A swan song

 

My final teaching commitments before I retire are fully online. I have taken on 2 groups of Business School Master's level students of Management who would like to learn some French, some are absolute beginners, some have experience or speak another romance language. This is not for credit, it is an optional course for which the resources have already been placed on a moodle course and which has previously been provided as a face to face experience. Attendance is the only criteria for assessment. There are over 100 students on the class and all share access to the moodle environment. They are not grouped in any way, all can see everything. I have about 40 of them and this week I met them for the first time in a Microsoft Teams channel I set up for our synchronous sessions. There will be 8 weeks @ 2 hours a week, all running at night. They are joining me from wherever they happen to be right know due to covid, some in Warwick, many in Asia. 

Anyone reading this with any teaching experience will be able to decode what I have just described - a highway to hell in teaching terms! A hiding to nothing perhaps. Putting to one side the pedagogical challenges of designing for this mixed ability, time poor group of students I would like to capture here some of the many issues that present themselves in the light of my rich experience of teaching with technology. 

Closing psychological distance matters.

In a physical classroom there are many techniques I use to do this. Some may call them ice breaker activities but they go beyond the "first impressions" stage in a language class. My constraints in this setting are imposed by the requirement to teach using MS Teams. This (like many of the tools institutions provide for teaching) is not designed for teachers. It is cobbled together from the leftovers of tools created and sold to businesses, often with the tagline that they are solutions to better team work. In MS Teams case it remixes a huge investment made in buying Skype (see this from 2011) with the extensive use of MS Office 365 in HEIs. Recouping return on investment whilst claiming to be a covid solution. So, once the students have their email address (courtesy of Office) they can join a Teams channel and hold meetings. So far so business like. They can even join as a guest but they will then have restricted access. However, in a teaching context where one is trying to establish a collegiate, collaborative and welcoming environment this just increases the work the teacher must do. Student names appear in the room in surname/first name order. Many of my students have very long names, meaning is is very difficult to see their first name in the participant pane, so I have to cross reference with a separate spreadsheet to avoid mistakenly speaking to people using their surname. No possible renaming as we have in zoom, no freedom for students to access under a name of their choice. Reminiscent of a public school classroom from the era of Jeeves and Wooster. So far so colonial.

Feeling at home.

The combination of a Teams space and a moodle course means that tutor time has to be invested in a guided tour. Despite already having a recorded version of this prepared before I started teaching, most had not seen it and so some serious hand holding was needed. I used screenshare to show everyone around both spaces, sharing links in the chat so they could investigate further. I designed a task in sub teams (group work within MS teams) for students to input into a notepad shared document how they wish to use our precious time together. This gave them experience of jumping into a different virtual room and collaborating together. This is do-able in Teams and by and large we got through it but it is very clunky compared to the interfaces I am used to for breakout rooms (in Zoom/Bb Collaborate for example). No quick room allocation through drag and drop, no one-stop recall message to call everyone back in 5 mins, instead I visited each room in turn to invite them back the main room, interrupting whatever they were doing to demand their presence. I certainly didn't feel at home. 

Emotions matter. 

We know that learning is positively or adversely affected by one's emotions. Most virtual rooms acknowledge this by offering a range of emoticons or reaction images which participants can use during conversations, giving a guide to the "room temperature". In MS Teams you can raise your hand and just like in school you can be ignored! It is not easy to navigate through a large group of students in order to ensure everyone feels heard. I became very reliant on good old fashioned teaching skills - namely my voice - to inject warm and welcoming vibes and encourage everyone to use the chat so I could deal with their queries. People who don't feel heard just get noisier or withdraw. Another cultural reference came to my head: Joyce Grenfell.  Those were not the days! Of course there were individuals for whom I didn't have a Warwick email address and they couldn't participate in the group activity as their guest status prevented them from seeing the subgroups. More work for me to sort out and update their details and more disappointment for them. It is lonely when you can't get through the door. 

So all in all, this term will be a challenging one. One where I am constantly reminded that my 10 years of experience through virtual exchange, although it has equipped me for anything, has failed to result in evidence informed technological provision for great teaching and learning. Plus ça change! 

