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.

Ok, I guess I should know these things already: For some time now I’ve been considering ways of providing students writing practice in a dl environment. I have thought about blogs and about wikis too…but it wasn’t until last weekend when I happened upon an excellent piece by Kato and Rosen in the November 2007 edition of The Language Educator that I finally felt I could proceed with confidence and begin drawing up a game plan.Their article is called: Improving Proficiency: Building Community: A Wiki Case Study. (For basic information on wikis go here or here. )

Writing has always been one of the most difficult and frustrating areas of language to “teach” because it involves getting students to understand and buy in to the idea that putting thoughts to paper is actually a process. In the traditional classroom that journey can be an uphill battle to say the least. Add some distance to the equation (as in distance learning) and things get even more challenging.

Most assignments attempt to deliberately instill an awareness for the writing process, say, by requiring students to submit a number of drafts before turning in a final composition. But imposing a contrived process will rarely push students to work hard on improving their writing and come to important insights on their own. For that, two important ingredients, audience and purpose, must first be present. The wiki platform can help to ensure that they are.

And then some.

How do wikis do it? Simply by providing a collaborative space where students can get to know each other, become involved in classwork, and exchange (and edit!) ideas. In their article, Kato and Rosen describe their approach to incorporating wikis in Japanese distance-learning courses administered by the Collaborative Language Program (CLP) at the University of Wisconsin. As a part of each assignment, students from diverse geographical locations join learning groups. Groups are made up of about four to five members. The small-size helps keep the interaction focused so that members quickly become acquainted with one another. Assignments are organized in three stages, each of which entails a specific type of posting. They are: 1) Personal response. Students are encouraged to write from their personal lives as they reflect and respond to a set of questions on a particular theme that is being studied. 2) Commenting and questioning (and proofreading.) Students read their own group members’ postings, and post at least 3 questions. They also highlight three errors that they found after reading the postings of one other group. 3) Responding (and correcting.) Students respond to the questions from posting 2 and correct errors that have been marked.

One of the great strengths of this set up, as Kato and Rosen point out, is that students are writing regularly in the target language, as well as correcting and rewriting drafts. The writing process is built in naturally and does not feel artificial because the audience is not only the teacher but a network of fellow language learners.

In addition to these regular target-language writing assignments, students are encouraged to initiate their own wikis in which they discuss in English various aspects of the target culture ( music, food and animé were popular topics.) What an awesome means for cultivating student interest and promoting life-long learning!

By allowing students to connect with each other, and collaborate (and socialize!) wikis provide fertile ground for a community of learners to evolve naturally. The real beauty of this process is that it can occur regardless of geographic location or time-zone. (Though one wonders whether kids might connect and participate more actively because of these factors, i.e. because they are far removed from each other geographically, they are perhaps more interested in being part of a community than regular classroom learners. Distance makes the heart grow fonder! ) In any respect, the wiki platform seems practically custom made to answer to the challenges inherent in k12 distance learning.

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.

The need for students to be able to add text comments to class content –like on the youtube site or on Chinesepod (see below) — seems more and more inevitable. The advantages cannot be overlooked…. especially for K12 distance learning where we have to overcome geographical obstacles and work to ensure that students perceive a special sense of belonging and community. In K12 distance learning it is just as important that instruction be delivered with a personal touch as it is in the regular classroom. By writing comments, students will begin interacting with each other and –before you know it–teaching one another. The teacher can chime in too of course.

If that is indeed where we are going then it will be important to draw up a list of expectations and etiquette for acceptable Web 2.0 use. I am not sure if this has already been done, but a colleague sent me this link from the Des Moines Register where they have established an etiquette policy for their readers that evidently has been quite successful.

What we’ll allow and what we won’t.

Spelling out a few rules.