From CMC to VE #wlvmlearn

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Just home from participating in an event held at the University of Wolverhampton Walsall campus at the invitation of Howard Scott and I would categorise it as an opportunity to provide my experience of CALL, or more specifically CMC and my subsequent journey into the Erasmus Plus Virtual Exchange initiative. I was able to provide myself as an OER. My focus was particularly upon the importance of finding suitable networks to support our professional development  and I am pleased to say that I have come home to connection requests on various social media platforms which mean the conversations can continue. Particularly important given that it will take the Palestinian teacher trainers I met today 2 days to return to their homes. We will be able to overcome our geographical distance and continue to interact and learn from each other. 

My slides from the session and the google doc with the tasks we tried to cover are linked here. Our conversations were urgent and rather restricted as we were part of a packed programme and participants were eager to find out as much as possible during their visit. We talked about how technologies of all sorts have long been part of our practice as language educators - from blackboards and chalk (chalk and talk was the expression used by one of the visiting teachers) to digital tools which they are very keen to embrace but wish to understand what works. Both myself and the final keynote speaker Michael Thomas  spoke about the importance of critical reflection when adopting digital technologies, alluding to the dangers of a solution based mindset and techno evangelism and the importance of prioritising the learning when designing with technology. Central to these arguments is the notion of ownership. The digital wilds, where your data is harvested, trolling, spam and fake news abound, are not exactly a safe space. If you are insisting that your students engage there, you need to ensure that they are digitally savvy. We as teachers need therefore to be well informed and to ask better questions. As Michael said we need to uphold our responsibilities as "difficultators" (taking learners out of their comfort zone).

Much to ruminate on, I hope the conversations will continue.

I captured the social media footprint of the event here:

Communication channels

With new technological developments comes a time of adjustment and it was ever thus!

Turns out smartphone addiction isn't new. Samuel Pepys (1665) was unable to stop checking his timepiece 100x nonstop pic.twitter.com/4D8wCreoUx

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) July 20, 2016

Over the holiday period I took a few days away from my laptop but still checked my phone. Getting online is how I interact with colleagues, friends and family. It is how I find out what I need to know (movie times, latest news). Even as I write this sitting in a very cold and noisy home surrounded by 2 heating engineers (boiler broke down just before Christmas and a new one is currently being fitted) I am communicating with my sons (stranded in their bedrooms as the floorboards and carpet are all lifted outside their doors) to check on them. I thought I would try to keep my fingers warm by typing a blog entry which has been in draft for a while. 

New communication technologies are a huge social challenge when they come along. Inevitably they are "sold" to us as the answer to every problem posed by distance, an efficiency we require to cope in the modern world, the industry takes care of that. Up to us then to try them out and express how much more complex human communication is than the software developers would have us believe. 

Humans like to choose their methods of communication differently, what works for some will offend others. Texting (SMS) grew rapidly in popularity and was welcomed by some as a means to encourage written communication between a generation who resisted reading books. However, it was not long before people were being unceremoniously dumped or fired by text message.

Email has become the default for formal correspondence in many workplaces, invoices, quotations and receipts can be emailed whilst "snail mail" has been reduced, business postage bills must have dropped dramatically but this shift has also brought new challenges - we have all had to learn how to manage these in order to stay safe and keep up with work demands. However, those who love email rarely seem to appreciate why others may find it intrusive and unhelpful. 

My hypothesis is email is not fit for work with multiple correspondents. Like all strong relationships it works better between fewer folks.

— Ernesto Priego (@ernestopriego) December 21, 2016

And now we are in the era of synchronous online interactions for work or play. Video conferencing for work has brought some interesting new takes on the meeting, beautifully illustrated in this video . The social norms we have long established over time, the reliance on body language and eye contact to help mediate our interactions, these forms of human feedback are replaced by a new need to understand the workings of our connection, hardware operation and indeed digital audio feedback!  Those who master these challenges, those with "communicative advantage" - especially between global connections - will undoubtedly have an advantage over others if they put their combination of technical and interpersonal skills to good use. All too often we see communicative advantage bring the wrong sorts of changes as we did in London thanks to the realisation of a particular messaging system but we must not fear or blame the tool, the fault lies with those who refuse to acknowledge and engage with the new channels, we only have ourselves to blame. If we do not inhabit physical spaces and leave them to be overrun by those who would do wrong we are complicit in creating ghettos and no-go areas, leaving mistrust and lawless behaviour to flourish. 

In the world of synchronous connection, there is great work already underway to restore the online spaces afforded by virtual connection tools to enable more open interaction and normalisation of such channels. I must mention at this point the work of Maha Bali and others, selflessly supporting intercultural discussions, helping to counter the inequity which blights us. Never has this research and exploration been more important for our world. It needs to inform and educate our young people to use such tools and communication channels appropriately for the good of us all. 

