Badges for Learning

When I was a Brownie and a Girl Guide, I loved to earn badges. I loved to pore over the badge list and dream about which ones I would try to get. I was insanely jealous of the leader, Susan. She had hundreds of badges. She had so many badges that she ran out of space on her badge collecting sash, and had to start sewing them down her arms. Nobody had as many badges as that! I think I only earned about 8 badges in my Guiding career, but I was proud of each one. Each one was a little marvel. Little, tiny, colourful pictures that meant that I had done something that other people hadn't. I did it myself! I had no idea that I was 'learning' anything. I just thought they were pretty!

I've just discovered badges for learning. I'm sure others have known about this for a while, but the fact that I was oblivious leads me to believe that there are other teachers out there unaware of this tool.

Digital badges can be awarded to students (or colleagues) for achievements, for prizes, for marking success. You choose the badges available, you set the criteria, you award them as you see fit. OK...it's late and I'm tired, so here's a link to Mozilla for a really really good explanation.
http://openbadges.org/en-US/faq.html

In fact, this all started for me a few months ago, as I was browsing Pinterest (another badge-like enterprise), and I found a tool called "classbadges"
http://www.classbadges.com/

Classbadges is in beta right now. You have to request an account, wait a few days, and when they have a space for you, they will send you a password and instructions. Tonight I got mine, and signed up. The process is a little bit convoluted, but I hope it will get easier as they evolve. 

Once you sign in, you create a class and name it. You have to enter your students' information...names and email addresses. You can do this by copying a list straight from an excel sheet, or you can add each student manually. The site then produces a list of your students with their own individual passwords. They will need these to sign in and view their badges. Once you have a class created, you can then start to select the badges you want to use. Classbadges has a fairly extensive list of education-themed badges, and you can peruse their collection, or if you don't find what you need, you can send a request to their team of designers. I found some silly generic ones that will suit my purposes. A lot of the "language arts" badges are pictures of books, but I wanted something to mark completed tasks such as making your first blog post, or winning the class debate. 

So, you select the badges you like, set the criteria, or meaning of the  badge, and 'award' them to the students of your choice. The students then get an email notification that they have received a new badge. When they open the email, they are asked to sign in with that password that Classbadges generated, and which you remembered to give them! I sent myself a trial badge and got it on my phone immediately! Exciting!

I like this idea of "gamification of the classroom" for my students who are often young, distracted, unmotivated, jittery, and would probably rather be playing games anyway. I can see it used to mark certain stages of progress....first post to Twitter, First Penguin Reader finished, 3 Conversation Partners in one week, etc...

What I'm not crazy about right now is that the badges are all stored in Classbadges and I don't see a way to export them. I hope that in the near future, they will be transferrable to other places like blogs, websites, heck...even Facebook. It looks like Mozilla is working on that, so it will be interesting to see how far the idea will be carried. If anyone knows of similar sites, let me know. I can't wait to try it out!

Q&A Time!

Hi!
I've been kinda busy. I haven't written anything in this blog for this school year! I feel guilty about that. It was so useful last year to track my progress through my course, and to have something to reflect upon: something concrete: a permanent record from which to draw material for my final assignments. This blog was a friend who always told the truth. It became a vital component of my studies.

Yeah. This year's different. This year I don't have time to write about stuff. Ideas? pfffffff.......This year I'm tangled in technology;  bogged down in blogs; drowning in a sea of passwords, usernames, HTML, CSS, 404's, URL's, blogs, links, audio, video, editors, readers, fonts, players, mappers, bubblers, quizmakers, walls, polls, wikis, VLE's, PLE's, PLN's, QR's, RSS, and other assorted alphabet soup! OMG!!!
My head is spinning!
I wanted to make a post of all the cool tools I've been using, but there are waaaayyyy too many, and I have classes to plan. So here's a couple of really simple tools for "Q & A" that take seconds to set up, and seconds to figure out.

1. Wallwisher. http://wallwisher.com/wall/fvelpn4tfg
It's so easy. Create a question. Send a link to your students. They type up short answers in blocks on a wall that everyone can read. Watch the answers roll in.
2. Answer Garden. http://answergarden.ch/view/43393
Easy enough for literacy level students. Ask a question. Students write one-word answers which are collected on a wall for all to see.
3. Twitter. https://twitter.com/
Not just for twits anymore! Great for low-level students. Send a question with a hashtag. They reply in 140 characters. Great for short question and answer practice! Or, ask THEM to send questions under a class hashtag. Everyone can answer each other!
4. Primary Wall. http://ronateacher.primarywall.com/2
You need to register, but then you can post notes for all to see. Students can respond by posting their notes. Similar to Wallwisher.

So what's with the QR code at the top? You can create your own QR code here: http://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/
using an image, a URL, text, phone number, or pretty much anything you want. Stick it on a handout for students and they can link to homework or quizzes, or websites, or wherever you want to send them. This one leads to my Pinterest page, which you will see is full of arty dreamy images...don't know what that says about me, but it's a nice quick link, rather than having to type in annoying text addresses. Try it out!

OK... enough for today. I have real work to do. Hope to return to blogland later with more tools too cool for school.

A Kid in Need of Special Help: Education at its Worst

Hi All,

Here's a nasty 'education' story for you.

