15th EFL / ESL /ELL blog carnival

The fifteenth edition of the EFL/ESL/EEL carnival is now published, and I'm very happy to be a part of it.

The carnival is a great way of providing a snapshot of what people have been blogging about recently in the world of ELT. This time round the topics are:

• Thought-provoking pedagogy
• Teaching effectively with technology
• Presentation and social media advice
• Issues to ponder

There's so much good stuff here, it will take you a while to digest it - that's the other thing about the carnival : it's a great way of getting to know bloggers that you may not have come across before. 

Of all the posts in the carnival, I particularly enjoyed Ozge Karaoglu's How to survive in 2010 - digitally and Marisa Constantinides' Don't Forget the Pedagogy. Karenee Sylvester's Powerpointing Me suggests a great way of using this technology well with a new class and Jeremy Harmer's On being nervous is a great read for anyone who's ever presented or is thinking about presenting at a conference. I also loved looking at Eva Büyüksimkeşyan's students' Glogster projects - fantastic work! I'd also like to take Vicky Saumell's 40 Things you can do with a data projector in an EFL/ESL lesson and expand upon it - a great resource to have .

And the best thing is...I haven't finished reading them all yet, so I'm sure this list of favourites will grow.

APLaNet - Exciting New Professional Development Opportunity for Language Teachers

APLANet is a new European Union project proposal which aims to help language teachers to develop their own Personal Learning Network (PLN) .


We are looking for two types of people/organisations at the moment: 

1. Educators who are skilled in using social networking tools and who would be interested in helping other teachers create their own Personal Learning Network using tools such asTwitter, Facebook, Ning, etc.
2. Teachers who would like to build their own PLN and would be interested in being mentored, piloting materials, etc. as part of  their professional development.

Both of these would be recognised on the project documents as 'Associate Partners' (EU project trerminology which sounds more formal than it actually is) and would receive recognition in the form of a certificate of participation as well as a great opportunity to form part of an exciting new community of language professionals.


Think you're interested? Or know of anyone who may be interested? Read more about it below and download and return the document (link at the end of this post)

Autonomous ‘Personal Learning Networks’ for Language Teachers (APLaNet) 

For Language Educators and Users of Internet Language Resources.

The APLaNet project will be showing and helping language educators how to join existing and create their own Personal Learning Networks (PLN) on existing social networks. The project will show you how to join and use the resources that are daily being created, shared, tested and talked about.

Using a PLN language educators will be able to find their way through the jungle of ICT resources on the net and find language teachers, just like themselves, that will help them use the resources.

We are looking for two types of Associate Partners (in the downloadable document we describe the associate partner roles in depth):



1. Teachers of languages – interested in piloting the project and building your own PLN

2. Existing users of social networks to help mentor the teachers and help them build their PLN

Please download the document to understand more about the project and how you can be involved:

You can download the document from the link below
http://burcuakyol.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Associate_Partner-form.doc

2010 - the year of the Personal Learning Network?

One of the things I'll remember 2009 for is it was the first year that mainstream ELT teachers really took to using social media. This is something that Lindsay Clandfield mentions in a recent blog post on language teaching trends of the 00s). It was particularly interesting to be able to see blogs being set up by educators such as Ken Wilson, Jeremy Harmer and Scott Thornbury.

Of all the internet memes that emerged in 2009, it was surely PLN (Personal Learning Network) that caught the attention of  the blogging educators.

The Twittering Classes 

This was mainly due to the emergence of Twitter as an essential tool for the connected teacher, although there are still many teachers who have decided it's not for them. Some have been put off by its trendiness (in the UK it became much talked-about because of Stephen Fry and other celebrities - the same seems to have been true in other places too) and others don't see the point of the 140 character limitation or think it's just a variation of the status update in Facebook.It is similar, but people are far more likely to connect to lots of other people in Twitter than in Facebook (For me it's 1800 on Twitter to Facebook's 721). I think this is the whole point - I get so much out of having an extensive network of people there , and the fact that its focus is on short messages is what makes it work so well

It's interesting to see  comments made by educators who have recently discovered the point of this social network, such as these words in a post at What's New in the World :

"I have found more resources and got more useful advice for professional development in 3 months on Twitter than in the previous 5 years without it. "

The blogger goes on to mention just some of the benefits of actively taking part in tweeting: the access to expert opinions, links to useful resources, advice and immediate feedback to any questions you may have. I would also add a few more to this: real time search (if you use a tool such as Tweetdeck this becomes even more useful), access to a quick and easy concordancer, debate on best practce.

