my dream project – a live chat

We have once had the chat on the internet with all students in class. Even though there was no structure in it and everybody was just throwing in his two pennies worth that time (it was basically too unorganized), I really thought it could work in practice. We would just need separate chat rooms and a decent topic to talk about. So I had the idea of the following project:

First of all, I will ask the headmaster or the administrator of the classrooms (probably the janitor) plenty of time in advance to reserve the computer lab on a certain date. I will ask him to double check all the computers and verify that there is a computer for every person. Ideally, everybody would bring her/his own notebook because everybody knows best how to work it, however, you cannot take it for granted that everybody’s got a one.

In the lesson before the 90min session in the computer lab every student will get a worksheet with his/her task. Those tasks contain a person who has got a problem or at least any reason for speaking and a list with vocabulary help. The person can be someone applying for a job or a boss who is looking for an employee. Another idea could be that someone wants to rent an apartment and is therefore talking to the landlord. A blind date is as possible for having a reason for talking as a simple ask for the way to a certain building. Almost every reason for chat is imaginable. However, the teacher must take care that there is always a pair of people who are going to talk to one another, in the actual chat. Finally, every student should have a worksheet with a job and some vocabs on it. -> double-deckers are ok, too.

Ok, so let’s assume we have reached the planned day and there are enough functioning computers for everyone. Now, the people in class would have to access (sometimes register) a homepage providing chat service. As we did it in class, it might be the best to use a video projector to outline the homepage, the way how to register and eventually, a list with people being logged in.

Then I am going to prepare the chat rooms. One chat room has got the name “job office”, another one “flirt room” and so on and so forth, so that every student joins the room that fits her/his task. I am going to tell my students that this session is an English only lesson and therefore is meant to be one no German is allowed. I tell them that I will check the conversation in their chat rooms -> I do not want to see any German word! (I know that controlling their dialogues has a whiff of surveillance society, however, the whole project makes barely any sense when the pupils are solving their tasks in German!)

After they talked to one another in the predetermined constellation they are supposed to move around in class and then stop and on my mark and take the job from the person they are standing next to. (So they are not only sitting on their butt;-) Another idea which just strikes me is that everybody can just take the place of their neighbor on their right – that mixes up the groups, as well. You can give them a minute to read through their new task and then have them starting the conversation again. I will do that a couple of times till the session is almost at the end. Finally, the pupils can get a free choice which chat room they want to enter and are allowed to write about any topic they like – however, they are still urged to write in English!

Think of two questions concerning the use of the new media in the Steinmühle.

Here are the two aspects to find out about on today’s field trip to the Steinmühle:

1. What kind of foreknowledge can the teachers expect from their pupils in lower grades when they work with the new media in class?

2. In what way is the new media used in foreign language classes?

We have got New Year (hope it is going to be a happy one for those who read the entry – and now it is time to reply to the questions above, right… First of all, the trip to the Steinmühle was very informative. The teachers who answered our questions are competent and didn’t talk round the subject. (I sometimes realize that when (especially teachers) have not the faintest idea about the things one asked them.) However, they did very well.

The Steinmühle contains all kinds of grades… I mean, parents can send their children to that one school the 10 years they are obliged. So I wondered in how far the teachers could use the computer labs and the notebooks they’ve got in lower grades. That is what I asked the teacher. From her own experiences she told us that even the younger pupils bring a lot previous knowledge in working with computers. They can very often already handle the mouse and know how to switch on the pc. From grade four onwards everybody can conveniently work with the new media being at their disposal. Nevertheless, since working with a computer is an essential skill within all grades there is an introduction to the basic principles of working with a computer in the lowest grades. The teachers try to convey the basics as simple as possible and in kind of a playful manner. Besides that, the software they work with in school is easily accessible, so that using it is no big deal for the children. Furthermore, there are compulsory lessons in informatics in the sixth, seventh and ninth grade. Here they increase their knowledge about how to deal with a computer and learn how to use the internet as well as data handling. Ok, I see I lose my way a bit. To sum it up, I can be said that the children already bring plenty of foreknowledge and the rest will be given to them in the in class so that they can work with the computers in class.

Because I extended the first section a bit I want to cut the answer to the second question short. The new media is of course used in foreign language classes. With the help of the computer the children went on a virtual class trip through Australia within an Australia project.