I need to tell you about my nephew, Spencer. He's a great kid...very sweet, gentle, and of course, we love him to bits. Spencer is a kid who struggles with school. It has never been easy for him. He is what I would call an "at risk" kid, but I'm not a doctor or a psychologist, so take that as you please. Spencer lives with his dad and younger brother, with very limited resources.
Spencer started high school this year. His high school is a good 50 minute walk from his house. It is far enough to be extremely discouraging for a young 14 year old boy who finds school a challenge to begin with. Add a heavy backpack, a busy highway, and a good Canadian winter, and we're not just talking about "a healthy walk" anymore.
Since August, my brother has been asking the school to provide bus service to pick up Spencer. He has to walk right by the bus stop on the way to school! The school is refusing. Let me show you a few things here.

The route, according to Google Maps, is 3.2 km from home to school: a 40 minute walk by their estimate, but 45 - 50 minutes in reality.

Here is a clip from the most recent letter received by my brother.

So, lemme get this straight... Spencer lives 3.2 km from school, according to Google Maps. The board has decided that he lives "under 3.2kms from the school and within the school's non transportation zone", according to ???
AND the BEST PART is that RATHER than let the kid on the bus which he has to walk by, they have decided to MOVE THE BUS STOP!!!!   Wow! That is just plain SPITEFUL!

Meanwhile, on FB,

They won't even call back to discuss it. Those of us who care about this boy are writing letters to the school asking for a bus ride for Spencer. It shouldn't be this difficult to get a needy kid on a bus.
I'd really like to hook you up with a link to send letters with us. I'm afraid of being sued. These are seriously not nice people.
I guess I'm so shocked because the teachers that I know are beautiful, caring, dedicated people who genuinely care about the kids they teach. Why would one school choose to do the absolute worst possible thing they can think of against one kid who needs help? I don't get it.

Thanks for reading.

***Update***
Want to help? Sign our petition. Thanks for caring!
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/put-spencer-mcintyre-on-the-bus.html

Beginners' Dictionary

I teach beginners. Not your average "false beginners" who just need to remember things they already learned, but REAL "start at the beginning" beginners.

In class, I teach ABC's (they still mix up 'c and s', and 'u and y', basic printing (stay on the lines, make them all the same size, capitals are different from small letters), basic phonics...Dolch wordlist, basic vocabulary (nouns and verbs of things in your life), simple tenses, question words (and they cannot remember the difference between Who and How), subject pronouns (I, You, He, She, It.....).  I mean it's REALLY beginner level! I have never been able to find an online dictionary simple enough for them. There are some great online dictionaries out there, but my students who cannot distinguish "he" from "you" are just lost at sea when faced with a real dictionary.

Here's an example of what's going on around here.

Student's homework: write a few words OR draw a picture of:  Dentist  (I'm hoping to get something like "doctor for teeth"). That would make sense to a beginner.

What they actually wrote:

"One who is skilled in and licensed to practice the prevention"
"Vixed teeth"
"dent doctor"
"someone whose job is to treat people"
"dentist for us eliminate tootheche"
"good job"
"doctor teeth"
"------"

Some of them have clearly looked at and copied parts of dictionary references without fully understanding what they are copying. Some of them have the basic idea of doctor, treatment, toothache, some are trying to fake it, and some have just given up. I wished that I could direct them to a simple online dictionary and show them how to find things when they aren't sure. But looking online I find these:


noun
a person who is qualified to treat diseases and other conditions that affect the teeth and gums, especially the repair and extraction of teeth and the insertion of artificial ones

:his mouth is still sore from his visit to the dentist’s

a leather dentist’s chair

from: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/dentist?q=dentist

• 
  

den·tist   [den-tist] Show IPA
noun
a person whose profession is dentistry.
from:http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dentist?s=t

And:

den·tist noun \ˈden-təst\
Definition of DENTIST
: one who is skilled in and licensed to practice the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases, injuries, and malformations of the teeth, jaws, and mouth and who makes and inserts false teeth
from: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dentist  

None of these is any help at all to beginners.

Tonight I found this:

den·tist

 

pronunciation:

den tihst 

part of speech:	noun
definition:	a doctor who takes care of the teeth and mouth.

from: http://www.wordsmyth.net/?level=1&ent=dentist

....which is super cool because you can click for pronunciation, AND you click on the pictures to blow them up! Look how simple that is! This might be my new favourite site! A quick check of other vocab shows mostly simple simple explanations and pictures (see also: firefighter, actor, chef...)
This is what I've been dreaming of for years! Why didn't anybody tell me?


So I just wanted to tell you, if you're out there with beginners, and tearing your hair out at definitions like this:


"Musician: the crime of deliberately kiling (sic) someone"


www.wordsmyth.net              It may not be perfect, but it's a really good start! So excited!!

(This is not a paid advertisement. I'm just really happy to find something manageable for my students!)

Sharp Board Smart

Update!

So, my Smart Board experience wasn't so Smart after all. Turns out it's not Smart. It's Sharp!
Here is the product. Doesn't do all those Smart Board things, but is still pretty cool.

I guess I'll have to wait a little longer to see Smart Boards in action. As of September I go back to regular, non-interactive whiteboards and *gasp* chalkboards!! How will I survive?!

Smart Board Smart

Ahhhh...."The proper use of the Smart Board". What is that? I finally got the opportunity to get up close and personal with a Smart Board, and thought I would jot down some of my findings, feelings, and thoughts. 