PLN: Small Pieces Loosely Joined

Of course, Twitter is only one useful part of my own PLN. Having a blog and reading and commenting on other people's blogs is another, vital part. As is belonging to specialist social networks (usually using Ning). Facebook is also important, especially as there are so many teachers who use this social network and who don't use Twitter.

The Importance of Facebook

In fact, nowadays (at least in my situation) if you're not connected to people on Facebook, and other social networks, you'll miss out on what's happening (more and more people are using Facebook to organise events, etc.) in your social and professional circle of friends and colleagues.

Here's an example that comes from a conversation with a colleague yesterday - I was talking to someone about the TESOL EVO sessions, because I'd invited lots of people to take part through Facebook, and she asked me what we were talking about. The conversation that followed went something like this:

Me: Didn't I invite you too? Aren't we connected on Facebook?
Teacher: No, I keep my Facebook limited to close-friends and family

On the one-hand, I can totally understand the reasons for doing this, but this attitude is definitely not for me - I only started to appreciate the personal and professional advantages and benefits of social networks once I'd become more inclusive and widened my network to include people from all over the world and who I hardly know (or don't know). It's led to so many benefits: to me finding out about things I'd otherwise never have heard about, establishing friendships and reinforcing professional contacts, being invited to speak at conferences and take part in projects, etc (in some cases based on a single tweet being picked up by someone who was monitoring a term in Twitter!)

2010 - The year of the PLN

All of this is why I think 2010 will be the year when teachers many more mainstream start to embrace the idea of the PLN and begin to take a more active part in belonging to the global staffroom that is out there waiting for you, offering you friendship, support, help and advice - if you want it!

TESOL EVO 2010

Happy New Year everyone!

Why not start 2010 with some professional development courtesy of TESOL's Electronic village Online?

The best place for educators to start, especially if they are new to teaching and learning languages with technology is the Becoming a Webhead (BaW2010) session. Run every year, this is the perfect introduction to the Webheads community of practice and it's specially suitable for those teachers who are interested in using technology but who are unsure of where to start.

After joining the BaW2010 Yahoo group, you'll be introduced to a dazzling array of possibilities and will be helped every step of the way by experienced and friendly mentors. By the end of the six week session, teachers will have a much better idea of how they can start to introduce technology into their classroom to enhance their lessons and will also be part of a supportive community of like-minded teachers they can draw on for inspiration and help.

For those of you with more experience, there are lots of other sessions to choose from:

• Adaptive Technology
• EVO Drama 2010
• Digital Materials Preparation Techniques
• Images4Education
• Internet4YoungLearners
• Multiliteracies for social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments
• EVO Video 2010
• Online Games for ESL/EFL
• Smart Teaching with Interactive Whiteboards
• Teaching Languages in a Virtual World
• Virtual Language Travel

Enrolment has now just opened for these six-week long hands-on virtual sessions and this year there is a wide variety you can choose to join,details of which are in the EVO Call for Participation

I'm excited about co-moderating the Teaching Languages in a Virtual World EVO session - essentially it's a repeat of the session we did last year, but so much has happened in the last year, and we're expecting the participants to have more experience, so the discussions should be very interesting. We're also hoping that more people will bring actual virtual world teaching experience to the mix. If you want to join in the fun, then sign up here: http://tlinvw.ning.com/

Language Teaching in Second Life - A Review

Time for a review of language teaching in Second Life. This post was prompted by a request from someone who wanted to observe a class in SL. This is the best place to ask for a Second Life class observation opportunity: https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators

As for observing classes, I was very impressed with the observations that I did while undertaking a teacher training course for language educators in Second Life, run by http://www.languagelab.com. They are a serious language school, with a sizable city in Second Life, employing highly trained teachers and teacher trainers and material designers and are doing the most when it comes to really using Second Life well for language teaching and learning. I suggest contacting them - they may not be running another teacher training course for a while, but you could always sign up to take Spanish or Italian and get to observe teachers in action

Avatar Languages is another language school that is also active, but it breaks the mould, as the classes are one-to-one: http://www.avatarlanguages.com. Check out their blog for ideas of how you can teach ESL without having land in SL.

