Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Suburban Bloggers

Suburban Bloggers
Blogging with EFL Students at Elementary Level.

This is how the blogging project was born.

We are online now.
http://suburban.tumblr.com/

The students decided to call our group blog Suburban. It is actually a metaphor, meaning we are still not city dweller in the use of the English language. We want to approach the neighbourhood by the suburbs.

The bloggers
This is a small group of beginners in English. they started their first level in March. They have had approximately 60hs of instruction. They are all 18+ years old. I advised them to use their first names only while online. It will be up to them to publish their own picture.

H0w I introduced them to the concept of blogging
While in class at the lab, I asked my students to point their browsers to my Playground Tumblr blog -a kind of sandbox.
I encouraged them to read how I was playing and discovering with the tool together with other teachers in my network.

Technical aspects
While they read, I created the group account and asked them to confirm their membership via email. One of my students had never had an email account before. So we opened one.

They posted a couple of trials, which they decided to delete. Then , they discovered they could edit on and on.

I briefly explained to them how to tag. We use tags a name signatures of our posts.

First Steps and Outcomes

Writing our first posts at the lab, there were moments of writer's block, moments of sudden enthusiasm. They had lots of questions on how to express exactly what they meant. They asked me to proofread before posting.

Reading our posts

This was the peak of excitement and surprise. They laughed a lot. They were amazed.

Here our first production:

A welcome post inviting to write fiction, not homework.

A description of what the day looked like from our window.

The student who first came up with the idea of writing fiction is sharing a suburban boy's s life story. A boy who belongs to a family struggling to make ends meet. A gem.




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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

When Blogging is Born

When Blogging is Born

Inspiration

It was Jhon in my second year senior class who triggered off the idea. He shared with us that after finishing level 1 in English he wanted to express himself more freely -to write outside the required format of the exam.

How did this happen?
He jotted down some fiction inspired by a book in Spanish, early one morning while he was reading on the bus to work. Took out a copybook and started a paragraph in English. I saw the draft, full of corrections, but neat. He made us laugh when he shared that people looked at him funnily on an early Argentinean bus. He did not let that discourage him and wrote on.

The moment I heard this
I thought: blogging project.

Jhon's description of the creative moment had all the
elements of a blogger's passionate writing. All but the blog. So I asked the class if they would like to read Jhon's fiction, if they would like to comment on it or perhaps share some anecdote of their own. Their eyes flashed yes.

Then I mentioned blogs and the comment feature. I told them that when they are not inspired to write, commenting on their classmates could be the start of another post. They got it. They just need to see it. We'll launch this at the lab next week.

So here we are ready to write in a new format:
expressing ourselves with our limited knowledge of the English language. That's our challenge.

Preparation stage
After playing Tumblr with gsellart and budtheteacher back in June, I decided that Tumblr is the blog engine we need for beginners. Ideal for the short postings to be expected by beginners in English language. Ideal for people new to blog reading and writing because the tool itself prompts you to clip and share.

Bud also pointed me to the work of Paul Allison on Youth Voices, which I had bookmarked long ago.

My project role
Set up the environment.
Show it at work at the lab.

Students Role
Be as inspired as possible when writing.
Shaping the topics.
Carrying on conversing.

Still needs thinking...
Will I be posting with them? Shall I remain a lurker?
This poses a totally different outlook on my role in front of my students in the classroom. I could well become a community member and find a blogging voice in there.

Language mistakes
I explicitely told them I will not be correcting their language on the blog or the comments. That will be done in class as part of a conversation on the structures and vocabulary they need to express themselves. We do not aim at producing grammatically correct sentences. Mistakes will be judged according to the extent to which they impede self expression and communication.

The
blogging snario: Tumblr
The idea is to give the students a single space, a chance to have a go at blogging. A place where students can try ideas that could eventually be the seed of a blog of their own. For now, everyone will use the same account and tag their posts with their name.

Technicalities
Tumblr does not include comments. We will use Disqus to enable them. I still have to explore Tumblr's tagging feature.

Project Timing
I'm enthusiastic about this project because of the way it is being born. I never invited the students to blog, but I was alert to identify a blogger when I saw one. I believe I am basically giving him a car to go where he wants. It is ideal that the students have just finished a first level and just beginning a new one. There is time for the project to go from fledgling stage to become a stage for all the class to play. This blog will be with us throughout the course.

Learning in a networked world has a lot of synchronicity and serendipity. I came back home to write this post and I find this in tweet from Paul Allison:

Writing and Reading Class Blogs on Teachers Teaching Teachers tonight (9 PM Eastern / 6 PM Pacific)

Join us tonight as we discuss the progress we are making on Youth Voices… WITH a special guest, new to our show, Sarah Hurlburt, Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Whitman college, Walla, Walla, WA, USA.