Smart Board technology is something I had only heard and read about, but had never seen. I don't know that it has been widely adopted in the ELT world...perhaps the cost is prohibitive. My 10-year-old nephew has had Smart Boards in school for years now, but perhaps the Ontario public school system is more well-funded and more unified in its approach to technology than the private language schools are. At any rate, I hadn't expected to gain Smart Board experience any time soon.

That all changed 4 weeks ago when I started work in a new school. I was offered a new contract...only 3 weeks...but one of the perks was that the classrooms were all "Smart"! Cool! I couldn't wait to try it!

OMG! What was I going to do? I had NO IDEA what to do with a smart Board!

I spent the weekend watching Youtube videos (like this one... ) and trying to see just WHAT they would do, as well as HOW to do it! I was amazed at the ease, the speed, the intuitiveness, and was starting to feel like I could handle it without looking like too big a moron.

I entered the classroom with the attitude that since I only had three short weeks, I would try to use all of the features and master as much as I could. It was an opportunity I didn't think I would get again. I discovered that there are pros and cons, as with any technology. Below, I'll just list some of my impressions.

Pros:

• It is easy and intuitive. Nothing to worry about in terms of learning new programs. If you can use a computer, you already have the knowledge to make this thing work.
• The whiteboard consists of "pages" which you can write on forever. You never need to erase anything to make more space. Very useful when you want students to refer back to something you wrote 20 minutes ago. "The Neverending Whiteboard".
• The overlay feature is very cool. You can put up a website, video, slide, or whatever, and then in overlay mode, you can write on it, diagram it, map it, draw on it, mark it up any way you like. I used it with a map of Toronto (from TTC) and asked students to find and circle the various neighbourhoods and landmarks, as our first week consists of an introduction to Toronto for the newly arrived students. Another activity involved analyzing a poem which I had created on Sliderocket. We were examining the parts of speech, and with overlay, we could use different colours to underline, circle, and label the parts of the poem, without altering my slide.
• You can save anything you have on the board and send it to students for later, or keep it in your own files for later use. I haven't done this too much, for reasons you will find in the 'Cons'.
• Videos, movies, slideshows etc...all look AWESOME! They are big and clear, and you can stop, advance, rewind, etc....all by touchscreen. We did a listening activity with a Youtube video where I could stop and replay as often as necessary, jut by tapping the screen...no need to run back to the computer.
• There is a wide variety of markers, colours, backgrounds, settings available for customization. I like to use the green chalkboard background with white marker so it looks like a chalkboard. That's just me.
• The students aren't familiar with this technology either, so there is a sense that "we are all in this together". You can help each other to figure things out. Use it as a "teaching moment"/"learning opportunity". They will be very forgiving of your mistakes/ delays.
• If your board writing is too messy, you can open a Word document and type instead of writing on the whiteboard! You can also make charts, diagrams, or whatever you do in Word. I had a class survey where students had to survey all the classmates and enter their findings on a chart. I put it on a Word document and they could fill it in as they went. Instant results for us to discuss later!
• It's fun.

Cons: 

• For reasons undisclosed to me, the school did not purchase the Smart Pens that go with the board. That means that you have to write on the board with your finger. Theoretically, this should work the same as the pens...but I found it incredibly difficult and frustrating. The boards are extremely extremely sensitive, and finger writing results in all kinds of malformed, misshapen letters with all kinds of weird extra lines, curlicues, and connections in places where you don't want them. In most cases, my finger writing is undecipherable...and uncontrollable. The board simply adds lines and blobs and there's nothing you can do about it. To be clear, you have to write BIG. Only about 6-8 words per page. And it's SLOW! At times when I need to write any quantity of writing on the board, I go back to the old-fashioned whiteboards. For schools considering purchasing Smart Boards: either buy the pens, or keep your whiteboards in addition to the Smart Board. Finger writing sucks.
• Even in overlay mode, the finger writing gets pretty messy looking, so after I've marked up a document, I rarely want to save and send it to students.
• Only one person at a time can write on the board. Think of all the times when you have several students at once writing on a whiteboard. You might have to re-think the groupings, and the time,  etc. In one activity, I had one student act as moderator and collect group information rather than have each group write their own results on the board. 
• Technical glitches still occur (of course). One day, we had no power in our wall outlet, so I couldn't turn anything on. If this was your only whiteboard, you'd be stuck. Luckily, we still have 2 regular whiteboards in the classroom.
• Our Smart Board doesn't seem to have all of the features that I've seen on the Youtube videos. They are doing some pretty cool stuff with writing recognition, blackout and highlight functions, movable parts, and others. Ours doesn't have any of these features. It's very very simple....stripped-down, I guess. 

Okay, I can't think of too many Cons. The biggest problem is the finger writing. I wish they had the pens, but I heard that they cost around $300 apiece, and of course the risk of loss or theft is too great. Overall, I've loved having the Smart Board, and the challenge of finding new ways to use it has been really exciting. It has pushed me to be more creative, and to look at old activities in new ways. That has been the greatest feature for me! My contract was extended a further 3 weeks, so I feel really lucky to have more time to experiment with this interesting tool. Come September, I don't know where I'll be, or what kind of board I'll have, but I'm glad I had the opportunity to add one more piece of technology to my arsenal!