Second Life English is another group worth contacting: http://www.secondlifeenglish.com (although I'm not sure how active they'll be during the summer) - the people involved in this, and the English Village island in Second Life were the first people to offer ESL in Second Life and you can therefore benefit from their experience. They have gone through the usual stages that anyone does when starting to teach ESL in Second Life (i.e. trying to teach in a classroom environment, with a desk and a board is usually the first one that goes out the window - it's still surprises me that anyone wants to duplicate this in a world where you can teleport and fly and build or find any scenario you want, but they do - it shows a complete lack of experience with the environment and/or a lack of reflection on what is needed for language learning to take place)

There are others, but most of them do not offer any innovative practice and show signs of trying to jump on the bandwagon without doing any legwork.

Speaking of legwork, if you've just joined it may be worthwhile getting in touch with a more active group of educators. A group of Webheads meet every week to discuss Second Life education and create lesson plans (most are English language educators too). Find out more here: http://slexperiments.pbwiki.com

Finally, if you'd like a good overview of the state of the art re. language education in Second Life, I recommend checking out the archive of the annual SLanguages conference: http://www.slanguages.net/archive.php which was held on the Edunation island (a great place to set as your home base if you want to meet other educators - you'll always find people there you can talk to)

Hope this helps - please feel free to get in touch. I am not directly involved in ESL TEACHING in SL (I spend most of my time working on the British Council's SELF-ACCESS centre for 13-17 year-old language learners in Teen Second Life: http://secondlife4teens.wikispaces.com), but I have been involved in language education in Second Life since 2006 - my avatar name is Baldric Commons

Digital Play - a new blog

I've started a new blog with a colleague and friend, Kyle Mawer, called Digital Play, which you can find here: http://www.digitalplay.info/blog/

The blog will specialise in collecting news, information and ideas for teachers who want to use computer games and other digital toys to help language learners in and out of class.

This is something that we both have been involved in for several years now, especially in our jobs as teachers of young learners. During this time, we have tried out different ideas of exploiting digital games with young learners of English and teenagers, and have introduced a lot of our colleagues to using these too. The interest has grown and now many of our colleagues turn to lesson plans and worksheets featuring online games when they have a computer room slot.

Of course, we have presented our ideas about using digital games at various conferences and have had articles and ideas published in various places too. The next, natural step seemed to be to set up a blog to help draw the ELT world's attention to what can be done. And so, Digital Play was born.

Hope to see some of you over there sometime.

Interesting Talk on Teaching English in Second Life

Nik Peachey spoke to Dennis Newson about Teaching English in Second Life last night

http://blip.tv/file/2482035

Among other things, he spoke about the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats according to him. Here's a summary of what was talked about:

WEAKNESSES

* lack of established social norms

The talk soon turned into a discussion with different participants agreeing / disagreeing with Nik. Talk mentioned the backchannel of the text chat sometimes interrupting the flow during meetings.

* no eye contact
* gestures and body language makes it difficult

Nik wondered about the effect of the lack of body language, gestures, etc have on students and the Teacher-Student relationship. Participants who have experience teaching online mentioned the fact that the more experience you have teaching online the better: you can pick things up in other ways (tone of voice, etc)

One participant, however, stated evidence has found that some students are more forthcoming because of this. Another mentioned the levels of control that classroom teachers have that do not exist in Second Life. She mentioned that this is similar to teaching high level business students - often teachers have to accept the interruptions that a lot of these (especially one-to-one) classes involve. Interruptions such as mobile calls, etc. Teaching in SL involves a similar degree of relinquishing control.

* Groupwork/Pairwork problems

Participants mentioned that groupwork is possible but other activities such as mingling activities do not work. Using different parcels or sending students to different areas makes groupwork possible. Nik mentioned that in particular, organisations that set up their SL schools like their RL schools have more problems than other types of language teaching organisations in SL.

Another participant said that many professionals involved in distance learning now agree that distance learning is often more labour intensive than RL teaching and that the ideal group size would be around ten people.

Monitoring student groups in Second Life is difficult according to Nik. And the idea of working with smaller groups means it is more difficult to make teaching languages in SL economically viable.

* Autonomous language learning opportunities limited

There are lots of opportunities online for autonomous language learning but they are few and far between in SL. Participants stated that SL should be used for what it is good for, and there's no point trying to use Second Life to do everything when there are bettwer ways of doing certain things elsewhere online.

Second Life, according to one participant is an example of disruptive technology. Development in SL is definitely catching up though.

