Languages from a Distance

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!

I started teaching when the mimeograph machine had been out of use for only a short time and still remember years earlier as a student smelling the freshly run-off dittos as the teacher passed them out. For these reasons and more I think you would agree I am entitled to provide a brief one-paragraph account here of the evolution of technology in our schools from 15 years ago to the present. Here goes:

Web 1.0 brought a universe of authentic content to our fingertips. It was liberating because it helped open up the walls of the classroom to the outside world. But it was just a first step. We still managed things pretty much as we had before…viewing content as something to be studied, static and separated from our touch. But then a whirlwind began to stir….or, rather, a tsunami? By allowing us to interact with content and create our own, Web 2.0 set off the revolution that we are now in the midst of.

Ho hum. It’s already an old story, I know.

But we need to rise to the occassion. With all the activity and innovation out there today, we have an opportunity as never before to MAKE UP for the distance in dl. We can provide our students–most of them in rural and remote areas–the opportunity to experience something that is a rare find even in the best schools: more personalized learning, collaboration, and interaction with the outside world.

We had better take advantage of this chance.

Sure, I understand the phenomenon of mass collaboration. There’s no rocket science involved. It makes sense as a scientific theory. Why the hype?

Well, whenever you experience its workings first hand, you can’t help but feel a little awe-struck.

Case in point: As I’ve l been experimenting with a myriad of wonderful web tools out there — for the development of a new, single-year of curriculum (and desperately trying to narrow down my focus,) it has become clear that it will be necessary to keep things as flexible and open-ended as possible. There’s no way around it. Things are changing so quickly.

For some time I’ve been carrying around this urgent but vague notion about what is needed: something flexible and open-ended…okay, but what? And now I find that many others have been working on this idea all along: it’s called loosely coupled teaching. Last week I first encountered the term in a post on Scott Leslie’s blog edtechpost and found out that there is even a whole group of educators who blog about LCT ! Some great ideas there!

Loosely coupled teaching makes use of loosely coupled tools, i.e. individual platforms that exist on the public internet. On his blog, Leslie is compiling a list of best practice examples of courses “taught using contemporary social software/web 2.0 tools outside a course management system.” Leslie concentrates his interests mainly in the arena of higher learning, but no matter. LCT shows great potential for K12 and dl as well.

And so I am awed and thankful that this conversation has already been taking place. The ongoing collaboration could bear some substantial results.

The rate at which amazing educational tools are being created and refined in just the last months is beyond comprehension. I hope by now you have come to terms with the fact that there is no way that you will be able to keep up with it all– especially if you are a teacher (i.e. you ALREADY have no life.) The good news is there are some great edtech bloggers out there who do a lot of important investigative work for you. My favorites are Will Richardson and Wes Fryer. In the end however you will have to decide on your own which technologies work the best for your unique circumstances.

Where to start? Well, what are the priorities you’ve set out for yourself in your teaching?

As a world language teacher, the idea of helping my students establish connections with young people in the target culture has long been a central part of my approach to instruction. But now that I have gone into distance learning, connections play an even bigger role. Connections are part of what has become the triumvirate of top considerations for me when deciding the road ahead. The formula I’ve come up with goes something like this: connections+collaboration= community. For years, research has shown us that community is essential to students’ feeling of success and satisfaction in distance learning. See here. Thus we have to urgently seek out means of connection and collaboration for our students to ensure that a community can establish itself.

New web technologies provide us with so many great tools. In the last month I have narrowed my focus down to a small assortment that I’m monitoring closely, some older and more familiar than others: Facebook, Ustream, Voicethread, Gabcast, Mindmeister, Google Earth, Yugma, Skype, and Second Life. Though the list is long, I think that each platform offers something unique..and yet is easily accessible and user friendly (Second Life may be a bit of an exception here.) Many of these tools and platforms can be used in conjunction with others. I’ll be commenting on my experiences with them in future posts.

Doubts? Plenty. I do worry about what happens if the community that we’re aiming for does not materialize….Students seem so “maxed out” these days. Will they be willing to set aside time and get actively involved?

How to avoid failure? We’ll build towards community slowly. Providing students opportunities for connections comes first. Of course we will push the opportunities through incentives…. And then collaboration will be required as well.

Over the weekend I attended a great workshop at the Kentucky World Languages Association 2007 Fall Conference called: Putting the Spotlight on Student Performance(s). Susan Marnatti and Thomas Sauer were the presenters.The topic is nothing new. Teachers have long been encouraged to use performance events for assessment in place of traditional tests. This workshop made compelling arguments why they should in fact do so– student achievement increases dramatically! –and provided a handout with prompts for actual events (or as students refer to them: projects) that Susan has used in class. Participants were also advised on ways to begin integrating performance events into instruction. How to begin? According to Susan, one should begin ……at the end.

If you begin planning a unit with the end in mind, i.e. what should students be able to do after they have completed the unit, you can easily create an “event” through which the students can demonstrate their newly acquired abilities. Susan and Thomas recommend writing down a list of “can-do” statements as a way of determining what those abilities should be. Once the event is created, it becomes the focal point of instruction. Everything else falls into place.

What about grammar?

Well, how much grammar will be needed for students to successfully complete the performance event? Do they need to have the ability to use a number of verbs, say about 10-15, in the past tense? If so, then during instructional time students should have ample amounts of practice using 10-15 verbs in the past tense. Everything proceeds in anticipation of the culminating project when students can show off their skills.

