Final Reflection

Integrating technology into secondary English language teaching

Again, we have been working with case studies in the classroom. This time I will analyse Case Study 2.4: Mobile learning inside and outside of the classroom in Turkey, taken from Graham Stanley's Integrating technology into secondary English language teaching.

What I liked the most about this project was the variety of tools available and the fact that the students would not have been able to do anything similar to this without the use of technology. 

The idea behind the project was that students should work on vocabulary related to Animals (idioms for example) and that they should develop the 4 macroskills. The first part of the project included a visit to a zoo, during which students had to collect information, pictures, videos, sounds, that they would later use in different tasks. Then they had to use different tech tools to create a website, to present the information, and to create a comic strip in order to practice idioms. After that, they had to work on the 4 macroskills using QR codes, recording a radio play script, and using more traditional Web 2.0 tools such as online dictionaries and an online grammar quiz. 

Different parts of this project would fall into different SAMR categories. For example, the dictionary and grammar parts are Substitution activities. They could have been done on paper with the same results; the same as the treasure hunt, which surely can be more fun when played in this innovative way, but is still about going around a building and solving different tasks. The writing and listening parts would fall into Modification categories, as technology redefines the task at hand. Finally, the web and comic design activities would fall into the Redefinition category. They are tasks that would have been previously inconceivable without the use of technology. Students can share their field trip not only with their classmates but with the whole world via the web, and they can be as creative as they want to because there is no one specified format they should use.

Unfortunately, the links on the PDF file didn't work, so I was not able to browse the final product, but I found the case study really interesting, especially since it also presented the problems that the teacher had encountered and I think that it is very useful to know the potential problems of a task in order to be able to prevent them or at least be ready to solve them. 

PLN

I had never heard of the term Personal Learning Network before starting this course, and apparently I have been making some (very limited) use of it for a while now. The idea of Personal Learning Networks is that one has a group of people one can consult who are always available, and willing to share. I guess all the different Facebook groups I belong to form part of my PLN. However, I must admit I'm not an avid PLN user. I belong to these groups, but threads are so difficult to follow because so many people comment on them all the time, that I only use them every once in a while, when I need help. But I am not contributing to it myself. 

Something similar happens to me with the Internet in general. I use the Internet constantly, and get everything I need from it: information, pictures, ideas, tools, music, videos, books. But I very seldom contribute to it. I guess this blog (together with the blogs I use for my lessons) is the biggest contribution I have made. Sad and selfish, isn't it? The thing is, it is so time consuming... 

Anyways... a great thing I have learned in this subject is how easy it is to be "in contact" (one way at least) with experts around the world. And it is not a matter of being constantly checking what they are up to, but it is more about knowing who to consult on specific things and having them available at the tip of our fingers. I have now joined FB groups of people interested in linguistics, and history, I'm following different university graduate programs on twitter and I've subscribed to various blogs on Sociolinguistics and Psycholinguistics. And I have realized I have been doing many of the things Nik Peachey proposes in the British Council Roadshow:
• Join or ‘Like’ a page or group on Facebook
• Go to a conference
• Take an online course
• Follow educators on Twitter
• Collect and curate online resources
• Attend an online webinar
• Subscribe to teaching websites
• Do peer observation
• Do action research
• Read blogs by other teachers
• Write my own teaching blog
• Do a face to face course
• Video my lessons and watch them

I guess now all I have left is to start producing and sharing knowledge myself... 

Speaking Skills

Here's my post... this time in a different format:

Digital play

I'm not much of a gamer. Once upon a time I was addicted to Age of Empires and the Sims and Winning Eleven, but that was precisely the problem: I was addicted to them. So I cut them off for good. At school we never used digital games in the classroom; just one that helped you type faster (boring). So this topic caught my attention, because it was a concept that was completely new to me. The Skype session we had with Graham Stanley triggered my curiosity and I've been trying different games since yesterday. 

Although I liked the "exit-the-room" genre, and I can see how they could be used with students to practice comprehension, or giving instructions, or using the past tense, or the present and lots of other language points, they were not the ones I liked best. The thing is, I found the ones I tried to play too easy. And I don't feel students would necessarily need to listen to or read a walkthrough to succeed. 

Two games that I did find interesting, though, were Spent and Enercities. 

As well as teaching History, I teach Geography, and I volunteer at an NGO that educates for peace. Both in Geography and in CISV, it is common for me to deal with the issue of Sustainable Development. 

