muscatwikiproject

Wiki Project Version 2.0

2009-08-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

Coming toward the end now of the second incarnation of the Wiki project. As I said before, we've been focusing on it a bit less in class, trying to have a more balanced approach, and focusing more on getting everybody doing similar projects rather than very different things from one another. It's been going OK, but now, with only four days left, the Wikis are almost completely empty! The students have told me they want to do their project stuff at home; and also, with one other teacher doing the wiki project, time in the computer room has been at a premium.

The projects themselves have been a little more focused this time around. I wanted the students to focus on their identities and the potential they have for developing Oman in the future. So the main project they've done is thinking of a change they want to create in Oman, and making a presentation about a way they think could be taken to achieve that aim. Students have made presentations about how to improve women's rights, improve the state of Omani football, improve the environment in Oman... all sorts of stuff. The presentations are due to be given tomorrow, so we'll see how good they turn out.

I'm not sure I'm really satisfied with either incarnation of the project, though. There have been several problems which have been hard to solve. The main one is plagiarism. The students are incredibly indisciplined here. They will take things one hundred percent from the internet and not feel any need to credit it. Another problem is discipline - as I think would be a problem for these age groups anywhere, really. For every two students working hard and trustworthy while working alone, there's at least one who will be using that time to chat and have a laugh with his (or her) friends. My colleague Ben has also had this problem.

Ideally, I think a Wiki should be viewed as an option for language learners, but not as the foundation for a course. That's rather too vague. If you start with the wiki and ask the students to create work for that... there is so much potential that the students simply don't know where to start. Better, I think, to start either with what the students or teacher actually want to work on in class - i.e. the changes in Oman thing - use that as the basis for more traditional ELT style activities; and then make the students aware of the option of using a wiki to present their ideas. A project for a project's sake may not be suh a good way to go, I guess. But, of course, the more time spent on traditional ELT type stuff in class, the less time there is available for students to work on any projects they want to do. It's tricky; and I'll almost certainly be leaving Muscat before I get a chance to work on a better way of doing things. So I guess I need to hope that I havbe managers in the future who are willing to let me do my own thing in my YL classes, as they have done here.

Quite possibly that might be it for this wiki. I'm very tired and looking forward to a holiday, starting on Wednesday, and I'm not sure I'll have time to post again before that. If not, then thanks to all those who have been reading and posting comments; all very appreciated.

Teacher Knows Best?

2009-08-01T22:21:00.000-07:00

So, it's now the second week of the second wiki project. There are now two of us on the case - myself and another teacher called Ben Cook.

This time around, we've done much more classroom based stuff, and things are slightly more teacher led. We're trying to do one "project" per week, with the end result being something that can be put onto a wiki. At least one day a week, there is no input at all, and the students just work on whatever they have to do.

My classes have two projects ongoing at the moment. The first is based on the Oman Sail project - an initiative by the Omani government to promote sailing amongst young people around the country. Already they've sent one sailor on a non-stop around the world trip (in Ellen MacArthur's boat); and they have other sailors competing in yacht races globally. Members of the Oman Sail team have come in to the BC to meet the students and let them taste the food and wear the clothes used on board the around-the-world trimaran. The students are now making projects about the Oman Sail project.

The other project is to create a business plan/project to improve Oman. For the younger group, this is aimed at getting them to think critically about Oman's young people and how to encourage them to think positively about how to improve the future for Omani people. They have to think of a project wehich will encourage young Omani's to put down the Playstation Portables and try to develop their country. For the older group, the idea is to look at Oman now, and think of ways to improve it. So things like charities and NGO's which haven't yet arrived in Oman. The students need to create web-based presentations which demonstrate what their projects entail exactly, and why there is a need for them.

So there is a mix of work going on - lots of new vocab, since this is the area I feel my students seem most lacking in (much like even native speaking teens, my students seem to have quite a small but generally adequate base vocabulary; but struggle with words of lower frequency); some critical thinking about themselves, their identity, and their role in the future of their nation; and web-based work.

