Transcript Slide 1

The Language Classroom in
a Connected World
Michael Coghlan
PacCALL Conference (Nanjing)
November 18, 2006
This presentation on the web at
http://users.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/pd/PacCall.htm
A GLOBAL AUDIENCE?
YouTube -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
QjA5faZF1A8
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Performance by a 13 yr old Korean boy
November 15: 10.7 million views; 22,900
comments
That’s more than the populations of
Israel 5.7m
Denmark 5.3m
Finland 5.1m
New Zealand 3.6m
Ireland 3.6m
DIGITAL STORY PLAYED AT THIS
POINT AVAILABLE AT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pue4FtOb3HM
WHAT’S ALL THE FUSS ABOUT?
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Is it real?
Who are these 10.7 million people?
Copyright implications? – I can reuse the content for
my own purposes
Who is exercising editorial control?
Disintermediation – the decline of the gatekeepers
of content
Should students have access to sites like this? (see
‘YouTube – a Class Act’)
How do students like this feel at school?
Should we be encouraging our students
1.
2.
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to create content
Publish to these kinds of sites
Empowerment through personal publishing to public
sites
MIT; Jason and TV shows…..
TODAY’S AGENDA
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Local v Global
Notions of presence
Personal Publishing/Social Software
eLearning 2.0/Web 2.0
Connectivism/Networked Learning
An example in practice
My Story
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ESL classroom teacher 1987 – 1997
1997 – went online
Blended ESL teaching 1997 – 2000
Volunteer teaching for EFI (English for the
Internet) founded by David Winet
ESL online 1997 – 2004
Founding member of the Webheads
online English teaching and learning
community
Current: facilitator on the Graduate
Certificate in eLearning (TAFE SA);
eLearning Networks of the Australian
Flexible Learning Framework
LOCAL V GLOBAL
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Is local necessarily best?
Daily contact with the planet
In the supermarket?
My neighbours are not my closest
companions
Australian made products are made
offshore
Overseas call centres
LOCAL
LOCAL = GLOBAL
(GLOCAL?)
Implications for the Classroom?
The Local Pre-Global World
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all dialogue was between teacher and students with some
communication between students (but who was really listening?)
Internet
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enter Internet tools: writing/speaking for an audience other than
just your teacher ie authentic contexts for language learning
The Global World
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Personal publishing tools
Teachers and students can now reach a global audience
Moot point: does everyone find this idea appealing?
PERSONAL PUBLISHING TOOLS
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Blogs
Digital story telling
podcasts
Flickr (photo sharing)
Wikis (Wikispaces.com) – collaborative
workspace
MySpace, Friendster
Video repositories: YouTube, Google
Video, BlipTV
PRESENCE IN THE PAST (Local)
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PresenceIdentityRelationships
Trust
based almost exclusively on face to
face (f2f) contact, or persons you
know who refer you to those they
have met and trust (eg relatives
and friends when travelling)
PRESENCE IN THE PRESENT TIME
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Relationships
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can be forged with people you have not
met, and may never meet
independent of time and space ie the
Internet affords the possibility of
global presence
CREATING ONLINE PRESENCE
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How do you do it?
Why bother creating an online
presence?
Why might teachers create an online
presence?
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You will get wider recognition
Wider network of professional and
personal contacts
Greater variety of options for
learning activities
Place to store and record resources
Why might students create an online
presence?
For students:
 Developing skills for the knowledge era
 Access to personal publishing tools for selfexpression and realisation of identity
 Excitement at publishing for a wider audience:
“Thank you so much for being such supportive, all
of you! I hope to continue my learning process and
get ready to speak and write in English. I was really
surprised to see all the people who wrote about our
wiki. It's so cool because it was from all different
places of the world... I think that's so great! :)”
(Maria, Venezuela)
COGNITIVE
PRESENCE
SOCIAL
PRESENCE
TEACHING
PRESENCE
Garrison & Anderson: elearning in the 21st century
COGNITIVE
PRESENCE
SOCIAL
PRESENCE
COMMUNITY/CONNECTED
PRESENCE
TEACHING
PRESENCE
Garrison & Anderson: elearning in the 21st century
A Paradigm Shift?
Or is this the
Paradigm Shift
required?
