of lesson plans regarding an article and communicative skills.
The problem is that I am so used to using a reading to teach grammar... eeks for having to break out of my mold, but YAY for being able to try new things!
Perhaps this isn't the best way to assess if our students understand a concept.
First off a recording of the webinar can be found in the LARC archives or directly here.
I apologize for the length of the post. While most of it is merely summarizing what occurred in the webinar I also put in my own opinions, thoughts and examples. Basically it is divided into Large Scale Testing needs, Classroom Alternatives, Dynamic Assessment Specifically, the Q+A summarized and My thoughts.
So, Matthew Poehner primarily explained assessment as a way to figure out what students know and if they understand, compared to teaching where we guide students to understand.
He pointed out that teaching and summative assessments are cut off from another and while students are being assessed teachers usually do not teach during a test.
Large Scale TestingThis part of the presentation talked about the limitations of large scale testing. Before we get into the basics I learned a new word! Washback. What the heck is washback? I found this from the Japan Association for Language Teaching's Testing and Evaluation's newsletter Shiken. James Dean Brown (from the University of Hawai'i) which does a GREAT job at defining this term using different sources.
"Shohamy, Donitsa-Schmidt, and Ferman (1996), washback is "the connections between testing and learning" (p. 298); to Gates (1995), it is "the influence of testing on teaching and learning" (p. 101); and for Messick (1996) washback is "the extent to which the introduction and use of a test influences language teachers and learners to do things they would not otherwise do that promote or inhibit language learning" (p. 241). Clearly then, the washback is roughly speaking the effect of testing on the teaching and learning processes."
I know "teaching to the test" is definitely a rising concern in California as standardized testing seems to be more and more prominent in education.
So we took a look at Pamela Moss' work with assessment. She goes to explain that testing is traditionally only a one day activity (as it has to be with most large scale standardized tests), but since in the classroom we can experience students abilities daily we have the ability to use more of a formative method of assessment. There is also an argument that collaboration is a "fundamental part" of language learning so giving tests individually does not always make the most sense. While large scale testing has to be formative and individual etc. classroom teachers have the liberty to assess differently.
This may be best seen with Delanshare's, who specializes in assessments as well, pointing out that when students are given a standardized test to assess their learning for that year it seems to assume that the learning as well has been standardized. That each students has learned the same thing, the same way at the same time. As teachers we all know that there is no educational theory that states this (that I am aware of at least) and as such standardized tests clearly have a disadvantage.
So, while it seems to be understood that large scale tests (like the STAR in California) have these limitation teachers should not try to model after these as we have different environments. Classroom AlternativesIn a classroom one normally teaching using activities that the teacher can observe. If it is possible to standardize these activities more and examine them to use this as an assessment while teaching (compared to the current model where assessment and teaching is completely separate).
Let's not just ask, "What do you know?" rather, "How are you accomplishing what you are doing?" and "What support do you need to be successful?"
Anyone who knows my teaching methodology knows that I am a HUGE fan of task based learning (learning through a task rather than listen, repeat, fill out this worksheet). Part of this (or something that is often with it) is embedded assessment. This is where students do a project of some sort which is also used an assessment. There is also task-based pedagogy where students have tasks throughout the course and then when there is a "formative assessment" it will parallel the tasks they have already been doing.
Dynamic assessment seems to suggest these are great starts, but if there's a way to INCLUDE the teacher in the process for support to the student then they could go to the next step.
Part of the hopes for formative assessment (with formative feedback) is that by guiding students they will eventually students will be capable of self assessment (which would, quite frankly, be AWESOME).
This is how I see it in my mind:
When I take a test (let's say in Spanish) I know the verb needs to be conjugated. I know it is past tense, and I am pretty sure that it should be the imperfect but because the sentence is weird to be I am not 100% sure. If I just guess and conjugate the imperfect later (when evaluating) the teacher only really changes my answer to the right one and maybe makes a brief note as to why. In a dynamic assessment the teacher could note my issue and re-phrase the sentence, or emphasize a word which should help me figure it out. This would help me observe things on my own and eventually be able to self assess more than simply being marked wrong or right.
