1. Integration of web2.0 tools in students’ projects using Google Sites Yoshie Kadowaki Yuka Matsuhashi University of Nevada, Reno
2. .doc .docx .mov .avi .mpg .wmv .jpg .tif .png .gif i.) hard for students to submit/organize ii.) hard for teachers to collect/keep track Projects in the past
40. Project #3: Eyejot video messaging -HW #1: Self-introduction -HW #2: Explain about other people - HW #3: Explain how to ~
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42. Google Document - Create and share document - Real-time editing by multiple users Helps students to work together for group projects
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45. “ Google Sites project helped me learn Japanese more effectively and efficiently.”
46. “ By working on projects, I feel that my language skills progressed faster.”
47. “ Being able to see other students’ projects online inspired me and motivated me to do better.”
48. “ I feel a sense of accomplishment because I can see my progress when I see my Google Sites page.”
49. “ It is good that I will be able to always go to my Google Sites page and see what I have created using Japanese even after graduation.”
50. “ The technological/computer skills I acquired through the Google sites projects will help me keep learning Japanese in the future.”
51. “ I plan to use my Google Sites page after graduation to review what I studied.”
52. “ I plan to add more stuff to my Google Sites page after graduation if I continue to study Japanese.”
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Editor's Notes
The title of our presentation is “Integration of web2.0 in students’ projects using Google Sites”. My name is Yoshie Kadowaki, this is Yuka Matsuhashi, and we teach Japanese at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Today we would like to share our experience of using Google Sites for the last three years. We had projects like making stories by describing a picture, video projects and so on, but they were individual projects, and we had to collect them individually too. And that often caused some headaches for us as students save them in different formats, which requires different viewers or players. Also students submit their projects in different ways, some burn it on CD/DVD, some try to send it to you via e-mail, but sometimes they can’t because the file is too big, or other students give you their thumb drive that they need in the next class. Even with something as simple as a word file, when students were using Office 2007 and my office computer was still 2003, I couldn’t open docx, and so on. It’s not that they were major problems, but it just gave us many little things that we had to deal with. Later things like Blogger, Picasa, Youtube came and worrying about different file formats can be taken care of, but we now would have a bunch of different websites we have to go visit and for students to manage too. And so Google Sites served as a perfect place for all of those projects to be stored in one place.
Google sites is one of the features Google offers, which lets you to easily create a website/webpages with no knowledge of HTML. It also let you upload files and attachments, embed not only other google applications but also many others. You can share the site with others, and also collaborate with others to create and develop one site, too.
We would like to share our three-year-long project with Google Sites Key is to teach them how to use Google Sites slowly
We would like to share our three-year-long project with Google Sites Key is to teach them how to use Google Sites slowly
Yuka and I created this Instructor’s Google Sites page to provide sample pages and resources for students, and to bring all students together in one place and create a community of learners.
We create a list of the links to all of our students’ websites like this. This way, all of the students have access to their classmates’ sites too. They do, of course, have choice in deciding if they want to make their website public or private, and I make it up to the students. I just make sure they add me as a viewer if they do decide to make it private, so I can view their page and grade their projects.
The first skill my students have to learn is how to type in Japanese. In our school, we use WebCampus as the CMS across campus, so we use that for posting syllabus, HW, quiz, test schedule and so on. We use it as the place to give instruction for the projects, too. If we didn’t have WebCampus, we could have used Google Sites as an alternative for CMS, but since we do use it already and students are used to them, and some functions are nice and convenient, so we use them. I give students step-by-step instruction on WebCampus, as you can see here. Please note that I don’t spend any in-class time for any of the technical part of these projects. All the explaining of “how-to” is done in the instructions here or on the instruction page I will show you later. First assignment is for them to use the website to learn how to type in Japanese, then they do a little assignment on WebCT to show me that they know how to use Japanese font by typing their name, then they create a google account and a google site and send me the URL. Especially in the beginning, I break the whole process into small steps so students are not overwhelmed.
For each project, we use grading rubrics like this. On this project, students are graded on their spelling and grammar, set-up requirements like having 10 sentences ore more. Later projects will have more requirements like including pictures and including certain amount of grammar they learned in the class and so on. The requirements and what we look at depends on the kind of project they are working on.
We are going to go over many of the projects that we do for our classes in our presentation, and All the example projects we will show today can be found directly on the page we created for this presentation at https://sites.google.com/site/calicopresentation2011/. If you have a laptop with you, you are more than welcomed to navigate it through with us, and see the page we are showing in our presentation on your computer.
