Podcasts

 

"Ears, I say, not the eyes "

   I love podcasts. I really do. In the world where eyes are the main medium of getting information (reading, watching TV), many of us are running the risk of exploiting the natural capabilities of our eyesight. I often feel tension and pain in my eyes and this often leads to feeling demotivated to read. This is a shame, since I find a great pleasure in reading.

   This inner conflict of mine has recently been resolved by the introduction of podcasts and audiobooks into my life. I started to listen to wonderful books and to lively discussions via podcasts. It only takes me a few minutes to download them and to to send the mp3 files to my mobile phone. The rest is magic. 

  Podcasts are liberating and empowering in the sense that they help you to shift the tension from the eyes to the ears, to use the multiple mediums that human body has for getting and processing information. Podcasts are my absolute heroes. They are with me in the public transport, while washing the dishes, taking the dust and even while walking out the dog. 

  Given the amazingness of podcasts, why not use them in education as well? While researching the topic ideas such as "student-created podcasts", "teaching skills like synthesizing via podcasts", "giving the students the ability to meaningfully participate in the world", "real audience" ,etc invaded into my mind. Are there any disadvantages of using podcasts in EFL? Apart from some possible ethical and copyright issues, which are clearly not podcast-specific, I see none. So why not? I am very optimistic in the potential of podcasts in EFL. One of our responsibilities as teachers is to empower our students with choices. Podcasts seem a very viable audio alternative to the heavily text-dominated way of getting knowledge in our world. 

So close your eyes and get your ears ready, they have relaxed far too much :)

Using Blogs and Twitter in an EFL classrooms

 "Feedback, Collaboration, Community"

  In this post I will try to outline a sample EFL project that makes use of blogs and twitter as learning tools. My hypothetical situation is a group of teenage EFL learners who attend a course that develops learner's creative writing. Learners would be asked to read Margaret Mitchell's novel "Gone with the Wind" and write a sequel to it afterward . Each group of 3/4 students would write its own ending to Mitchell's unfinished novel and would post the sequals in a blog created specifically for this project. Learners of the group would have to read the sequals of other groups  and leave feedback be either adding comments in blogs or making updates in twitter. Each students would have to post at least one comment for each sequal. The sequals will be both peer-assessed in the form of peer comments and tutor assessed. The latter will mainly be in the form of comments on the content but will also include some feedback on the accuracy and the organization of the narrative. 

  The main challenge might be to overcome the learners' fear of writing creatively in a foreign language. Activities of pre-writing stage, such as introduction and practice of free writing, narrative, descriptive writing, may help to lessen the anxiety related to writing in English.

  This project would be aimed at fostering collaboration among the students and would help them to have a first hand, authentic practice in creative writing. The technology used would help to realize the project in a cost and time efficient manner.

Blogging and Microblogging

 "Blogs are much more than a diary",Will Richardson

    We live in a world where every person from every part of the world (where internet is accessible) can share his ideas with the rest of the world without having to pay anything. This is what blogs and microblogs have done for us. What's more, blogs have enabled us to comment and to discuss each others' ideas. Finally, we can spread  the information via as many channels as we have (Twitter, Facebook,etc). The world has never been flatter. 

  The potential of blogging for teaching purposes has scarcely been researched. However, the changing world requires changes in the way we view education as well. Bellow are some of the benefits and caveats I see in using blogs as a learning tools. 

Benifits 

a) authentic, worldwide audience

b) improvement of research skills

c) the opportunity to make choices about what to read

d) improvement of reading skills 

Caveats

a) a lot of messy, sometimes inappropriate content

b) distracting factor of social networks

c) the need to work a lot in front of the computer screen and not paper, which some people (including me) find demotivating

No one knows what the future holds. However, it's relatively easy to assume that blogs will most probably enter the field of education as well. Will they prove to be effective triggers of learning? With all the irrelevant but attention-grabbing and easily digestible information floating all over the net, I am a little uncertain of whether the learners will be able to concentrate on more serious and intellectually demanding topics.  In any case, time will show.

 

Teachers in the new world

“ A teacher that can be replaced by a machine, should be”.

  I find several clear-cut parallels between the Hole in the Wall project by Sugata Mitra, the Digital Youth Portraits and Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat".