Dynamic Assessment Dynamic Assessment is a "Interesting and new" way of assessing students. It is basically based in the thoughts of Vygotsky.
Basically there are two levels of development, the Actual Level of Development which we can see through most forms of assessment, but it leaves of emerging skills.
There's then the Zone of Proximal Development which allows us to see emerging capabilities so we don't overshoot their capabilities or teach them what they already know. To do this we make tasks which are very difficult for students that they can then try to accomplish with teacher mediation. Teachers gauge their responses to discover where to go in the future with lessons.
Many teachers are familiar with different correction techniques. In this case a Spanish teacher trying out Dynamic Assessment for 10 year olds created mediation prompts she would use in the classroom. These were in order of least invasive to very invasive.
Let's use it with an example.
Teacher: "What do you and your sister like to do?"
Student: "My sister and me like to swim"
So according to this teacher's scale we would start at number one and see how much support the student needs.
First I just pause and see if the student self corrects.
If this doesn't prompt the student I can rephrase their statement as a question. (My sister and me like to swim?)
Repeat just the part with the error. (My sister and me?)
Ask: "What's wrong with that sentence"
Point out the incorrect word. (Can we change me?)
Ask an either or question (I or me?)
Give the correct answer (Use I)
Explain why
The teacher logged the mediation prompt that students needed at each interaction which gave her a view of the overall classes progression as well as individual progression.
This isn't by any means the only way to do Dynamic Teacher and could be brainstormed so teachers can have other options, but it is a nice primary example.
Q + A What kind of weight is given to each successive question? [I would say interaction rather than question]
Clearly there's the discretion of the teacher. Some may choose to ignore the amount of the support needed and merely give students a pass or fail based on whether or not the task.
Other teachers may create a rubric where if a student needs more support then their grade can reflect this compared to students who need less support.
We also need to remember that as time passes this should be reflected on student. This goes with Stephen Krashen's theory of second language acquisition (input + 1) that we want to be teaching students things which are just out of their grasp.
Should this kind of approach be used only for formative assessments or can it be used for summative assessments as well?The basis for this type of assessment is at this level most assessment should be formative, however dynamic assessment can be used for summative assessments as well. How can this approach be applied more to meaning than grammar?
This system can function regardless of the type of teaching. The prompts for support would need to be changed, but could easily be applied to students trying to have more comprehension rather than just grammar.
Is self assessment something that just happens "naturally"?
We want learners to self assess so they have more agency and it involves them in the process. Despite the assumption that this will happen naturally it seems to be developmental. Using dynamic assessment he would be able to figure out exactly what the issues are and why so they can eventually self assess.
Is this possible in computer mediated settings?
Though dynamic assessment is quite new for second language teachers it has been around in the areas of IQ tests and special education. So we can see where it is pre-prepared and not just through dialogue.
What about the validity of dynamic assessment?
Validity is usually easily argued using large amounts of data to prove your test is legit.
Instead of data from many people we can look at lots of data from the same students. In looking at this we can see the quality of feedback they were given, what the students are able to do on their own and their responses to feedback.
Using this we can "prove" the activity is an appropriate choice to to show what learners know, and how it changes based on the feedback they receive.
My Thoughts While this seems efficient and makes sense to me based on the process of learning I do see some problems.
For example, I know in many cases student expect a test or examination of some sort at the end, and if they don't receive this (especially when they are paying for a course compared to public education) they don't feel they have learned.
Also, if this is done as a class the students who are assessed later in the classroom students who go later have more examples and are able to base their responses off of their friends examples.
Interested? More information can be found:
http://calper.la.psu.edu/assessment/index.php (the site is down now so I am not so sure what is exactly there)
One of my classes (taught in Spanish) was supposed to help us be better teachers in regards to writing. So this is Spanish as a Second Language class designed for high school students around the Greek myth of Summer. Most of it is pretty standard, but I am quite happy with the fake facebook page!
