Creating Open Learning Environments with Online Tools: Blogging and Podcasting (LL2007 1B)

Session Overview
Presenter(s): Patricia Glogowski
Session Time: May 7, 2007

10:45 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Session Number: LL2007 1B
Presenter Bio: Patricia Glogowski (MA) is an ESL instructor and teacher trainer interested in meaningful uses of Web 2.0 technologies. She has presented at the following conferences: TESL Canada, TESL Ontario and ECCO. She also co-moderated a TESOL pre-conference workshop: "Webpublishing in Open Participatory Environments" (http://evo07sessions.pbwiki.com/). Her professional blog can be found at: http://www.monitorhypothesis.typepad.com/

[edit] Session Description

In this presentation, the presenter will argue that open learning environments that can be created with the Web 2.0 technologies can benefit language learners because they offer the potential for learning to take place in immersive contexts where learners interact with wider audiences. The presenter will also argue that through personal online learning environments, learners are stimulated to learn more than in traditional closed environments because of the wider social interconnectivity. The presenter will report on classroom research on a second language project that utilized blogging and podcasting tools to create collaborative, dynamic, and open learning environments where learners engaged in social interaction. The presenter will describe the design of the project and the tasks students were asked to complete. The results will be drawn from observations and analysis of students’ online interactions. The presenter will argue that creating online personal spaces with blogging and podcasting tools helps second language learners strengthen their linguistic skills, communicative and written competences, and leads to increased motivation, autonomy, and self-confidence.

[edit] Session Notes and Reflection

Here are my notes from the presentation: "Creating Open Learning Environments with Social Tools"

1. Facebook - Today's (ESL?) Learner

Facebook Statistics

  1. Statistics (February 2007)
  2. Users: 18,000,000
  3. Page Views: 30,000,000,000 per month
  4. Searches: 600,000,000 per month
  5. Photos Hosted: > 1,000,000,000
  6. Largest Network: Toronto, ON (over 500,000 Facebook users)
  7. The most viewed site by females in the United States (69%) ages 17 - 25 and also the most viewed website by males (56%).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

2. Today's (ESL?) Learner

  1. Actively seeks to establish social ties with peers & others: f2f individuals & virtual individuals
  2. Engages in multimodal (text, video, audio, photo) social networking
  3. Participates actively in online communities (interest-based) --- has multilingual online presence
  4. Learns through interaction with others (Vygotsky, 1979) – participatory learning
  5. Learns in chunks & learns at any time/any place
  6. Constructs his/her own multiliteracies (social, cultural, cognitive, linguistic & imaginative capital) – at an unprecedented pace…

SHIFT IN THE WAY LEARNERS LEARN

3. ESL Teaching Challenges

  1. ESL Class (15 students) – Academic Preparation Program

Challenges:

  1. Academic skills (reading/writing/listening/speaking, critical thinking skills, research skills, library skills, university life survival skills...)
  2. Academic topics
  3. Research essay (capital punishment, legalization of marijuana, gay rights, abortion)
  4. Ethnic associations/grouping
  5. Learning culture (previous educational background)
    1. teacher-centered
    2. memorization
    3. classroom learning (9 am - 1 pm)
  6. Personality factors - L2 Anxieties (Functional vs. Academic language proficiency)
  7. ESL academic textbook: “Bridge to Academic Success” (1990) – limited content/outdated
  8. Profile of a successful learner: Ellena vs. Cindy

4. Closed vs. Open Learning Environment

5. Social Tools (LINKS BELOW):Blogs, bloglines, flickr, community walk, 43places/things, wikis, and podcasts.

6. Today's (ESL?) Teaching

Open Learning Environment

  1. Facilitates active learning (interesting, motivating, meaningful for the learner)
  2. Facilitates community building/participatory learning
  3. Allows for authentic learning (authentic language, authentic tasks, authentic feedback)
  4. Content-based learning - Allows for learner-centered approach  Control of learning is delegated to the learner
  5. Increases intrinsic motivation: “I learn what I want to learn”

Open Learning Skills (New Literacy)

  1. Skills to find, understand, sort, connect, and critically analyze information (information overload)
  2. Evaluate online information/resources
  3. Social networking skills development
  4. Ethics of being/interacting/publishing online
  5. Ethics of using online information (copyright, creative commons license)

7. Active Learning

“Promoting active learning: Learners should be supported in taking control of, and self-regulating, their own learning. When students take ownership of the learning process and invest their identities in the outcomes of learning, the resulting understanding will be deeper than when learning is passive (Bransford et al. cited in Cummins, 2006).”