Faking It

Is there a glut of unqualified ESL/EFL teachers plying the world with their fake or non-existent degrees? And is this rampant fakery limited to the ESL industry, or is it everywhere?

I'm about to start a new job on Monday and they have asked me to bring my degree. Original. Not a copy. Can't work here without producing it.

Same story every time I change jobs or countries, or need a new course or certificate. I guess I'm annoyed because I would much rather be able to hang my degree in its frame, on my wall. I have the perfect spot for it! Instead, my degree lives in a cardboard tube, tightly rolled up and ready to travel whenever I need to prove to the next HR person that I in fact told the truth on my résumé. The default assumption is that I`m lying. Guilty until proven innocent.
It`s ruining the degree. It has been uncurled and re-curled, and manhandled so much that it has developed creases across the surface. The seal is cracked, and the edges are dirty and wrinkled. This might not bother some people, but it really upsets me. My degree is something very personal, and precious to me. I don`t want the whole world handling it every two years and shoving it carelessly back into the tube.

I should be used to this by now, but it still pisses me off every time. Why is it that other people in other industries can hang their degrees on their walls and never have to take them down? My mother has four degrees which have been hanging in their frames for over 20 years. I can guarantee she has never had to take them out for some monkey to photocopy. Two other friends have their multiple degrees hanging in their homes. They have never had to roll them up and stuff them in a tube.

Why does the ESL industry have such a hard time believing that someone who has been working in the industry for 13 years, in various countries, and who has successfully obtained further certification, and who has embarked on a Masters degree in the field would be in possession of a real, bona fide degree? I really want to hear from people in other fields to see if others have to go through this hassle every time they want to cross the street. I don't know anyone else who does.

So who are all these degree-lying people that they think they need to weed out? Do people really apply with faked credentials? Wouldn't a little logic suffice for establishing the veracity of my claim? Let's think about this for a minute. I am certified by TESL Ontario. My registration number is on my résumé. You cannot get certification unless you have shown the degree to the TESL Ontario office (Original. Not a copy). Therefore, if you really really doubted that I have a degree, you COULD search for my registration number on the TESL Ontario website, verify it`s there, and therefore logically deduce that the degree must exist! Then I wouldn`t have to carry the damned thing with me on Monday!

Maybe it`s time to start believing and trusting long-time professionals. I couldn`t have gotten as far as I have if I didn`t have a degree and you know it. Stop wasting my time!

Summer Break!

Two assignments finished and posted. Am now enjoying every second of my freedom with a huge smile on my face! Yesterday I spent all day cleaning my house and putting away all of the "school stuff". Today is for a backlog of neglected laundry. And tomorrow I go home to visit my parents for a couple of weeks. I'm NOT taking my computer, as I hope to not have to look at a computer screen for the next 5 weeks! Probably no more blogs til next session! 

Thanks to all for reading, and for following! 

Have a great summer!  (or winter, I guess, depending on your orientation with the equator)

See you in September!

Procrastination

My assignment is due in 8 days. Right now, it looks like this: 

 

With a little bit of this: 

It seems so hopeless. It seems so massive. I don't think I can do it. Time for a break!

Oh yeah... gotta do the laundry! 

Oh yeah...I MUST clean up the balcony!

Hmmm...better wash those dishes!

Are those pigeons back? I really have to pigeon-proof the patio!

Dinner time? Yeah... I'll get to the essay after dinner!

Gosh, those plants look thirsty...

Isn't that TV show online tonight? Can't miss that! Season Finale!

OMG! Is it 10:00 ALREADY?? Where did the day go? 

Clearly, I'm not going to get any more writing done tonight...might as well just read a book!

And so it goes.

I know I'm not alone. I don't think I'm worse off than any of my classmates. We are all in the same canoe!

But the guilt!! Terrible! How could I have wasted another day? Time is so precious, and I'm letting it slip away! Is this really part of the process? Will it ever get better? I mean, I have 2 more years of this. I don't know if I can deal with this guilt every time I have an assignment due. There has to be a better way! I'm going to do some research on time management.

Tomorrow.

Never do today what you can put off til tomorrow.

Good luck to all of my Manchester classmates!

Tree Murder in a High-Tech World

So, here's Toronto as viewed from my 11th floor balcony. I'm a bit Northwest of downtown. Know what I see when I look across the city? TREES! Lots and lots of trees! Red ones, yellow ones...green, brown, purple...it's gorgeous! You wouldn't think so in a big city, but it is! So today I am quite sad to say that I am sitting here murdering trees. Otherwise known as 'printing'. A lot of printing! PILES of printing! Reams of paper!
"But why?" you might well ask. "Didn't you blog about all the tech devices that keep you going?"
hmmm... yes. Yes I did. 
I recently discovered (while cramming for final essay #1) that I read MUCH MUCH faster on paper than on uh....screen. 
And I annotate faster. 
And it's easier to go back and find things. 
And it's easier to find files.
And it's easier to see where I am, and how much more is yet to be done.
And it's easier to put a particular article down HERE, in THIS spot, and remember where it is when I need it. Imagine articles strewn across my apartment in seemingly random order.... But for this visual learner, it makes perfect sense! "Bax... he's over THERE!"
Reading offline (on paper) is still for me, the easiest, fastest, most efficient way to read. 
Especially for the massive quantity that must be done for a research paper. The poor Sony just can't keep up. And the Mendeley account is full! They want more money for more space! Ha! Why would I spend money when I have all this PAPER?!
So, back to the trees... I'm feeling guilty. It is a LOT of paper.
I think grad students should be required to pay for tree-planting.
I'll be making a donation as soon as I finish my killing spree!

