March 4, 2009 at 1:45 am · Filed under Unspecified
My journey continues – and I was pleased to see my blog getting read by ‘external bloggers’…I had thought it was more of an ‘online’ journal to manage my own thoughts and feedback (and have a paper trail for accrediation!), but Steve, if you’re reading this – I am not on Twitter, in fact never heard of it – but I am on Facebook and on Skype and well, here – and I am looking forward to talking to you about Second Life, as I have somewhat taken on the role of exploring benefits of IT in language teaching withing our staffroom.
But first things first. After a shocking start to the week (I had missed my accrediation training course at AIS on Monday, my day off school), I had another lesson oberved by the Head of our department and I am happy with the way the lesson went. Well – happier at least after the last time she came in. The aim of the lesson was to revisit the pronouns and etre, to rehearse spelling and the alphabet, learn to state “I am from + city” and finish off with a listening/reading comprehension to extend their vocabulary base. What worked really well was the my movement around the class (berger allemand – Jose je t’ecoute!), the fact I had their attentions and managed them well in between tasks – they were attentive and on task today. I was commended for having a girl write out the pronouns on the board rather than doing it myself and she also liked how I approached the reading comprehension: After 2 listenings, asking them to find expressions that I give them in English in French. I still need to work on giving instructions clearer and providing more scaffolding before expecting them to produce language. The suggestion was made to have them repeat after each ‘bubble’ and to ask them to rote learn a dialogue which they have then to perform before asking them to make up their own dialogue. And whilst this (rote learning) is totally against pretty much all things we learned at uni, I am tempted to try it…thinking back, I learned French by imagining conversations with my (French) boyfriend and learning them off by heart – and I am pleased to say that most of my imaginary dialogues were played out at some stage over ensuing years! I will also try to incorporate even more song into my lessons and add another dimension of rythm to my lessons that way.
I am collecting my annotated lesson plans from the lessons I was evaluated on, which should be a good starting point for the teaching portfolio, which I aim to get done this year. But like I said – overall a good lesson and I look forward to trying the suggestions in upcoming classes….but no room for complacency and rest – there’s still lots of lesson to be planned and Second Life to be explored…..which brings me back to Steve. How far is your school from mine??
February 13, 2009 at 8:20 pm · Filed under Unspecified
2 weeks in the new job! It’s still everything I could wish for – and in comparison to reports of fellow graduate teachers, certainly NOT your average conditions. I still feel as though I ought to pinch myself and can’t believe I have been given such an amazing opportunity. It is hard work but I am challenging myself to become a great LOTE teacher. Sue came in to observe a lesson of mine and it wasn’t as successful a lesson as I had hoped. The lesson was meant to be the culmination of a series or predominantly grammar focused work on the partitive article and its exceptions- I had asked the girls to prepare a dialogue, which they were to act out whilst I filmed them (we moved to the main hall for this and the girls could dress up in their chosen characters). The most obvious flaw was that I had miscalculated – I had been concerned about running out of time yet we finished so much ahead of the end of the lesson that I had to take the girls back to their classroom and I hadn’t got anything great up my sleeve for the last 5 minutes (which seemed like an eternity of course). I should have halved the time for the role play and used the remainder of the lesson for something new or different altogether. Sue also rightly pointed out that by nor correcting the girls’ dialogues upfront, they now went ahead and learned something potentially wrong off by heart, which is harder to undo. So I should have collected and corrected their work first before setting off on the role play. She also thought my warm up activity was too hard for a warm up. I used Flashcards to revisit the partitive article and its exceptions, but I should have started with just letting them state the items on the Flashcards – give them a ’success event’ before testing more complicated grammar points. I also think that next time I use video I will get a student to be in charge of the camera, as I couldn’t jot down comments and felt I could have had problems in a less well behaved class because I was concentrating on the videoing rather than what was happening amongst the non-performing girls. Always the encouraging mentor, Sue pointed out that she was happy with what she had seen in terms of my relationship with the girls. She thought I had a presence in the classroom and had their attention and managed transitions without losing control. She said such a demeneaour is not acquired – you either have it or you don’t, and she seemed satisfied with my performance in that respect. I guess what she said with that was that the rest (ie. the actual methodology of making sure learning occurs) IS something that can be learned and practised, and I want nothing more than to show her that I am listening and learning and applying and therefore hopefully visibly improve my teaching methods.
In one way it’s daunting to think that she’ll come to one lesson per week, but I see it as a gift, as her feedback allows me to rethink my approaches and detect their flaws. I just hope I’ll get the hang at some stage!
