Designing a new learning environment (#DNLE) Assignment #2

The following is an assignment submitted as part of the requirements of the DESIGNING A NEW LEARNING ENVIRONMENT MOOC course from Stanford University. 

As the assignments typically include analyses of real or hypothetical educational settings, here's my disclaimer (oh yeah, I've always wanted to write this!): My views are my own and not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Assignment #2 - Write a description that tells a story of a real or hypothetical educational challenge or problem scenario (300 words)

Audience and context

This project aims at students at a major Teacher Training College in Buenos Aires, Argentina. During the last couple of years, the local English Language Teaching (ELT) community has come to appreciate the potential opportunities offered by technology integration to the field of education in general and the teaching of foreign languages in particular. Although it is now commonly accepted that a certain degree of digital litaracy is crucial for our future teachers,  its place in Teacher Training programmes is reduced to workshops of a couple of hours a week, due to the demands of mainstream subjects like English language, Phonology, Literature and Methodology both in terms of class hours and assigned homework. In this scenario, the challenge is to offer our trainees opportunities to develop the technological skills that will enable them to become highly efficient and competent 21st century teachers, by implementing online programmes which allow for the integration of technology to the curriculum while following the trainees' own pace. As this programme should not interfere with class hours or overload students and/or teachers, the environment used must offer asynchronous training and a variety of collaborative tools.

Technology infrastructure 

Most students have access to high speed internet service at home and they have netbooks provided by the Government’s one-netbook-per-student initiative. There's also a computer lab and wi-fi connections available from 8 am to 10 pm at the insitution.

Learning objectives and implementation

This programme will be implemented in the last 2 years of the four-year course of studies and the contents and objectives will be divided in four units, coinciding with four school terms. By the end of the programme, trainees will have fairly deep understanding of the following:

• How to use web-based tools to enhance the four language skills (writing, reading, listening and speaking)
• How to foster collaboration and evaluate different media to implement collaborative projects in their classes
• How social media shape learning in the 21^st century
• How to make students aware of and acquire appropriate digital behaviour (digital citizenship)

Designing a new learning environment (#DNLE) Assignment #1

The following is an assignment submitted as part of the requirements of the DESIGNING A NEW LEARNING ENVIRONMENT MOOC course from Stanford University. 

As the assignments typically include analyses of real or hypothetical educational settings, here's my disclaimer (oh yeah, I've always wanted to write this!): My views are my own and not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Assignment #1 - Find 3 interesting learning environments or education technologies, and explain 3 positive aspects and 3 negative aspects for each (500-800 words)

CONTEXT

The target I have in mind is teachers of English as a Foreign Language based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Although there has been an increasing interest in technology integration in education in the last years, this has been especially relevant in the private sector. Last year, as part of a government initiative, all kids and teachers from public schools were given a netbook to be used both at school and at home in the preparation of assignments and homework. Although most kids are totally familiar with technology and know how to use their computers as a tool for writing assignments, searching materials and interacting at a social level (most of them are active users of social media such as Facebook and Twitter), teachers find it relatively hard to include technology in appropriate and meaningful ways. I believe that choosing a relevant and efficient Learning Management Systems (LMS) might be a first step towards opportunities for successful implementation of blended learning programmes.

AIM

In this assignment I will evaluate three different LMS platforms potentially useful for teachers seeking to introduce technology into their classrooms. I decided that they should follow two criteria: they had to be cloud-hosted (no downloads required) and they had to offer a free plan. I finally chose Edmodo, Schoology and EDU20.

Edmodo

(+)

• The first and most obvious advantage of Emodo is that its interface resembles that of Facebook, a platform with which most students (and many teachers) are familiar with, so relatively little time is invested in explaining how the platform works and what its features are.

• You get direct access to your Google Docs through the Library and share them with your students or colleagues within the platform.

• It is connected to other education-oriented platforms or webpages, such as Aviary and SchoolTube, so you can access these apps and use them within the platform. 

(-)

• The fact that Edmodo is so similar to Facebook might potentially present a disadvantage, since students may behave similarly in both platforms, not understanding that Edmodo is to be used for educational purposes. The appropriate etiquette must be taught, going through the necessary adjustments in register and content.

• You have to rely on your students to give their parents the entrance code.

• Something I don’t feel comfortable with in Edmodo as a native speaker of Spanish is that if you sign up as an instructor you are automatically referred to as Mr. or Mrs. García. In Spanish we have two distinct ways of referring to someone -vos and usted- which assume very different levels of formality and relationships between speakers. My students and I have a pretty close relationship and we use vos (this is probably the case in most classes nowadays). Some users might consider this limitation culturally inappropriate.

Schoology

 (+)

• I find Schoology’s interface very intuitive and user-friendly. The different features and sections are easily identifiable at a glance and so are the materials and assignments for each group created.

•  The platform has an in-built Help Guide, which can be consulted any time while you’re navigating (it opens up in a new window). Additional help is found in the Resources section, where users upload video tutorials on how to go about many of the sections and features offered.

• It works as a truly complete LMS, where you can keep record of attendance, keep your gradebooks (which can be imported form Excel and other formats) and create quizzes and tests within the platform. 