The Big Crunch

The Crunch is on! Only 3 weeks left to get 2 papers written. Dear gods! It is not going well. 

I have severe doubts about paper #1, and as for #2....I feel sick just thinking about it.

Not a good time to catch a cold.

To anyone and everyone...DO NOT do a Masters Degree in anything. Just don't. 

Good luck to us all!

Down the Rabbit Hole! Rona's Adventures in Chatbotland

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Sound familiar? It's from a story about a little girl who falls down a rabbit hole! While there, she meets many wonderful and strange creatures. Some of them are rather more difficult to understand than others. 

Today I visited this site: www.jabberwacky.com and I also met some weird and wacked out characters! This is a site where you can 'chat' with a 'bot' that is supposed to make natural, human-sounding conversation with you. It has been suggested that you might use it with language students. Students can chat, get naturalistic, meaningful responses, and practice conversation skills.

It was a bit like talking with a hookah smoking caterpillar...well, maybe exactly like talking to a hookah smoking caterpillar, since its first words were also "Who are you?"

First, I chatted with 'Joan'. She is a very professional looking avatar with a lovely British accent which only makes her pointed sarcasm that much more savage...and hilarious!

We were chatting about whether or not I liked humans (what else would you discuss with a bot?) It ended with THIS!!!!    

OUCH!!  Joan...that hurts! After ROFLing for a while, I continued the chat, but after she was mean, she got strange...

I'm a rabbit? I'm not sure why she's calling me a rabbit.  But there IS that Wonderland connection....maybe I'm the White Rabbit!!  It IS getting rather late!  OK....let's continue....

Now I was just confused....and I really did have to go..."Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!"

I'd had enough of Joan. She was mean and snarky and was getting downright belligerent! 

Bot's got attitude!

Before I left though, I decided to have a quick chat with George. He also accused me of choosing my words randomly, and of being a computer. I wasn't sure where he was getting this from...so I told him he was as mean as Joan! Well, you can see where this ended up!!

Oh my goodness!! These bots are just nasty!!  "Meaner than Voldemort"???  Well, "Avada Kedavra!" to you too, George! They've clearly been learning a lot of bad habits from humans. Which is the point. These Chat-bots are designed to interact with humans and "learn" speech patterns from your input. If you feel like subscribing, you can buy your own 'bot' and train it to talk anyway you like. I really wonder who has been training Joan and George!

Would I use this program with students? It can certainly be entertaining. Some of the responses are funny, and if I had an advanced class, it might be fun for them to interact with the computer and have a 'realistic' conversation, with its twists and turns. I did have a few segments of 'normal' and 'non-insulting' speech.  I worry about doing this with my beginner classes though. There is just enough non-sequitur to be confusing. If we believe, according to SLA theory, that students need comprehensible input, and need sensible feedback to correct themselves and monitor their own speech, I'm not sure this program is ready for prime-time yet. Many of the 'conversations' were really disjointed, with the bots' responses being very disconnected from the flow of discourse. In another convo where we were discussing my assignment, the bot told me that it "thought I would move to Puerto Rico". When I asked "Why do you think that?" the response "Because it's broken" (although amusing) did not follow normal conversational expectations. I asked "What is broken?" and the answer was "My heart". How did we get from my assignment, to Puerto Rico, to the bot's broken heart?

How do I feel about Jabberwacky as a teaching tool? I'll let Alice answer that:

"It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see she didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are!"

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

All quotes from: 

Carroll, L. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland &Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. Bantam Classic Edition, 1981. New York, 1981.

relaxation without the birds

I need to take better care of me.
I'm getting all kinds of strange ailments and I know it's all from stress.
The asthma is the worst. There are lots of other problems, but I don't want to bore you.
It all comes down to the hours and hours I am spending every day at the computer.
Not enough exercise...too much stress...too much looking at a screen, too much of this... too little of that.
So I decided to take a night off and do some stretching and relaxation techniques.
"Chirp.....tweeet.....tdrrdrrdrdup tdrrdrrdrdup tdrrdrrdrdrup....chirpetychirp...tweeeeetily tweeeeeet tweet.."
Why does all of my relaxation music have tweeting birds in it?
"Mountain stream (with tweeting birds)", "Zen garden (with tweeting birds)", "Ocean waves (with tweeting birds)", "Amazon waterfall (with tweeting birds)"   and so on.
Do most people find chirping birds relaxing? Apparently so. I don't. I find them distracting.
I'm drifting off on my peaceful desert island, listening to the waves and breathing deeply,
(well... as deeply as I can with a raging case of asthma),
listening to the slow, low, mellow, soothing tones and suddenly,
"CHIRP! SCREECH! SQUAWK!" butts in and ruins it!
It's weird. I like birds. But I don't want them interfering with my waves.

Anyway... off to find some inner peace.
Got to heal the body and mind.
No birds allowed.
That goes double for you, Twitter!


*all non-birdy relaxation music suggestions welcome in the comments*

Go Fly a Kite! or Multimodality: The 5th Hybrid Skill

A little background: We are reading about writing and how wordprocessing facilitates the writing process in a language learning classroom (Jarvis, 1997). OK.... sounds obvious.

