Jul 02 2009
I threw together a VuVox collage to create a mini presentation for our annual Education Staff Retreat at KET. The presentation is a bit rough on the edges but it was fun to work with VuVox to create it. See if you can find the “Hot Spot” to Alan Levine’s 50 Tools for Story Telling. It is a GREAT resource for educators in finding Web 2.0 tools.
May 28 2009
Perhaps the way to “whip it”, the failure of our schools that is, is to place our focus (and preoccupation) elsewhere. On l e a r n i n g.
Thoroughly enjoyed these two recent Facebook discussions with Tom Welch, Janna Chiang, and others about schools and how the time may demand that we simply pass them by rather than try to change or “reform” them. We also touched on the need to get the word out to parents /students about viable and enriching learning opportunities out there. The Golden Swamp comes to mind on that point. I am interested in finding out more.
May 03 2009
Recently we came up with this blurb for our new German II course and I wanted to share. Very soon (Fall 2009) it will be time to deliver! Whew! The way I see it, we either pull this off or crash and burn. I’d prefer the first option.
A new and improved KET GERMAN II course is launching in Fall 2009! The new GERMAN II incorporates a modular approach students can use to customize aspects of their learning. Course participants navigate through a variety of instructional segments which are organized according to theme or topic. The result is a fast-paced—sometimes quirky but always fun!—way to learn. Dramatizations, music, interviews, authentic film clips, and slides shows are all part of the mix. In addition students complete online activities, and converse live with a tutor on a regular basis. This approach presents language in context to help students grasp meaning quickly and begin to communicate in German with confidence. Email John Krueger at jkrueger@ket.org to find out more.
Apr 30 2009
Ok, it is possible that the above title exaggerates a bit…but not by much. Honest!
Like most foreign language teachers I know, for some time now I have heard about Linguafolio and how as a portfolio-based, language-assessment tool that has origins in Europe, it can help students monitor and take control of their own learning. The idea always had an appeal to me but unfortunately I never found the time to delve into it and work it into classroom instruction.
Fast forward a number of years: I am now the teacher of an established K-12 online German program that finds itself in a period of rapid transition as we move away from traditional, lecture-based, one-way instruction. Though I had been taking care to include performance-based assessments in the new courses as a way of providing more context and meaning to the student-learning experience, there still were some sizable pieces missing from the puzzle. And I didn’t even realize it — that is,until I heard Ali Moeller from the University of Nebraska speak this past weekend.
Dr. Moeller was conducting a seminar called: LinguaFolio Review and Classroom Implementation for the Kentucky World Language Teacher Network. She reiterated the underlying ideas behind Linguafolio over the two-day event. In my opinion, the following LF requirements for students are especially ground-breaking and compelling:
• Goal setting
• Self assessment
• Self-reflection and self-regulation
All of these components reveal a focus that is central to the Linguafolio design: that the student become more and more responsible for his own learning.
Of course for any educational scenario, such an objective would be highly desirable. But for K-12 distance learning formats in particular, this is just what the doctor ordered: a way to ‘teach’ and/or instill independence in the learner. Of course the devil is in the details. There is a lot of work ahead - I will be documenting our LF path here- but , following the tenets of backwards design, if we start with where we want to end up (in this case: greater student responsibility and autonomy) then we will be able to build a better road to get there. Right?
My life is saved.
Click here for Linguafolio Kentucky
Click here for Linguafolio Virginia, Carolinas, Kentucky, Georgia.
Click here for Nebraska LF Teacher’s Guide.
Apr 15 2009
Judy Breck calls SEO (Search Engine Optimization) the”sleeping giant” in regards to its still unlocked potential for education. She has a point. The technology, through which websites like amazon.com are able to routinely send personalized suggestions regarding books, videos, or CDs, could allow any student a means of cutting through the messy and confusing cloud of information on the internet and accessing authentic resources instantly for his or her individual learning needs.
But not only has the education establishment been slow to unleash the power of Search Engine Optimization, it has failed to recognize the true source of this power: traffic. Much to its detriment:
Resources without traffic linger in the shadows and lose relevancy - which is awful on several levels for learning.
Because a majority of existing educational resources remain locked behind “proprietary wall of publishers and universities” Search Engine Optimization remains only a fragment of what it could be for learning. But Breck is confident that will change: As more and more traffic goes to resources that are online and therefore accessible through SEO, other institutions will open and “publish into the cloud as well.”
I am all for this process of opening up and becoming part of a global network of learning, although I do see obstacles on the way: copyright, for example. As a language teacher, it is extremely important to me that I include all kinds of music, images, and film in my lessons. I do this for the purpose of demonstrating culture and providing context. Or course I always make a point of giving credit to the author of a work. However I frequently use works in a derivative way to increase their educational value for the moment. I might loop a pop song for example or make a clip from part of a short film to demonstrate something for a particular lesson. If I were to do this on the open internet, I might run into legal trouble and ultimately have to refrain from the practice. And so, I continue my mixes and mashups behind the walls of my online classroom.
