My name is Esther Soria and I'm a student of Primary Education in Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, in fact, I'm doing the English minor as I want to be an English teacher. During this first semester, I'm doing a subject called Aprenentatge de la llengua estrangera en l'Educació primària mitjançant les TIC, in which we are learning how to introduce Technology Enhanced Project Based Language Learning (TEPBLL) in our classrooms. Now you are probably wondering... what is this?
As Melinda Dooly (2014) says, we have to re-think how we teach languages, we have got to find a new education paradigm that integrates language, technology, competences, new notions of knowledge and learning based on socially-distributed cognition.
Nowadays, technology is in our daily lives that's why at school, we don't have to look to another side; we have to face children's reality and take profit from it. If children are engaged with technology, why do not introducing it in class to motivate language learning? This is the key point of TEPBLL, it focuses on language learning through real communication contexts, apart from a lot more things that we will see as we go on in this blog.
Before starting reading my reflections, here you have a link in which you can know me better!
I hope you enjoy it and you join me in this learner reflection!
Before going in depht, I would like to set out which competences I want to improve during the course so that, at the end, I will be able to assess how it has gone.
According to the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages (2007), there are some main competences and knowledge required of a good foreign language teacher. Going through these competences will allow me to see which ones I already have, which ones I want to work on during this course and, finally, which ones I will deal with in upcoming years.
If you click the link below you'll see which competences I have chosen to develop during these months. Once you're in there, you have to click on each title and, then, it will appear the competences chosen from each section.
This is the first week, not only in this subject, but also in the English minor, that's why I feel excited for starting something new but, at the same time, worried for what might happen.
Although I have never got along well with technology, it is the new era in
which our students are, that’s why I’m really interested in learning new
resources to use in classroom and improve my teaching.
Here you have some reflections about how I have felt during my first day!
This week I haven't had any class as it was La Mercè but we have had our first meeting! I was really nervous because I was starting something new just with the guidelines of the blog and with only one class done in the previous week.
As an autonomous work we had an assigned text to read! In my case, I read a very interesting article about Virtual Worlds, written by Dr. Sadler. [Sadler, R. (2012). Virtual Worlds for Language Learning. From theory to practice. (pp.55-78). Bern/Wien: Peter Lang.].
When I saw I had to read such an academic text, first I was a little bit scared, but then I started reading it and it was easier than expected. Probably, it was because I have been reading about these authors before in the degree, so having previous knowledge about it really helped me to understand it.
After reading all the text, I think that the most important idea is that, as Dewey, Vygotsky and Kolb highlight, we should teach in new environments giving priority to students' interactions. As we know, this idea appeared a long time ago, but we still use tradicional methodologies at schools. Here is where it comes the importance of including technology in class. Thanks to Virtual Worlds, we can create truly communicative environments where the students are engaged while they are learning, not only language but a lot of useful competences for their near future.
Once we have assimilated the content, we met
the members of our group (seek&found) to exchange information. Here you have the conclusions we arrived to...
In this week, I’m
starting to see the importance of collaboration. For example, we couldn’t have
done this group discussion if all the members hadn’t read the articles first.
It’s very important that each student feels responsible not only for his/her
own learning, but also for their peers’ learning.
Moreover, we have to present each task using different tools so we can pick up ideas
and resources that catch our attention for, later on, using them in class. In
this meeting, for example, we had to present some ideas related to work
telecollaboratively. What we have done it’s, first, we have opened a google docs to work on it all the members and, then, we posted everything on a prezi to present it to
our classmates. Here you have the result of our discussion!
In this week we were doing our Practicum at
different Primary schools, for this reason, we haven’t had neither class nor
meeting. What we have had was an asynchronous online activity in which we had to
start thinking about possible ideas for the TEPBLL we are going to plan.
Surprisingly, it was easy to reach an agreement
as most of our ideas were very similar (food, festivals ...). In this case I
was the leader of this activity and it worked very well. I created a google
docs where each member could include her ideas using the scheme provided by the
teacher in order to, later on, be able to discuss them.