Then I found an article which says that MS Word is dead! Obsolete! It no longer meets the needs of online writers! You can read it here: http://slate.me/IrzVT6

I posted about this seeming 'clash' of ideas in my class forum, and my instructor's response got me thinking about a possible 5th hybrid communication skill (Slaouti, 2012). 

I am fascinated by this idea, as I think it gets at something I noticed a year ago, but didn't know what to call it....now I do. I think there IS a 5th communication skill, and I will call it "multimodal" skills, as opposed to our traditional reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. 

I have a nephew who one year ago was 8 years old. His class was doing a project where the teacher showed the kids how to make kites, which they did in class, and then they took the kites out into the schoolyard to fly them. My mother who is a volunteer at the school was there to help, and she filmed short video clips of the whole activity on her digital camera (not a video cam...just a point and shoot still cam with video capability...hence the short clips). There were little scenes of the kids gluing frames, cutting paper, tying string, painting the paper, running outside, trying to fly the kites. It certainly had no structure other than a sequence in time.

Later, on the weekend, my nephew was busily working on the computer, and I was amazed to see that he had taken those short video clips and was editing them together to make a movie that he wanted to show his class! I don't even know what program he was using, but it had to have been simple enough for an eight -year-old to figure out for himself. He certainly was not receiving any prompting or guidance from the 3 amazed and clueless adults in the house! But it gets better... While he was editing the video clips together, he was also typing and adding subtitles, explaining what happened, and adjusting fonts and colours. He asked us for several spellings when he wasn't sure. He also searched, found, and downloaded a piece of music to run in the background, and was able to control the volume, and sync it to the video.  He was really excited that he would have something that "he made himself" to put on the SmartBoard for the class to see! What was amazing to me was that this was all happening simultaneously. It wasn't as though he first made the video, and then "added things onto it". There was no pre-planning, editing, revising....the different parts simply sprang up naturally as he progressed through the process. Video, text, sound, music, speaking, listening, reading, searching: all coming together simultaneously to create one project which he could share. "Multimodality" in action!! At the time, not only was I blown away by the computer skills of this child (Where did he get that from, in this family of Luddites?), but I also felt something happening in my brain regarding education, and the way we think about teaching communication, and teaching children and perhaps language learners in modern schools. 

If we had done such a kite building activity when I was in grade three, I'm pretty sure that the follow up activity would have been to write, or "compose" a narrative of what happened, and perhaps illustrate it with drawings. You would have seen a bulletin board filled with paragraphs on lined paper, with drawings of kids with kites lining the halls! That 'writing composition' would have been the sum total of our 'communication' about the events.

Now, 35 years later, the child has moved so far past the point of 'composing a paragraph on paper', that I started to wonder if teaching writing, phonics, spelling, composition, organization is all passé? In a world where a child can pick up a computer and create a 10 minute video with all of its bells and whistles to communicate his ideas to the masses, what relevance does mere writing have to him? Ten years from now, when he is ready to enter university, will he have any desire, or need to do lengthy writing when he has such multimodal skills at his disposal? I can see why kids are bored with reading and writing in school. It must seem completely archaic to them when they are able to instantaneously find, acquire, and put to immediate use a wide variety of materials encompassing all forms of communication. Writing??? Composing???? Why would anyone want to do that? The world is so much bigger, and faster than that!

I don't work with children, so I may be way off base. I work with adult language learners, in a pre-EAP program, and often wonder about similar issues. Are we truly preparing students with life skills? Our focus in a university setting is heavily and squarely on writing skills. They will need to be able to write in university. Writing is our bottom line. If they can't write, they can't go on. And yet, where are the "multimodal" skills? Presumably, in the real world, the students will need to be able to do so much more than write. And ten years from now, when my nephew hits university, will there be any point in writing at all?  Won't he by then be able to "compose" his assignments, even his thesis in a multimodal format? That's my prediction. 

I think we need an adjustment in our thinking: FAST!! The traditional 4 skills we cling to in language teaching must be shuffled around to make way for a 5th skill: multimodal communication skills. We ignore this at the cost of our students' full communicative abilities and needs, heading into the future.

I haven't done any reading in this area yet, so have nothing to back me up, but I'm just intrigued by the concept. Read anything on this? Comments welcome!

References:


Jarvis, H. 1997. Word-processing and writing skills: practical applications to language teaching text books, British Journal of Educational Technology, 28(3), pp.165-175.

Scocca, T. 2012. Death to Word, Slate Magazine. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/04/microsoft_word_is_cumbersome_inefficient_and_obsolete_it_s_time_for_it_to_die_.html [Accessed April 13, 2012].

Slaouti, D. 2012. Re: MS Word is Obsolete! [forum post]. Message to Rona McIntyre. Sent April 14, 2012, 09:35 BST.

Wordle or Tagul: You Decide

Comparing two word cloud tools:

Wordle:is easier to use, but you cannot customize shapes and colours to the same extent as Tagul. You can click on the little copy here, and it will enlarge for easier viewing.

Tagul: is more difficult, but you can choose the shapes and colours. It also has a cool 'rollover' feature. But it doesn't appear that you can click to enlarge, so some words are lost in this small size which I chose for embedding.