In June 2008 Sarah published an article in the Journal of Online learning and Teaching, “Defining Tools for a New Learning Space: Writing and Reading Class Blogs.”

That's in a few minutes. Just in time.

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Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The EFL Tutor Blog

Blogging for students, a year on
A year ago I presented my my first blog for students, The FCE Blog, at Teacher's Day in front of 50 of my co-workers at the BAC, the theatre of the language school I work at.

A translation of this presentation into Spanish was published in an interview at Educ.ar, the Argentine Ministry of Education blog, which opened the door for me to meet the Spanish speaking edubloggosphere. A most rewarding learning experience. It was viewed over 2,500 times at Slideshare and favourited by 20. For all of you wondering whatever I said there, here is the English version of the interview.






I must say I love my first blog. I have used its name/logo as my avatar. Sometimes -not too often- I miss the days when I had no idea there was a network of edubloggers around. I made me focus more on my ideas. Definitely what I produced before September 2006 was purely original content. Somehow ignorance helped me to write unhindered from thoughts such as, hasn't anyone done this before? Shouldn't I build upon what others are doing? Once you are connected, I believe you assume the responsibility of not reinventing the wheel. I did check there was no like of it around the web. There was not.

Some achievements

In April 2007, the blog got a mention as an example of the ELT Tutor blog in the book How to Teach English with Technology published by Longman. The students' reaction to this was 'We are making history'. I think the blog showed there are simply no more walls in our classroom.

Personally, I am so glad Stephen Downes has included The FCE Blog in his Edu-RSS feed list of edubloggers.

More Questions
All in all, a successful presentation. As I have been asked to present again, I am reviewing it. Some core ideas I still find relevant; but others have changed under the light of the knowledge gained in the last six months.

I do not have answers yet. I get stuck and need help. I am posting the questions and hope you make me think. (Contributions will be properly acknowledged and linktributed in a future post).

Can we still use the concept of "digital natives versus digital immigrants" to explain the divide between teachers and students?
Students use msn, fotologs (highly popular in Argentina) and text incessantly. When I speak of blogs, wikis, del.icio.us or Flickr, I am speaking a new language to them. I am not trying to integrate the same technology they master to my lessons. I am introducing new tools which are far more social than a private mail, chat or text message. Learning and sharing with the whole world has, so far, been pretty innovative to them. They do not adopt blogs and wikis at the touch of a button. You can expect a series of adoption resistance moves before the whole class gets engaged.

How can student blogs be best moderated?
Reading class blogs, mostly ELT, it is hard to find lots of blogs flooded with student comments. Moderation and word verification seem to be rather off-putting. Moderation in itself is a top-down activity, which somehow makes the course blog a teacher-centred place in the end.

In order to engage students in writing their reflections, is it better to blog in class or at home? Do students reflect more in blog posts of their own or in comments?
This question is connected to the idea of assigning posts or comments as homework. When I think about my own learning as a blogger, I can connect anywhere, but I still find my home the best place for writing reflections. I can come up with an idea for a class anywhere; however, I would not have developed a whole blogging project on a school computer. Now that digital literacy is not so time consuming, I find it a lot easier to make myself home in a public computer.

Not that these are the only questions in my mind now. But let's say it is enough for one post.


Related links
Presentation handout (in Spanish).

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Saturday, March 24, 2007

Blogging Matters

Why Blog After All?

For those (still) outside the blogosphere the question of why we blog does not even reach the status of a poser. It is not that easy to see why blogging matters to us. That is, you should imagine an impassive voice mumbling 'Why do you do that?' 'Doesn't it take too much time?' And you might even hear a voice -almost carrying the force of a full stop over the issue- demanding: 'What for?'

These voices were trained by the same education we have had. At the time before blogs could be envisioned. Blogging in education is still in an infancy or adolescence that sometimes needs to prove its value to the world of adults. To the actors in education. Universities have a pattern of success that builds upon tradition, method, research and plan. Our passionate talk of integrating technology sounds too like you-niversity, too informal and even dangerous.

The unsettling power of innovations is equally felt by peers and managers within the organisation. When the school needs equipment to set up a lab, the old question of ROI (return over investment) will crop up. What's the benefit of all this time-consuming blogging experience after all? And us, pioneer teachers, cannot explain to managers this need that, although becoming pervasive and evident to bloggers and Time magazine, doesn't yet exist for them. We tell them that we should bring this experiences to the class because the nature of information distribution is different and our students will need to face a new world. Come on! Even change is changing!

As a student of mine told me this week, this can be a hard message to pass to management. Leading companies like Apple have a strong innovation policy that overrides any market study. They do not stop development investment because they still need a survey to know what will sell best: they just do it right. And they create what we will find hard to live without. Ford said that if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have answered: Faster horses.

