Do you check your emails?
No. Never. Occasionally, they answered.
How do you communicate?

Young people in Argentina still use MS messenger, not useful for my purpose. But they also use Facebook.
I remembered iftt. It just didn’t make much sense the first time I tried it. Now it does.

It’s quite interesting to see to what extent new practices trigger new tech developments.

Campus

Same post in Spanish.

When classes started this year I asked my students if they ever got engaged in activities which were not class related but helped them learn English. They all agreed that listening to songs was a great contribution to their learning. However, when I asked them to be more specific and explain what they learned and how, they started to doubt.

Some days ago I found the 30 day song challenge on Facebook thanks to a video posted by Graham Stanley. I though it would be a great idea to challenge my students to complete the daily tasks. Why?

I think songs help you learn new words, remember passive vocabulary, maybe even improve your pronunciation. But songs are much more than words + music. They come to life in particular contexts and they are also the feelings, memories, opinions they trigger. All that can be expressed through language.

We are going to work in the school campus and as this is school work and I’m a teacher (not just a social media user), I’ve written down some rules and suggestions. I especially hope they follow my suggestions.

A side note
One of my favourite social media sites is Blip.fm. It is as simple and effective in fostering communication as twitter is. The difference is you communicate just through music.

Photo Credits

Evolution

Winco

I had a group of 11 year old kids. I’ve always worked with teens and adults; kids are a mystery to me. I felt really resourceless. I couldn’t anticipate the results of any new activity I introduced to the class. One of them was really successful.

I came up with the idea of starting a silent reading project. We had classes twice a week and one of those days they would go to the library before the class, pick up a book and bring it to class. They read for the first 10 minutes. When I introduced them to the project, they all complained. And went on complaining for about a month, maybe even a bit more.

I insisted. I know reading is a habit. Once you’ve established a routine, it’s impossible not to enjoy reading.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ozyman/443545349/in/photostream/

When they accepted I was not going to give in, they started to focus and have fun. By the beginning of the second term they were spontaneously commenting on what they’d read and using new vocabulary I’d never taught them. Moreover, they were reluctant to close the books when the 10 minutes were over and some of them even started borrowing books from the library to read at home.

The activity had an extra, unexpected consequence. They were quite an heterogeneous group, they didn’t get on well with each other and on top of that they came to the English classes after spending the whole day at primary school. It was very difficult for me to get their attention. However, the days we started with silent reading the classes ran smoothly.

I think the key to success was to strictly follow the schedule: always the same weekday and the exact amount of time assigned. But it’s also important to let them choose what to read freely and most of all, not to start asking questions or doing follow up activities.

The only time I summoned the courage to log in (many years ago) I felt absolutely lost. I tried to explore a little bit until someone asked me, “Are you new here?” I knew I was lost, but didn’t know I looked lost. I immediately signed out and never ever again visited SL.

A couple of issues have stood in my way and prevented me from experiencing SL.

First of all, the name. I just don’t like the word second. I mean, all my online activities are embedded in my life. Of course I play different roles, on and offline; but I’ve always regarded those roles as part of my own life. The idea of having a second life makes me feel a bit nervous. Maybe if I accept this, moving around a virtual world will be an enjoyable experience.

Secondly, my name. I just couldn’t use a fake name in none of the accounts I opened. Well, maybe I should start by calling it nickname, or rather, SL identity.

I hope by January 11th I’ll have got rid of those naming prejudices so that I can start flying and teleporting in the Village 2011 EVO session.

It’s high time I got some sandpaper and white paint to complete my mask.

Soon I had to admit I was taking too many things for granted, which made the class a bit messy.

I had to face a bigger problem. No. I mean, I’m facing a bigger problem.

I believe technology should be part of a class. Twitter, a piece of chalk, google search, delicious, a text book, a Cd, a blog, a sheet of paper, a wiki, a pencil… So, the thing is, how can a once in a month lab session (scheduled by someone else) be part of my classes?

I haven’t been able to work that out. In fact, I don’t want to work it out. Any solution to this would be a hoax. I could lie, lie to you, to the institution and even to myself and publish a list of the wonderful activities my students are developing. Well, some are wonderful, not doubt. Yet, they are not embedded in the classes.

Supplements.