Here's another. From "Word It Out"  (Thanks Eileen). It comes from one of my personal study notes from Evernote. It is a response to one of my instructor's tasks. I like how it says "felt comfortable" in big letters.

Word cloud made with WordItOut

That's all. It's late. I'm tired. Going to bed. Will get students to do this later.

Keep Calm and Carry On

I used to teach TESOL (teacher training, for those not in the know). One of the things that I used to tell the novice teachers was that in writing lessons, they should allow 3 times longer for writing than they think it will take. So: they think it will take 20 minutes...allow an hour. They think it will take an hour, allow 3.  It was something that I had learned through observation in my years of teaching. Students take much longer than you think, until you gain the experience to judge more accurately.
Today I took my students into the computer lab. I thought it would take 10 minutes. It took 35.
Apparently, I am still learning how to judge computer time.
So far, my writing lesson time scheme seems to apply. That students are slower than I expect is only one issue. The bigger issue, which simply amazes me every time I take students into the lab, is how non-existent their computer skills are. These are adult students from a wealthy, educated country. Should I be shocked? I am!
Today's task was to Google their favourite place, find an image of that place, and print one copy that they could bring back to the classroom. How hard could it be? 10 minutes, tops!!
I just finished reading an article from 1997 (yes....15 years ago, and before I had ever used a computer myself, much less owned one!) which warns about "the time it takes to develop basic keyboard skills and the fact that students' word processing ability is likely to vary within any class" and "for short language courses the time factor is particularly problematic: students may spend so much time learning basic word processing that they never get round to actually writing" (Jarvis, 1997). It seems I am dealing with exactly these problems, here in 2012! Incredible!
Two of the students could not remember their passwords to sign in. That required the tech admin guys to go into the main system to allow the students to change their passwords, wasting 15 minutes before they even got started. Most students found their images on Google relatively quickly, but then had no idea what to do next. We have no teaching computer in the lab, so I had no choice but to go around to each and every student and show them how to find Word, open Word, copy and paste, change the orientation to landscape, resize the picture, change the margins, and how to print. Some of the women did not know how to use a mouse, or what it means to 'left click' and 'right click'. Some of them could not navigate between Google and Word. One man could not type anything unless he was using an onscreen Arabic keyboard (refused to try anything in English), one could not understand how to copy and paste, but kept trying to crop the photo to "cut" it out of the background (bizarre??).  *sigh*...
At the end of 30 minutes, I was exhausted. My students proudly took their pics back to the classroom as I stood there shaking my head and thinking "Thanks gods I wasn't doing an actual WRITING activity!!" All they had to do was get one simple photo printed, and I felt like I had just run a marathon!
As I read the above mentioned article this evening, I knew that the author was talking to me. My course is extremely short. I only have them for 2 hours a day for six weeks. Jarvis is exactly right; if I am to have my students working with word processing, they will spend so much time learning the basics (how to use a mouse!!!) that they may never get around to actual writing! Is it worth it? I don't have an answer. It's exhausting and frustrating to be a computer teacher when I am supposed to be helping them with language skills. I am simply amazed that this level of ....what's the word? non-skill? unskill? non-proficiency? exists in 2012, and in students who think they are going to gain admittance to a Canadian university within the next year! When will I stop being amazed by this?
I am not deterred, however. As I mentioned in a previous post, the goal is normalization, and the only answer is to 'Keep calm and carry on'. I will continue to bring students into the lab for a variety of tasks, but I must remember to make allowance for 3 times longer that I expected....just as I taught my TESOL students years ago!

Reference: 

 Jarvis, H (1997), Word processing and writing skills: practical applications to language teaching textbooks. British Journal of Educational Technology 28(3), 165-175

One Degree of Abdication- Gomen nasai!

I'm a total failure....a total loser....a total liar.  I have abdicated my responsibilities. I feel guilty and ashamed. I don't even know how to fix it.
A few weeks back I hooked up with the IATEFL Glasgow people and said I would be an IATEFL Blogger. It involved watching some of the online sessions and blogging about them. They put my blog on their site so that people could read my reports on the online sessions. I was really looking forward to it! Exciting! An OFFICIAL Blogger!
As luck would have it, I got really sick that week, and spent every possible minute lying in bed in a cold-medicine induced semi-coma, trying not to die, but kind of wishing I would. I didn't do any of the blogging I had promised. I didn't do any of the video-watching I had promised. It was awful.
Two weeks later...here I am, MOSTLY recovered, and I see that lots of people from various, interesting places did in fact check out my blog...hoping to read awesome reports from IATEFL, and probably wondering "What the heck am I doing on THIS loser blog??"
Gomen nasai. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I let you all down. I'm sorry I promised to offer something of value, and then didn't. I'm sorry I neglected my duties...and my blog.
I can only hope that next year I can try again. If they'll let me!
Now, where are those echinacea pills??

Getting through the days...and nights...