Essentially students read the myth make a bullet point timeline for the characters and then pick one and make a facebook page on their behalf.
There's a webinar coming up on the 10th through LARC again. It covers Language Assesment in foreign language classrooms. There's a quick podcast out now from the speaker (Dr. Matthew Poehner) who is trying to support assment towards support of learning compared to merely assessment fo measurement.
With the ongoing struggle of teaching to the test to generate adequate scores for their classes I a interested in this discussion and the implementation of dynamic assessment. It seems to be a more involved humanistic approach. We'll see how it goes. If you are interested in joining you can read more information here: http://larc.sdsu.edu/poehner-webinar/
So in Methodology we were discussing different ways to teach using Children's Literature. My friend Danesha and I got together and made up a lesson for Hansel and Gretel. In this case we taught emotions and made a brief version of the story
My other first class was led by Jennifer Schmidt. She got her Masters in TESOL and Linguistics and works as an English Professor in a business school. Our classes were mainly spent going over the different methodologies used to teach and trying to focus on teaching English through teaching another subject matter (using math for example to teach plural nouns)
For our final project we had to create a CLIL lesson plan using a seventh grade standard (from the LOE again) to teach English. In my case I taught about Alexander the Great to teach reported speech, and how to summarize. Throughout the lesson there would also be a review of past tenses. This is the first lesson (includes activating the schemata and such).
This is the teacher's notes, as Jennifer explained its like a toolbox it doesn't need to be in any order, it is where we put all the information we COULD use and then we use them when creating the daily lesson plans.
Overall it was nice introduction to the world of CLIL
One of my courses was Biliteracy and Curricular Design it is designed to "include an analysis of biliteracy as well as its application to curriculum design in bilingual and multicultural schools." Our teacher Amparo-Abengozar is a coordinator of the bilingual project in Madrid as well as an English teacher in the program itself. She is also an English Language Assistant trainer for the Bilingual Project in the Community of Madrid State schools AND the BEDA program (Bilingual English Development & Assessment).
Through the course she focused on having us look over the different types of bilingual programs, the bilingual program in Spain and most importantly how to plan a didactic unit that connects the Ley Orgánica de Educación (LOE) which creates the standards all classes need to follow.
In the end I created a didactic unit on the house and home (focusing on prepositions) for infantil classes.
Now I haven't had a chance to see the series, but I hope that it helps remind people that teaching is a lot more difficult than showing up and reading out of a book.
I also hope that it doesn't portray teaching as a joke :(
Today's presentations are going to be on ESL wow by Claire Bradin Siskin. She has about tons of experience with technology and ESL so it should be good. She's actually presenting now so I'll make this fast
After that there's a presentation from Chris (who's been active in all discussions thus far) who has used twitter to teach Spanish!
Today started off with Ronnie Burt who works with edu-blogs now. Think of edu-blogs as a sort of teachertube of blogger (although I am sure they have a better marketing tagline). Most schools allow edu-blogs through their security filters when other blogs (like mine: http://www.blogger.com/) would get stuck. Which makes sense, I remember when youtube was blocked in Korea for a week. My lessons were dependent on those videos, I had to run home download a program that would save youtube videos to disk. Transfer those to my mp3 player and then plug that into the computer to make it work...basically it would have been much easier if I had been using teachertube and not had that stressful ordeal.
We went over embedding (which I manged to work out when I used my personal blog) and review some of the other fun web 2.0 things the Internet has to offer
Glogster Which I've checked out before, but at the moment is a bit too graphic for me. Perhaps I'll play with this later tonight and post something tomorrow. (update: Dec 10 2011 I still am not a big fan of Glogster for me, but find it a great took to give to students)
Vokis are essentially speaking avatars. I had never really thought of implementing them into ESL before, but I think I am beginning to stir up some options. Will probably mess with this tonight as well.
watchknow Is sort of like a moderated twitter for videos. Moderators essentially keep a running post of videos they think you should watch. But the catalog is AMAZING
So not only could I perhaps find a video I have my students watch as homework about a difficult grammar concept(or use it to brush up myself before the lesson!). I could give them actual authentic content for History or Science in English! Or have them watch a video on hobbies and have them try to replicate it with their own hobby using photostory 3! Really excited about this as I see it as something that can save me a lot of time I usually spend looking through youtube videos.