And what about student work that serves as material for collaborative projects? Should it all be published on the open internet? I do not think that Breck is advocating this…but how many of these “proprietary walls” will we still require?
I suspect that the answer lies somewhere in the middle: Online courses and educational institutions will publish content on the open internet in order to build traffic and remain relevant but will also make use of walls to respect student privacy and to allow a place for all of those things to develop that can make the classroom a special place: creativity, intimacy, and community.
Apr 10 2009
OK, perhaps I was seeing the glass half empty in my last post. In fact, I see it half full most days. I know that we are moving in the right direction. Though success can be elusive, sound goals are in place. It’s worth the continued effort.
In regards to the grouping of the students for collaborative work (on wikis for example), the idea just needs to be tweaked I think to make it work in an environment like ours where students and schools are on different schedules. For example, one could …
Because that’s what it is about after all: allowing students to develop collaboration skills. In order for that to happen of course, they MUST have the opportunity to work together.
Actually, I’ve always looked at collaboration primarily as a means of achieving something else: community—-a very important concern for distance learning. See my C+C=C hypothesis here. But I am beginning to see collaboration more and more as an important end goal in itself. Especially when I read articles like Ruth Reynard’s Web 2.0 Tools and K-12 Challenges in which she cites evidence that today’s employers …
usually comment on their need for employees who have more highly developed “employable skills,” rather than having only content knowledge about specific academic areas.
But what are those skills anyway? Reynard describes them this way:
Students with collaborative skills…
know how to evaluate a problem or situation; assess what information and resources are needed and what others have and can contribute to the challenges; maximize all of the resources and build on what is available to meet and address; and, hopefully, solve the problem or challenge posed.
So, in other words, our students need to be able to do the following when working with others:
Wow. That’s what I want for my students. Practice with real-life skills. That’s relevance.
So, ahem, I guess my work is cut out for me. I’ve got to do the following to ensure that my students will have have the opportunity to develop such all-important collaborative skills:
Back to forging a new battle plan…
Apr 08 2009
My mantra these last months has been the thesis from Moltke: No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I say it over and over again - sometimes while chanting ‘Rama Rama’ and ‘Hare Hare’ in between as I light some incense. (smile)
At the beginning of the school year I had big plans not only to introduce a host of new web platforms into the curriculum but also to get our students c o l l a b o r a t i n g on projects. As I’ve stated before, (here for example) the development of community is of the utmost importance in DL environments. We need to integrate community however we can, ESPECIALLY in DL. There are many ways to do this and certainly cultivating student collaboration must be one of them. If students work together on projects, then after a while they will get to know one another and communicate more and more. Before you know it, a new layer of support will develop. That is definitely where we want to go in Distance Learning because it will help put our students on equal footing with classroom learners.
But collaboration can be quite tricky to build into a DL curriculum when students start their school years at various times and follow completely different schedules. Such nonconforming school calendars can be a formidable obstacle to deal with when attempting to create rich student collaboration activities.
I did not take that into consideration when I based my plans for incorporating student collaboration on a model put forth by Kato and Rosen in the November 2007 edition of The Language Educator. (See my take on it here) Their approach was designed for use in a community college context where students are all on the same course calendar.
In such an arrangement, students from different locations, say: locations A, B, C, and D are put together in groups where they post writing on a wiki page and comment on each other’s work. I attempted this approach this past year but I did not consider that it would be too confusing to monitor and assess since students start the school year at different times.
Well that blunder in organization has since been fixed and we now organize the student work on wikis according to school. But I continue to think of ways to have students collaborate on various projects throughout the year. We will get there. I am confident.
As a friend once reminded me, one of the great parts of being a teacher is that each August one gets to begin anew with fresh ideas.
Mar 31 2009
The way content is organized is what will begin to blur the differences between DL and classroom scenarios. If the same or similar content is accessible in both, then what is the difference between the two?
Perhaps the direct feedback aspect. Working on that one! 
Mar 27 2009
Yes, I will try to teach culture. I’ll do my best because after all: culture is why we study foreign languages in the first place, right? We were charmed by the culture and never lost our taste for it. We yearn for it still.
But I can’t simply tell the story of culture and expect students to understand. They have to experience it themselves. It’s so hard to remember that.
I think we must include it at every turn. And be sneaky about it.
Embed it in the curriculum. Without any intro.
Explanation and elaboration can come later. But only after the fact.
Mar 27 2009
April is not yet here, but the showers have begun. I feel inclined to include some of my favorite lines from the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (translated into Modern English):
When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,
Quickened again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun
Into the Ram one half his course has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye ……
With much work, successes, and setbacks in between, I feel compelled to write again. Most of all, it’s about thinking. I need to think. And so I will write…again.