I think this approach is working better than before. I feel the students are learning more. So, although it's less in line with my own principles of being as student led as possible, I feel confident that it's more helpful. As I saw with the last project, the students will quite happily create wikis which reflect their social interests (one student told me that now, two weeks after class finished, they are still using the wiki to keep in touch - and that's wonderful!); but it then becomes hard to scaffold the students' work and make it into something greater than it would be without my input. It also becomes tricky to lead the students into areas they wouldn't normally go to. So for now, I'm happy to have a slightly more teacher-led wiki project.

Fundamentals (or: The Medium and the Message)

2009-07-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

On the first day of this term, I went into class and told the students about the wiki project. I was excited, but it seemed hard for them to share that excitement.
Now, having almost got to the end of the term (last day is today), I think we're all proud of what we've done, but as I've said, I also think there are some reservations over the approach we've used.

When I look back to the classes I taught at this time last year, there was a far greater sense of togetherness amongst the students - a stronger dynamic.

What I began to realise about this recently was that I may have slightly neglected the fundamentals in class - a case of forgetting the message and relying on the medium - i.e. the wiki.

I'm not going to get into much detail about what those fundamentals are - I'm sure the fundamental principles of teaching are different for everyone. But for me, I think that I need to put more dedicated effort into the dynamics, and into the personal connection between myself and all of the students.

Teenagers and the Social Web

2009-07-21T07:25:00.001-07:00

My younger class, who are all 12 or 13, have added a chat function to their Wiki. This came after some pages of the Wiki got up to 200 or more comments - most of them being social in function - "What's up?" etc.

The students have taken over the Wiki. It is theirs. And I think this explains some of the reluctance they have to treat it in an academic way.

As I think I've mentioned, it has been a real struggle at times to get the students to reference their sources, to write original work rather than plagiarising. It is simply a feature of the social internet to reproduce content (see Susan Blackwell on www.ted.com for an interesting take on this phenomenon - memetics).

So one angle I'm considering for the next incarnation of the wiki project is to use the theme of identity to explore with the students the way they use their social time, the impact of the internet on that. I feel that the wiki project can go much deeper than it is doing now, and that's got to be the main goal of the next term, starting next week.

Organization

2009-07-14T03:32:00.000-07:00

It's almost three weeks (out of 4) in, now, and I've basically decided that the way I've organized the course hasn't really worked as I hoped it would. Here's why:

1. I think that the idea of discourse didn't allow the students the freedom and creativity they wanted to make the Wiki their own. This resulted in students working on projects that had little to do with what their classmates were doing.
2. Neither did discourse study give the students a form of language study that they found useful.

However, simply ditching any form of organization and allowing a curriculum to "emerge"... well, nothing very structured has emerged, and nor can it be relied upon.

So how to organize things? The criteria, I think, need to be that:

1. There is some form of language study which includes both vocabulary and grammar components, or teaches what Scott Thornbury has called "text attack strategies" - i.e. skills for learning about the way texts are constructed, and which thus build autonomy
2. Students need to be working on similar projects at the same time

The more I think about this, the more I feel that discourse is the way to go... but that it meeds to be implemented more strictly. So I've been thinking over the last few days that I need to design "modules" on different types of text - but more along the lines that the students have expressed interest in:

- film dialogues
- radio shows
- interviews
- biographies

In the back of my mind, though, is the fact that a decision made by me is one taken away from the students. Often I've found that I've suggested things, the students have rejected them; and then the students have worked their way back to the same ideas themselves, and then produced great work. What is missed with that model is the chance to work on the language.

To put this whole things more simply, then: there has been a tension between freedom and flexibility on one hand, and organization on the other. The loss of one has been to the gain of the other. By organizing things and following that order strictly, the students learn more language. Yet the lack of freedom reduces motivation.

Now, some students feel unhappy that there has been too little formal study. Is it reasonable to take away some of the freedom to address that dissatisfaction?

