Wikis for vocabulary work

The task consisted of putting vocabulary words- together with definitions, examples, images, translations, on the wikis. We had a list of 600 words from Barron's 600 Essential Words for the TOEIC Workbook. We divided the words between the two teams- 300 each- and told them that their job was to learn the words, make sure their teammates learned the words, and make sure the other team learned them, too. The idea was to give the students responsibility not only for their own learning, but for their classmates' learning, too.
The team together had to decide how they would work, and who would be responsible for what. Now, remember that my goal is to see if a learning community would form among the students. The literature tells us that a learning community needs to have several elements: they need to establish a goal, they need to set up rules, they need to create a sense of common identity, they need to feel shared responsibility, they need to negotiate their different points of view to give way to a shared one, and, very importantly, they need to build knowledge.
In Team 1, it was clear to see the first five elements: they spent a lot of time and thought on giving their team a name, on establishing the whats and hows and whys of their project, and on teaching each other, too. The relationship was symmetrical in the sense that their was no student who was the clear expert. They learned individually how to work with the wiki, and they shared that knowledge with others.
These elements were less clear in Team 2, pretty much they divided up the work and then did it individually. However, I can't honestly say that there was knowledge building in the work they did. I'll talk more about that next time.
Meanwhile, you can check out the students' wikis here: Team 1 and Team 2.

Promoting Community in the Classroom

The focus of my research is precisely community, so the second phase of the study was particularly interesting.
The group consisted of ten students from several different schools: Communications, Marketing, Civil Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Industrial Relations, and also from different semesters, so it was a pretty good mix. Also, there were five guys and five girls. We divided them into two teams of five each based on their scores on the diagnostic test, so we tried to mix stronger and weaker students, too.
Both teams decided to use wikis to deliver their projects. In Team 1, none of the students had used a wiki before, nor knew how to make one. In Team 2, one of the students had had a class in e-commerce the previous semester, so he knew how to make wikis.
In case you don't know, a wiki is a web page that can be easily edited. The most famous is probably Wikipedia, which is an online collaborative encyclopedia. A wiki is easy to use, since it doesn't require a special programming language, and depending on how you set it up, it can be edited by anyone, or anyone you give rights to. It can be very collaborative, and it also keeps a record of who's editing and the changes that are made.
There are several hosts where you can set up free wikis. In Team 2, Alex, the student who knew how to make wikis, did the preliminary work. In Team 1, one of the students was selected to set up the wiki. It was a fast and easy process and soon the students were working on their projects...

Technology in the classroom Part 9

I have to start thinking of another title for these messsages, because "Technology in the Classroom Part X" is beginning to sound like a series of increasingly bad horror movies.
Anyway, Phase 2 of my project included two groups of students who were taking an intensive summer course- from mid-June to mid-July. One group studied from 10 to 2, and consisted of 10 students. The other group studied from 3 to 7, and consisted of 21 students. They worked with the same two teachers as the previous phase. Both groups were given a list of 600 "words for the TOEIC" that come from a book of that same name (Barron's). The 600 words were divided among the number of teams in the group and they were told that they were responsible for learning those words, for making sure their teammates learned them, and for making them available to the other teams, so the other teams could learn them, too.
Responsibility to oneself and to one's team is an essential element of a learning community, and therefore, it's of interest for my research.
I'll tell you about Group 3 first; the students formed into four teams. The teams chose video, blogs, powerpoint and e-mail as their medium to store and share their vocabulary words. The video team unfortunately chose a technology that they couldn't manage in the classroom, and they never found time to work outside the class, so they ended up not presenting anything. The blog team divided the work. One of the members was responsible for the blog, the others for getting definitions for their words and making sure they were posted. Team 3 looked up the vocabulary words, put never got around to putting them on the powerpoint. Team 4 didn't do anything.
The morning Group, however, did do some interesting work, and I will tell you about that tomorrow.