There are many advantages to concentrating instruction around such events. One advantage not to be underestimated is that students seem to be AWARE of them . In fact according to Susan they actually LOOK FORWARD to performance events and afterwards even REMEMBER them. Susan related that she frequently hears a comment like “When can we finally do the Doll House project, Frau?” and never one like: “I can’t wait till we take that test on dative prepositions!” After the performance project is completed, the whole class should complete a short list of open-ended statements that the teacher has prepared beforehand. In this way students “can reflect on what they have learned and where they are headed.”

I had seen Susan present a couple of years before about performance assessments and how they tie into the Linguafolio. The newer session had a lot of the same core material from that earlier presentation. The message and discussion are so important however. We need to continue to revisit this topic . Especially so since I would guess that most foreign-language teachers today still use pencil-and -paper, classroom-isolated tests. It’s understandable. After all, a teacher carries such a heavy work load as it is. Additional tasks are heaped on every day…how can they be expected to create curriculum and assessment pieces on their own too?

That question brings up one of the most fundamental messages of the workshop, I think: that the teacher should tailor the performance assessment idea to his or her teaching. Susan stresses how these events should be incorporated into the curriculum one at a time (perhaps one year at a time?!!) Otherwise we risk the danger of teacher overload. We don’t need more work! We need more success! Do one of these a year. For the following year, revisit and tweak the original and try to add another for a different unit.

If performance-based assessment is so good—and I believe it is–the question is how can we get all teachers to integrate it into instruction? Certainly there must be a push from the state and district level. Teachers should be expected to include more and more performance measures in their courses. And yet I would have reservations about steps that imposed teacher compliance all too firmly or in a sweeping manner district wide.

In Virginia, Fairfax County Schools have taken the lead nationally in embracing performance measures by developing a vast resource bank of performance-based tests over the years, the well-known Performance Assessment for Language Students (PALS.) There are two basic types of PALS: written and spoken. For each level of language study, students are expected to complete one written and one spoken PALS for every quarter of the school year in addition to two summative PALS(one spoken, one written) at the completion of the course. Fairfax teachers are encouraged to submit their own PALS prompts according to a template in which proficiency categories are listed: level of discourse, comprehensibility, vocabulary, etc, etc… The pool of ideas is awesome –perhaps FCPS can be convinced to go “open source” with it? (smile) Think how many learners would benefit!

Because the Fairfax County school system is so gigantic (the 13th largest in the country with over 164,000 students) the decision to go with PALS as a district requirement was a massive–and bold– undertaking. But I wonder if a slower approach that leads to gradual integration and teacher ownership would somehow be possible. I know that some Fairfax teachers grumble about the PALS requirement. Large school systems have so many complicated and thorny issues to deal with and I am not presuming to know the answer.

How to incorporate performance events in a K-12 distance-learning curriculum? With the help of technology, there are more possibilities than ever before. I will be drawing up some concrete plans in the next weeks.

It’s time to come clean. I have to admit that I have been a skeptic of distance learning for years. It all goes back to my TV Spanish course back in the sixth grade I think. It was such a failure in my eyes that still years later I was never able to see distance learning as a viable format for education—-until now, that is…but more about THAT later!! These days I ask myself what it was in that experience that disappointed me so much and even made me feel resentful.

Now I figured it out. The answer lies in the most central ingredient of the program: i.e. the ?”TV?” part of TV Spanish. The television is an apparatus that transmits information entirely in one direction. It’s no wonder we sixth graders were not amused. In the new setting we had an even more diminished role in “learning.” What little influence we had enjoyed in the regular classroom was now completely taken away . Whereas before we could at least provide feedback to the teacher—through our puzzled looks or our glazed-over, sleepy eyes—we now were utterly powerless. This new, electronic instructor took no note of our well being and plowed on through the lesson.

What could we do?

We rebelled of course and in the end had our revenge. TV Spanish died a disgraceful death and soon vanished into oblivion. Or did it? I don’t even remember…I was too busy growing up. It doesn’t matter anymore.

In the end though the creators of TV Spanish for sixth graders should not be blamed for the failure of their project. They were merely complying with the general assumptions in education at the time which have persisted for decades in schools. Like everyone else they were made gullible and blind by a very persuasive metaphor: that learning is simply a matter of filling vessels with knowledge. If it were so, television would undoubtedly be hard to beat as a classroom tool. Is anything better at disseminating information (and misinformation?) The internet comes close.

Perhaps the lesson of TV Spanish is that distance learning is especially ill suited to rely on a one-way, stand-and-deliver format upon which to base instruction since there is no on-site teacher to intervene and gauge the student responses. If DL is to become a viable alternative to classroom instruction then it must offer something more.

Foreign language instruction from a distance? The idea may arouse some skepticism…and perhaps rightly so. After all even in a traditional environment like the high school classroom, teaching a second language is a challenging endeavor to say the least.

Nevertheless, distance learning will most certainly experience rapid growth in the decades to come as educational goals become more individualized and focused. How can foreign languages be taught in this new instructional context? Learning (and teaching) a second language is tricky business and there are many parts of the puzzle to consider. These pages we will explore both the possibilities and challenges that distance learning presents students and educators alike