Schools though, are traditional artifacts. In order to replace obsolete PCs we will need to show management the investment is worth it. Needless to say, we will prove it with our own free and voluntary time investment/contribution! (No comments on this, please. Just read on). We tend to think that with more PCs at school, things could be different. But it is not a question of simply having equipment and broadband connections that can bring about the change. As Kelly from Canada very sharply points out in his comment in my previous post:

"We have access and we have the people who are trying these tools but there are few who are truly aware of the power that they have."

Sometimes even the teachers who embrace Web 2.0 have their own mind fetters to blog and end up clogging the Internet with book pages. And it is a power issue. At the planning stage of your blogging project you can hear your inner voice saying: What if my manager does not like it? And you must shut it up or you cannot really blog. Period.

It is a whole new frame of mind that has to change to make it happen. Playing with the tool and creating a hybrid online context can help. When I started my FCE Blog, I started a website on a blog engine. It wasn't until much later that I found myself blogging there. So I clearly arranged sections (always available at the site footer) like: Disclaimer, acknowledgements, site rules, privacy, links. And I am still preparing one on accessibility (still learning about it). After that, I believe I will become the first edublogger ever to have all those XX century links on a footer!

You want to laugh? According to MyBlogLog link-tracker stats, nobody seems to click on them! Except perhaps, the people who have taken to blogging after my presentation. Teachers attention is always drawn to them. The "book nature" of my blog. They also tend to start modeling their blogs after my profile or sections and I always wonder why don't they go for the more Web 2.0 aspects first?

I believe that part of the success of my blog in my school community is due to its seductive hybrid nature. You can -if you want- read it as a book. It is, though, a highly disruptive hypenlinked environment that is dressed up with some order, organised sections and a flavour of a book that one day will have a post called "The end". Reading all my blog and its links would take ages. Students will be forced to make autonomous decisions as to what to click, read and learn. And that is the essence of it.

Sharing, always sharing
I think that presentations by new teachers who blog can function as a decisive change agent. Sharing what we are experiencing -more than showing statistically proved facts- is indeed powerful. People start blogging!
Some teachers have told me about their playing with draft blogs that were never published. But they gave it a try.

I am happy to read the blogs of Patricia and Gabriela, attendees at my last year presentation of my students' blog. Their work is entirely a personal realisation of the task. They have taken things from me, but they have translated them to their own way of talking to students.

This week, Gabriela has opened up a new blog. She is no doubt Taking it Further. Her own introduction in the profile section, her account on learning paths, her writing style... all bear the marks of an accomplished blogger.

Don't read this, just listen to her:

"I’ve always wanted my students to get involved in their own process of learning. We teachers can artificially create the need to learn, the need to communicate but only if you go beyond the single moment of the class, you will be able to appropriate the language and in doing so, you’ll stop feeling that English is an appendix [...]"

And she wrote an acknowledgements section that after winking an eye on me reads:

"
When I started teaching adults (the beginnings of time) the most fashionable book was Kernel Lessons by Robert O’Neill. By that time he visited Argentina and I attended his lecture at Colegio Lasalle. I do not remember his words, but I remember this: that day I learnt my second really true methodology lesson –teaching is about sharing. Thanks."

Don't you just like her style? She can talk about a book no one would dare use today and at the same time she adds power to her thoughts. Great.

And if this passes blog owner approval, I'll have the honour of contributing with the first comment (Yes, blame me for suggesting comment moderation to her and I am a victim now!).

Dear Gabriela,

Each day I am more convinced that teaching is all about learning.

As a teacher, I have always been moved ahead by the need to share. Remember the dinner we had in your house last January? I perfectly remember when you were asked how you started your blog and you answered that suddenly you were correcting your students' writings and thought: 'How come I am the only one reading this?' And I felt echoes of my own voice in yours.

Somehow, even before blogs, I've always wanted to reach far. I always thought that the highest point in my career would be to teach teachers one day. Not out of a need to see a bit of myself in others, but rather to set people into autonomous learning mode.

I have found in Whitman the finest expression of my inner thoughts about the definition of success in my profession:

'I am the teacher of athletes,
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.'

I am most grateful for your words in this post. Yet, I am far deeply honoured to read how accurately you have captured the essence of blogging, learning, and sharing it all with your students.

I am sure you will take me further and look forward to it!

Wishing you all best,

Claudia


See why blog matters? How could I know a year ago that what I wrote for my students could trigger off this? Because you cannot measure the impact of an innovation before the development stage. The talk of ROI is not applicable. Not in education please. Students' motivation and teacher's commitment matter, therefore, blogging matters. That is all.


..............................

I thought today I would post my draft on my bloganniversary, but with all this going on in my head I think it can wait.

I want to thank my student Nico, because the talk about innovations we had last class has been most inspiring for me.

Whitman's lines are taken from Song of Myself section 47 in Leaves of Grass.

I'll save related links to this in my del.icio.us here:
http://del.icio.us/fceblog/blogging_experience

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