Copyright

2009-07-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

I've been having a few problems with students wanting to use copyrighted material on their wikis, so I thought I'd write about what the problems are and what I've been doing about them. Basically, the students either

a) try to pass writing taken from the internet (e.g. from Wikipedia) off as their own, or
b) try to use copyrighted music or video on the site.

The first problem has not been difficult to solve. The students know it's wrong - they just need some tips on how to avoid it. One student, for example, wanted to post some tips on dealing with stress on the wiki. She'd been sent this in an email from her Dad, who is in Iraq. Fine, I said, but she would need to make it clear what the source was. She found a link on google, and added it to the bottom of the page.

Slightly more difficult is when students find things online that they want to "add" to their own work. What I've found is that, given the chance, the students, when given a topic to write about, will start their ideas search online, and use the texts they find as their starting point. So the most practical piece of advice I've been able to give them is to simply make their own ideas the starting point, and to use other research methods only when necessary. With that as the starting point, it becomes quite simple to teach students to paraphrase.

Problem (b) has been trickier. My students either seem not to really understand the idea of copyright (e.g. a Chris Brown track isn't copyrighted because I downloaded it from a free file sharing site...) or are pretending ignorance.

You might have less of a problem with this than I do - I prefer to pay for music I download and don't really agree with copyright infringement, but one teacher voiced the opposite opinion - "Does it really matter? It's not even a public website". For me, learningn about this sort of copyright infringment is valuable in itself. I wouldn't want to lecture the students on morals or anything like that, but I do think they need to be aware that they're producing materials for a website paid for by a large organization, and such organizations can be seriously harmed by things like copyright - however unaware the students may be of the legal ins and outs of their work.

There are exceptions, though. The interpretations I've read of using copyrighted materials for ediucational purposes seem to hinge on just how educational the use is. So I wouldn't allow my students to soundtrack a piece of work with a copyrighted song simply because they like the way it sounds. However, with the students currently working on radio shows, I've allowed one group to use a copyrighted Korean song to illustrate a dimension of Korean culture. I think this adds something to their presentation which they would be unable to add with only copyright free music.

For other purposes, however, I've introduced the students to a free site they can download royalty-free music from - www.freeplaymusic.com.

What's your approach to copyright in the classroom? Would you be a bit more lenient than me?

How tech-comfy?

2009-07-06T21:15:00.000-07:00

I think the main worry that teachers interested in doing a project like mine have is that they don't know enough about how to use computers and internet tools. While planning this project, I didn't really think that attitude was justified - firstly, it's far easier to set up and maintain a wiki than people think; and secondly, the students already know so much, there's a good chance that they can do most of what they need to do without any help anyway.

After almost two weeks, though, I'm beginning to wonder.

Firstly, it's proving more troublesome and problematic than I thought to maintain the wiki. The students don't know a lot about how they work; and there are more small niggles to solve than I expected. For example, all my students have been working a lot with Windows Movie Maker. That program is very versatile (more than I realised - I've almost never used it). But it creates files in the .wmv format. That ought to be fine for anybody; but Wikispaces seems to have problems with it. So we've needed to download software to change the format to .flv, which Wikispaces can manage. For me and a few of my students, this sort of technical dexterity is no problem. But for less tech-comfy teachers, it might turn into a bit more of a headache.

Secondly, the students often need more convincing of the merits of certain programs than I expected. I've needed to set homework of getting the students to "spend half an hour or so" on a website, simply getting to know it. Simple examples created by myself are not really enough to get the students to try things for themselves. And while most students are comfortable enough with the internet to learn for themselves just by having a play with a website, some of them need some guidance. That means that teachers with less experience are going to have to spend a fairly significant amount of time getting to know a few useful programs. And often, the students will simply say, "I don't like that site". Often that'll be totally justified - the students, for example,have shown me the advantages of using Windows Movie Maker instead of a slideshow creator like Voicethread. But sometimes the students just don't want to spend the time they need to learn aboutn what's possible with a tool.

