Chennai

Teachers have to keep learning to be effective teachers Use your creative input Technology is not a magic bullet Don’t be too serious Technological determinism and the wow factor Learning is a social activity Choose one thing you may able to use (for your bag of tricks) Take your classroom to the World or bring the world to your classroom Technology does not of itself promote Language learning Continual Partial Attention

Language learning in a connected world Michael Coghlan IATEFL Conference (Chennai) August 4, 2007 This presentation on the web at http:// www.slideshare.net/michaelc/chennai

“ technology” “ future” TAGS

A GLOBAL AUDIENCE?
YouTube - http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v =QjA5faZF1A8
Performance by a 13 yr old Korean boy
July 23rd: 24,510,118 million views; 90006 comments
That’s more than the populations of
Israel 5.7m Denmark 5.3m Finland 5.1m New Zealand 3.6m Ireland 3.6m
Holland 16.4m
Australia 20.4m

DIGITAL STORY PLAYED AT THIS POINT AVAILABLE AT http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v =Pue4FtOb3HM

WHAT’S ALL THE FUSS ABOUT?
Is it real?
Who are these 24.5 million people?
Copyright implications? – I can reuse the content for my own purposes
Who is exercising editorial control?
Disintermediation – the decline of the gatekeepers of content
Should students have access to sites like this? (see ‘ YouTube – a Class Act’)
How do students like this feel at school?
Should we be encouraging our students
to create content
Publish to these kinds of sites
Empowerment and realisation of identity through personal publishing to social networking sites
MIT; Jason and TV shows…..

IN A CONNECTED WORLD:
Daily contact with the planet
In the supermarket…..Australian made products are made offshore
My neighbours may not be my closest companions
Overseas call centres

LOCAL GLOBAL LOCAL = (GLOCAL?)

Implications for the Classroom?
The Local, Unconnected Pre-Global World
all dialogue was between teacher and students with some communication between students (but who was really listening?)
Internet
enter Internet tools: writing/speaking for an audience other than just your teacher ie authentic contexts for language learning
The Global, Connected World
Personal publishing tools
Teachers and students can now reach a global audience
Moot point : does everyone find this idea appealing?

The Internet – more than just a book

eLearning 2.0/Web 2.0 (Stephen Downes)
Elearning 1.0:
static packaged content
little true interactivity and learner input and
very little contact with teacher
represented by Learner Management Systems. (eg WebCT, Blackboard)
Elearning 2.0:
more student-centred
students generate and share content .
they interact not only with teachers and their peers, but with anyone in the world they can learn from .
(this description courtesy of Sean Fitzgerald)

PERSONAL PUBLISHING TOOLS
Blogs
Digital story telling
Podcasts
Flickr (photo sharing)
Wikis (Wikispaces.com) – collaborative workspace
MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Bebo
Video repositories: YouTube, Google Video, BlipTV

Indian YouTube Equivalents
http:// meravideo.com /
http:// apnatube.com /
http://layfile.com/
http:// www.aapkavideo.com

Facebook in India
… .these people are not your average Indian young people; they are from upper socio-economic tier of Mumbai. But one thing is clear, there is a revolution brewing in the Internet space.
Environments like Facebook and MySpace offer easy publishing tools, powerful communication mechanisms using multimedia experience…
http:// ngs.ics.uci.edu/blog/?p =779

CREATING ONLINE PRESENCE
Why bother?

Why might teachers create an online presence?
You will get wider recognition
Wider network of professional and personal contacts
Greater variety of options for learning activities
Place to store and record resources

Who are the Webheads?
“an experiment in world friendship through online language learning”
300 + members

Where are the Webheads? in approximately 50 countries To join the Webhead community send an email to [email_address]

Why might students create an online presence?
For students:
Developing skills for the knowledge era (facility with technology, collaboration, conflict negotiation, problem solving, communication, adjusting to rapid change: ‘employability skills’)
Access to personal publishing tools for self-expression and realisation of identity
Excitement at publishing for a wider audience:
“ Thank you so much for being such supportive, all of you! I hope to continue my learning process and get ready to speak and write in English. I was really surprised to see all the people who wrote about our wiki. It's so cool because it was from all different places of the world... I think that's so great! :)” (Maria, Venezuela)

It’s a Wild World http:// youtube.com/watch?v =T-t8tUED9MI “ Just remember there’s a lot of bad and beware.”

