Transcript The Community Café project: getting community languages teachers to share resources online Kate Borthwick Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies.

The Community Café project:
getting community languages teachers to
share resources online
Kate Borthwick
Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics
and Area Studies
Overview
• What is ‘the Community Café’ project?
• Why do it?
• Aims
• Method
• Work so far…
• Future plans
• Useful links
The project
• funded by the JISC ‘Developing community content’
programme
• collaboration between LLAS, Southampton City Council
and Manchester Metropolitan University
• Broad aim: to co-create and publish a collection of online
language and cultural materials for use by those engaged in
the teaching and learning of community languages within
the local Southampton area
Why do it?
• there is a scarcity of up-to-date online teaching resources
for most community languages
• community languages teaching is under-resourced and
under-valued despite often large student numbers
• to provide ways for community language teachers to make
contact with other teachers across the UK
• the University of Southampton has a remit for community
engagement
Aims:
• to use expertise and tools developed at UoS to collect and co-create
digital resources
• to build a self-managed community-based group to support
community language speakers engaged in teaching and learning
• to improve the pedagogy of existing materials through peer
review/discussion
• to provide training in using and creating digital content
Secondary aims:
• raise awareness about the work of community languages teachers in
the community and beyond
• upskill C.L. teachers through engagement with elearning and
consideration of pedagogic practice
• provide a model which could be run elsewhere in the UK
Method
• cafés – informal café-style meetings
• workshops – training by university staff in using
technology to create and teaching resources and
the use of technology in the classroom
• online space – the LanguageBox
The online space…
• personal profile pages
• range of resources
contributed by language
teachers
• see most
viewed/downloaded
• see when someone else
downloads, remixes or
comments on your
resources
• create ‘favourites’
• contact other users
through the site
Work so far…
The positive…
• great enthusiasm (attendance 30-40 each time)
• enthusiasm to discuss pedagogy and teaching practice
• desire to engage with technology and learn new skills
• willingness to work cross-language
• early discussions have already begun to influence
teaching practice
• IT successes for less IT-literate
Work so far…
Some issues…
• IT literacy highly varied
• community languages teachers work ‘out-of-hours’, so
time to engage is limited
• access to computers within their teaching setting can be
restricted
• perceptions of how to use technology in the classroom
• teachers are new to the concepts of open sharing of
resources
• reflective practice new to the group
The future…
• complete our programme of workshops
• begin funded development projects
• get the Portsmouth community involved
• work with Manchester Metropolitan University to
engage their community languages teachers; get them
using LanguageBox and evaluate materials
• set the Community Café off on its own
Thank you! Here are some
useful links…
• The Language Box: www.languagebox.ac.uk
• The Community Café blog:
www.communitylanguages.wordpress.com
• The webpage: www.llas.ac.uk/communitycafe
• The JISC programme
• ‘Community Languages in Higher Education: towards
realising the potential’ (2008), a report by Joanna McPake
and Itesh Sachdev for the Routes into Languages project