So to answer the initial question - you do have to be fairly comfortable with technology to work with a project like this. You can't rely on your students to teach you everything - you'll need to spend time getting to know, in particular, the Wiki software you choose to use. I wouldn't want to overestimate the difficulty of this - if you have someone to show you the ropes, or if you can work through things with a couple of colleagues, it shouldn't take long. But I do think it's an investment you need to be aware of the need to make.

Democracy and roundabouts

2009-07-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

You may remember that initially I had thought that the study of discourse would be a good way to organize this project. You may also remember that on the first day, the students said, "No, teacher, we want to write about teen stuff!"; and then spent the first week creating wonderful projects around their lives and interests.

Well, they came into class today (the older group) and said, "Teacher, we want more study". So I said, "OK, why not study discourse, and use that to create new content for the wiki?".

So we've taken sort of a round-about way of getting back to the point I thought we were going to start from.

With the other group, things are happening in reverse. I started the group off by telling them (with the younger students, I allowed less freedom) that we were going to spend the first week creating movie reviews. These students came into class and told me they wanted more freedom - they wanted to create movies, videos, etc... So from the starting point of discourse, they're now getting their freedom bit in, and it'll be interesting to see what they want to do next week.

It's nice, though, to be able to let the students decide on these things themselves. They are responsible enough to make their own decisions and then back them up with effort, so I don't have to worry that they're not using their time effectively. If they need me to be a teacher, I can do that. There are also times when they don't need me to take on that role, and that's also fine - in those moments, I'm more of an IT guy than anything else - about which more later!

Three days in

2009-06-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

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.

The "what" & "how" of a wiki

2009-06-16T04:17:00.000-07:00

Especially for those teachers who are a bit intimidated by the idea of using a wiki, here's a video showing how it's done and what it's good for.

It's about 13 minutes long, so make sure you have enough time to watch it all!

Record your screencast online

Letting go of the "teacher" role

2009-06-13T00:57:00.000-07:00

One issue I'm already thinking a lot about with regards this project is the role of the teacher. A colleague recently expressed an interest in why I've chosen to use a genre-study approach in the course. I think that, in fact, there are two questions to answer there, not just one. The first is, "Why impose any form of organization at all? Why not just leave this to the students?". The second can only be asked once the first has been answered - "Why genre analysis?"

So I'll try to answer the first question, though I'm not sure I know the "right" answer.

My initial idea was to have a fairly structured first week, where the students would have a specific task to complete using a combination of classroom study and online learning. After that, I wanted to let them choose projects they were interested in and create "products" which reflected their own interests. No imposed organizational structure, then, beyond the first week.

But I worried that this would leave the students:
a) not sure what was expected
b) not getting any actual linguistic input
c) free to abuse the freedom I afforded them

And I also worried that I would:
a) have to come to terms with a loss of authority in the classroom, as the students became more autonomous
b) lose the opportunity to pass on my knowledge, and thus be unable to help the students to improve the quality of their work

So, a bit of an existential crisis. I think most teachers probably feel some need to stay "in control" in the classroom. Our status as the holder of knowledge is important to us - at least, we've got used to it - and it's not easy to let it go. If we allow the students to take complete control of what goes on in the classroom, why do we need to even be there?

But we mustn't let our insecurity get in the way of our need to work out what it is that will bring about the greatest improvement in our students. So I have to think about this logically, put my own feelings aside, and decide whether imposing this structure is for the best.

One source which suggests it is for the best, at least in the beginning, is Dornyei and Murphey's excellent book on group dynamics. They suggest that in the beginning stages of group cohesion, it's best for the teacher to remain in command and make goals for the group explicit. Later, once the group has gelled somewhat, they can be encouraged to form their own goals.

So perhaps having an imposed structure is a good idea for the first week. And perhaps, once that structure has been understood, it will naturally influence the students' decisions for the rest of the course.

But where does that leave me for the next few weeks? Do I continue to "teach" about genre throughout the course, or do I aim to use the first week or two to develop skills of analysis which the students can then apply as they see fit during the later stages?