(-)

• The interface is in English only and there’re no translations available. It is ok for teachers of English as a Foreign Language but it wouldn’t work for other subjects.

• Teacher moderation of students’ comments is not available.

• You can’t open more than one account in any given computer (certainly a disadvantage if you work in a lab where students share computers).

  

Edu2.0 

(+)

• Edu 2.0 seems to aim at collaboration and it fosters it through online video conferencing  (via Skype) and the inclusion of forums and wikis (within the platform). Also, your personal library may be networked with other schools in communities or districts.

• You can customize your URL.

• There is a Certificates and Badges section, so if you are into gamification, the platform makes it easy to include it in your classes. 

(-)

• Although the platform offers a free plan, this is only for accredited institutions. Plans for individual teachers start at $49 a month for up to 20 students.

• Little help is offered as you navigate.

• Limited customization of interface layout and templates.

While working for this assignment I bumped into some other Learning Management Systems worth investigating. Want to give them a try?

Course sites

Collaborize classroom

Teamlab

Gamification in education: trying to solve the puzzle

I must confess I've been trying to understand what gamification is for a while now. After reading several tweets and posts from my PLN, I still was not able to figure out what it was! I did know something about game-based learning, but this seemed somehow different.

Sooo I registered for a gamification MOOC at Coursera, dictated by Prof. Kevin Werbach from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, determined to take every advantage of it.

The course is half way through now and I must say I find it incredibly informative and motivating (although-not surprisingly- it turned out to be highly business-oriented and not related to education). In spite of this, I've already learned quite a few interesting concepts and I'm gradually coming to terms with the underpinning principles of gamification.

So, one thing is clear for me now. Gamification and game-based learning (GBL) are not exactly the same. They are somehow connected, sure, but they are not the same thing. Some differences:

Created in minutes with easel.ly

Now only one question remains: what are the implications of these differences in the classroom?

GBL seeks student engagement by proposing students activities that are naturally fun and motivating for them (i.e. games). For instance, students can learn history by playing Pirates, or they can research on capitalism by playing Animal Crossing (examples taken from Knewton).

Gamification proposes the use of game-like rule systems in the classroom or school. It involves game-like experiences such as repeated experimentation and failure, adoption of a variety of cultural roles and other challenges that might eventually result in learning and changing behaviour. Some examples provided by Lee & Hammer (2011) include giving students "reading points", "perfect attendance rewards", and assigning roles, such as a "lead detective role" in the Science class, among others.

Feel like going on reading?

Why use games in the classroom?
The gamification of education and cognitive social and emotional learning benefits
Lee & Hammer (2011) Gamification in education: what, how, why bother?
Knewton - The Gamification (or GBL???) of Education Infographic
Video: using game desing to improve my classroom
The 50 best videos for teachers interested in Gamification (and GBL???)

Developing skills with web-based tools in ELT

Last Saturday a group of teachers and myself held a very refreshing PD session, where we worked on web-based tools and their applications to help students develop both language and digital skills. The participants contributed to an informal, relaxed atmosphere, making the workshop a great learning opportunity. Thanks a lot to all the wonderful teachers that joined me!

You are welcome to have a look at my slides!

The loss of #ELT chat - Plan B! REPOST

For the last – well, almost two years now, since September 15 2010,#ELTchat has kept us on our toes and forged hundreds of professional and personal relationships amongst its followers who turn up on Twitter every Wednesday to talk about topics they have suggested and voted on – a community of peers which was created by a small group of colleagues – which grew and grew some more and became something that counts as an important part of our continuous professional development.

Like many great ideas, it didn’t hit just one person but several.

And that is how #ELTchat was created.    

The website to keep up the communication of its members, a base and repository of our ideas was one of the first things we all thought of creating – the wiki came later.

Andy Chaplin was keen to join the moderation team and help with podcasts and technical stuff; he was quick to buy eltchat.com and announced the good news to us after the fact.

A few months later, right after TESOL France 2011,  he suddenly disappeared – some say for reasons of health.

We never found out for sure.

We never received a single word of response to our emails.

eltchat.com was and still is registered in his name.

And yesterday we lost it.

On August 8 the domain expired and we have no way of taking over unless it goes up for sale again; it was very sad that Andy Chaplin did not find it appropriate to renew.

The news is really upsetting.

The work we have put in on this website cannot be told in a few simple words – but it has been a labour of love and we have got so much out of it that we have never regretted one single moment

We are pretty upset at the behaviour of this individual – disappointment is one big understatement.

But we trust that our community of #ELTchatters, our PLN for short, will again gather round the new domain which we have purchased – eltchat.org

It will take us a few days to put the website back on its feet.

And all will be as it was before – all the posts in place all your thoughts and comments, all the polls and great summaries which got us on the shortlist of the ELTon Awards nominations.

We will be back with a vengeance.

We are not just a website – we did not get on the ELTon awards shortlist as just another website!!!

We are a great community of teachers and we have a Plan B!

See you all in September!!!

Marisa Constantinides – Shaun Wilden

Vicky Loras

Barbara Paola Garcia

P.S. We would greatly appreciate it if any of you belonging to this great community of teachers,  teacher educators, bloggers, #ELTchat followers,  reposted this on your blog.

If you decide to do this, please add your name to the post under ours.