Three days in

The project is now well under way. I'm beginning with two classes, both with a high level of English. One class is aged around 13-14, and the other 16-17. Their responses on the first day to the project were quite lukewarm - perhaps just the first day of school blues? Because from day two, things picked up enormously.

But the approach that the two age groups took were quite different.

The younger students were quite satisfied to accept my plan to use different discourse types to organize the course. They were happy to use movie or book reviews as the first task. Once I'd shown them a few tools, they were also more reticent than the older students about using those tools. They preferred to use tools they knew from their own experience - e.g. powerpoint. Which is fine with me - they're still creating good quality stuff, still using lots of English. Perhaps seeing what the older group are doing will persuade them to broaden their horizons a bit more, though.

The older group quickly set about telling me that they didn't really like the ideas I had. Movie reviews, travel guides... no. They wanted "teen stuff". They told me they wanted to be able to describe their lifestyles, display their hobbies, show the world their achievements. Many of them are already very interested in designing things with computers - Photoshop, Windows Movie Maker etc. - these things they have experience with already. So they're already able to make decisions about what tools they want to use.

The challenge for me, then, was to get them thinking about how they were going to turn their raft of ideas into something that could be displayed proudly on their wiki. Pages and pages of writing are not likely to be too attractive... So I set them this task as homework - come to class on day 2 with solid, do-able ideas.

They came with heaps of them. So by the end of day 2, I was able to get them in groups, having chosen an idea, considered ways they wanted to turn those ideas into interesting presentations, and made decisions about how to go about turning their ideas into reality.

Today, on day 3, I didn't have to say anything. When I entered the classroom, one minute late, it was already a hive of activity.

So the students have a deadline of end of class tomorrow - the end of the week here in the gulf - to get their first "products" online. One or two are there already; the others are looking like they can be done in time. The most ambitious project - a short film documenting the lifestyle of Arabian teens - might not make the deadline... but I'm not about to get upset about that! I know it won't be for lack of effort.

Unfortunately, because of the students' and parents' desire for privacy, I can't offer a link here to the wiki itself. But I'm happy to provide a password to anyone who would like to have a look.