Audio stuff

Valentina made some suggestions on ideas for creating a podcast. Our open webpublishing class got up to 11 on the 99 ways to use podcasts. 

 Valentina also made some useful comments about Chinswing and using it for language teaching/learning. Suggestions for EFL teachers (presumably initiated by Webheads) in the language channel had some nice ideas and showed me some of the features ie. length can be as long as you like, the way that it automatically plays in the order that comments were added, has RSS feeds. Nice the way you can move across pictures at the bottom. Dwinet commented on the need for interesting topics.

metaphors for CALL

I am learning that when you come across something useful you note down the reference straight away. The other day I read a comment on a blog posting that said something like ‘Technology is not just a tool. Technology opens doors’. Apologies to whoever said that - but I liked the metaphor of the open door.

The metaphors that Carla Meskill discusses (in ‘Metaphors that shape and guide CALL research’ in Egbert’s CALL Research Perspectives, 2005) are

• conduit and berry bush
• magister and pedagogue
• worlds - environments
• tool
• community and meeting place

She says these ‘ways in which we think and talk about CALL are rich and varied… metaphors can push us to see what was once invisible, to conceptualise the unconsidered’. Of course, one of the useful things about metaphors is the thinking that must happen as you explore the boundaries of one and realise its limitations for your purpose.

Writing for myself

Dave Warlick’s blog posting resonates for me when he says “When I write in my blog, I’m trying to describe myself, where I am, who I am, and, perhaps even more, how I got here, why I think and believe what I do.  I’m laying a trail to myself, as much so that I can find my way back, as much as for others.” 

 I think he’s right. In lots of ways I am writing for myself on this blog - a kind of journalling about my own learning journey related to teaching and technology.

It’s also a way for me to record stuff that I’m interested in keeping and know will get lost on my computer - which one? I save stuff at work and at home and am about to start using a laptop as well. So, three places to have to dig deep into folders to find things which I may well have forgotten what I’ve named anyway. Not to mention an overflowing filing cabinet where I can usually…sometimes…maybe find what I think I put there! 

But blogging is for snippets of ideas and thots that may be sparked by what someone else said, as I realise when I see that I have posted three things today after a silence of several weeks! Finally got round to checking bloglines again, obviously : )

Dave refers to Christine Hunewell’s posting about the process by which she blogs. She does what I do - likes to sit on things for a while and tweak as necessary. And knowing that I have an audience does make me sharpen my act and be more careful about what I say…

blogging for conversation

I haven’t used blogs with my students for a good year (because of the class and courses that I am currently teaching - have been getting my head round wikis instead), which is such a shame as over that time my learning has curved upwards and I know that I would want to do blogs with students differently. So this is a frustrated teacher/blogger reflecting on what I would do now.

 I really liked grammaramble’s recent comments about blogs, which she linked to Jeff who talks about the need for blogs to be seen as conversations. 

The problem with blogs is that it is not about writing, it is about a conversation.
“If you think of blogs as conversation vehicles, then it becomes easier to understand how blogs can be very powerful in education and the classroom. Too often, educators use blogs as a replacement for journals, when really what blogs should do is extend conversations from within the classroom to a wider audience. Those conversations should then be brought back into the classroom for further discussion. The word ‘blog’ might be short for Web Log, but the power of blogs is not in the writing, it is in the thoughts, the comments, and the conversation that they can start, sustain, and take into a million different directions.” 

My students in the past (the ones who took to blogging like ducks to water and are still blogging a year down the track) treat blogs as conversation. The journallers are much more reticent and only write when class time is given or the bare minimum expected!  

I would put a lot of effort now into developing the class conversations, allowing time in class to read and comment and also making sure that blog posts were referred to in the class. I would spend time helping students find blogs that they are interested in on topics which push their buttons and make them WANT to talk. I would put energy into getting others to read our blogs, through links in dekita and the like.

The bit of research that I did in 2005 with my students’ blogging suggested that it was a powerful way for them to discover their individual ‘voices’ but I would like to develop those voices to help them have conversations.

I also think that blogs are useful to demo that you are reading other people and to give links and this is something that I didn’t explore sufficiently with my classes in the past. The reason is probably that I hesitate to make them read more when their English was at a lower level. However, with a new blogging class I would like to start with linking and move on to focus on the critical reading and commenting aspect of conversation-blogging.

I also liked Nancy’s list of 7 virtues of blogging. A nice starting point for new bloggers, with advice about being brave, generous, motivating, patient, humble, grateful and showing respect. She got them from Kathy Sierra, whose visuals I always enjoy.

Just realised that this post has me referring to someone who refers to someone else not once, but twice! Rather than conversation, this is perhaps a version of ‘And then she said that he said…’ No doubt there is a term that has already been coined to express this…

New Technology

Enjoy : ) 

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People of the year - us!

Just came across a comment about Time magazine’s person of the year 2006. I know, it is almost April! But anyway, they chose ’You’! A nod to the power of social networking!

“The magazine said naming a collectivity rather than an individual reflected the way the internet was shifting the balance of power within the media through blogs, videos and social networks.  Time cited websites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Wikipedia, which allow users to interact with the web by uploading and publishing their own comments, videos, pictures and links.” According to the BBC, the award is for ”the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill”. Complete list and comments (negative) on the 2006 choice can be found at wikipedia.

So… power to Open Web Publishers and You (and me!). Shame no one called me for a photo shoot - I’ve always wondered how it would feel to have my face on the front cover of a magazine!

Unlearning curve

Given the title of my blog, I had to link to Will Richardson’s blog posting on the steep unlearning curve that many of us teachers have to go through.  “One of the most challenging pieces of figuring out how to move education forward in a systemic way is “unlearning curve” that we teachers and educators have to go through to even see the possibilities that lay before us.”

So what am I unlearning at the moment?

That I need to be in total control of everything that happens in my classroom!

That I don’t need to question the value of technology for language learning!

That teaching is a competitive sport!

That I should know more than my students!

I do know admit the above, but realistically unlearning them is a process : )

Who is giving who a gift?

There are some interesting quotes, albeit slightly dated, on What good teachers say about teaching They all share a passion for student learning and the part that we play in that as teachers. I read some of the below and think “I wish I’d said that!”  A handful of examples…

“My goal is to give the student the basis for a knowledgeable and informed but independent relation to the text. In each course, at whatever level, I mark my success by the extent to which I can imagine myself as having vanished into thin air at the end, leaving each student fully able to carry on teaching him/herself.” Janet Adelman

“We are so accustomed, through sophistication and self-protection, to glaze everything we say about ourselves with irony that it is difficult for me to express what I feel at such moments…we too often routinize and flatten out that which is most remarkable about our profession. That, with my help, a sixteenth-century English poet can sing his verses to a twentieth-century Californian continually fills me with wonder. There is for me, in such moments, a small, temporary victory over death.” Stephen Greenblatt

“I do what I do because I love what I work with. Even the sanguine among us will admit that such a privileged situation is rare, that teaching—as opposed to, say, football playing—allows one to grow in it to old age, and even to be rejuvenated by it.” Anthony Newcomb

Buying in to consumerism

Kiwis spent $937 million on consumer electronics last year, an increase of 10 per cent on 2005 according to the Herald. The average American will spend $3122 on the same. Wow!

So much for poverty - being connected is clearly what is important! And how do we as educators react? Larry Cuban, in his book Oversold and Underused, suggests that schools clamber onto the ‘If it works for the individual, it must work for the classroom’ juggernaut - when there are much more useful ways to spend the money for educational gain. Such as making sure our kids actually get to eat breakfast, let alone thinking of smaller class sizes, better paid teachers, etc etc!