Podcasting: Capturing Global Voices

This week, I got to explore some more a technology tool I use sometimes, but not to its fullest potential: podcasting. As Lee LeFever talks about on Podcasting in Plain English, podcasting is a great medium through which people around the world are able to share information on almost any topic imaginable with interested listeners.

One source of educational podcasts I really like and have used with my students in the past is voanews.com An interesting feature on this news website is something called "Special English" a series of news broadcasts that are slowed down by 1/3 of the normal speed and are aimed at intermediate and high beginner level English speakers. VOA Special English offers weekly podcasts on a variety of topics that might be of interest to English language learners such as education, current events, health, technology, and American history. I thought the podcasts on American history might be of particular interest to immigrant and refugee English language learners who have been in the United States for several years and are interested in learning about American history in preparation for taking the citizenship exam.

After some exploring on VOA's website, I decided to listen in on a podcast about the Cold War. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services lists 100 questions students need to know the answers to in preparation for taking the citizenship exam. If I were to use this podcast in the classroom with intermediate level adult refugee students, I might begin by introducing the related citizenship test question, "During the Cold War, what was the main concern of the United States?" I would also engage students in a background building discussion to see if any of them had heard of the Cold War before, knew anything about it, or could guess why it might be described as a "cold" war before having them listen to the podcast. As this podcast is 15 minutes long and includes much more information than students would need to know for the citizenship exam, I could have them listen to the entire pod cast or just parts of it, depending on their English language ability. To aid with listening comprehension, I could have students take notes on a graphic organizer.  I could also pre-teach key vocabulary critical to understanding the podcast. I could stop and show pictures of key people and events to provide further scaffolding.

After introducing students to part of this pod podcast in class, I could have them listen to another part of it at home. Students could be responsible for taking notes on the part of the podcast they had listened to at home as well as any questions they had about it or anything they didn't understand. They could read along with the podcast on the website as they listened to it. One great feature of VOA Special English is that if students come across a word they don't know, all they have to do is double click on it and a screen will pop-up with its definition form the Webster-Merriam dictionary. After discussing the remainder of the podcast in class the next day, the class could wrap up by coming back to the question about the Cold War students needed to know for the citizenship exam.

As my students gained practice in listening to podcasts and became more proficient in their listening comprehension skills, I could eventually have them subscribe to and listen to these podcasts on American history at home on their own, before coming in and discussing the information in them in class.

Connecting Students with Global Voices

In a TED talk entitled How to Listen to Global Voices, Ethan Zuckerman makes the point that while innovations in technology have made it possible for more and more people from around the world to become globally connected, many of us are under the illusion that the world is a lot flatter than it really is. "The world isn't even close to flat - it's extremely lumpy," Zuckerman says, referring to the fact that while the internet creates the potential for connecting people with a diversity of global voices and perspectives, the reality is that most of us are listening to the same conversations we always have, conversations by people who look like us, think like us, and mostly live in the same cultural context as we do. And it's likely that most of our students are too.

This week, I learned about one online technology tool that can help with reversing this trend. Epals  is a tool for connecting classrooms around the world in collaborative, project-based learning. A teacher can sign up for a classroom account, choose from a variety of projects she'd like to have her students do, and then find a classroom to collaborate with her's on that project. A third grade class of Spanish language learners from the United States, for example, can partner with a third grade class of English language learners in Latin America to share about similarities and differences between schools in North America and Latin America, using both the Spanish and English language. In the process of collaborative projects like these, students and teachers gain valuable insight into what life and school is like for individuals who may live in a very different cultural context, whether that context is across town or on the other side of the world.

Epals has a variety of ready-made projects in various subject areas that instructors can choose from, or they can design their own. One project I thought was interesting was entitled, "Outside my Classroom Window."In this project, groups of students took pictures, or drew pictures of scenes taking place in the community outside their school. They then shared these through skype or powerpoint with their partner classroom. In the subject area of science, "Weather: A National Geographic Project" provided a forum for students to collaborate with classrooms around the world to learn about weather patterns and conditions in their own and their partner classroom's part of the world. What I liked about these projects was that not only did they contain lesson plans and ideas for implementation in the classroom, they also included objectives and standards to be met through them.

