My final reflection

Hello there! This is my final reflection about the subject. I chose to use goanimate because it's the tool I had the most fun with. However, I was unable to record my own voice, because apparently my computer is running too slowly :(

The free version allows you to record for only two minutes, so I had to record my reflection in two separate videos. Here they go! (I added a touch of humour, I hope you don't mind!):
Final reflection by laucascone on GoAnimate

My final reflection part 2 by laucascone on GoAnimate

Digital storytelling in Argentina

The following is the analysis of case study 2.3: digital storytelling in Argentina, which appears in Innovations in learning technologies, taking into consideration the frameworks put forward by Mishra, Harris and Koehler, the TPCK model, and by Puentedura, the SAMR model. 

In the TPCK model we first need to think about the context, which limits the content, the pedagogy and the technology. In this case study we are talking about a private school in Buenos Aires, though mostly funded by the state. The name of the school is Instituto San Francisco de Asís, so we can infer it is a religious school. Students have three hours of English a week, and teachers often feel preassure to stick to the chosen coursebook. Thus, they often have little time to do other, more creative things with their students. The experiment was carried out with teenagers. 

Teenage students worked with different digital storytelling projects, tackling different contents; some worked with famous paintings and street art to create art stories while others worked with Shakespeare's Midsummer night's dream, 

In these projects they did different activities (the pedagogy). Some students had to create art stories collaboratively. In groups, they chose some paintings and wrote a narrative that linked the stories together, thus practising and developing their writing skills. They then put them together in an animated slideshow, with a soundtrack. Other students working in the same project decided to take pictures of street art and put them together in a slideshow too, but the difference was that, instead of writing a narrative, they recorded themselves discussing what they liked about the graffiti. Thus, this activity aimed at practising oral skills. 

Another group of students worked to recreate part of the story of Midsummer night's dream by, for example, making animated versions of the stories. You can see the result here: http://isfa.wikispaces.com/A+Midsummer+Night%C2%B4s+Dream

As regards the technology used, the groups working with art used Windows Movie Maker to create the animated slide shows. Those who focused on street art used their digital cameras and mobiles to take the pictures of the different graffiti. 

In the case of the Skakespeare project, students used the animated movie making software Zimmer Twins. This is the webpage http://www.zimmertwins.com/ and here's a caption of the website:

In all the projects, the shool's wiki was used to publish the results. 

When considering these activities within Puentedura's SAMR model, I think we could be talking about the redefinition level, since these projects changed completely they way teachers and students used to work. Without technology, these projects wouldn't have reached the level of circulation they reached. Students created digital stories that reached audiences outside their community (these projects were even published in a book, and that is why I'm writing about them!) Plus, the use of technology meant great motivation for students to work in a committed way. 

Finally, we can conclude that with these projects students were not only developing their second language skills, but they were also developing their digital literacy skills. In a world and a society of multitasking teenagers, these projects surely exploit learners' capacity and abilities more fully than a coursebook. 

Personal Learning Network

Before writing this post, just out of curiosity, I looked up "Network" in the dictionary, and this is the definition I came across in the Cambridge Online Dictionary:

"A large system consisting of many similar parts that are connected together to allow movement or communication between or along the parts or between the parts and a control centre."

I'm a teacher trainee and very often I find myself overwhelmed by the load of information on ELT one can find on the web. How many teachers or teacher trainees out there feel like me? Every single time I've felt like this the solution came from a peer I did not know; a colleague from some part of the world - or from the same neighbourhood as me - who, perhaps, had already had the same querie or interest as me, and was kind enough to upload his/her material, solution, app, etc. 

Going back to the definition of "Network", I feel part of a system, or rather a community, of teachers who need to contact each other, "to allow movement," or rather, LEARNING. 

So, why do we need to build a PLN? Because we cannot stand alone on the world wide web. At least not if we want to learn and profit from others' experience and learning. 

My present Personal Learning Network is modest, but increasing day by day, mostly thanks to a subject I'm attending at the teacher training college: ICT applied to ELT. I've created this mind map to tell you a little bit more about my PLN (click on the image to enlarge it). 

Gamifying our classrooms

In different ways and degrees, we all use games in our lessons. Tic-tac-toe, Simon says, etc. etc. etc. are games we often play with our students, and these are probably games we have played as students, too. These days, some of us may even play computer or ipad games in our classrooms. Here's a picture of one I've used with students of mine, WORDSHAKE: 

Now, while this may be fun to some of our students, we still have to ask ourselves: is this a game they would play at home, for pleasure? Probably not. 