Also, if you scroll down, you will find a step-by-step instruction on how to use and incorporate each tool into google sites. We don’t have time to go over the “how-to” part of the projects in our presentation today, but you can use these pages as your reference if you are interested in trying this for your class. And actually that’s exactly what I give to our students when I introduce them to different tools.
So I feel I should give you some background information about our program so you can compare to your own program and think about what is doable and what kind of adjustment you might need to make if you were to do something similar. Basically, I teach the first year, Yuka teaches the second and the third year classes, and that’s our program. I teach JPN111, which is the very beginning Japanese in the fall semester, and the second semester Japanese JPN112 in the Spring. Yuka will tell you the demographic of her classes later, but my 1st year Japanese classes meet 4 times a week (M-Th), and each class is 50 minutes. I teach 3 sections each semester, and have about 25-35 students in each class. Typically I have total of about 100 students in the beginning of JPN111, then I have about 70 students in JPN112 this semester.
We would like to share our three-year-long project with Google Sites Key is to introduce them into Google sites and teach them how to use different tools with it gradually
In Japanese 111, students learn how to type in Japanese, create their own Google Sites page, then work on three different projects. In Japanese 112, they work on four projects. I will go over each of them in a minute.
So after students learn how to type in Japanese, and create their own Google Sites page, I assign them with the first project. The first project in the first semester of Japanese is to write a 10-sentences of self-introduction and post it on their front page. I have them type it up first and collect them, correct their mistakes then they post their final version.
This is the second project students work on in JPN111. They have to create a new page, make a link to that new page using the side bar so the new page will show on the side bar when you go to their front page. They choose a topic, insert a picture, and describe his/her/it’s daily activity in at least 10 sentences.
This is the last project for the first semester. I assigned them this before Thanksgiving, and told them to take a bunch of pictures during the holiday so they can put a picasa slideshow together after the break. So they had to have at least 10 pictures and a caption that go together with them. This was right after they learned how to describe past events, so they had to use that.
In Japanese 111, students learn how to type in Japanese, create their own Google Sites page, then work on three different projects. In Japanese 112, they work on four projects. I will go over each of them in a minute.
In the second project, we add a new tool. They just learned phone conversation expressions and inviting others to do something. A pair of students create their own conversation to make invitation to do something together, decide the time and place to meet, and so on. Each of them have to post their script, and also record their conversation and post it on their page.
This is the project #3 for the second semester Japanese. Students form pairs and create a dialogue between them using expressions they learned for visiting situation, and I video recorded their dialogue in class. This is one of the few times I used in-class time for the projects. I upload all of them on my class page, and they make a link to the video on their own page. For this one, too, I use grading rubric to grade their performance based on their accuracy in the grammar and pronunciation and so on. I also assigned a homework for them to watch their video and write a reflection on what areas they thought they did well, what areas they need to work on more.
In Japanese 111, students learn how to type in Japanese, create their own Google Sites page, then work on three different projects. In Japanese 112, they work on four projects. I will go over each of them in a minute.
Thank you Yoshi. Now I’m going to talk about the 2 nd and the 3 rd year Japanese. In the second year, unfortunately, the class time reduces to 3 times a week but we have a pretty good amount of grammar structures and Vocabulary points to cover so usually we don’t have a lot of time for applications and it is not easy for them to retain all the materials that they have been learning, So our goal for the second year Japanese is that students use Google sites to keep motivated.
They have two projects for each semester. With a given topic, They just include sentences, images on their Google Sites, and Youtube video, which students have learned how to do in the 1 st year. We have less projects because we introduce a lot of materials but we want students to keep motivated when they work on the projects. I will show you how students start to enjoy their projects and manage to learn this amount of materials.
The first semester, students pretend to become a Japanese journalist and write “Health Journals.” They write how they stay health and also give a health suggestion to the audiences.
Comfortable for Google sites projects
Lots of work to do -> you see some positive comments too. We have movie premiere
So, then students begin their 3 rd year. After learning a lot of materials in the second year, they are more likely to be able to express themselves in Japanese and so I can give them more options and some freedom for their language study. Also, we don’t have any more Japanese course after the 3 rd year, so some students complain like “I don’t have any more classes to take!” and “I will forget all the Japanese I learned!” so we would like to introduce some self-assisting tools that they can use outside of the class in the 3 rd year and our hope is that students think that language learning is not limited within the frame of the classroom, but they can continue to learn on their own.