February 1, 2009 at 8:24 pm · Filed under Unspecified
Well! I am writing this at the eve of a new era…tomorrow I will be teaching my first class at Pymble Ladies College; my first time as a fully fledged graduate teacher. By then I will have had a week of internal workshops and getting to know the school, and I am impressed to say the least. The school is run like a small corporation, complete with resources and helplines, who, so far so good, have been excatly what the name indicates: Helpful! My line manager is taking a lot of time to ensure I am settling in ok, which is reassuring. No question is too much, and every request /comment is acted upon (and in most instances resolved) almost immediately. We will have monthly meetings to discuss my progress (she will be sitting in a class every fortnight) and discuss professional development opportunities. So far, we have agreed that for 2009 my main goal is to achieve accreditation with the Institute of Teachers. The school will pay for PD if it falls in line with this goal. We have identified a course by the AIS on how to accumulate the accreditation materials as a first priority. I will also attend the NAFT conference at the end of the year and possibly attend the Goethe conference in March (at least for 1 day). Once I have gotten the hang of life here at Pymble and gotten on with the accreditation, I may look into undertaking web-inars with Goethe to improve on using IT in the classroom. I also volunteered to be the Moodle point of contact for Modern Languages, so any training that is coming in that respect will be on my plate as well! I can’t wait to get going.
I have recorded myself talking about a great German Website promoting e-learning…enjoy and excuse the wild hair….I will spend more time in make-up next time.
As previously mentioned, our immersion activity was to take part in a Quest Atlantis Professional Development Workshop. Quest Atlantis was designed to create a context for learning, in which learning, working, helping and playing co-exist. It aims to engage children ages 9–14 ‘in a form of dramatic play comprising both online and off-line learning activities, with a storyline inspiring a disposition towards social action’. The essence of the storyline (which is extended to a novel and comic book) is as follows: Despite its technological development, Atlantis is slowly being destroyed by the reckless heirs of their recently deceased ruler. They are only interested in progress with no consideration for ancient knowledge and customs or, in fact, the needs of their own people. In an effort to save their civilization, a council was formed and OTAK was developed –a virtual environment that serves as a technological portal between Atlantis and other worlds. Students enter the OTAK and move within different worlds, which feature a number of villages from which a series of challenges (quests) are launched. The underlying premise is that by solving the quests students (called questers) will help to restore the Atlantian knowledge.
The first workshop (each lasts an hour, the next one is tomorrow night), saw us enter the OTAK from the students’ viewpoint. We roamed through different worlds and tried our hands at a number of quests (finding and commenting on information – every time a student is required to reflect on an experience, a word processing window pops up in which the students type their thought through responses). As homework, we had to enter the world in our own time and complete some more missions. Teachers can either work with pre-existing quests (there are quests for each KLA – currently around 600) or you can post your own. Completed quests need to be evaluated by a teacher before the kids proceed anywhere, so there is a level of human intervention, but they are not necessarily aware that this is NOT a game, as the whole interface and concept is more reminiscent of a Playstation game. According to the Seminar Leader, Bronwyn, Quest Atlantis strength is that it caters to a broad range of learners (gifted and talented students benefit from being able to explore further). Tomorrow, we shall go “behind the scenes” and learn about the magic us teachers can create to encite our students to learn (in our case: to use language).
If you are interested and would like to know more about Quest Atlantis, visit their website, with plenty of video-based information and example quests. If you would like to participate in an upcoming seminar and qualify as a Quest Atlantis approved teacher (meaning you would be allowed to use it in your school next year), contact Bronwyn: bstuckey@intraceptives.com.au
This is a reaction to Athina’s thoughtful blog on “Teachers and Students learn together”. Knowing of Athina’s “phobia” of all things technical, I can only say how happy I am for her that she’s coming to enjoy using it in her Greek classes. I am a big believer in lifelong learning (in fact that’s one of the reasons why I am retraining to become a teacher) myself and I believe that this attitude allows me to gain the respect of my students, as echoed by the quote by Mr Taylor. I haven’t had a chance to use Whiteboards again after my first practicum, but I am looking forward to (hopefully!) joining a school in which they’re part and parcel of the teaching approach. And who knows Athina…it may well be me asking you for help at that point…!