Graham Stanley, a teacher since 1995, has specialized in digital play applied to ELT. He states that games can be easily adapted for teaching and that they can be used to practise ALL language skills. Thus, why not gamifying our classrooms? After all, games make learning fun and learners LOVE talking about games. I must say that, in my personal experience, this is true. I work in a school with fifth formers and most of my students LOVE playing Minecraft. I had no idea what this game was, all I knew is my students were begging for a reading comprehension on minecraft! So I started “Googling” about it and found out that this game is being used in many schools because, apparently, students can learn in many different ways by playing it. Check this out:  

After watching Graham's webinar, investigating his blog and having the pleasure of “videoconferencing” with him, I became very interested in “Escape the Room” games. In this genre of online games, players have to use their logic to escape a room and, in the process, they have to find hidden objects, solve puzzles, etc.  

And how could this help our students learn the language? By using the WALKTHROUGH, a step by step, written solution. 

I tried one escape the room game called Plush Room (I must admit that I had to read the walkthrough to win it!!!). You can play it on this website: http://www.dozengames.com/Room-Escape/23049/Plush-Room-Escape.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/hmdo+(Dozengames) and here's part of the walkthrough: 

Click on the red book twice to get closer and again to turn the pages.

Pick the fuse from the book, zoom out

Click the orange fruits to zoom and get the knife, zoom out

Click on table on the right side to zoom.

Click on the Night lamp to move it and get the fuse.

Click on the flower Vase and take the key, zoom out.

Click the cupboard on the left to zoom, click again to open it

This is a picture of the game:

Finally, here's a video on how to play it: 

Of course, these instructions can be adapted to our students' level. This game is also very rich in vocabulary; if you place your mouse on an item, it tells you the name.
I'm thinking that, if the walkthrough is adapted, this could be a good game to practise vocabulary, prepositions of place, existence (there is/ there are), etc. I could read out the walkthrough while students play the game, thus making it a listening comprehension activity. Students could then tell each other what they did in order to win the game, what the most difficult or the easiest part was, etc., thus turning it into a speaking activity. Eventually, students could write their own walkthroughs, a writing activity in which they would have to use the language they have been working on. 

We are all curators

The definition of curation, according to Marisa Constantinides, is: "the selection, preservation, maintenance, collection and archiving of digital assets." However, this definition - she states -  does not include the concept of SHARING, while social bookmarking does.

What is the difference between social bookmarking and curation? She says they are similar, though "we can use the term curation when there is a sense of display and arrangement of the elements, such as a museum curator might do." (taken from: http://marisaconstantinides.edublogs.org/2013/09/20/from-curation-to-creation/#.Un_LT_nddqB ).

Here are some curation tools:

Most of us will be able to identify at least some of the icons, like youtube, blogger, facebook.... So, in a way, most of us are already content curators. We already organize and display online information of our interest, in different ways.

After having watched Marisa Constantinides' webinar on content curation I decided to try a new curation tool, one I had not heard about: scoop.it.

In Scoop.it you register (I did it through facebook) and you create topics you're interested in, for example, technology in ESL. Once you've created your topic, this tool suggests links related to that topic, which you can scoop (bookmark) if you like. This is the link to my scoop.it account:

http://www.scoop.it/u/laura-cascone

It's very easy to use and it organizes information in a graphic and very didactic way.

How can curation be creative?

We generally relate creation to something original and entirely new, but the truth is one can be creative by elaborating on the ideas of others. 

"Being a skilled performer in any skill, whether a ballet dancer or cook, involves not just skills and abilities to perform well, but is based on knowledge and awareness of facts and information which support the creative process." (Constantinides).

Tools like Scoop.it certainly help us raise awareness of facts and information which can help us develop as teachers.  

A different way to work with speaking skills

Getting our students to talk in the target language is sometimes a hard task. Here are some tools that we can use to boost our students' motivation and which, hopefully, will engage them in some meaningful talking. I took these ideas from Shelly Terrell's webinar: teaching with speaking tools and apps. 

Blabberize

Blabberize is a very user friendly tool. You upload an image and in three very simple steps you can make it talk (i.e. make it move its mouth). That's it, no registration or payment required. You can upload an audio or record your voice in the moment, too. I tried it and loved it. Here's a caption of my trial:

Soundcloud

Soundcloud is a tool used mainly for recording. It requires registration and the good thing about it is you can record up to 120 minutes! For free! You can also share your recordings and listen to other's. I really didn't feel like saying anything in particular, so I recorded myself playing something simple on my charango. It's the intro to a song called Huayno del Diablo. Here it is:

Goanimate

Goanimate.com is a webpage where you can create your own video. Registration is required, but it's free. There is a "plus" version for which you have to pay, but the free one offers plenty of options to choose from. Thus, you get to choose the characters, the settings, the props, the sounds and, here comes the best part: you can record your own voice. Thus, you can have students speak in the target language. 