Technology in the classroom part 8

As promised, I want to tell you about an experiment I carried out with these two groups of students.
I was hypothesizing that it would be the interaction among the students- and not the technology- that would help them learn. I believe that technology is a tool that helps us find, store, retrieve, and share information, but it doesn't necessarily make us learn. In order to test this idea, and also to give students an example of what kind of project I was talking about, I came up with the following scheme.
I asked the teachers to ask the students for their cell phones numbers. I told them to reassure the students that this was totally optional, and that nothing would happen if they preferred not to give their numbers. Nobody opted out. Then, I asked the teachers to tell me a word that had come up in the class and that they students hadn't known. In one group, it was stuffy; in the other, it was box office. Fortunately, my cell phone has software that you can download onto your computer. With this, it's very easy to send multiple text messages. I wrote the vocabulary words, plus a definition and example, I typed in the cell phone numbers, and I sent them off.
The teachers tell me the students were totally amazed. They thought it was the coolest thing in the world. They asked me if I would continue to send them words, and I agreed to do so for the remainder of the course. Students who hadn't attended class that day asked if I could include them, and the word even got around to students from other groups, who wanted to join in.
Needless to say, it was expensive, but the students learned the vocabulary, as shown by a post-test (average score, 19/20 words), and they expressed positive or very positive views about receiving their word a day by phone. There are some websites that permit mass messaging at low cost. I think it's worth looking into and exploiting, but it's not the objective of my research, so I'll put it on hold for a while.

Technology in the classroom part 7

I was working with two different groups of students, and two different teachers.
Basically what happened is that the project was so fuzzy, that the students never knew what they were supposed to do.
I had envisioned them doing things like making podcasts, or videos, or choosing texts and adding hyperlinks to new vocabulary words. What they were coming up with was "listening to music and getting the words to it" or "watching movies in English". Some of the teams were more ambitious: in one group they wanted to write a tv show and act it out, another wanted to download songs, get the lyrics, write some exercises, and put it all on a cd. In short, the projects were either too easy or too difficult, and there was a lot of frustration and confusion, on the students' part, on the teachers', and on mine, too.
After a heart to heart talk with the teachers, I asked the students to concentrate on vocabulary. The change in attitude was notable: they had a sense of purpose, and that helped motivate them. In short, it wasn't a total disaster and I learned some useful things:
a) the project can't be that fuzzy; it has to be a little more definite;
b) I should limit the kinds of technology I ask the students to use.
c) the students don't think of some things as technology. For example, cell phones are useful gadgets that everyone has, but they're not technology.

And speaking of cell phones, next time I'll tell you about an interesting little experiment I carried out with these two groups. Till then...

Technology in the classroom Part 6

Back after a hiatus. I had to turn in four chapters of my thesis at the end of December, and defend them last Friday, so the blog was definitely on a back burner. Besides, I'm working on an interesting translation that I'll tell you about later, but anyway...

So, if people learn in interaction, but today's kids are learning with technology, how do we combine both elements to take advantage of the potential they both have to offer? The main focus of my research is learning communities interacting with technology. However, these are face to face communities and not virtual communities, which are becoming ever more popular.
What I'm trying to do is have students work together in small teams on a project that involves creating their own learning materials and uses some kind of technology.
At the beginning, the project was kind of "fuzzy". I read that the more undefined these kinds of projects are, the more students will find them motivating. I must've read wrong, though, or else that rule doesn't apply to the students I was working with. I was working with students who are taking a preparation course for the TOEIC exam. I asked them to:
a) form teams of 4 to 6 students
b) decide what they wanted to work on (e.g., reading, listening, grammar)
c) decide what kind of technology they would work with (wikis, blogs, cell phones, podcasts, pdas, etc.)
d) create learning materials that used the chosen technology to deliver the area they wanted to focus on.

It was ambitious, I know. Next time, I'll tell you what happened...

Technology in the Classroom Part 5

Well, Monday was a long time coming, but I'm back.

So, if we say that technology is the way kids learn nowadays, it would seem logical to offer them technology in the classroom, right? Actually, it's not that easy. In the first place, a lot of the technology that exists at this moment for the teaching/learning of languages is not that good. I remember seeing once a video of someone's cat going round and round and that was it! What are you supposed to do with that? Or else, you get the same information that's in a book, but it's posted online, or made into a CD. The whole point of using technology is that it should take advantage of its unique capabilities, and not just replicate what already exists.
Another problem, is that technology tends to be isolating. If you've ever been to a Starbuck's where there are seven people sitting by themselves with a laptop and earphones, you know exactly what I mean. And people don't learn in isolation: they learn in interaction with others.
The idea is that we include technology in the classroom, taking advantage of its full potential and using it to promote interaction.
This is the topic of my research