This is a reaction to Matthew Kearney’s blog on the use of video in the classroom. Video capture capabilities provide exciting possibilities to be incorporated into our teaching programs. In today’s world literally every event may be caught and distributed on video (even mobile phone capturing devices offer high quality video and free software like iMovie enable users to produce near professional content). In a language classroom, learner produced video could be a fun way for students to use their language and at the same time monitor their progress and become aware of where they can improve in terms of pronouncitation, for example. I can see the potential for video based content in cultural contexts as well. The only concern I still have is the one raised elsewhere in this blog – and that is that not necessarily all students are equally tech-sazzy when it comes to manipulating video (even simple applications like iMovie require a) that the student has access to it and b) that they are willing to teach themselves how the program works). And when we’re marking their work, would be prone to giving higher marks to more accomplished results (which would not be assessing their language or cultural knowledge but their capability to create video output)? Nevertheless, I look forward to making use of my Camcorder in some way, shape or form next year.
Whilst researching an assignment for Language Methodology a few weeks ago, I came across an article by Linda W Braun (unfortunately I am unable to find the link to the document again at this stage, but if you’re interested contact me and I can email you a pdf. version). Linda, an Education technology consultant, seems to be a a bit of a “guru” when it comes to integrating emerging technologies into the learning environment (which is why I have added her to my blogroll!) She did a reasearch project in which she enquired about 13-18 year olds reading preferences (they had to list anything and everything they read on a daily basis). The final list read as follows:
1) text messages
2) email
3) MySpace + Facebook
4) Orchestra Music
5) Seventeen Magazine
6) itunes
7) IM + Specific websites
Book reading was almost always related to school assignments. What Linda is saying is that adults need to realise that “non traditional” forms of reading are equally valuable and these resources can be tapped into in order to promote literay skills and get students to think of themselves as avid readers. I have come to accept that in Australian schools, reading (traditional) foreign literature is reserved for Extension courses. But in line with what Linda promotes, I aim to enhance all of my students’ reading skills in the foreign language by use of online texts (e.g. online newspapers, blogs, deducting information from authentic websites etc).
The Horizon Report is a publication that seeks to idenitfy and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on teaching and learning. “Collaboration Webs” is one of 6 areas outlined in the report, and it’s expected to enter mainstream use in learning focused organisations within 5 years (if it hasn’t already done so). In the language classroom, joint projects with students at other schools (e.g. the German International School and the French Lycee in Sydney or schools actually located in foreign countries) can expose students to authentic use of the target language as well as offering a new cultural perspective. Collaboration Web applications include those that allow students in different locations to work on the same document or multimedia projects (e.g. Google Docs, Zoho Office, Jumpcut and SlideShare). But the most exciting areas in relation to collaboration webs as far as language learning is concerned are (in my eyes) those that allow for the creation of a safe and secure and customized network. Ning is a prime example. Creating a workspace for a specific class, topic or assignment offers great opportunities for monitoring collective progress. I could also imagine how great it would be to have a space with a particular partner school in Germany or France, in which students exchange information about each other, their work, their progress and even showcase some of their work. Ning seems to remedy some of the concerns I had in relation to using social networking sites in the LOTE classroom. But it still involved a lot of effort and needs a teacher willing to set up, use and maintain such a space (…and you still need to find a suitable partner school at the other end who share the passion for integrating ICT….)
As part of Language Methodology, Dr Liam Morgan provided us with this interesting reading. An easy and enjoybale read. It is a comprehensive and thorough evaluation of IT in the LOTE classroom, located within a sound theoretical framework (for those in Sue’s and Liam’s classes – plenty of references to ol’ Richards and Rodgers). The report reinforces my own opinion on several fronts:
Technology Based Language Resources need to be carefully selected according to their paedagocial potential. There are many resources with al lthe “bells and whistles” which are dominated by technology and do not make the language use and learning the main concern
Learner differences; Even the best and “paedagogically sound” ICT material may not appeal to all students at the same time, highlighting the need to make it one of many varied approaches to language teaching.
And on the same vein – despite the fact that more kids than ever before are extremely tech-sazzy, ICT knowledge can’t be judged to be universal and a given for every kid in the classroom. So where we make use of ICT, we need to be sure that the kids are familiar enough with the technology to get learning out of the activity (and that’s not the type of learning related to being able to navigate around on a PC or MAC).
Another interesting point raised in the article was that with falling numbers of LOTE classes, ICT may offer a financially viable alternative to offering foreign languages. Where schools can’t put on a particular foreign language becasue there’s only 3 or 4 students interested, a “virtual classroom” (like we use for this subject) may be an alternative. But of course, there is heaps of logistical and techological groundwork to be done to set this up (plus finding a teacher who’s willing to take on such a challenge).
Overall the best read I had so far in regards to this topic and language learning.