In the lower grades they almost use the computers every week, since the classes work with an E-workbook. During the intermediate levels online dictionaries are consulted and when the students have reached an advanced level, they do power point presentations and internet researches to certain topics. To keep in mind, the teacher especially appreciated the variety of methods the new media provide. That can largely enrich the lessons and since the modernity of the new media makes the lessons more interesting and motivates. That can be seen as a positive side effect when they work with computers and so acquire the skills they are going to need in the future. Frankly, to me that is the main reason why I will work with the new media in school. As a teacher for upper stages I can expect a lot of foreknowledge from my students and will therefore ask them to use the computers on their own. So I hope to create a challenging and encouraging atmosphere with the help of the new media.

the new media in the Elsterschloss Gymnasium

Hi @ all,

in today’s blog task I am supposed to have a look in the “Schulprogramm” of my former grammar school in order to find out about its intended use of the new media in class. Since that school, the Elsterschloss Gymnasium, is located in eastern Germany I have no access right to the paper at full length right now. However, I looked it up on their website, where I found a short form of it. What stroke me first, there is not a single entry dealing with the New Media. So I used the search engine searching for “Computer”, “neue Medien”, “Internet” in the document, but again and again – no results. It is incredible that a school taking care of 1200 pupils does not give a toss on teaching the new media or at least haven’t it included as a central issue in their “Schulprogramm”. Even the homepage of the school offers no information about the use of computers in the classrooms. Of course there are certain courses in computer sciences. However, this is not what I run for.

So I try to remember the time when I used to go to school. Personally, I feel that there was not much use of the new media in our classes. Not in math, not in history, not in biology, not in sports – not at all? … No stop it, of course there was! During our EFL (English as a foreign language) classes we used to go to the computer lab once a moth and got a simple task. For instance, find out about medically assisted suicide on that and that website. However, that seemed to be rather a convulsive effort to imply the new media. I remember that most of the people checked their mails or visited other websites – I mean they were easily distracted by a computer having access to the internet and used the class in the lab as a timeout. (I do not want to exclude me in doing so…)

All in all my former school did (and probably does) not even try to involve the media and if some teachers tried, they failed. Don’t know whose blame that is. Maybe the headmaster does not urge the teachers enough to do so or the teachers have never attended a training of how to do so. So first I want to appreciate that the new media in foreign language education are offered at university and even are a firm issue of our teacher’s degree. Because to my mind the new media are a good basis for an eventful language learning on the one hand. Furthermore, since the new media gather a greater influence on the everyday life of the children and youths it is worth having a closer look on them. Therefore, it is a shame that the Elsterschloss has not included those in their curriculum. Anyhow, actually, I must respect the fact that my former English teacher tried to imply the new media. She had no idea how but at least the motivation to do it. Hopefully, I am going to have her motivation once. A good teaching unit with the new media should work then.

p.s. have a look on the website of the school:

http://www.elsterschloss-gymnasium.de/

an e-mail exchange project

I just visited a homepage where I hit on an e-mail project. I want to talk shortly introduce this project. However, for detailed descriptions follow the link below:

http://www.markus-grasmueck.de/projekte/gaigomailprojekt.html

This project treats of an e-mail exchange between a finnish school and a school in Japan. The pupils were supposed to write emails on certain topics and texts to their fellows in the other country in German. This demanded a high deal of discipline from not only the students in both countries but from the teachers who supervised the project, as well. They had to provide texts and had to care for their students language, since it was necessary to write in propper German in order for the recipient to understand the writing. The project started on October 2001 and ended in January 2002. The finnish students (eight altogether) were 14 and 15 years old and the students in Japan (they were six in number) were 17 and 18 years old. The aim was to use the German learned in school in practice. Nevertheless, they acquired plenty of knowledge about the culture of Japan, Finland and even Germany, too.

During the whole exchange project there were different types of topics the students worked with. What came first – of course the introduction. They get to know each other and then they created quizzes about their home countries, described interesting places around their schools or they kept a diary about their weekly experiences etc.. Furthermore, they sent messages to each other that were just of private interest. And neither of the two involved German teachers must afraid that they did not learn German, because every e-mail sent was inevitably composed in German, since that was the language both students could deal in well enough to talk properly.

Please look at the link above to get more information!

an impulsive breakout on the terminology used in the virtual session giving me a hard time

