YuperStar

I’ve been brainstorming a variety of language learning activities using the technology available to us. These are all in very rough form, but I thought I’d throw them up anyway as an opportunity for teachers to start telling me all the good reasons why they might NOT work. Or, conversely, how tweaking it here or there could make them more feasible. I’m looking forward to have actual teachers HERE that I can brainstorm with… Please, feel free to post your comments below!

RSS Twenty Questions Students set up their own blog just for the project. Each student is assigned a secret word in English. They translate to target language and design twenty questions in the target language (using grammatical stipulations, perhaps). Twenty questions are reviewed by peers and approved by teacher. Then students upload their questions to the 20 questions blog with the frequency to be determined by teacher (1/day, 3/day, etc.). Then they are given the email for a student in a different class. They send the RSS subscribe link to their partner in the other class. The student gets the 20 questions and makes guesses as to the word. Student pairs use chat to discuss.
Silent Movie Students create a silent movie (short) with subtitles in foreign language. Expressive background music. Perhaps using pre-filmed silly scenes to cut down on project time. Then it is just a matter of figuring out the story to tell by lining the clips up in the right order, writing the dialogue/narration and putting it on top of the clips, & adding music. Have a movie viewing day and use movies to test comprehension (i.e. have students translate back to English as many phrases as possible for one of the movies - typing while viewing)
eZine Build a template blog with predetermined blocks to be filled with target language text, videos, commentary, & pictures. Topic could be assigned or chosen: tourism, politics, history, music, etc., etc.
Podcast Radio Show Give a radio show script to students in English to translate into target language or have them design their own around a particular theme (interviewing an historical figure, entertainer, scientist, historian, etc.) Record directly into iPod using iPod microphone. Dump into Garage Band and add background music. Attach to a class blog entries designed just for projects and create XML feed. Students will be able to see their podcast in iTunes under podcasts.
Online Storybook Project Use offtype.net to create a computer generated storyboard. pics are automatically saved as .gif images, which can be easily added to a series of html pages on iGoogle. Appropriate for 3rd grade and even fun for older kids. Older kids might use comic book software for more elaborate graphics. Task could be a historical timeline, cookbook instructions (someone else has to follow your recipe and make it at home), story for 3rd graders in target country to read and correct [!], sky’s the limit
Skype Guest Find a Skype Guest in another country who is willing to have a Skype conversation in the lab. Each student prepares one question to ask the person based on their biography, which was previously read in class. Students walk up to main terminal to ask question, students hear answers, teacher helps translate when necessary. Entire conference call (video & audio) is recorded for future use. Break down audio for use on DiLL, perhaps.
Skype World Conference Hold a “world-wide” conference on an issue of importance. This could me mono- or multi-lingual. iChat handle up to 4 channels. Very cool if it was 4 channels from 4 countries.
Skype Classroom Would work best if both classrooms could pipe real video through the internet. Then a video person could shift focus and move around the room. Great for sharing classroom space. This could be potentially set up in the classrooms.
Blogging for Students Move all homework assignments to blog format when possible and save on paper. Teacher subscribes to RSS feed and can view all of student’s recent assignments. Students become familiar with diacritics on keyboard. OR design an ongoing assignment for use on the blog so that when the year is up, students can look back at their progress and be reminded of past lessons. Blogs are super easy to maintain and students will personalize them like we did our 3 ring binders.
Blogging for Teachers Teacher designs a series of assignments on blog (or moodle). Students subscribe to RSS and do short, rote-like tasks daily on their blog.
Unconventional DiLL activities. In my interview, I heard about a “blind date” random pair activity on DiLL. Please add to this list other fun activities that could be done on DiLL.
Self-testing Using survey software (surveymonkey.com, etc.) Give the students hundreds of test questions and have them pick 20 to put on a quiz for their peers. Have them grade their peers on the quiz and correct their peers errors with an explanation of why.
Music Video Pick a song as a class and divide it into 1 minute segments. Using portable video cameras, shoot and edit 1 minute’s worth of footage either lipsyncing the text or not. Add all of the footage together for a funny parsing.
World Music Idol Students are given a selection of target-language tunes to pick from, or they find their own, which is approved by teacher. They must translate the text into English and perhaps even sing it (in English or Target Language). We can do Karaoke in the corner of the room. “World” Idol contest?
News Articles in Target Language Have students access a news article, copy and paste into excel, phrase by phrase, and translate word for word to the best of their ability.
Video Collage Students are given a theme and they must use still pictures to create a ken burns-like documentary. No longer than 3-5 minutes long.
Video Poem Students are exposed to some kind of music in the target language that they have never heard before. They must listen intently to translate. Research on the style of the artist music and present images with narration about artist/music/style in iMovie.
Radio Show (for Club) Pick a classic drama in target language and act out scene like it was a radio show with sound effects, etc. For in class, give various students one paragraph chunks of text to do in class. They post them to a page in order and/or edit them all together into one continuous whole.