COMMUNITY-CENTRIC
(diagram courtesy of James Farmer)
Who are the Webheads?
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“an experiment in world friendship
through online language learning”
300 + members
Where are the Webheads?
To join the Webhead community send an email to
[email protected]
in approximately 50 countries
ONLINE PRESENCE
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How do you do it?
“I blog therefore I am.”
Weblog search engine Technorati says it is now tracking over three million
weblogs, with 8,000 -17,000 new blogs created every single day. That
means that a new weblog is created somewhere in the world every 5.8
seconds. …. about 55 per cent of the weblogs are still active three months
later. The number of conversations are increasing to over 275,000
individual posts a day. On average, approx 3 blogs are updated every
second.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/13/8000_bloggers_per_day/ (13/4/06)
MEDIA RICH BLOGS
http://english-ad.blogspot.com/
by students of Aiden Yeh
MULTILITERACY
DIGITAL LITERACY
ELITERACY
Aiden is an EFL Lecturer, Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
MOVIE
ORAL PRESENTATIONS FOR A
GLOBAL AUDIENCE
From Buthaina al Othman (Kuwait)
 http://alothmanb.tripod.com/present_162.htm
-------------------------------------COLLABORATION:
The Student List Project at
http://sl-lists.net/
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The Internet –
more than just a book
CONVERSATION
SOCIAL
SOFTWARE
Social software lets people rendezvous,
connect or collaborate by use of a
computer network
. (Clay Shirky)
CONNECTION
Relevance for you? your students????
eLearning 2.0/Web 2.0
(Stephen Downes)
Elearning 1.0:
 static packaged content
 little true interactivity and learner input and
 very little contact with teacher
 represented by Learner Management Systems. (eg
WebCT, Blackboard)
Elearning 2.0:
 more student-centred
 students generate and share content.
 they interact not only with teachers and their
peers, but with anyone in the world they can
learn from.
(this description courtesy of Sean Fitzgerald)
THE CULTURAL
CONTEXT
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Does teacher know best?
Image courtesy of
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/USIS/test/education/1-2-14.html
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Students may be connected (via the
Net and their phones), but do they
seriously believe they can learn
from each other?
ePORTFOLIOS
See Dr. Helen
Barrett's work
on Electronic
Portfolios:
http://electronicpor
tfolios.com/
Image courtesy of http://www.weiterbildungsblog.de/archives/cat_eportfolios.html
CONNECTIVISM: A Learning Theory
for the Digital Age
(George Siemens, Red River Community College, Canada)
Principles of Connectivism:
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Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to
facilitate continual learning.
Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the
intent of all connectivist learning activities.
Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming
information is seen through the lens of a shifting
reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be
wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information
climate affecting the decision.
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HOW DO YOU TRANSLATE ALL THIS
INTO CLASSROOM PRACTICE?
IN CONCLUSION…..
Mapping
the cultural
emphases
ofofemerging
software
practicestools
sharing
knowledgesocial
emphases
the cultural
Mapping
Institutionally driven
Culture of compliance
Informal
Emergent
Bottom-up
norms, not rules
of
e
n
Li
r
inc
sin
a
e
g
y
nc
e
g
la
a
on
rs
e
p
Formal
Top-down rules
for creation,
operation and
governance
Enabling Culture
Member driven
From Stuckey and Arkell; Development of an
eLearning Knowledge Sharing Model; 2005
IN CONCLUSION:
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Is it time for NALL? (Network
Assisted Language Learning)
a connected classroom, connected
living (Nancy White: ‘eliving’) DOES
reduce the time you have available
to attend to relationships locally.
And THAT is a very interesting and
confronting thought…….
From a student of Konrad Glogowski:
“Hello Mr. Glogowski
It’s Phil, just in case you haven’t guessed
already. I’d just like to thank you for a
great year of blogging, and to wish you
luck in the years ahead. You really
managed to make a few of us into
writers. I think writing/blogging will be
something I’ll carry with me my whole
life.”
(http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/)
THANK YOU
This presentation on the web at
http://users.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/pd/PacCALL.htm
Email: [email protected]
Promo: Podcasting Education and Mobile
Assisted Language Learning
http://wirelessready.nucba.ac.jp