Nobody would have ever thought how complex the field of E-communication could be. I mean almost everybody of us uses email-programs, icq, guestbooks, forums and many more internet based communication tools every week, some of us even every day. However, it is like in every scientific field, beyond the user friendly applications are complicated trains of thought and hundreds of thousands technical terms describing apparently simple methods and distinguishing between things which to me are all the same. To illustrate this point, for communication tools such as email, newsgroup and forums I of course know that it takes the guy reading my writing a bit of time to respond to it. In all likelihood he is not sitting in front of his computer waiting for my mail. However, there must be a weird name for that and it is “asynchronous communication”. Of course that name makes sense, it is not my purpose to argue contrary. A “synchronous communication” is quite a proper name for chats or video-conferencing, too. Nevertheless, from the bottom of my head I was not able to answer the question in the virtual session what the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication tools were. So I worked through the answers and then of course I knew the difference. In the following it was a must for me to acquire the fancy vocabulary first, before I could start thinking about the answer to the question. My point is, first of all – why do I have to learn that computer language at all; can we not break down the complexity of the words to its sometimes far simpler concept (here it is just that an email is not replied at the same time it is written) ? Secondly, is this not disencouraging? Too much of the time we deal with the new media are just wasted by remembering (and as fast as we have understood them we forget those words again) complex not even daily vocabulary. So why not just saying smiley to a simple face which is laughing – who the hell had the idea to come up with the blend “emoticon”?! And why is there even a standard in internet slang? I’m not gonna ever use OTOH for “on the other hand” and if I did so – no one would understand me.

Ok so far for that. I definitely know that I am very narrowed in my opinion here and not even give a short glance to the other side – this might sometimes sound a bit dumb; like a blind fanatic who regards only his view on the world:-[ Of course there is another side. In a scientific field you need a common language, so that at least your colleagues know what you are talking about. You cannot always write down half a novel including “the communication tools which take place in real-time when two or more people meet to communicate” in order to explain that you refer to the synchronous ones. And by the way it sounds much smarter and précis when you use the technical terms, of course. Incidentally, I did that too when I called the “emoticon” a blend.

However, I do not intend to get rid of technical terminologies in general (what a nonsense would that be!!!!) but telling that it is not worth implying too many of the computer and internet terms in our teachers training since most of us will not memorize them.

advantages and disadvantages of internet researches

So what comes to my mind when I work trough the virtual session. It is about Internet research, right. Actually for me internet researches have an important significance. When I used to go to school it was stressful to give a presentation on a certain topic since before I got to know Wikipedia. I had to consult books, went to the library, asked my parents and at the end came up with an incomplete view on the topic. The time I received my computer and simultaneously an ISDN internet connection the effort to give a presentation decreased. In consequence the preparation time for it, as well since the internet knows everything and everything about everybody. However, not only the preparation time but unfortunately the time I scheduled for preparing a presentation decreased, too. Hence, the presentations did not improve at all. Quite the contrary, I had not enough time to tackle the topic intensively (you know, actually I had but just did not use it for school). I put off the workload till the evening before giving the presentation and made up excuses such as, “I just copy all the necessary information from Wikipedia!” or “I don’t need books or pictures – everything can be found on the internet much faster!” So I did not really learn something about the topic I had to deal with and had to explain my fellows the next day.

Ok, what I wanted to show with this stretched example is that using the internet which goes hand in hand with internet researches is not only a technical boon but to a certain extent also a curse. At first glance one only sees the advantages. Information can be collected quickly (as you see in the example above) but since you access so much data you could easily come across tons of irrelevant results. Thus, if you have no time to pitch on the worthwhile ones you can easily end up with a pile of pages merely for a simple biography.

On the other hand the internet is a non-expensive way of collecting information. Pay about 40€ a month for an access at some local provider and you get material for all the things you are interested in. Books are quite expensive and going to the library to get works on every specific topic (you actually just want to look up fast) can be quite inconvenient. Therefore, with a simple internet research you can gather independence of time (e.g. library opening hours) and of place (e.g. places of shops to buy information).

There are many other advantages and disadvantages while dealing with the internet. To cut a long story short “all that glitters is not gold”. Nevertheless, if you are acquainted to an internet research and have obtained a certain internet competence it is a straight-forward database for everyone.

What if computer skills and media technology were the most important things to learn in school?

I have immediately chosen this poster since it has some kind of a cliff hanger. This is the striking and controversial headline. What if computer skills and media technology were the most important things to learn in school? How I interpret this question is the following: Pupils and students are exposed to the fundaments of using a computer, the internet, multimedia and the technological stuff connected to it. Therefore people would know how to deal with the information they receive from the internet (e.g. they would know that they cannot rely on the advertising that they have won the lottery jackpot after having sent an email) and could easily receive the knowledge a math-, history-, biology teacher would convey via internet and computer technology in general. Hence, this idea means self-determined learning.