Weaving for peace

Image: Lucky charm 1 paper weaving

by Shannon Sinclair CC BY ND 2.0

I am not talented in an artistic sense. My secondary school art teacher took a dim view of my attempts to create a homework that scored anything above 7/10 and I quickly abandoned any attempt to improve after a brief struggle to convince her that my "gift" needed to be nurtured. However, I have a love of art and I derive great pleasure from the appreciation of the talent of others and the natural beauty I see around me in the world. I do maintain a passion for creativity which, in younger days took the form of poetry writing and singing (I thank a great English teacher for his encouragement). 

Once I was working as a teacher myself, I started to derive pleasure from creating activities and designing learning materials for my students. This interest has grown and mutated since the advent of digital media. I started in the late 1980's to devise web tours and treasure hunts, use databases as a resource for realistic oral role plays and I enjoyed how the use of new media disrupted the usual classroom dynamic and helped different students shine. Of course, much has changed since then - CD-ROMs, MP3 players, YouTube, WYSIWYGs and HTML5 have revolutionised how we create. Most recently of course digital communication tools such as smart phones have helped us to connect and interact online more easily, for better or worse. 

This has been the background for me finding a new creative space. Over the past 10 years I have gradually increased my online presence as part of my professional life. Having taught myself a little HTML many years ago, I realised that websites are rather like tapestries. The beautiful appearance of a page is the result of lots of knots and threads behind the scenes, a good deal of imagination and craft goes in to the finished product - if indeed it is ever finished. When you make online you enjoy a medium that offers lots of possibilities as long as you understand your purpose. Rather like the beautiful piece of weaving above, the various aspects of my digital presence: personal websites; twitter/instagram accounts; open resources shared through various repositories such as slideshare, XTlearn; video accounts and more have to be woven together in order to reveal all the facets of my work. I seem to have arrived at a place where my "next steps" are increasingly about weaving together the various threads of my digital creation. I worry about the web needing to remain this open canvas, a democratic space where all can participate, not one "owned" by states or multinationals who seek only to exploit or control the voice of users. My digital threads are multi-coloured but when they come together they form a coherent self portrait of an educator who will always value the spirit of the artist, who nurtures talent, openness and creativity whatever the circumstances. We can use our creativity for good or evil, I choose to support a positive vision of global human endeavour. I weave for peace. 

My thanks go to Martin Weller who commented on my weaving skills after this blog post which in turn inspired me to practice more!

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. 

of eggs and baskets #blimage

This #blimage challenge was posted by Steve Wheeler here. 

I know it's a bowl in the picture but with a little poetic licence it is easily connected to the proverb:

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket"


and for those learning English here's a quick test of your understanding of the meaning of this advice. 

I'm looking at this advice in the context of educational technology and change. Ubiquitous technology means that we are all becoming increasingly dependant upon tools to support learning. I would argue that this is, by and large, a good development overall as education needs to capitalise on the learning potential offered by digital tools and help inform their use so that we are able to influence the users. We do not need more passive consumers of an ever increasing wave of expensive gadgets, we need critical thinkers who understand the relative advantages and affordances offered and can make informed choices. They in turn can then influence the evolution of the markets and use their democratic power to regulate when necessary. 

One of the risks we need to ensure that users of technology understand is that of "lock-in". You can read more about it here. Some technical tools for creation that may be very enticing insist on producing file types that require ongoing commitment to a particular technology, tool or licence. This brings an inherent reduction in future proofing for your creation. At a time when the pact of technical change continues to accelerate you could very soon find that your well thought-out digital package of content is no longer usable. Remember Betamax or Sony mini disc cameras? Think of the time and money wasted and the potential for wheels being reinvented endlessly. 

Fortunately there are folk out there who are working to convince the technology industry of the importance of open formats and interoperability. Look at the work of IMS on Learning Technology Interoperability here. Also the open source media streaming company Kaltura campaigns for open video formats.  As users of technology for education we should ensure that we know how to preserve our educational resources so that they can be repurposed, accessed by anyone. That way educators' great ideas do not become obsolete overnight. Here are a few practical tips:

• if you are making something using a browser based tool (a video, screen cast, audio recording) make sure that you can download the finished file so that you have a copy. Websites disappear regularly.
• find good file conversion facilities (e.g. Format Factory, Freemake) so that you can save your file in a range of formats.
• go open - use Creative Commons licences (CC BY) on your work so that others can remix, repurpose and develop your ideas. Sharing to a wider community increases the longevity of your work but you should get acknowledged as the originator. 

Real writing

Why get your language students used to navigating web pages which are largely populated by native speakers of the language they are struggling to comprehend? Isn't the use of techncial language and the culturally specific content only going to confuse them?