Wordle isn't a new concept to me (people use it in couchsurfing a lot) but for those unfamiliar: You basically go to the website and either copy and paste a bunch of words, or a link to a web page which has words (in this case I used my blog) and it makes a "cloud" of words. The more a word is used the bigger it is (so my blog is pretty student centered I suppose). It is nice to make one for students before a lesson and use it as a quick attention getter/prediction task.
you can mess with how things show up if you like (colors, font, orientation etc).
So the one above is the same as the one below (as far as content) it just has different preferences.
A few more things and then I'll stop rambling :)
There's "Wall Wisher" where you can create a wall where people can leave sticky notes. I am not sure I really see the applied differences between this and a blog, but I suppose it would appeal more to visual and kinesthetic learners. For now I am envisioning something like this:
There's a theme (in this case regret) and students would need to post relevant videos, songs or stories. In case they need something to start I posted a song in L1 that they could refer to in the target language.
Vimeo is essentially a youtube (video sharing service) but it allows longer videos and seems to have stricter rules...I am not sure would have to look into it.
LAST THING!
So many of these websites you just want to try out before you sign up, right (like a test drive BEFORE you buy the car)?
I was reminded of an older website I used to use http://www.bugmenot.com/ It is used for free accounts online. Essentially you go to bugmenot and put the website you want to access. If someone has already gone through the hassle of creating a "shared" account you can just take that shared password and username to try the site out. NOTE: This should NOT be used if you plan on using ANYTHING private. As you are using a username and password accessible by anyone ANYONE can access what you do within your account. But I usually use it BEFORE I make an account for a new free service (like Prezi) to see if it is even anything that I would be interested in joining.
The first presentation started with Glen talking about his job. He's been a distance teacher for about 6 years. His students live in small villages where it is too inconvenient or expensive to get teachers, so he teaches from the computer.
He went over some ways that he uses eluminate with his students to keep it interactive and not just presentation.
Then we went through the basics of photoStory 3. It had gotten some great results from his students who felt that it was "more fun than writing an essay" (even though it still uses the same basic skills). So using some old photographs from Korea I put together a basic video.
Not fantastic, but I get how it can work with students. My one fear is that they may spend more time on effects than the language content. Sometimes we see this happen with pen and paper assignments. The artists make the fantastic elaborate posters with very little language content and the artistically challenged (me) do stick figures and gigantic paragraphs (theirs always looked so much better!).
Well I figured out what re-mix semiotic practices means! Thorne's presentation was really cool! You can still check out the recording and I HIGHLY recommend it. I'll actually try to make another separate post on it because it hits on some of the things I studied in Communications back in college so I'd like to be able to link to some Communication theories (which means it shall take a bit longer than the other summary/reflection posts).
It is a big rambly, but at least I get my point across.
There's the primary pad we've been working on as a group. (You can see how we all could add to each other's work (in this case not much peer editing was done)
In the primary pad document we were advised to go onto voice thread and tell a bit about ourselves and what we learned
Soo, that's pretty much it today, we have Glen Cake giving a presentation on the "Online Class and Digital Story Telling through PhotoStory 3." This is supposed to give us the tools for storytelling such as how to integrate voice, images and text.
After lunch we have a recorded presentation from Steven L Thorn. This will go into uses of social media, "remix semiotic practices" I have no idea what that means, new media literacies, and multi-player gaming as settings for teaching languages.
Well Michelle and Catalina seemed to mainly focus on the use of primary pad and voice thread for student collaboration. To help their students practice third person they were assigned groups from another school and had to describe
As a group students had to come up with sentences describing the duck. Now in this case they are 8th grade Spanish teachers so the sentences would be in Spanish. Since I primarily teach EFL my students would be doing this is English.