A couple of responds were attached around that question. To my mind a couple of them are quite thumb are could therefore be easily disregarded. The “Lehrplan” and the traditional learning objectives have of course no more influence on a class were computer skills and media technology are the most important things to learn in school. Our central disputable statement already implies that there is another type of “Lehrplan” and the traditional learning objectives have changed or nobody cares about them anymore. And that there will be “empty classrooms” left is definitely not a problem! However, some other references were quite meaningful. For instance, how could social competences be taught? Communication between the students would still function, since they are all located in school and are taught by teachers. Thus, while learning how to deal with certain features of a computer they could tackle certain tasks in groups. Even at this stage that is already working. Some guys who study informatics have to work with their partners to solve a computer based problem. That’s why I think teaching social competences is not the main problem.

As I have written above the basic idea of that statement is that every student can easily access all information she or he needs through a computer in particular via the internet. Personally, I feel the main problem would be that not every pupil will be able to understand complex certain complex matters such as nuclear physics or the composition of a language just by using texts and media but not having teachers who are able to explain a matter in their own words. Furthermore, learning in school means not only to store hard and fast facts like vocabulary (one could easily do that with drill and practice software) but comprehend interrelations and apply knowledge when dealing with a task. To practice those things can hardly be achieved by pupils who have the help of computers only. Especially younger pupils must experience the world in multisensory ways and do not merely need to know how to use a computer in order to see facts on the internet.

How do learning theories influence the schooling of prospective teachers?

This blog entry concerns learning theories and principles of learning and how I see their impact on the teachers degree. It may be convenient for you that I better sum up the three major theories and comment on each, one after the other. It is behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism. It is quite plain that there are other propositions, too. However these three are the important ones.

Behaviorism deals with the idea that learning works via conditioning. That happens when a natural reflex responds to a stimulus (to illustrate that – you all know Pavlov’s dog!) or if you get positive feedback on something – in that case the response is more probable. Personally, I feel this is actually very helpful in school. If your students know (meaning are accustomed to it) that you are going to write a short test every 3 days before the big exam, they probably will start their preparation not only the night before but a couple of days in advance. Nonetheless, this must be a strict rule – if you make exceptions the principle works against you.

The theory of cognitivism represents best that the general comprehension of learning has changed. Knowledge must be acquired by the learners. It can not merely be conveyed by the teacher or text books. Students must understand the information and not only learn it. Therefore the information must fulfill a pile of requirements: It must be relevant for the person being instructed to store it. The information must be packed up exciting and interesting, thus the student wants to learn it and be engaged with it. Last but not least the piece of information must be build up on prior knowledge. That is, that a student cannot purely learn it by heart without having any relation to it but must fit into the his/her level of mental capability. -> Do not expose fifth graders to nuclear physics;-) The next principle seamlessly attaches to this idea. That we construct our own understanding of the world, that is what the theory of constructivism comprises. So every piece of information we gather will be in queued to our already existing knowledge. So we build up our own individual understanding of the world. Keep in mind Plato’s Cave Analogy if you want to do a more intensive research on this principle.

So far so good, however, what do I personally think about those theories. Actually, they show that the notion of learning and hence, teaching has changed. It is not a teacher’s job to replay the knowledge around a field of study s/he has stored but rather find ways and methods to raise the student’s interest in it. Learners are not passive barrels waiting to be filled up with data but active humans who want to explore and experience the world around them. Seeing that, a smart teachers training is more important than any time before in order to educate the prospective generations successfully.

comment on Mark Bauerlein’s criticism

First, please watch the interview if you haven’t done that yet.

During an interview Mark Bauer complains about teenager’s tendencies spending the mass of their lieftime watching TV, surfing in the internet or dealing with a limited number of technical devices. In other words, they waste their time in a tiny social world in that they are stuck in. Irritatingly, he does not give any arguments supporting his claims but excerpts from his own life, what to my mind proves nothing at all. Besides this recently mentioned thesis he states that those people want their teachers to help them breaking out of that common life. For this reason teachers should much more often rebuke their students. As a prospective teacher I would like to respond to this statement, I clearly disagree with. In my view students want their teachers to encourage them to learn that there are many things which are worth being engaged in, but definitely do not want to be dispraised. That is, constant reproach causes stubbornness whereas a motivation stimulates. To illustrate this point, Robert Steinhäuser known as the person running amok in Erfurt had a bad relationship to his teachers, too, which was one reason he found no nonviolent way out of his social world. The example must not be generalized but for me it serves as an illustration for my firm conviction that rebuking students in order to show them another way of living will not crowned with success.

Hey@all

A warm welcome to all visitors of my blog.

In order to give a short introduction it must be said that the voluntariness concerning the creation of this blog has its limits. Since it is my job to do it in the context of a university class. However, this does not mean that the topics I am going to deal with here are tedious. I can honestly say that the subject is quite interesting and I will present it as inspiring as possible. Therefore, it would be a pleasure if I had raised your interest here and could welcome you much more often.

Cheers,

Thomas