Reading first the activities proposed by Graham Stanley for the use of Enercities, I realized that this game would be great for both environments. In the classroom in particular, it would give students the chance to see how difficult it is to balance the interest of businessmen, ecologists, and politicians; something that is difficult to grasp when dealing with 12 year olds. To the activities proposed I would add a couple of things. Before playing the game I think I would have students watch Story of Stuff for which I have prepared a viewing guide with activities for my students this year. The aim of this is to get students to approach the game in a serious way. I'm thinking that if I came up to the classroom one day and told them they'd be playing a game, as they're not used to it, they'd think it's just for fun. In this way, they'd be approaching the topic from a more "serious" perspective, thinking already about the impact they themselves have on the planet. 

Story Of Stuff - Viewing guide.pdf

The other thing I would add to the activities proposed by G. Stanley would be to stop the game halfway, have students change places and advice their classmates on what they should do now. This would give them the chance of using 2° Conditionals to give advice (If I were you I would). They could also practice giving advice using "might" (Well... now you might want to build a new power station). Also, they could be asked to write a speech impersonating either a politician, a businessman or an environmentalist, to convince the audience why they should build X or Y.

As regards Spent, I really liked the ideas G. Stanley gave us yesterday, of having small groups of students play together, and have them discuss the implications of each of the decisions they can take. This would communicative discussion, and would open up the debate for different moral choices. At CISV we "play" something similar but the analogic version. It's a sort of simulation game. I think Spent could be used to prepare the kids who will participate in CISV summer camps, as it involves the same kind of tasks they would do when they travel: discussing open topics that don't have just one answer, putting themselves in other people's shoes, listening to other people's opinions and the like. 

Content Curation

As much as I love art, there was a time at which I couldn't set foot on another museum. The thing is, for our IB art exams at school, we had to visit as many museums as possible and it ended up being so boring. It's not that Buenos Aires has few museums, but the process was always the same. Visit the museum and then write/sketch about it in your sketchbook. As it usually happens with literature, school took all the fun out of museums for me.

It was only in 2011, while traveling around Europe and the US, that I set foot in a museum again. Wow! All those open galleries with marble sculptures created hundreds of years ago. So refreshing... all the light and the flow of the art pieces as one artist brought you to the next. I started appreciating then the work of curators. The process of selection, association, display... simply exquisite. 

And it was so interesting to find out that I could do the "same" (or I was already doing it, sort of) with all the online content that I used to just save to Evernote with absolutely no systematicity. 

I first tried Diigo. I found it useful. Quite similar to Evernote actually. I don't think it'll be replacing Evernote for me, as the elephant allows me to keep all my devices synchronized as well as allowing me to upload and sort different types of content; not just websites (voice notes, pictures, to-do lists). 

I was already using Pinterest for DIYs, clothes, hair-dos, motivational phrases, home design. I love it because it's so visually appealing. And it's so easy to access other people's boards. I'm not very active in it though; more the follower than the producer. 

And then I came across Pearltrees in Marisa Constantinides' From Curation to Creation, and it was a bit of both. It is like Diigo in the sense that you can select and classify websites, and it includes an add-in that allows you to do it directly from your browser, and it's like Pinterest in the sense that it looks so nice (yes, I am the kind of person who judges a book by its cover)!

Here's my pearltree. It's quite small now because I've only just "planted" it, but I'll try to water it often:

Web tool analysis

Among the apps that Nik recommends in his blog, I ran into blubbr. It is an app that allows you to create a trivia based on a Youtube video. How does it work?
The first thing you have to do is to give your triv a title:

Then you 1) choose a Youtube video, 2) crop the video, 3) you create your questions and write possible answers, and 4) you publish your triv

I liked the idea very much and just looking at the instructions made me think it might be quite accessible. Besides, you can register using your Google account so you don't have to memorize any new username or password. Plus it is free and it can be used on your iPad, iPod, tablet or PC. Although I couldn't find much use for this app outside the classroom environment, I think it could be applicable to other subjects; not only English. 

I thought it might be a good idea for a task in which students have to create their own videos and share them with their classmates. If on top of creating a video, they created a triv, they would ensure their classmates are paying attention. 

However when I tried to use it I encountered several problems. First of all, you cannot put questions more than 20 seconds apart. That limits users a lot, since in some videos you might not have important or complete information that often. Also, there is the fact that users watch the video without knowing what they will be asked so they don't know what they should be paying attention to; will the question be about what the speaker is saying or about the background music, or about the image? And most importantly, when I tried to create my own triv, the app kept freezing and I had to start over. Imagine having 30 sts in a classroom and them being about to finish but having to start over because the site is not working properly... impossible!

Bottom line... it might be very appealing, and it might work well with videos sts have watched at least once, and clear instructions as to what they should pay attention to. But I would not advice that you should use with students in the classroom. Rather, if you like it, prepare a triv at home, make sure it's running smoothly, and bring it to the classroom as a treat/challenge every once in a while.