As I thought about how I could use a tool like Epals in my own teaching practice, the idea of connecting refugee students with other students who are also going through or have gone the process of adjusting to life in a new culture was one idea that came to mind. An Epals project like this might first involve having students from both classrooms describe the current context in which they live to each other. Next, they could compare and contrast similarities and differences between living in that context and living in the country they came from. Finally, they could volunteer to share about the challenges of adjusting to life in a new country and offer suggestions to the students in their partner classroom of things that have helped them in this adjustment. The goal of an Epals project like this is that students in both classrooms might find it encouraging to interact with others who are experiencing some of the same things they are going through, even if the cultural contexts are different.

Digital Storytelling Revisited: Photo Story Tools

Last week, I wrote about combining digital bookmaking and the Language Experience Approach to give ELLs with emerging literacy skills the opportunity to publish their stories. This week, I looked at a few other tech tools that could be used for bringing students' stories to life in the L2 classroom. Photo story tools, such as imovie, stupeflix, and animoto, are an example of these kinds of tools.

A photo story is a short video which usually features a slideshow of images that may be accompanied by speech, music, or text. Being a mac user, I decided to begin my foray into the realm of photo stories by trying out a program  I already had on my computer; imovie. Taking the text and images from the story my students had written about their field trip to the Garden Walk, I used this program to create a slideshow of their story. Not only did imovie give me the option of adding text to each of these images, it also let me add a sound recording of myself reading the sentence that went along with that image. In a classroom equipped with the appropriate technology, a tool like imovie could be a great resource for differentiating instruction, allowing students who needed extra reading practice with a story the class had created to use headphones to listen to it being read at their own pace while following along with the text on the bottom of each of the images.

Since not all instructors will have access to a program like imovie in their classrooms, I decided to also try out one of the free photo story tools offered online. The tool I chose was stupeflix, because I liked that it offered the option of adding text and sound to each of the images in the slideshow. I ended up uploading pictures I had on my computer of my family members and myself doing different things and make a simple story using the present progressive, as this is one of the first grammatical structures I teach my students to use. Although I was not able to record myself reading the story the way I had with imovie, stupeflix does have a "text to speech" feature that lets you type out a sentence you want the computer to read for each image. Although computer generated, the speech was surprisingly native-speaker-like.

I imagine a tool like stupeflix could be a great resource to give students who already have some basic literacy skills the chance to demonstrate their command of a specific grammatical feature by creating a photo story with photos that have been taken by the class or that they themselves have taken. They can then use the "text to speech" feature to listen to their story being read by a "native speaker," before themselves reading and presenting it to the class. In a class of students with emerging literacy, on the other hand, the instructor could use stupeflix to create a photostory like the one below that highlights vocabulary or grammar currently being taught in class. Students could listen to the videos with headphones and follow along with the words on each slide as they heard them being read aloud.

Conversations in the cloud...

This week, I learned about yet another interesting tech tool that can be used for educational purposes in the second language classroom; voicethread. Voicethread is an online tool for collecting and recording conversations that occur around an image or a video. It is something akin to an online discussion board, except that the options for commenting are much more versatile. Not only can individuals type up their comments, they can also voice or video record them. The variety of comment formats creates the impression of a much more authentic and interactive conversation. This week, my classmates and I each  experimented with creating our own voicethreads that we might be able to use with the students in the various settings in which each of us teach. It was interesting to see the variety of topics - from characterization in literature, to Chinese culture, to Spanish verb conjugations - which my classmates chose to create voicethreads about. It was also interesting to see the variety of purposes they had their students use voicethread for.

Alicia's voicethread, for example, was created for the purpose of giving her students a forum for becoming more comfortable using their English speaking skills in front of their classmates, without actually having to stand up and speak in front of the class. Her first assignment for her students was to leave a comment telling what country they were from and to tell about some similarities and differences between their the country or culture they were from and the United States. It seems like this would be a topic of relevance and interest to her students, and as a result an effective way to get them to practice their oral communication skills. Additionally, a voicethread like this could be well suited to building a positive sense of community among learners as they listen to and learn from the unique perspectives each of their classmates brings to the question about cultural similarities and differences.

