Week 8 Post: Three Technologies

Teachertube, at www.teachertube.com, is a video-sharing website, much like Youtube, and it was suggested by Gordon King.  Instead of songs, music videos, films, and so on, Teacher tube is dedicated to providing educational videos.  While videos with educational content can be found on sites like Youtube, Teachertube focuses more on videos that resemble what we might experience in a classroom environment.  In fact, some of the videos were taken during a particular classroom presentation.  Search for any topic that comes to mind, and you will get loads of videos that range from classroom lectures to PowerPoint presentations, and from animations to documentary excerpts.  As a language instructor, I searched for grammatical subjects and found many videos that my students would benefit from watching.  Sometimes, it is good to hear the same concept explained by different people, maybe something I explained in class is explained more clearly by a more experienced teacher in one of the videos on Teachertube.  Also, videos on this site can be referred to by students who missed a class or several classes.  I have weekly tutorial hours, of course, but in the event where I cannot fulfill such obligations, Teachertube is there to help.

            Teachertube is not all about catching up on missed lectures, however.  Videos can be uploaded, and I can imagine assigning a project where my students have to create a video of themselves in a group, explaining a grammar point, and, ultimately uploading this video onto Teachertube.  This is concurrent with the emerging trends in education as outlined in the 2014 NMC Horizon Report (Johnson, Adams Becker, Estrada, & Freeman), which state that the future of education will be characterized by students creating and producing more than they consume.

            Another website which was brought to my attention by our friend Gordon King is Flickr at www.flickr.com.  Again, this website is all about sharing.  Richardson (2010) writing about major shifts to come in the future of education, asks us to “Think of how much of student work today simply ends up in the recycling bin at the end of the year” (151).  Forget about end of the year, yesterday I photocopied homework assignments for my class and one student didn’t even bother to take hers home.  But maybe it’s not her fault.  Now that I think about it, the assignment was kind of dull and boring.  Maybe it’s not that students are lazy or anything like that, maybe there’s something wrong with the assignment.  Either way, sites like Flickr offer us many alternatives to get students more motivated to create work that “can have real purpose and real meaning for the audience that consumes” (Richardson, 2010, p. 151). If there’s anything today’s audience loves to consume, it is pictures.  Selfies or food shots, people are clicking away and talking pictures of, well, their lives basically.  So how can I use this educationally in a language learning context?

            Obviously, the most basic of classroom presentations can be much more fun to do when students know that they can include photos instead of just standing up there in front of the class mouthing away about something that we covered in class.  Basically, what I am trying to do here is add substance to an assignment.  I want to use pictures alongside language activities in order to give students something to talk or write about in class.  For example, think about a writing assignment where students are given a piece of paper with a question on it and they have to answer that question in 250 words in 50 minutes.  Sounds boring right?  It might be difficult to brainstorm ideas.  However, a nice montage of pictures, done by me or the students beforehand, can be very helpful in helping our students with their writer’s block.  Finally, for basic language practice, talking about what is in or what is happening in the pictures is classroom classic: it can help with practicing all sorts of tenses and vocabulary.

            Karen Kendall introduced me to Gameshow Pro, which can be found at http://www.learningware.com/gameshowpro/.  This website allows you to design game show content for whatever purpose you have in mind.  The games already exist and they are based on well-known TV game shows, teachers just have to make the questions.  Games in language learning contexts are especially helpful to boost energy levels when students get tired.  They are also helpful for vocabulary.  For example, the questions in the game can be definitions of words and students have to figure out what words are being referred to.  A game can also be designed where students are asked very easy general knowledge questions but can only get full points if they answer the questions in correct grammar and pronunciation.             

References

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

The New Media Consortium (n.d.). NMC Horizon Reports. Retrieved May 30, 2012, from http://www.nmc.org/publications

Week 6 Post: Distance and Open Learning Technologies in Adult Learning

Moodle (https://moodle.org/) and Desire2learn (http://www.desire2learn.com/) are asynchronous online learning technologies.  Of course, the big name in this act is Blackboard, which Walden uses, but since we are all familiar with that, I decided to have a look at some other names in the business.  