Projecting the future

Having just emerged from the usual end of year exam marking frenzy I am now pushing ahead with a learning and teaching project supported by Warwick's International Higher Education Academy. The project team is an international mix, combining staff and students with a range of roles and experience and they are keen to investigate the new learning context we see all around us. We will be looking at how we can improve engagement in lectures, how the availability of information through digital devices changes the roles of student and teacher, how we manage our online presence and what sharing means today. 

For me, this is an exciting development as so far my thinking in these areas has largely been with others outside my immediate context, through participating in online interactions in and beyond my own teaching and ed tech communities. I am interested to see if our collaborative discussions help shed some light on where the newly founded School of Modern Languages and Cultures can progress good practice informed by these pioneer researchers. 

The project approach is heutagogic - participants will make their own decisions about the investigations they wish to contribute to, they will determine their own path, reflect on their learning and co-construct pages in Mahara (our e-portfolio tool) in order to make their findings explicit. Much of the activity will be mediated through our course areas and this in itself is a new challenge. My kick off meeting and drop in session so far have focused on making sure everyone gets to know each other and feels welcome in our digital spaces. We have a short project window (finishing at the end of July) and, given the nature of the project design each has to find their own way through our set of investigations, contributing to our shared goal as they go. Order will eventually emerge out of chaos, but we all have to be comfortable with the disruption involved in order to get to grips with some challenging ideas. Not surprisingly there are lots of questions for me as project manager: can I...? should I...? and the answer is typically Do you want to? Go ahead...try it...It is scary to have permission to follow your curiosity when you have been trained to meet targets and accomplish set goals. I am very grateful they are willing to give this a go. I can't wait to see what they think and to bring it back to the ALT conference in the autumn. 

Who are you?

On a reçu dans les casiers un petit doc à propos de la minute de silence, en comic sans ms, forcément. Question de tradition

— Monsieur Le Prof (@MsieurLeProf) November 16, 2015

This little tweet brought all the horror of recent events into sharp focus for me. 

I follow @MonsieurLeProf on twitter, He teaches English in the suburbs of France and has a wonderful, dry sense of humour. He is a skilled user of web based technologies and has a clear understanding of how to present his digital identity to the world.  Here he makes an off the cuff remark through twitter that illustrates the lack of general awareness of appropriate etiquette when using digital media. The incident? A missive for communicating the observation of a minute's silence out of respect for the victims of the terrorist attacks. It came via pigeon holes, written in the childlike, light-hearted font known as Comic Sans MS. 

The lack of understanding of the nature of this communication is startling. The printing press was introduced to Europe in 1439, nearly 600 years later publishing is in the hands of individuals, every office produces desktop published documents for circulation on a regular basis but much research into fonts and their communicative properties is surely common knowledge? Google it! YouTube it!  Find out here what your choice of font says and watch a personal evaluation of fonts here to help you make your own choices.  

This is computer-mediated communication 101, the most basic of digital communicative skills. Yet our educational institutions fail to recognise the importance of effective digital communication skills as vital in today's world. If we paid more attention to digital interaction we would understand that we only have a hope of addressing the unfortunate abilities of those with effective digital skills combined with murderous intent if we raise awareness of the importance of transversal skills.

These skills are no longer only the domain of the publisher. In the same way as music production, photography and film making have been democratised by the personal computer (and now smart phones and tablets) our digital presence speaks volumes about us. We look very foolish when we neglect these forms of communication and worry only about the face to face. 

Toneless CMC? I don't think so...

I spend a good deal of time communicating with people through computers these days, as I suspect do most of us. Exchanging hurried emails as we fight to cram in more hours of work each day than is possibly feasible. Sometimes the fact that we can access such messages anywhere, on our phones, on the train etc. means that we feel we are taking part in several ongoing conversations rather that writing a specific message in reply to a clear written communication. I have been accused from time to time of writing rather blunt emails, short and to the point. Equally I have recieved emails which have no more than one word, be it "yes" or "no". 

Such exchanges have been vairously reported as faulty because the medium of email doesn't communicate tone of voice. Of course, any written medium doesn't carry the sound of the voice of the writer. The voice in our head re-interprets the written words in front of us and we reconstruct an impression from that as to how it was written and the feelings it conveys. Although, as a lover of poetry and literature, I think great writers are very clear in their self expression, one has to bear in mind that they may spend days or months crafting their writing and considering how it is to be recieved. Spoken messages are very much clearer, carrying lots of information above and beyond the simple communication of facts. Voice is an amazingly poserful communication tool, something babies learn within moments of birth.

There are of course ways in modern computer mediated communication (CMC) to add tone to your message although some may be frowned upon or ridiculed depending on yrou audience! The emoticon, a small collection of characters on the keyboard that generate an icon or emblem such as :) are designed to help others understand the tone of your message. Whe we get to the stage where we are communicating with somone in a frequent, ongoing way, the tool of choice would have to be either text messaging or instant messaging where use of emoticons is commonplace. Business gurus recognise the scope for miscommunication that can occur through email and have some good advice. 