Mobile Me (Sorry it's a long one...skip at will)

As an online/distance student, access is everything. You simply CANNOT do this kind of study without the right tools. Since I started in September, I've been building up an arsenal of tools, hardware, and software to keep myself  online WHEN and WHERE I need to be! There is lots of research on students' online habits, online needs, online communities, etc.  Great! But I'm finding that it is often the OFFLINE needs that are hardest to meet! All of the materials, resources, podcasts, discussions, etc all happen online, but because 3 hours of my daily study time are spent on trains and buses with no wi-fi, it means that I need to find ways to get those ONLINE materials OFFLINE, and portable. That's the bigger struggle for me! Online is easy...Offline, not so much...
So here's where it's at:
Tool #1 was the Kobo Wi-Fi Reader:
I used it to read pdf's on the train. It was difficult, and slow, but it beat printing thousands of pages to carry with me. It had no capacity for highlighting or note-taking, so when I got home, I would rush to my computer and hook up to Mendeley (document management system), and try to make notes on there before I forgot the whole article. It was an awkward system, but the alternative was spending a fortune on paper and ink. Not an option. I burnt out the Kobo with overuse. It died in January. RIP.

Tool #2 is a new Sony PRS-T1:
It is smaller, and smarter. It reads pdf's a little more easily than the Kobo. In both machines, pdf's work best in landscape mode, so turned on its side, each page is divided into 2 sections to scroll through. You can crop the margins, which is nice, and there are different font sizes (which are unpredictable). There is a pinch/zoom feature so you can zoom in on diagrams, charts, etc. Now, let's talk about notes and highlights... It is possible. Sometimes. I haven't yet figured out how to know which pdf's will allow highlighting, and which ones won't. It's really hit and miss. Some do...some don't. You never know until you try. The really cool thing is that IF you are able to highlight a word or phrase, then you have options to "Highlight, Note, Google, Wikipedia, Search (dictionary)" so you can get a lot of extra info. Also in notes, you can either type them, or draw them onscreen! There are something like 12 translation dictionaries built in too! Apparently, you can also sync your notes with the Sony Reader software on your computer, but I haven't tried that yet. I'm not sure about importing notes (with texts) from other sources. I've been off work (layoff) since I bought the Sony, so it hasn't met the commute test yet. It's going with me tomorrow when I start my new session. I don't anticipate any big problems. (although the universe may have something different to say about that)..

Tool #3 is the iPod Classic: 
I could never afford an iPhone, but it's not necessary for my purposes anyway. My old iPod Classic is what I use to take podcasts with me. Two of my courses have made substantial use of podcasts, and since I can't stream them (no wi-fi...remember), it's really easy to take them with me for viewing on the train. Sometimes older technology does the job just fine. But it IS one more piece of equipment to carry....

Tool #4 is an Acer Iconia W500 Windows tablet computer: 
This baby broke the bank. When I bought it, I thought I would be able to carry it with me for reading on the train, but I quickly realized my folly. It's waaaaayyyy too expensive to flash around on the TTC! My students were held up at gunpoint for their iPhones, so this would be taken in no time flat, I'm sure. It's a beautiful machine, with full Windows capability. It does everything my "real" computer does, and has an optional attachable keyboard if you are going to be stationary. I decided not to use it for commuter reading, but it HAS been useful in other capacities. I use it at work when I am doing marking in class (exam time), and also for training webinars (Moodle training). I also use it at home  for portability inside my apartment! It's nice to not have to sit at the computer desk, and just curl up on the couch with this thing...or in bed. So, mobility in my house has been nice! But the best thing about this, is that it's PERFECT for carrying between cities when I travel home to visit the family. Inter-city trains have Wi-fi on board, so I can do everything I need, and when I get home, I have access to everything WITHOUT having to take my heavier laptop home with me.

Tool#5 is an LG P505 smartphone: 
My first smartphone. I bought it just before Kobo died, and then was kicking myself for spending the money. I have used it for making notes to myself (Evernote), but not much else related to studying. It can do Youtube, and Twitter, Facebook, and all of those social things, but the problem, as usual, is that there isn't usually any signal, unless I'm home. Mobile phones aren't all they're cracked up to be if you can't get a signal.

So last week, in my week off, I decided to go visit my parents for a few days, and knowing that I had tons of reading to do, and a couple of online meetings and Second Life meetings, I was trying to decide which tools to take with me. I packed up my iPod for a great music selection, my Sony for all those pdf files, my phone for ...well... you can't live without a phone...., and my Acer, with keyboard, for computer access when I reached home. Plus all the power cords, earphones, microphones, styluses, and carrying cases. I couldn't lift my bag! Before leaving the house, I stopped to remove the Sony (I could get the pdf's online once I got home), and the iPod (will just have to do without music....maybe I can find an online radio station instead), and got rid of the microphones, styluses, and one set of headphones. I took only the computer and the phone. I regretted it immensely. Note to self: NEVER TRAVEL ON VIA WITHOUT IPOD!!! NEVER NEVER NEVER!!! Screaming babies always sit beside me...if the train was completely empty, they would STILL park the screaming baby in the seat next to me. It's one of the laws of the universe.

Back to studying.... It seems incredible to me that I need all of these tools in addition to my computer....just to carry around all of the media that I need in this course. I feel like a walking electronics shop. If I could count on having an internet signal, then I wouldn't need all of these gadgets. One gadget could do it all! But since I spend the most part of every day without wi-fi, I need ways to take the books, the pdf's, the podcasts, the videos, the music with me. It's almost like the resources are too advanced, too smart, too digital, and what I really need is for them to just dumb-down a little. For the most part, I use a sort of combination of Sony + home computers (with Mendeley and Evernote) to do most of my reading and studying. It's not a perfect system, but I'm not sure there is one!
So how do YOU read? Vote in my poll! Top right!