Languages from a Distance

There must be a mistake. I’m a Virgo. Virgos are meticulous, neat, well organized and especially fastidious when it comes to finances. Ahmmm…that is –unfortunately– SO not me!

I’m a teacher. Another mistake somewhere? After all…teachers relish and excel at multitasking. I dread it and am less than stellar at it. I love a morning when I can think about ONE thing.

Why am I writing this? Well, I’m at it again. Doing fourteen things at once and feeling like I’m not quite covering the bases… The new course is coming out soon. And therefore when a little serendipity comes my way, it is most welcome!

I’m still working on a way to incorporate LinguaFolio into the plan. I was so excited about the prospect of being part of the LinguaFolio online pilot. It was the answer to my prayers I was sure. How much more manageable an online option would make incorporating LF in K12 Distance Learning courses! How difficult a paper-and-pencil LinguaFolio would be to monitor over the miles and miles that separate me from my students.

Well, I just learned today that the online LF is not gonna happen this year. And for the whole afternoon I was trying to figure out how I was going to make this work. Then I checked my twitter page and behold the following Tweet from Mandy Lindgren appeared before my eyes.

E-portfolios! That’s it! That’s what I need! I clicked the link and eventually found materials by Helen Barrett. Check out her blog entry on e- Portfolios here. She’s got an AWESOME slide show with step-by-step instructions on how to create an e-Portfolio. To access it, go here.

By referring to Helen’s instructions, I was able to develop a thinking guide (using Exploratree) that is helping me feel quite a bit more at ease with all of the concepts to consider when dealing with LF. The guide is still quite rough and definitely not finished (see below). But I’m beginning to feel like I can do this.

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.

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.