His name is Paul.
He likes to swim.
He hates to do math homework.
Primary pad is a type of etherpad. EtherPad was the first web-based word processor that allowed people to work together in really real-time. It was started by applejet and later acquired by google (I believe) but when they shut down the program they released the code for others to develop. I may be wrong, but all you really need to know is it allows several people to get together and brainstorm, peer edit etc. The other thing I really like about it is you can use the public version without logging in or registering!
Since students are working with one another they get all the positives of peer learning (team-building, greater psychological well-being, social competence, communication skills, self-esteem, higher achievement etc.)
Now, this activity gets them to practice reading and writing, but speaking is also pretty important. So the students also had to go to the link that the teacher had previously created and they would read the list they had created describing their duck. Voice thread seems pretty basic, it is just a way to have students record their voice over a picture and allow people to leave voice comments.
Finally Kyle Murley took the opportunity to show us around some sites on the web and we all brainstormed some possible applications of these different options.
Some of the things we went over:
Prezi: Essentially a gigantic white canvas where you can put images, text, etc that you can play with (rotate, make bigger etc). A decent alternative to powerpoint, but it will take me a long while before I figure out if it is really any "better." It still seems rather presentational rather than interactive. Regardless, it was still nice to be made aware of this thing I kept hearing about.
Twitter: Twitter is actually linked with screenr when Kyle spoke about it. I think that Thursday we will have Chris Brown talk about twitter more so for now I am going to skip any application and just talk about the concept. Most people are aware that twitter is a "micro-blog" which allows members to post 140 characters per entry. While many native speakers have to practice to get concise this is a pretty good size for people acquiring a language.
Flickr: By linking Flickr to an e-mail address you can have students e-mail (or sms) pictures of relevant vocabulary words or themes tagging them appropriately. This will give students a great base of pictures (meaning!) and since it is THEIR material they will be more motivated and passionate about the concepts you teach! GREAT!
Blogs!: It is also possible to send pictures straight to a blog! I know Blogger offers this as does flickr (through blogger). By just having a number or e-mail students need to text things so they avoid needing to have yet another log in and password and you still maintain control. There's more discussion on blogs on Wednesday so for now we'll end that train of thought.
Screenr: The great thing about screenr is it can post things directly to your twitter without even needing to start an account with screenr. If you have a twitter account that's all you need! YAY for one less password. Its basically a way to record what goes on your screen (and you can voice over) so you could do an exercise on "How to look for an apartment in England." A nice replacement to the usual, "How do you make lemonade?" I'll make an example later but for now that's a pretty good summary! I am really glad I found this and looking forward to tomorrow!
"The goal of this summer's workshop is for each participant to walk away (or log off) with a new social media tool to use in their next language classroom. Along the way they will hear from language teachers using these tools, engage in discussions on best practices, theory, and global trends, and also meet potential partners for future projects. It is going to be an exciting and interactive workshop, so plan on diving into the technology without inhibition."
Thus far I've had the opportunity to hear from Evan Rubin and learn more about using Elluminate. It is essentially an e-classroom with screen sharing, microphone, webcam, private rooms and many more functions. You can create a free account which allows you to have up to 3 people working at the same time. For bigger meetings (like this webinar) you need to have a paid account, but for the present time it seems the free one should work fine! We also got an idea of where everyone tuning in was from and the diverse backgrounds we all had in social media. If anyone was unable to make it but interested you are welcome to view the recorded session here We were also given the link to Learn Central where all the participants will be able to log in after and keep in touch with one another and the ongoing acts of incorporating social media into our lessons.
Soon after we had a chance to hear from Nicole Naditz as we all reviewed the basic standards for teaching (and learning a foreign language). It was great to be able to review what the main goals of learning should be and the different ways we all accomplish that.Her recording is here
Next up are Michelle Olah and Catalina Bohorquez who will be sharing about PrimaryPad and Voicethread applicable uses for students beyond the walls of the classroom.