            On the first page of Moodle, I clicked on “Join Us” and was taken to another page where there were several links to various discussions.  Of course, the discussion topic I zeroed in on was entitled “Teaching with Moodle”.  This page was a kind of troubleshooting / suggestion grab-bag page, where teachers either wrote about glitches and other technical problems, or where they simply posted questions on anything from how to implement a particular learning objective to how to split a class of one hundred plus students into groups.  I went back to the main “Join Us” page and this time clicked on “Lounge”, which is where teachers share anything from articles and links of interest or teaching suggestions and lesson plans.

            I then decided to take a tour of the facilities and was impressed with the user-friendly interface and the customizable dashboard.  The interface is specifically designed to be compatible with mobile technologies, which is a significant advantage as learning becomes more and more mobile (Park, 2011).  Moodle contains many tools (such as wikis, forums, and chats) to promote, foster, and implement collaborative learning.  Basically, I got the impression that Moodle is teacher- and user-friendly, and as anyone who has ever taken an online course knows, that kind of friendliness is one of the most important factors to consider when incorporating learning management systems into courses.  At the end of the day, how pretty the page is and whether or not it is compatible with your mobile will not matter if, among other things, your students have problems accessing their pages, you cannot see their grades, or announcement do not get published in time.

            Neither Moodle nor Desire2learn appear to have such problems.  Desire2learn is not that different from Moodle.  Indeed, perhaps it is safe to assume, on a superficial level at least, that all LMSs are more or less variations on a similar theme.  The basic premise is this: Teachers get to put their courses online and manage them quite easily.  With distance learning becoming ever more prevalent (Bonk, 2009), LMSs are going to become more and more important in our lives.  Who knows, with learning becoming ongoing and lifelong, perhaps LMS and social networking will combine to form a symbiotic whole in which learning and networking are one and the same.

            Fantastical as that may sound, it probably will not provide learning in a formal capacity.  In fact, while I was reading class materials for the assignments this week I kept asking myself what the difference was between open learning and distance learning.  Of course, the differences became clear as I was reading and the main difference is that distance learning is formal and credited.  Therefore, the utopic and fantasy combination of social networking and LMS would be fine if we were talking about open learning.  Indeed, if you go to the MIT OpenCourseWare website, you can see links to their Facebook and Twitter pages.  However, when it comes to official and formal learning endeavors, it would perhaps be better to stick with LMS and network with classmates via the tools provided by the system.  

            There is no doubt that such technologies enhance adult learning.  I mean, that is what we are doing right now, is it not?  We are benefiting from an LMS and we are receiving a formal credited education through it.  In a language learning context and LMS can provide learners with valuable opportunities to practice online.  Mostly, the LMS is used for work on grammar or practicing reading skills.  The main thing to keep in mind is that along with the efficiency of the LMS, the meaningfulness of the tasks is equally important.  If we do not provide learners with learning tasks and objectives that are meaningful to them, then using LMS would be no different than any other kind of teaching-learning interaction.   

References

Bonk, C. J. (2009). The world is open: How web technology is revolutionizing education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 

Park, Y. (2011). A pedagogical framework for mobile learning: Categorizing educational applications of mobile technologies into four types. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(2), 78–102.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

Week 5 Post: Games, Simulations, and Virtual Environments in Adult Learning

Conduct a Google search for online games, simulations, and virtual worlds, and you are bound to be met with a vast array of choices.  Where should one begin?  With so many choices available, it becomes increasingly difficult to select a particular game that can be interesting and lesson-friendly at the same time, and one that all the students in a class can enjoy and learn from.  However, while pondering this issue, I remembered two statements in Squire (2011) that resonated with me.  The first is related to mutual interest.  Squire (2011) recounts how he took an interest in a student’s hobby in order to reach out and connect with him.  Previously, the student had been reluctant to participate in activities and do his assignments.  Squire befriended the student through gaming, and researched the student’s hobby, in this case, a love of Great Pyrenees dogs, in order to engage him in conversation and reach out to him.  This show of interest forged a connection that enabled the once reluctant student to excel. 