Well, as I said, I don't know the "right" answer. Perhaps it's impossible to know it - "it" may not even exist until those students and I get together and start finding out how things go. So I'll leave it at that for now. But I'd be grateful for any thoughts!

One way of working with Web 2.0

2009-06-03T05:40:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to upload things to the wiki, and the process is forcing me to think about things a bit more deeply. What I'm finding is that the most useful way of approaching a lot of Web 2.0 tools is if you first think of a genre you want to create something for - e.g. a newspaper story, a biography, or a film review; and then choose tools which can bring a slightly different perspective to them.

I find this a really good way of working because it makes me see the tools I'm using in a different way. Using xtranormal to create a film review is a good example of this. Rather than just being two people having a conversation, I turned the whole thing into a TV-show style film review, with one character interviewing the other.

I think this is also a good way to work in the classroom. One thing might find myself battling against is the students' desire to just play around with the tools and create loads of random stuff. I need to make sure there are opportunities for them to learn about more than just using Web 2.0 tools; and I think learning about discourse is the way to go. If we select one genre per week, we can do classroom based stuff looking at how texts are ararnged and features of their cohesion ; and then the students can cut loose a bit and make some sort of presentation, hopefully incorporating what they've learned.

This newspaper article is an example. The written article includes features of that genre, like the use of the passive, the quotations fleshing out the story, the lexical variation on the theme of the master and the apprentice, etc. And then, at the end, there's the Web 2.0 bit - a cartoon strip illustrating the whole thing, which hopefully brings it to life a bit more and engages the students' creativity!

What do you think of this way of working? Aside from focusing on discourse, can you help me think of any other approaches I can take? With the above approach, the syllabus is a mixture of discourse- and task-based designs. Do you think it might be possible to use vocabulary- or grammar-centered approaches to syllabus design together with Web 2.0? Click "comments" below if you have an opinion you'd like to share!

Hello!

2009-05-30T04:48:00.000-07:00

I'm Peter, and I've started this blog to keep a record of the Wiki-based project I'm about to start up with my young learners here at the British Council in Muscat, Oman.

So in this post, I'd like to let you all know what the project is all about, and how it's going so far.

Firstly, then: in around one month from now, I'm going to walk into a classroom of the highest level students we teach here in Muscat. They are overachievers, they're on their summer holidays, and they're going to want to do something challenging and fun (about an hour and a half later, I'm going to walk into another class full of similar students,too, and do all the same stuff - the only difference will be the places the learners choose to go with it).

My answer to this challenge is to let the students loose on the Internet. To get them started, I've set up a wiki which is at

britishcouncilmuscat.wikispaces.com

This wiki is empty at the moment, but over the next couple of weeks it's going to start filling up with lots of interesting (I hope) stuff - for example, Voicethreads, Xtranormal cartoons, podcasts, timelines, weblinks, comic strips, interactive maps, presentations... and just about anything else online which I can find an interesting use for.

And then... in that first class, I'll fire up this wiki and the students will be invited to have a look and see what they can see. I'll ask them to make notes of the different tools, gather URLs, think about different uses for the tools I used, and think about which ones they liked (I might even create a worksheet for this - watch this space, or leave a comment if you think it's a good idea!).

The next few days will involve the students being put into groups, and then given a challenge - for example, create a users guide to Voicethread - using Voicethread! - and set to work. Once they have all finished these tasks (and if you have any ideas for how to cope with them all finishing at different times, let me know!) we'll have a look at them and choose the best.

From that point on, we're into uncharted territory. We should be approaching the end of the first week (out of 4). My plan is to get the students to form groups with three or four people they want to work with, and then choose from a list (or from their own ideas) what sort of thing they want to create next. They can use the wiki I mentioned above for ideas. They will need to plan in quite a lot of detail - writing scripts, researching photos, making storyboards.

One thing I haven't decided yet is whether all the students will have to do the same things all at the same time. This would make sense from an administrative point of view, but not so much so from one of creativity. Any views?

That's it for now, then - but watch this space for updates on how things go in the run-up to the classes beginning.