I explored the tool and tried it out. Here's a picture of the creation process:

You can see that on the left you have the options: list of characters, props, effects, etc.

I made a video with a grammar point in mind: "will" for spontaneous decisions. After having taught and practised this point I could ask students to brainstorm situations in which they would have to make a spontaneous decision, for example, a friend shows up in your house out of the blue. The great thing about this tool, is that it offers very creative settings and characters. Thus, students may get inspired and think of very unusual situations. This is the one I created:

A strange meeting by laucascone on GoAnimate

Quite bizarre, right? But making it was fun, so I'm guessing students will probably feel enthusiastic too. 

We could think of many ways of integrating these three tools. For example, students could first sit down in groups and think of situations in which they would have to make spontaneous decisions. They can use the regular pen and paper to write the dialogues. They could then record and listen to themselves on soundcloud. They could work on intonation, expression, pronunciation, chunking, etc. To take things to a different level, they could use Goanimate. When students have a look at all the settings and characters available, they might probably feel like changing the original idea. And that would be ok. Finally, after having made the video, a further step would be to ask students to imagine a little bit about these characters' lives. They could then upload a picture of them to Blabberize and have them talk about a particular topic, for example, where they live, what they like doing, their personalities, etc.    

Exploring web tools

After watching Nik Peachey's conference I decided to try a web tool called blipfoto, and here's my humble outcome.

This is a tool with which you can take a daily photo, describe it and uploade it. You can use it on your laptop or on your mobile. In my case, I downloaded the app on my mobile and uploaded my entry from there. Then I checked it on my laptop. The webpage has a forum and journals can be grouped by themes. You can also subscrbe to the journals of your interest.  

Considering Peachey's criteria, I chose this tool for different reasons:

- This is something students would do in real life. In fact, many of them do, what with facebook, twitter, instagram, etc. etc. etc. (when I was a teenager we used to do it with fotolog!!! I guess that says something about my age). 

- It is free!!! 

- It is not specifically designed for ELT. Thus, it has an authentic purpose, it can be used for real communication.

- It is easy to access: you can use it on your laptop or on your mobile phone. 

- It is really easy to use, and you can learn in 5-10 minutes. Peachey very wisely says that if learning how to use a tool takes you longer than 10 minutes, then it's not worth teaching. 

- Hopefully, students will get hooked by this site and will use it more than once. 

- It requires registration, which offers a kind of protection for our students.

- The learning outcome is tangible and concrete.

On a previous post I wrote that I had tried using a facebook group with former students of mine but I felt that I was not able to encourage natural participation. Now that I have explored this tool, I can say this would have been a great idea. Perhaps, I could have assigned dates to students (one very important thing about this tool is that you get to upload only one entry per day, and you really cannot lie about the date) and have asked them to take a picture that day and write about what they were doing. Then they could have posted the link to facebook, at least at first. Then gradually they could have started using blipfoto directly. I'm sure this would have encourgae students to comment on their classmates' entries sicne, as I said before, that is what they do on facebook and other social networks.

Some "twisters" to reflect upon...

These are two phrases that I liked from Puentedura's conference:

I chose this one because sometimes we might choose technology tools for the sake of using them and not really because they make a change...

This is a great challenge... recycling activities, adapting them, changing them to fir our students' necessities...

By the way, the tool I used to capture the twisters is called JING

Analyzing case study 1.2b: video conferencing

This case study has been taken from the book Innovations in learning technologies for English language teaching, edited by Gary Motteram.

I will first analyze it using the TPCK framework.

Context

This experience was carried out in Taiwan, where families are not used to reading in English at home; they do it in Mandarin. The participants were 5th form students (eleven-year olds), their teachers and an English native story teller. 

Content

Three books were chosen for picture book reading: An old lady who swallowed a fly, Joseph had a little overcoat and We're going on a bear hunt. 

Technology

Video conference system called JoinNet. Here's a video tutorial to learn how to access and use JoinNet. 

Pedagogy

Students listened to a book reading by an English speaker while they viewed the page spreads on the computer screen. Students were able to interact with the reader by putting and answering questions about the plot, characters and events, in their own mother language. . The teacher was able to specifically focus on English vocabulary, upload worksheets incorporating listening and spelling activities, such as cloze procedures, as well as utilising the system’s polling function to elicit responses from the children.

Where does this experience fit in the SAMR model?

I would say this experience fits in the redefinition level, because this is a new task which the teachers considered useful and necessary, and which was previously inconceivable without technology; hitherto, teachers had not found the way to expose that number of students to a story telling, interactive session. In this experience, students and teachers listened to and interacted with a person from another part of the world through this new technological tool, while they viewed the book online. 