* Ability to handle text

SL is a graphics delivery system and its ability to deliver motivating text is still a challenge. If you compare notecards to typical worksheets and handouts there are limitations (no formatting, they do not behave consistently, they don't look very good). Placing text in SL on the wall etc. is still not satisfactory.

STRENGTHS

* SL is a good social platform

Nik thinks that SL regulars get strangely attached to their avatars. This attachment is something that puts SL on a different level from 2D Web. He also mentioned that if he has met someone in SL, he feels he has met them "on a deeper level" than those he has only talked to on Skype or exchanged emails with.

The 3D aspect of SL is very important. SL provides a feeling of sociability

* Space ownership

It is easy to develop an identification of ownership of space. You can't build same kind of attachment / sense of ownership to a Moodle space, for example.

The discussion then moved onto using virtual worlds with teens and pre-teens

Nik suggests providing space for students - it will motivate them more if they can take ownership of the space and will provide a stronger pull to keep them interested as 'virtual residents' .

OPPORTUNITIES

* Language Exchange

Sites such as livemocha, italki, and other language exchange sites work well and he believes that this could be done much better than it is in Second Life, with people helping each other to learn a language.

One participant mentioned this is an extension of tandem learning and pairing students up can work very well and offers great potential .

One of the problems for students find is not being able to find someone. Enabling students to find others to help them, to get feedback, etc offers great potential.

* Authentic tasks and projects

Nik thinks that SL offers a more authentic experience than learning in a classroom environment, which is very synthetic. SL hasa much more genuine correlation to the way languages are generally learned.

For example, there are real businesses in SL - there are real activities going on. If language teaching can tap into this, the real things that are happening, then this can provide a very authentic experience for students.

* Extra-curricular activities such as chat groups, drama groups, etc

There is a great opportunity to do this in SL and work on projects such as machinima / theatre in order to motivate students to use language in a real way.

* Playing/Creation of Video Games

Nik thinks SL is a playground and believes that SL can offer a great place where games can be created and played, motivating students through SL's visual strengths.

Many classroom activities do not work very well in SL. They lead to groups of students standing around in circles reading notecards. He believes the environment is so visually strong that we need to be able to use it, to create large spaces with motivating games. This will take serious groups of people with serious SL skills to be able to do this.

One participant mentions the common misconception of people thinking of SL as a game. This is good because it is attractive to students who like games. But it's also bad because teachers generally think of SL as a game and don't take it seriously.

Discussion moved onto Marc Prensky and the use of games in teaching and to another virtual world, There. Nik mentioned that he was impressed by this virtual world.

Strong motivations in computer games (mastering tasks, preserving life, evading enemies, etc) are lacking in SL. People will do things over and over again in order to get to the next stage of a game. This is one of the strengths of gaming that could be built into learning.

THREATS

* Reliability

We are never really sure that SL is going to work when we go there. This makes it difficult if you are offering a commercial product and students cannot get into SL for example.

One of the participants mentioned the threat of:-

* Griefers

Being interrupted by people during a class can be a problem. One way round this, according to a participant is to locate the classroom on a sky platform.

The key is to teach people how to deal with this when it happens. A griefing incident can be turned into a strength if the griefer can be engaged in conversation by students, etc.

The discussion branched off after this...

Nik mentioned that using a female avatar brought him more attention on There - he got approached a lot more.

One participant expressed that she loved the feeling of playfulness that SL gives her. She mentioned getting involved in activities that she wouldn't do in RL.

The discussion came to an end with Nik mentioning the resistance that someone had in their organisation to using Second Life. He believes that there are so many changes that have happened to teaching and education through technology in the last 5 years. The average teacher now has a huge amount of pressure to learn new skills and to step in front of their students and to use these skills. It is a great challenge for teachers and lots will need to take it slowly. Nik believes the best way to introduce SL to other teachers is to make it part of their professional practice first, before it can ever be part of their classroom practice. Teachers then will feel more comfortable about using it with students.

Nik then mentioned that the whole nature of the way we communicate is changing because of technology, and what we teach and the way that we teach it should reflect this. If our students want to use these tools, then they'll need help. Just as students needed help with writing a letter, then some will need help communicating in places such as Second Life.

One participant mentioned that SL would benefit a good intermediate learner best.

Nik said that for students who have a gaming background find SL much easier to use and understand.

All-in-all a very stimulating discussion.