However as we get more multimodal, using a range of CMC tools for different purposes perhaps we should bear in mind the appropriate ways of communication they require and facilitate. When the telephone was first invented we needed to be taught the protocols for its use. I was taught as a child to answer the phone by saying my phone number and name and then asking "who's speaking please" (my parents ran a business, I knew it was important to give the right impression). We could learn much from younger folk about which technologies are best for which interactions, and they from us can learn how captured, traceable computer-mediated communication is not always our friend. So think before you type :)

ALT-C 2014 post conference reflections.

I always look forward to this conference and this year it was held at Warwick so it was a lovely opportunity to bring this brilliant community right to the heart of my work context. The keynotes were inspiring, the connections and presentations helpful, the sheer amount of experience and expertise in educational technology awesome. (and that's not a word I use lightly!) Since the conference finished on Wednesday however I have been mulling over my contributions. I spoke about #oie and #clavier on wed morning and Languages@Warwick development on the wed afternoon. I thought it might be helpful to summarise what I have learnt about using technologies for international interaction in a simple 5 point way for anyone who is thinking of taking this on in their own context. So here goes: 

 1. Choose your technologies carefully but choose your partners even more so! It may be almost impossible to find tech that everyone likes, but this matters not a jot if your collaborators don't trust each other. You will inevitably need to compromise on timings, activities, objectives - play the long game, agree to make progress gradually and take your teachers and students with you. If you're unhappy or resentful don't pretend everything's fine, establish clear communication right from the start and respect the opinions of others. 

 2. Connections precede collaboration. Allow time to let all participants get to know each other. Our experience shows that this is best done by proxy, that is to say carry out some tasks (profile writing,photo sharing etc) which allow the participants to discover each other without the pressure to work together immediately. If you are meeting in an online space each participant will want to build an identity in the space. Remember how you felt on arriving at the school disco or a party in a new house? You probably spent a while thinking about how to dress and then had a few drinks in the kitchen or chatted with familiar people first. 

 3. Ensure a good level of presence. There's little worse than entering an online space expecting to meet people and finding an empty space. Worse still if no-one replies to your messages. Tumbleweed moments! Plan to have sufficient "animators" in the space to welcome each new arrival and facilitate the mingling. Lead by example.

 4. Be open to ideas. Resist the urge to control everything. If people are to engage they must be given the space to make a contribution. They may want to do something you had not planned, you will not know how that will turn out unless you try it. Be flexible and generous with your time and support. 

 5. Celebrate every small win. It is important to growing the activities that you surface the impact of the activities you do. Use hard data as well as participant narratives to ensure that you have a clear picture. Communicate the findings openly and creatively so as to engage onlookers. Careful: Don't make unsubstantiated statements, that will come back to bite you! 

Collaboration is complex, see below the waterline!

Speaking up!

The point at which I fell in love with the French language is a difficult one to pin down. Undoubtedly I was influenced by the trips my parents encouraged and the role of interpreter which they bestowed on me at just 12 years old. I was terrified of my French teacher but recently took my family to see her home town of Aix-les-Bains because I surely recognise her impact on my life. I went to Oxford Poly to study for a French degree, determined not to "do" literature but within a year I had negotiated more literary study and still have a passion for the works of Mauriac, Camus, Baudelaire, Voltaire and Prévert. (read, discussed and analysed in both my languages). I created a drama project during my PGCE around the theatre of the absurd and the works of Ionesco. Working as an assistante during the 2nd year of my first degree was no doubt a turning point though - I began to understand that language learning is not just intellectually challenging, it is fundamentally transformative - it changes the way you understand others and yourself through interaction. I continue my language learning journey through interaction largely but not exclusively online using #cmc computer-mediated communication.

My community (language teachers/experts in a variety of guises and contexts) are struggling with the realisation that young people are increasingly not choosing to continue language study for single honours degrees, numbers on such courses have been in freefall. It is very upsetting for all of us to see that the qualification we so treasure is not featuring on more wish lists and this has been the subject of countless reports, discussions and soul searching. However, the very opposite trend has been seen in university-wide language study provision so clearly young people do still enjoy the thrill of interaction across cultures. Many of them have done so all their lives but have had little or no state recognition of their linguistic heritage. At a recent school event at my university I asked a group of 14 year olds why they thought languages were useful (expecting the usual list that pointed to employability). This insight came back immediately from a young Sikh - "you can tell someone something without the others knowing what you said". Out of the mouth of babes! Language encodes, linguists decode. That is a human skill, still unmatched by google translate, requiring sophistication, knowledge and skills way beyond those which can begin to be awakened at A level, that is just the beginning. In the UK we have to send a clear message from our community that the journey may be long but it is worthwhile. In schools we need to have the freedom to inspire, in H.E. we must be relevant and move with the times.  Most importantly our community must pull together, for the losses we will sustain otherwise are too terrifying to contemplate. Valuing language skills is valuing human diversity in all its richness, and respect for life gives hope in an era of instability and war.
This post was written to relate to UCML's support for A level Content Advisory Board's recommendations.