It was an intense week as Practicum let us very
few hours to do all the homework from university. This made me feel a little bit
overwhelmed because with so much work I couldn’t go in depth as much as I would
like with all the materials provided.
Apart from these activities, we had to explore UniCollaboration website. I was really surprised because I didn’t know that there were websites destined exclusively to promote
telecollaborative projects. Here is where I started to be aware of the
magnitude a TEPBLL has and how it can help students and teachers to grow up
academically and personally. Here you have some ideas I want to point out. UniCollaboration
During this week, we had to choose a tool for doing
a critical review. The truth is that it took me some time to decide which tool I
wanted to use as I don’t master many tools and I didn’t want to choose a known
one but discover new ones. First, I decided to delve into some tools that we
were using in class and they were new to me, such as Padlet, but as time went by, many
people had chosen them before. Finally, I found a tool (WeVideo) which I
consider that could be interesting.
This week has been very useful, I have learnt a lot of things, I have clarified some issues and I have organised much better all the information I had until now. Here you can see a summary of it!
The class has just started when the teacher
said we had an exam. First I was scared, I have been working really hard through
all the materials provided, but I didn’t know if I could show everything I
learnt in the exam. Once I read it, I was more relaxed, most of the questions were
familiar to me. Then, the teacher said we had to stop and I thought it was the
end of the time, fortunately, it was just a moment because we were going to
continue it in couples. At this point, I
was far more calmed as I knew I had the support of a colleague who had also
prepared the materials and, to my surprise, almost all the answers were very
similar!
Finally, we made groups of four where two of my
peers had the answers to my exam and vice versa. At this moment I realised
three things:
1) I had underestimated me because my answers
were on the right track. I think I could have done it well if it was a real
exam.
2) Children also suffer this anxiety during an exam. Moreover, the final
result made from the combination of the pair or group work is even more rewarding than the individual one.
3) Everything, from the individual exam through
partners and finally in groups, is part of the learning process.
Here you can see my feelings before the exam and after it:
Afterwards, each group explained the ideas of each TEPBLL; ours was called “The Holiday Buzz”. It was a really discouraging session because we were very engaged in our project and it wasn’t telecollaborative enough. Moreover, we didn’t know how to make students collaborate by creating interdependence between them. We thought a lot of different ideas but anyone actually fitted in. However, I have to say that the group to whom we were presenting our TEPBLL was very helpful as they provided some suggestions to improve it. Finally, during the meeting I came out with an idea, why not searching information from different countries rather than exchanging only their own experiences? From here, everything went better.
At the end of the class, each student had to
explore one tool, in my case Wordle. I must say that I have never thought
before that I could take such profit for a TEPBLL from a tool that, at first,
seems quite simple!
Throughout this week, I also finished my
critical review. Initially it was a challenge that I did not know if I would be
able to overcome, I have never used camptasia
and I have never done a tutorial before, not even in my mother tongue! I
prepared carefully what I was going to say and, with clear ideas, I carried out
my proposal. Actually, it took me less than expected and I'm pretty satisfied
with my result considering that I haven’t had any prior experience in this
field.
In class we made groups where each member had to investigate one learning style. This class was very interesting not only to know
all the learning styles that must be taken into account when planning a project
and how to introduce them, but also because it came to discussion interesting
issues such as whether we tend to use more activities related to the learning
style we are or not, among others.
Here you have a summary of the four Learning
Styles and some tips to take all of them into account when planning a TEBLL!
After that, it came out a discussion about all
the hard work we were having during the subject. As I mentioned earlier weeks, I think it’s
very interesting everything we are doing because we're working firsthand
resources that may be useful in our future as teachers. We always say how the activities
should be but we have never applied it during all the degree and probably it
scares us. However, I believe there is too much work to be done each week and,
for this reason, I can’t delve into the material as much as I'd like to.