            From this anecdote, I was reminded of the importance of teacher interest in students.  When planning to use games, we really need to keep our students in mind.  A game I found stimulating and fun may not evoke the same feelings in my students.  Furthermore, interest needs to exist at the outset.  If I do not like video games and have no interest in them, it would not make sense to try to employ them in class.  Firstly, I would probably have no idea what I was doing, and, secondly, it would be highly dismissive to tell the students to just play a game and do such-and-such activity; this kind of behavior does not foster an inclusive atmosphere in class.  In short, teachers need to be into gaming if they want to use games in class.

            The second item that struck me from Squire (2011) was his discussion of the Montessori system of education, specifically, its focus on the normal development of children and how creative problem solving is an essential, though not singular, component of this development.  Reflecting on creative problem solving, I thought about purpose in learning.  Solving a problem is an objective and teachers need to provide such an objective when incorporating games in their lessons.  Again, teachers cannot be dismissive and send students off to play games as if they are being sent away to recess; students need a purpose.  If students end up asking themselves what’s the point of all this? then something needs to be reworked.                

            It would seem, then, that a requisite for using games in class is teacher interest.  If teachers are not interested in games and gaming, this can also be used: Teachers can ask students to convince the teacher that gaming is interesting.  Such an activity can help students practice reasoning skills.  Also, an assignment can be designed around learners teaching teachers how to play games.  Again, such an assignment can be used to get students talking and participating in class.

            Therefore, in a language learning context, the opportunity to practice narration, instruction, and discourse become the focal points of teachers’s learning objectives.  If this seems like a simplistic approach to incorporating games into classroom curricula, then it probably is.  What we need to keep in mind is that to become a gamer, in other words, someone fluently capable with games of all sorts, requires years of familiarity with the gaming world.  If I were to compare myself to Squire, I am a novice.  True, I have played a number of games over the years, but my exposure to gaming pales in comparison to what Squire has in mind.  Therefore, if I were to choose a game, I would need to choose something that both learners and I can easily familiarize ourselves with.  Ideally, the students would already be familiar with the game, and I would need to catch up with them.

            In circumstances where I am not very familiar with a game, I would use my ignorance to create a teachable moment where students play the role of instructor and teach me how to play a game, but they must not, under any circumstances, take control over the game either by snatching the joystick from my hands or by asking me to scoot over so they can sit at the keyboard; they have to explain to me, orally, what it is that I need to do in the game.  If the students and I are both familiar with a game, then I would design a scenario in which I am stuck at a particular juncture in the game.  They have to provide me with a walkthrough to get through the part that I am stuck in.  This would work better if I told students that I was stuck on a particular level and they had to provide me with a walkthrough for that entire level.  The best thing about games these days is that there is more than one way to get through a level, so I can tap into some competitive spirit by challenging the students to come up with the best walkthrough.

            Bonk (2009) tells us that almost all teenagers play video games.  If as many learners are passionate about video games, then we have struck gold because “identifying students’ passions and using them as a vehicle for relating academic content,” (Squire, 2011, p. 46) can have a significant impact on students’s learning: “When passionate about a topic, students will willingly read and write texts that are far more complicated than texts about topics they are not passionate about” (Squire, 2011, p. 46).  However, we cannot assume that all students are passionate about games and gaming.  Therefore, we return to a common theme of the past several weeks: incorporating games into our classes does not necessarily mean that we exclude other forms of learning; just as incorporating technology in education does not mean we completely replace the old ways of doing things.

            Which games would I choose?  During the first week of classes, as we are building a healthy learning community, I would ask students to tell me which games are their favorites.  Then, I would prepare learning activities based on the feedback I get.  This way, I can be (almost) sure that the learning related to games would be both interest-driven and passionate.    

References

Bonk, C. J. (2009). The world is open: How web technology is revolutionizing education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 

Squire, K. (2011). Video games and learning: Teaching and participatory culture in the digital age. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.