Photo Credit: So Many Ways by Furryscaly

I was talking to my labour-division-fan groups, trying to get them involved into a collaborative work. C-o-l-l-a-b-o-r-a-t-i-v-e. The thing is they kept stuck to that group notion. Kill the group, I thought. Individual, I said.

Have I become a late neoliberalism agent?, I feared.

Soon, traces of collaboration started to show up.

I work with words. I teach a foreign language. Even foreign to me. I know words are tricky. I know they can mean what they don’t mean. Why would it matter if I’d said individual when I meant collaborative? It just worked.

I was trying to start a learning experience. I don’t know whether learning is social or not. I do know it’s an experience. As such, is it explainable? Well, at least it’s livable.

This is what we are living:

We are reading 2001: A space Odyssey and after our first academically correct students’ production, I decided to make a change. I told them they would become experts. I selected four quite broad topics related to the book and asked them to jump into the universe (wiki included).

I jumped as well. I didn’t keep my safety teacher feet stuck to the planet earth.

• Two classes are working together. Same school. Different ages. Same language level. No class face to face contact between the two groups, but for the wiki. (Still weak wiki.)

• I know nothing about their fields of future expertise. (I’m far older than my students, though. Sometimes that is an advantage.)

• I’m working without a plan. Yes, no planning at all. I  improvise. Constantly. Thrilling, isn’t it? It’s working. Furthermore, I think it’s working because I don’t have a plan. As the only thing I have is the pure experience, I observe. Constantly. And I try. Trial and error. And patience. Loads of.

• I’m not grading them. They’re working for free. And they are secondary school students. At secondary school everything is about marks. (Well, some are not working much, I admit. But they wouldn’t be working even if I was grading them.) No marks, but assessment.  Me and them.

I don’t know what the outcome might be. I do know that to some of them it will be meaningful.

As a teacher -that observer/doer who is within the picture, I’m enjoying my own learning experience. Individual up to now, socialized after clicking publish. I’m also enjoying witnessing my students’ learning experience. Individual? Social? Personal. Yes, personal. And shared. And distributed.

En Español.

These were roughly the instructions I gave them:
Prepare a 30 minute group class including a presentation. More details here.

All the classes were well prepared and enjoyable. Yet, I couldn’t avoid noticing that Frankenstein result group work usually shows. I’m talking about those stitches which put different contributions together into a whole. I’d love those stitches to be invisible, or maybe I should say I’d love those patches to merge.

Group work, at least to my students, means division of labour. Far away from the collaborative work I always hope for. The thing is, can collaboration be taught?

I’ll try.

Will that be an odyssey or just a journey?

I just want to remind myself of some of the things I enjoy and need. And to commit myself to keeping track of my classes this year.

Situation: Students complain (in Spanish) that the following class will coexist with a Boca-River football match. They don’t want to attend, but they have an institutional exam.

They know I’m on Twitter. I tweet and read aloud as I write.

“We’re intelligent,” one of my students says. In English.

I tweet:

They start to have a conversation in English for the first time ever.

I don’t mean to say that you can use twitter to change your students’ attitude. This is not one of the thousand ways you can use twitter in education. What I do want to say is, keep it simple. Digital tools should help you meet your class needs. Just as a piece of chalk does. Just as the tone of your voice does.

(This post was inspired on reality + #3 and #6 here.)

En español.

This year I’ve signed up for two of them: Process Drama and Virtual Language Travel. On this post I’ll focus on the former.

Why I joined the session.

Many years ago I took drama classes. It was something I hadn’t planned or I hadn’t even dreamt of. Moreover, I would have stated I couldn’t act. A friend of mine was about to start to coordinate a drama group and I agreed to join it just to help him get to a meaningful number of members. The very first class I got hooked. Besides learning lots of things I had never suspected about myself, I learned something really important: anybody can perform drama. I’m not talking about being a great actor/actress, I’m just talking about performing drama.

At that time I started to use drama techniques in my classes. Sometimes through carefully planned lessons and many times spontaneously introducing an activity when I glimpsed the chance/need as the class was developing.

After quitting my drama classes I gradually stopped using drama in my EFL courses. I just missed the habit. I know how much students can benefit from drama. Being someone else frees you from the bonds you’ve built to construct your personality. As the person you are unties, your language unties as well.

When classes restart next March, I hope I will have recovered that healthy habit of taking my students into that trip through action and imagination.

Photo credit:  Johnson Cameraface