This is the overview of students projects. We have two types of Japanese classes/ reading-writing classes and conversation class. I assign students 3 to 4 projects each semester, including video-recording Oral performances and other video projects. Besides that, I introduce different types of assignments, including Blogging and Google Documents, and Eyejot video messaging. In third year, Blog/Eyejot requires advanced Japanese, more interactive can be affordable. Thus, they can afford to learn new technology, too.
There are a few blog sites available for educational use, but since our students already have a Google site we use Blogger, since it allows students to use their Google account to log in..
This is one of the student’s Bailey’s Blog site. You see titles, text and images. You can easily add YouTube videos and links to other websites, too. Students can add Gadgets to customize his/her main page. Her blog has her profile, a daily bento box, and her fish. Because students built up learning technology tools from the 1 st year Japanese, I believe that students are more used to doing such arrangements. Also, notice that her site is embedded in Google sites. So students can actually create new blog entry from their Google site once they are logged in.
Students can share their favorite books, movies, celebrities, TV programs with other students on their blogs, and leave comments on their favorite topics. In this entry, Baily wrote about her car “Rocky” with the picture. In this assignment, students are required to read three other student’s blog entries and leave comments on them, and students who receive comments need to reply to each comment. She mentions that Rocky is small and so it’s easy to drive. Also, she sometimes drives while singing and dancing. 4 classmates commented on her post, commenting it looks like my brother’s car or Oh, I want to ride on Rocky! I believe students will be able to build closer relationships and gain a greater sense of community. And I do encourage students to continue to use Blogger after they finish the 3 rd year Japanese class for the future study.
Eyejot is a browser-based video messaging website, and
Eyejot allows people to send instant video messages online so you don’t need a portable video camera for recording. What’s great about Eyejot is that you do not need to download any software to instantly create video messages right in the browser. When you receive a message, you get an email notification and be able to view the video mail right there. Your free account allows you to send messages of up to 60 seconds each.
In the beginning of the conversation class, Eyejot is introduced. Since it was their first time trying Eyejot, I asked the students to bring laptops with webcams to class, and had them perform the basics steps up to creating a video and sharing it with their classmates. You can also embed eyejot into your Google site too, so I will teach how to do so to students.
Here is an example of Beiley’s Eyejot embedded into her Googlesite. I matched students up with Japanese native speakers. I gave students their Email addresses and had them do self-introductions to the native speaker. The Japanese native speaker replies to the students using Eyejot with the same topic three times. This semester, I gave students three different assignmenst; 1st: Self-introduction/ 2nd: Explaining about other people/ 3rd: Explain about how to use things.
A few students misunderstood that Blogger was not a part of Google Sites. To maximize its advantage, it is important to improve how to introduce each tool
We did introduced Google Docs in the 3 rd year as a trial, but you COULD apply this tools with the 1 st and the 2 nd year Japanese classes for collaborative writing project, especially for things like group video projects, Google doc is a great tool for students to edit their part of movie scripts.
We would like to share our three-year-long project with Google Sites Key is to teach them how to use Google Sites slowly
This year we had a pretty small group of students who took third year classes. Usually the students number range from 20-30, but we only had 12 students, and one of them joined in the third year only, so we have 11 students as respondents.
There were statements like this and students chose one from “Strongly Agree” “Somewhat Agree” “Somewhat disagree” and “Strongly disagree”. And this is the result for “I believe~.” More than half of them said either “Strongly Agree” or “Somewhat agree.”
This is kind of an interesting result because in the previous questions there were small number of students who didn’t think Google Sites project didn’t really help them learn, but this one we have 100% students answering positively.
This one is about their motivation.
We wanted to see if this project give them the sense of accomplishment like we had hoped it would.
We wanted to know how they feel about the project in terms of their future learning, so we had several questions relating to that.
We wish we had 100% YES! on this one, but that’s what teachers hope and not always what students would do.
This one tells us students are thinking, “Definitely!” or “Maybe I will”, and the rest are pretty sure that they wouldn’t. No “probably not” here. Again, the reality of us not having the control of students’ future learning plan, but at least more of them said they plan to use it for review purpose after graduation. We only have three years program so once they are done taking all of our classes, our hope is that all of them continue their study somehow. Even if they might not use the same google sites projects, we were happy to find out that almost all of them felt the skills they acquired through their project will help them keep learning.