My reflections

I found this to be a very interesting case study. More often than not, we tend to think of our own context and circumstances, so it is enriching to read about education and experiences with technology in other parts of the world.

I believe this experience was more aimed at a an exposure and comprehension level, since production was done in their mother language. This is of course due to the stage of learning at which students find themselves, but it proves that technology may be used at any stage in a beneficial way. 

From an experience like this, not only students learn, but also teachers, who may sometimes be afraid of incorporating new technology: "... whilst the children gained a huge amount from these VC sessions, the major beneficiaries were the class teachers. They were able to see an effective book reading modelled by by a skilled English speaker and identify techniques for engaging the listener, as well as learning how to enable children to think and talk around a story in order to maximise comprehension." (Pim, 2013, p. 27).

I have had only one experience with video conferencing. It was last year, for a subject called Multimedia applied to ELT. We weren't able to have "normal" classes because of a conflict at the teacher training college, so we had an online lesson through video conferencing. The experience was good: I found myself doing something I had no idea about, I was able to participate and to listen to my classmates. However, due to a slow internet connection, at moments I felt annoyed and frustrated: I could not listen properly and neither could some classmates. I believe this was a useful tool ni a moment of necessity (otherwise, we would have missed the class). 

On the SAMR model and my experience

After reading about the four levels of technology use developed by Rubén Puentedura - substitution, augmentation, modification and redefinition - I've been reflecting about my teaching experience and how I've integrated technology so far.

I realize very often I have worked at the substition level: for example, when working with listening. Whenever I needed to work with an audio, a song or a dialogue, I used to record it in a CD. This was more comfortable than using tapes, of course. But these days I use a flashdrive, which is way more comfortable (and cheaper). However, whereas this represents a change to me, it does not really change the way in which students learn.

I have also worked at the augmentation level, especially with videos: I used to show my students videos on youtube, but I had to rely on a good internet connection, and this was not always the case. Now that I know how to use atube catcher I not only download videos, but I also cut them, change their format to make them weigh less, etc. Once more, whereas this has made things easier for me, I doubt whether it has really meant a change to my students.

Although not very often, I believe I have worked at the modification level. For instance, with former students of mine I opened up a facebook group. I put weekly questions which they had to answer. In this way, my students were able to read their classmates' productions and comment on them. I also uploaded relevant information, pictures and websites. They were also able to do that, though they didn't do it much, I'm afraid. I should have probably foster that in a different way.

I haven't worked at the redefinition level yet. Partly, because I wouldn't know how to go about it. But also because probably I've been afraid of doing so; I feel that at this level there are so many new things to learn and control... Hopefully, this subject will give me the knowledge and confidence to start working at this level. After reading about the study cases today in class, I feel enthusiastic and eager to learn how to work at this level.

A more detailed introduction!

Hello!
This post is to introduce myself in more detail...

I'm Laura Cascone, I'm 26 years old and I live in the city of Buenos Aires. I've been studying to become a teacher since 2008, and I'm planning to graduate next year. I study at the "Instituto Superior de Profesorado Joaquín V. González." Here's a picture of its building!

I've worked in schools - both state and private - and in private institutes. Currently, I'm working at a private primary school with 5th form (11 year-olds). This is my first experience as a primary teacher and I really enjoy it, although I don't really know how I would feel teaching first or second form.
I also work in an institute in Palermo with kids. They are 8 and 9 years old, but I don't find it that difficult since it is a small group (only six students). I also have my private students, mostly adults.
I've always taught adolescentes and this is the first year I teach kids. I must say so far, it has been a very rewarding experience...

Hi, there! This is a blog to share my views and reflections on the uses of technology in EFL. Feel free to comment! :o)

Here goes my Voki. I was finally able to create it. I realized that apparently some of the avatars are only available for classroom voki users, and being a user is not enough. But other avatars were available to regular users like me, so here's mine:





 I work with seven and eight year-olds in an institute, and we sometimes work with puppets. They are great, especially for shy students, who might feel more confident when talking "through" a puppet. I was thinking an avatar is also a good option for these cases...
Here are two ideas on how to use avatars in EFL teaching:

1)  Students can write three things about themselves which they think nobody in the class will know. Eg: I never eat a second slice of pizza because I don't like cheese that much (this is true for myself!!!). Students write that information for their vokis to say it. Then I show all the vokis and the students guess whose voki it is.
2) Avatars can be used with kids in description of animals (I've noticed that in Voki there are animal avatars). Students write a description of an animal of their choice and then they have their voki reproduce it. Students could, at first, only listen to the audio, and try to guess which animal it is.

There's an app for ipad which is called sock puppets. It's great for roleplays. You can check it out here!  http://my.smithmicro.com/mobile/sockpuppets/index.html

:)