The purpose of the voicethread Alyssa made for her students, on the other hand, was a lot more narrow and specific. Rather than posing an open-ended question for the purpose of prompting discussion and conversation, Alyssa's voicethread asked her students to give three sentences to demonstrate their knowledge of how to use a specific grammatical tense; the present progressive form in Spanish. A voicethread like Alyssa's could be used quite effectively as an assessment tool after a grammar lesson and in-class practice activities on a specific grammar point. By listening to the sentences students gave in their comments, the instructor could get a pretty good idea of how well students could use the grammar in their speech, without the logistically difficult and time consuming task of conducting speaking tests with each of her students.

While these two examples show how voicethread can be used for the purpose of creating classroom community, helping students develop speaking skills, and assessing speaking skills, there are many other purposes for how this tool can be used with L2 learners or in the L2 classroom.

Digital Bookmaking: Bringing Students' Stories to Life

How do you help students who have never learned how to read and write in their first language make the connection between written text and spoken language? I think this has to be one of the biggest challenges instructors working with beginner-level adult refugee students face. Recently, I've been trying out something called the Language Experience Approach, or LEA for short, and I've had some encouraging results.

 LEA begins with a group activity or experience, such as a class field trip to a nearby neighborhood location or a cooking lesson. The instructor takes pictures during the activity, and with the help of the pictures, students come up with a story about the experience they've just shared. The students take turns adding to the story to tell what happened, while the instructor writes down what they say, word for word. The class can then spend the next few classes using the words in the story in different activities to practice skills like spelling, phonics, pronunciation, sight words and sentence formation. What works well about this approach is that you are basing your instruction in language students are already familiar with as well as connecting this language to a real life experience. To get a clearer idea of what LEA looks like, check out this video.

One of the LEA stories the students in my classroom have written is about a field trip we took this summer on the Buffalo Garden Walk. Most of my students are very interested in gardening, and several have their own garden plots in the summer, or at least grow a few vegetables in containers in their back yards. I thought it would be interesting for them to see some of the other gardens in their community as well to have the chance to meet and practice using English with some of their American neighbors. During the trip we took pictures, and afterwards my students created a story made up of sentences they told about all of the pictures. Even my most shy student was able to contribute a sentence, and therefore have an important role in the story writing. As students were telling the story, I wrote it out on a large piece of chart paper, and had the students who were able to copy it out in their notebooks (I typed up a copy for students who weren't able to do this). This story became the basis of our sight word practice, word study, and phonics instruction over the next few class sessions.

Now here's where digital bookmaking comes in. LEA is great because it helps students make a connection between spoken language that they can understand and written language that they can't yet read. This happens first of all when pre-literate students hear one of their classmates saying a phrase and watch the instructor writing the phrase down. It should also happen during the various follow-up activities that are based on the vocabulary and sentences in the story. A digital bookmaking tool like Bookr or Bubblr can further reinforce the connection between written text, spoken language, and meaning. 

Depending on the technology available in the classroom as well as students' familiarity and level of comfort with using it, the instructor can either create on her own, or have students help her create a digital flipbook that juxtaposes the pictures from the trip with the sentences the students have generated for each of them. For example, the instructor might add an image to the book and have a student volunteer to tell her the sentence that goes with that image, or conversely, type and read a sentence and have a student pick out the image that goes along with it. This gives the students another opportunity to hear each of the sentences being read while also seeing them in writing.

Another variation on this, which comes closer to digital storytelling, might be to use a tool like imovie to create a slideshow that includes images, audio and text, allowing students to hear the story being read while seeing the corresponding pictures and sentences that go with each sentence. I experimented with both of these tools to see how they would work with the LEA story my students wrote. Here's what I came up with!

In addition to helping reinforce the connection between spoken and written language, another objective of using a digital bookmaking tool with the Language Experience Approach might be to build students' self-confidence as writers. How empowering for students who have never had the chance to learn how to read and write in their first language to see their own words published in a book, even if it's just a digital book, for now.

Serious Games: An Oxymoron?