At the end of the class, each group of students explored one tool, in my case TIKaTOK. Here you have the reflections done in class about it!
Almost every week, we have commented in class different questions related to the bus metaphor. I have not explained all of them explicitly in the blog as I presented all the reflections in the slideshare of the 6th week. Nevertheless, I found really important the fact of having a Plan B when planning, so I will add some more comments about this issue.
Having a Plan B is a really important thing to bear in mind because,
when we are in class, most of the times we will have to deal with some unexpected
problems that could appear. One of the interesting purposes we have discussed was
to keep a diary, so the teacher can take notes from everything he/she sees in
the class so that, later on, he/she can do the appropriate modifications of the
planning to adequate it to children’s needs.
Little could I expect that I will see the need of a plan B in the same
session! At the end of the class, we went to the computers room to work on
Second Life. I was very excited as I have never worked before with such tool.
It was surprising the fact of having all the students at the same time and at
the same place while the teacher is explaining, in this case Dr. Sadler was
teaching us how to use it.
However, I think we should be very careful with this tool because
everyone can access to these platforms unless you have a private island. Strangers
can talk to students which is, actually, what has happened to us. Also, we have
to keep in mind that the internet connection can fail and you NEED TO HAVE A
PLAN B ready. This is what happened to me, I felt frustrated because every time I
tried to access to the platform, the computer was not working and I couldn’t enjoy the activity. Apart from that, we have also commented some slides from a PPT about "Question 2" from The Bus Metaphor. As I said before, I have summarised the content in week 6, but I would like to emphasize some issues. One of the most important things when planning is to state a learning objective apart from the
output. Sometimes, we focus too much on the final output we want to obtain and
we guide the activities to achieve it. This, can make us forget our learning
goal which is as important as the product we want to obtain. The final part of the class, discussing with
other groups, was very enriching as it came out some opinions that were
really interesting to discuss, such as if we have to change or adapt the
objectives, which objectives we have to share with kids, … Although we had some
different opinions, it made me think about different issues to take into
account when planning a TEPBLL. In the meeting... 6th meeting
Dodge, J. (2009). 25 quick formative
assessments for a differentiated classroom. New York / Buenos Aires:
Scholastic. Retrieved 28 May 2014 from http://store.scholastic.com/content/stores/media/products/samples/21/9780545087421.pdf
Policy 2520.7
21st Century Foreign Language ContentStandards and Objectives for West
Virginia School.
Before ending, I would like to summarise some ideas about the first article as I think assessment is an important part of the learning process that, sometimes, we tend to forget. FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
For this week, we had to make a self-reflection about all we have been working on. As you have been seeing, I have learnt a lot of things! Apart from the last ones explained (formative assessment, plan B...), I have some other issues to comment, let's have a look!
In class, we have been discussing the feedback
from our colleagues about our TEPBLL. Although some of the comments we had improved before, I think the discussion has been very helpful. I
realized it helped me to clarify the main issues to consider when planning a successful TEPBLL. Moreover, I have been able to criticise the drafts much better than at the beginning of the subject. Sometimes, it's easier to see "the mistakes" but it's more difficult to think about how to improve them.
Dervin, F., Paatela-Nieminen, M., Kuoppala, K., Riitaoja, A-L. (2012). Multicultural education in Finland: Renewed intercultural competencies to the rescue? International Journal of Multicultural Education, 14(3), 1-13
Although I think that the finish lecturer is going to be very interesting, I found the text a little bit difficult to understand. Therefore, I formulate some questions that worried me about how to deal with multiculturalism in class. I must say that I’m very excited because I‘m curious to know what she will explain, not only about multiculturalism, but also about the finish education system as we have very good results from it.