So I’ve spent a few hours now reading about technology-assisted language learning. I haven’t even graced the surface yet; it’s all a foggy haze I’m still trying to see through.

Sure, I’m a big fan of technology and education in general. I’m definitely in the camp that believes that world citizens today have got to be fluent enough with technology that they can solve problems and to express themselves. But how does this work again? How do you actually use technology in the classroom setting to IMPROVE language acquisition?

I’m still scratching my head on this. DiLL is a great piece of software and I can see how it may improve on the interactive games and role-playing I’m doing in my Italian class, but beyond that I’m still a little stumped. Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve got a ton of ideas for how technology COULD work in the language learning environment; I’m just a bit skeptical that it really will vastly improve on the activities that good teachers are already doing. Maybe some of my readers can appreciate this healthy skepticism.

I’ve been thinking about a WIN-WIN-WIN scenario as a possible direction. Teacher needs to win. Student needs to win. Technology needs to win.

TEACHERS. Teachers are short on two kinds of time: prep time and real class (curriculum) time. They feel pressed to cover more information than they could ever hope to in the short blips of class time available to them. And they have to make sure that whatever it is they are teaching is actually sticking through a variety of assessment tools, which in and of themselves eat up a huge part of their prep time. It’s not just the doing or the preparing for the doing; it’s also the assessing that plays into a teacher’s perpetual state of exhaustion. I’ve already heard reports that while DiLL is engaging and fun, it has essentially added to the teachers’ workload by requiring them listen to all the sound clips that the students leave behind. Add to all of that the fact that the language skills of students in any single class will run the gamut. So for teachers to win, a technology needs to 1. SAVE them eval and/or prep time or at the very least, not require any MORE time and 2. be flexible enough that students with a variety of skill levels can participate and experience some measure of success.

STUDENTS. At an Independent School like this, my hunch is that many of the students are here to get the good grade and move on. And that’s not a knock on the students; that is a well-worn knock on the system itself. It’s hard to imagine sometimes, but what’s really in the best interest of the students is that they acquire actual language skills that are practiced enough in the  “safe” environment of the classroom, that they would actually be willing to use them in real-world communication. From my admittedly-narrow vantage point, for students to win, technology-assisted learning activities need to 1. result in a marked improvement over traditional language learning activities, one that can be clearly (and easily) assessed and 2. engage students in relevant forms of real-world communication, whether written or spoken.

TECHNOLOGY. Technology also “wants” something from its users. Following Mitch Resnick (creator of Lego MindStorms), technology would ideally be used used as a paintbrush (co-creator) and not as a television (distributor of information). Technology provides a powerful platform for creativity and problem solving. It is not the only platform, but clearly one that is essential for those who want to “make stuff happen” personally, or in almost any industry, country, nation, or community I can think of. It is very much in the interest of the world, that learners of all ages (students and teachers) experience using technology to CREATE, DESIGN, CONSTRUCT, EXPRESS, COLLABORATE, COMMUNICATE, EXPERIMENT, and EXPLORE. In order for technology to win, language learning activities should tap into at least one of these big words, or others like it.

So there you have it. The Holy Grail of Technology-Assisted Learning, according to moi. I’m eager to hear comments and discussion around these ideas. I anticipate that my views will change quite a bit over the course of the year. In any case, the challenge ahead for me and for the World Language department is to experiment, fiddle, and fail until we stumble on language learning activities that are truly WIN-WIN-WIN.

I’ll proably host a party every time we do.