A serious game is a game whose purpose is not primarily to entertain, but instead to solve a problem or sometimes, provide a simulation. In my exploration of the various "serious" games out there, I was surprised to find that there was even a game created by the UNHCR, the branch of the United Nations that works with refugees and other forcibly displaced peoples across the world. As I spend a lot of my time working with and teaching refugees who have been resettled to Buffalo, this piqued my interest right away.

Against All Odds describes itself as "the game which lets you experience what it is like to be a refugee." You pick a character and embark on a three-part quest, which includes fleeing persecution in your home country, crossing an international border, and finally starting life over in a new country. Depending on the decisions you make and your ability to evade those who are trying to harm you, you may or may not make it. The game is broken up into several segments and I played most of these, several of them multiple times. 

This isn't a game I would use with English Language Learners who are themselves refugees. Rather, I could see using it with American students learning about global issues. One part of the game that I particularly liked was an activity toward the end, during which your character walks around a mall trying to buy a cellphone and you hear people talking about you. Some people express suspicion, resentment and ignorance about you as a refugee and what you're doing in their country, while others have a more informed perspective and welcoming attitude. I think this activity shows particularly well the range of perspectives and attitudes towards the refugees who make their new homes in our country, and could be particularly helpful for building students' sensitivity to these new members of their community. 

One challenge serious games like Against All Odds face is to help players understand issues that are real and serious without trivializing them. For example, any excitement or adrenalin you might feel as you try to dodge the secret police while running across a dark city in Against All Odds is nothing like actually running for your life from people who are trying to kill you and your family. In the game when you make a wrong decision or get caught by the bad guys there are an infinite number of opportunities to start over. In real life there aren't. 

The last thing I would want is for students playing a game like this to walk away from it with the idea that now they know what it's like to be a refugee. (And, as you can guess, for this reason I'm not the biggest fan of the game's tagline). Instead, I hope that what a game like this could help students start to do is to imagine themselves in the shoes of these people who are coming to their country, and to realize that refugees are people just like them, except they are people who have experienced the unimaginable. 

I think this game would be a great jumping off point for a middle school global issues class about to begin a unit studying about world conflict or refugees. The game could be assigned to students for homework, and students required to write a journal entry about their game character's journey to allow the instructor to assess that the activity learning objectives had been met. This homework assignment could be followed up by a class discussion, and students could be asked to identify a specific part of the world or a specific part of a refugee's journey to do more research on and then share with the rest of the class. The unit could even end with a service learning opportunity at a local organization that works with resettled refugees.

Confessions of a Microblogging Skeptic...

I admit, I was skeptical. Although I’ve heard a lot of people talking about using twitter, I’ve never had any desire to get one of my own. Twitter has always struck me as something that had the potential of taking up a lot of time while offering little substance in return. So it was a bit begrudgingly that I created my twitter account for this class. After all, I wondered, how much useful content can really be conveyed in tweets of 140 characters or less? 

Apparently a lot. Perhaps I just got lucky, but over the last week I’ve spent following a dozen educational microbloggers, I’ve come across a LOT of useful information – blog posts about classroom strategies, links to articles and videos about teaching , a webchat on working with ELLs, to just name a few. Yes, not everything that’s tweeted is relevant to the context in which I teach (a lot is not) but it only takes a few moments to glance through the unhelpful tweets to find ones that point to exactly the kind of resources I’m looking for. 

 

Not only can twitter be used for the purposes of personal professional development, educators are coming up with new ways to creatively use it with their students and in the classroom. In 28 Creative Ways Teachers are Using Twitter the authors suggest using twitter to make announcements, have students follow conferences, and keep a class discussion going even outside the walls of the classroom to just name three possible uses. 

One interesting video called Leveraging Twitter in Large Lecture Classes to Increase Participation describes how a tech tool like twitter can be especially useful with large class sizes in which there is often not enough time during class for every student to contribute something to the discussion in the traditional sense, and in which many students do not feel comfortable speaking out in front of the whole class. While I'm not sure my concerns about using twitter with younger students outweigh the benefits, I could see twitter being used effectively as a discussion boosting tool in the large classes in which so many college freshman find themselves.