   The main recurrent thread that I see in them is the following: because of the technological innovations the world has changed and the roles and attitudes in the newly-shaped world need to be altered accordingly. The world is now one global ecosystem and the opportunity of showing one’s potential  is becoming more and more equal,  irrespective of one’s social status and country of origin. In the words of Friedman (2007), “The playground has been levelled”. A curious, open mind, with or sometimes without any outer stimulation, can find the tools and the pathways to success. In the Hole in the Wall project Sugata Mitra notes that younger kids usually taught the older ones. This, in my view, shows that the more open the mind is, the more easily it finds the pathways of fulfilling its curiosity. For such a mind, neither the foreign language, nor any other barrier is an obstacle. The digital portraits of Edutopia illustrate this point very well.

    All this seems to point to the following question: Do we need teachers in a world where information is just one click away? I think we do and we do so even more than before. In the complexity of the web and the abundance of distracting, low-value information, a guiding and motivating teacher is invaluable. I would just quote Sugata Mitra’s friend’s quote here, since I doubt that I can put it any better: “ A teacher that can be replaced by a machine, should be”.

               Thomas Friedman, ''The world is flat"

"The playground has been levelled" 

 

   In his book, called "The world is flat"  Thomas Friedman discusses the changes that technology has brought into our lives.

  All of the ten flatteners discussed by Thomas Friedman are groundbreaking and amazing in their own way. That’s why it’s hard to single out only some of them. Also, it would take too much time and space to discuss all of the flatteners. Therefore, I would rather discuss the flatteners that have had a very palpable influence on education. In this respect, “8/9/95”, open-sourcing , in-forming and  steroids have a huge influence on learning and teaching.

 

1) “8/9/95” and “In-forming”: Browsing and search engines

 I find browsers and search engines  absolutely amazing. The internet would have a been a messy, extremely non user-friendly  pile of information without search engines. With the availability of so many online language dictionaries, thesauruses, language learning websites and communities, the opportunity to browse and find the required information seems priceless to me. Google’s ability to locate relevant web pages with the help of the user queries is getting more and more advanced. With the addition of supplementary services such as mail, calendar, translation, blogging, etc, search engines like Yahoo, Google, Bing have already become invaluable tools work and study.

2) Open-sourcing

  The internet is full of free, downloadable applications, tools and software that can help any learner to improve his knowledge of virtually any subject. Numerous wikis, blogs and forums are available for free. It is becoming less and less difficult to protect intellectual property since the idea of sharing and open-access resourcing is central in many internet communities.

  

3) Steroids

  It’s not at all uncommon to see a situation like this in today’s classrooms: A teacher explains something and then notices one of the students quickly google-ing and either checking what was said or making additions to it. Cutting edge ipads, iphones and other gadgets make it one click’s work to find virtually any information anywhere, anytime. Taking this into account, it becomes naive to hold the idea that the teacher is still the all-knower. Clearly, a change of perceptions is needed here.

  

 

 Digital Youth Portraits

 

   “Give them the tools and get out of  the way"

 

 

 

Dylan,13, uses the internet chatsto collaborate with his like-minded friends all over the world and promote a more green planet.

  




 



 Digital Youth Portraits is a series of video stories of young kids educating themselves and exploring the world via technology.
   Watching the videos I was mostly struck by the obvious capacity of very young children to learn and explore all by themselves through technology. These portraits show that very young and teenage children, who are technology native from very early on, can and do use technology not only for fun but also for pursuing their passions and educating themselves. These children are problem solving, independent learners, who use their creativity and the opportunities created by the modern technology to explore their passions. 

  Literacy is not only text and knowledge. In modern times, more than ever before, it includes values such as creativity and problem solving skills. This has an obvious message for primary school teachers all over the world. The role of the teacher is no longer that of an information provider but more like a guider, a facilitator. As Sugata Mitra puts it: “Learning is a self-organized system and primary education can happen almost on its own”. (watch Sugata's Ted talk entirely here )

    As a TEFL professional in Armenia, I am well aware that the majority of teachers in my country are far from just giving the tools and getting out of the way. Teaching in my country is heavily teacher and textbook centered and is stubborn against changes. Teachers are still the all-knowers and the students are still treated as a passive audience. Drilling, habit formation and repetition are still the core of our mainstream education system. Having said this, it’s worth noting however that the youth is getting more and more technology native these days and is starting to make use of the advancements of technology for learning and exploring. Nevertheless, when will the technology also enter the classrooms and when will the teachers willfully give way to children’s ability of self-learning, is still not clear.