8. Communities of Learners

“Support within the community of learners: Learning takes place in a social context and a supportive learning community that encourages dialogue, apprenticeship, and mentoring. Learning is not simply a cognitive process that takes place inside the heads of individual students; it also involves socialization into particular communities of practice. Within these learning communities, or what Gee (2001) terms affinity groups, novices are enabled to participate in the practices of the community from the very beginning of their involvement (Bransford et al. cited in Cummins, 2006)”

9. Today's (ESL?) Teaching

  1. Enhances learning/Engages student?
  1. EXTENDS students’ learning outside of the classroom - Life learning
  1. ESL student = non-ESL student
  1. Allows for both to acquire multimodal (text, video, audio) & mulitilitercy capital (linguistic, social, cultural, cognitive, creative & imaginative capital)

10. Challenges

  1. “Are schools ready for the openness that Web 2.0 tools allow? Why or why not?”

(Birds of a Feather Session: Web 2.0 - Blogs, Wikis, Podcast, Social Bookmarking)

  1. Are teachers ready?
  2. Can we afford not to be ready?

11. References

Learning Theories

  1. Anderson, Terry and Fathi Elloumi (Eds.) (2004). Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca: Athabasca University.
  2. Cummins, J. (2006). Identity Texts: The Imaginative Construction of Self through Multiliteracies Pedagogy in Garcia et al., Eds. Imagining Multilingual Schools: Languages in Education and Glocalization. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd., p. 51-68.
  3. Egbert, Joy. (2000). CALL Essentials: Principles and Practice in CALL Classrooms. Virginia: TESOL.

Technology

  1. Androutsopoulos, Jannis. (2006). Introduction: Sociolinguistics and computer-mediated communication. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 10 (4): 419-438.
  2. Kern, Richard. (2006). Perspectives on Technology in Learning and Teaching Languages. TESOL Quarterly, 40 (1), 183- 210.
  3. Labour, Michel. (2001). Social constructivism and CALL: evaluating some interactive features of network-based authoring tools. ReCALL 13 (1): 32-46.

Blogs, Wikis, and Online Learning

  1. Boulos, Maged N. Kamel, Inocencio Maramba and Steve Wheeeler. (2006). Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education. BMC Medical Education, 6(41), 1-8.
  2. Dickey, Michele D. (2004). The impact of web-logs (blogs) on student perceptions of isolation and alienation in a web-based distance-learning environment. Open Learning, 19 (3), 279 – 291.
  3. Downes, Stephen. (2004). Educational Blogging. Educause Review, Sept/October, 14- 6.
  4. Felix, Uschi. (2001). The web’s potential for language learning: the student’s perspective. ReCALL, 13 (1), 47-58.
  5. Huffaker, David. (2005). The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom. AACE Journal, 13(2), 91-98.
  6. Nardi, B. A., Diane J. Shiano, Michelle Gumbrecht, and Luke Swartz. (2004). Why We Blog. Communications of the ACM, 47 (12), 41-46.
  7. Williams, Jeremy B. and Joanne Jacobs. (2004). Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector. [Electronic version]. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. 20 (2), 232 – 247.

12. Links

TESOL pre-conference workshops (Electronic Village Online)

  1. Open Webpublishing Workshop http://openwebpublishing.wikispaces.com/

TOOLS

  1. Social Networking Sites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
  2. Blogs: www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.com, www.typepad.com
  3. Bloglines (Blog Aggregator) www.bloglines.com
  4. RSS Explanation http://www.cbc.ca/rss/
  5. Community Walk http://www.communitywalk.com/
  6. 43Places http://www.43places.com/
  7. 43People http://www.43people.com/
  8. 43Things http://www.43things.com/
  9. iTunes http://www.apple.com/itunes/
  10. University Podcast Collection http://www.oculture.com/weblog/2006/10/free_university_1.html
  11. Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
  12. Facebook www.facebook.com
  13. Odeo http://studio.odeo.com/create/home
  14. HipCast http://www.audioblog.com/