Online Presence

Are we sociologically ready? What are ethical responsibilities as educators?

http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v =e5jtiJPlv4Y

YouTube in Chennai Media:

ONLINE PRESENCE
“ I blog therefore I am.”
Weblog search engine Technorati:
8,000 -17,000 new blogs created every single day.
a new weblog is created somewhere in the world every 5.8 seconds .
On average, approx 3 blogs are updated every second.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/13/8000_bloggers_per_day/ (13/4/06)

From a student of Konrad Glogowski:
“ Hello Mr. Glogowski
It’s Phil, just in case you haven’t guessed already. I’d just like to thank you for a great year of blogging, and to wish you luck in the years ahead. You really managed to make a few of us into writers. I think writing/blogging will be something I’ll carry with me my whole life.”
(http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/)

MEDIA RICH BLOGS
http://english-ad.blogspot.com /
by students of Aiden Yeh
Aiden is an EFL Lecturer, Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages Kaohsiung, Taiwan MOVIE MULTILITERACY DIGITAL LITERACY ELITERACY

ORAL PRESENTATIONS FOR A GLOBAL AUDIENCE
From Buthaina al Othman (Kuwait)
http://alothman-b.tripod.com/present_162.htm

CONNECTIVISM: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age (George Siemens, Red River Community College, Canada)
Principles of Connectivism:
Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

THE CULTURAL CONTEXT
Does teacher know best?
Image courtesy of http://www.sussex.ac.uk/USIS/test/education/1-2-14.html

THE CROWD: Collective wisdom? Stupidity of the masses? Is our culture being re-written? Is the Internet killing our Culture? (Andrew Keen: the cult of the amateur)

THE MOBILE/CELL PHONE

Africa (and the developing world)
Cellphone
economy
Kiva

Mobile/Cell Phone
Phone to web communications
Post photos Flickr
Post photos/videos to blog (moblog.co.uk)
Post audio to blog (hipcast.com)
Web to Phone via SMS (ipipi.com)
Lesson feedback
Spot quizzes
Anonymous contributions to controversial topics
SMS – may need to be taught; it is now a legitimate form of communication

Check:
http://flickr.com/mikecogh (to see photos uploaded from cell phone)
http://mikecogh.blogspot.com (to hear audio posted from cell phone)

http://flickr.com/photos/32912387@N00/171506548/

SLOW LEARNING "It is going to become very fashionable at some point to be disconnected," Silicon Valley futurist Paul Saffo predicts. "There are going to be people who wear their disconnectivity like a badge.“ ( http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070111/1a_tech-noxx.art.htm )

SLOW LEARNING: A Dangerous but Powerful Idea - Counter Acceleration and Speed with Slowness and Wholeness
Geetha Narayanan is Principal Investigator with Project Vision at the Centre for Education Research Training and Development (CERTAD) within the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology in Bangalore, India.

Geetha Narayanan - Slowness as a pedagogy
consciously embrace the core value of slowness – both as way of being and as a way of learning
culture of immediacy values fast knowledge which in turn runs counter to the development of both the self and the mind.
The thoughtless and widespread use of technology as the universal solution to the rising need for fast knowledge is wrong and must be questioned. Often in developing countries, such as India, the term ‘digital divide’ is used to support the argument that the use of new technologies, alone, will create conditions of learning … That is not true
the new digital technologies are tools that allow for learners to develop their imaginations, to be able to play and to have fun, to be able to tell stories in different and exciting ways. But in order to generate value they need to be integrated into new forms and structures in an invisible and contextual manner - one where new media arts can sustain social change .
Slowness promotes “wellness of being”

HOW DO YOU TRANSLATE ALL THIS INTO CLASSROOM PRACTICE?

IN CONCLUSION:
It’s all about NETWORKS = CONNECTIONS
Is there a place for NALL? (Network Assisted Language Learning)

Education by and large has not changed. The world outside has. Syllabus/curriculum is rooted in a past paradigm of fixed knowledge. Photo courtesy of Sawrah, http://flickr.com/photos/sawrah/314474272/

IN CONCLUSION:
a connected classroom, connected living (Nancy White: ‘eliving’) DOES reduce the time you have available to attend to relationships locally.
And THAT is a very interesting and confronting thought…….

Resources
Vance Stevens: ESL Skill Areas: Writing and the Internet
http://www.geocities.com/vance_stevens/writing.htm

THANK YOU This presentation on the web at http:// www.slideshare.net/michaelc/chennai Email: [email_address]

Chennai

by michaelc on Aug 06, 2007

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Chennai — Presentation Transcript