This week, we haven’t had any meeting but, as
we all agreed, we have been doing the theoretical framework and improving the advertisement
in order not to leave everything for the last meeting. Moreover, as Melinda sent
us feedback from our TEPBLL, I gathered all the information and I made the
necessary improvements. I have to say that I’m very glad with the feedback as
we have finally made a truly collaborative project! I'm also very
happy because we have been carrying out the tasks up to date thanks to tools, such as google docs, that have allowed us to work at the same time in the same document.
We are arriving to the end... you'll see the result of our work next week!
In class, we made a very interesting dynamic
called "Fishbowl" where a group was placed in a circle and another
group was placed in a circle surrounding the first group. The group who was inside
had to discuss some questions that we had proposed in previous classes, while
the group located outside had to observe and take notes.
Here you can read some comments of my group and my feelings during the activity:
The last meeting was pretty fast because, as I
said earlier, during the week we were working asynchronously to improve the
project so, in the meeting, we have just refined some details.
Then, we did the exam. The situation was a little
bit strange because UIUC students didn’t have any exam, so we were supposed to
do a task together when part of the group didn’t have to. However, our UIUC
mate participated in the discussion, but perhaps not as actively as if it was
also his task, we should always do parallel activities.
At the end, the exam was fine since we had similar ideas
about the questions proposed. The moment of farewell reminded me the first
meeting, everything has gone quite fast so we had the work done but nobody took
the initiative to say goodbye. Finally two of us started saying “it has been a
pleasure…” and we said goodbye.
In class, we evaluated the advertisements of
our peers’ projects. The fact that half of the audience has to assess the jury
and the other half the presenters, is a good way to keep public's attention. Moreover, as the jury had to ask questions, we could clarify some
doubts that, otherwise, it might be difficult to do. Thanks to this, we could
get a gist of what the project is about, their main objectives, resources...
for, later on, assessing the written document.
During the week, I have been assessing
Travelling Teachers’ project. While evaluating it, I have realised I’ve made a
big change from the first to the last week when critically assessing. I thought
I wouldn’t be able to critically evaluate a work based on a methodology that,
until now, I didn’t even know it existed. During this assessment, I’ve realized
how many things I've learned, sometimes, even without being fully aware of it.
I could see that it is not necessary to have an expert teacher in front of the
class to learn, but with his/her guidance we could build our knowledge. We
started very afraid of this way of working but, actually, it is how we want to teach
in our classrooms; TEPBLL has the theoretical basis we have always defended
and, at the end, we have seen that, with effort, we have learnt more and better
than we could ever think.
On the last day of class, we did a dynamic
where, in pairs, we had to answer some questions projected on the whiteboard.
Then, we had to change the partner for answering others and, in this case, the
couple had to be someone with whom we haven’t worked before so, it was very interesting
to share new ideas. After that, we had to think individually some questions we
still have. The truth is that, this moment was a little bit uncomfortable
because we have been asking so many questions throughout the course that, now, I
didn’t know exactly what to ask. Nevertheless, when we put in common our
questions in group, I realised that there were some doubts I also had
during the course. Finally, we wrote the questions on a post-it and we stuck it
on a wall. Then, in order to choose which group was going to be the first one to pick a question, the
teacher said a topic (for example clothes) and each group had to guess which
clothes the teacher was thinking about. I found really interesting this dynamic
as students can learn vocabulary without even being aware of it. Once each
group had a question, we discussed them together.
Here you can see the reflections we made during the discussion!
I think that this last part of the class has
been too long as many questions were repeated and we were saying the same
things we have been talking about during the whole course. Nevertheless, we had
a surprising “final exam”. We were supposed to ask three questions, two of them
were related to naming famous people (nobel prices...) and the last one was to
name three teachers that have had an impact on us. Obviously, we couldn’t answer
the first and the second questions, but the third one everyone has thought about
someone. This makes us aware of the importance we have in childrens’ live. We,
absolutely, are change agents.
Before ending, I would like to go back and take up again the competences I set out to develop during the subject. Here you can see my reflection about them after doing the whole course.