Maybe. 

But don't forget, many will be very familiar with finding their way around a website, they will have the contextual understanding to work out which button does what. And they can and will help others. Encourage some exploration.

Plus de deux tiers des Français avouent qu'ils ne connaissent rien au vin http://t.co/IYoQb54bEd
— 20 Minutes (@20Minutes) September 2, 2014

You never know what they may discover and it is all happening in real time!

I have used the French jobs portal ANPE as the starting point for a very real work related vocabulary activity and for a deeper dive into the skills necessary for students wanting to prepare themselves for life in the real world. The short video clips such as this one may be linguistically challenging but they are well sign posted for key words and the similarities between French and UK jobs clear. This opened up their minds to considering placements abroad  and these students had the equivalent on GCSE level French. 

Collecting shopping vocabulary using a supermarket site makes a lovely homework task, you can rest assured that browsing in French will continue longer than the usual 5 minutes! Use the Pointless quiz game metaphore and see who can bring back the item that no-one else found. 

So don't assume that all language your learners come across has to be carefully pre-screened. Our brains are hard wired to work out language, we may only bother if the task is real and sufficiently relevant. 

Ayez confiance!

Celebrating the digital in HE at #digifest15

Last year I watched Jisc's digital festival #digifest from behind my desk. I could see from the website that the venue was imaginatively laid out and according to the twittersphere there were many interesting things to see and do, all at the bleeding edge of technology in education. This year, with attendance free to HE staff, I decided to go along and see for myself. The short train ride to Birmingham followed by a brisk walk across town taking in the Cathedral and the new Library was a welcome break from sitting behind a screen. The International Conference Centre in Birmingham is easy to find and well staffed and soon I was exploring the hub under the multi-coloured circus tent decor which gives the event an enticing atmosphere. Using the event app and twitter I was able to connect with other participants too. 

#digifest15 kicks off pic.twitter.com/CL2uH1IKDf
— christine sexton (@cloggingchris) March 9, 2015

Soon I was getting the latest on Jisc Open Access services, giving me helpful insights into the issues and the technical challenges that Jisc can help HEIs to confront.  I made a mental note to share with colleagues in our library.

I was interested to hear about Jisc's support for publishing:

Institution as eBook publisher #jisc project. Support for heis to take on a publishing role #digifest15
— Teresa MacKinnon (@WarwickLanguage) March 9, 2015

and participated in a lively, well attended session on using apps which included a good hands-on demo of Socrative. A session on 3D tech gave me insights into the technical aspects of this immersive way of curating and interacting with valuable artefacts and extended my understanding in an area I don't usually come across. 

My twitter feed brought more interesting observations from attendees:

It may be our institutions that are not fit for purpose, not our #edtech #digifest15
— Elizabeth Ellis (@liz_isabella) March 9, 2015

The combination of the physical (an unusually genteel, calm conference) and the virtual (through social media) brought me space to think. Add to that the encounters with tweeps I had not really had a chance to chat with before as well as meet ups with old friends and this was a better than average conference experience. The highlights were yet to come though! The Google presentation was comprehensive and enthusiastic, well caputred by Martin Hamilton but by far the highlight, and well worth waiting for was the no-nonsense delivery on FE and Feltag by Bob Harrison, seen here getting a selfie to show the wife :) He reminded us that we have a responsibility to future generations to make best use of our assets, to think differently and to engage together in agile evolution. 

So thanks Jisc for a memorable day, my batteries were recharged and I felt ready for the rest of my week knowing that the sector lead is up for embracing the challenges of digital education. Inspired by Bob's words I am ready to shift some paradigms :)

IT, ET and UT. Rethinking the control of technology in education.

Crossed wires.

A photo posted by Teresa MacKinnon (@profteresamac) on Jan 13, 2015 at 9:28am P

 Working in educational technology and teaching at this time of rapid change I often find myself in uncomfortable positions, trying to navigate conversations with people who have varying levels of understanding of technical systems and priorities that are not my own. I try to understand their point of view and, if they are interested, explain how I see things. Some conversations end happily, with increased empathy, others are awkward. Control is central to the awkwardness.

In educational institutions access to technology, how it is configured and used and by whom has long belonged to IT departments.  Over more recent years, technology deployed specifically for teaching and learning (Educational Teachnology, ET) has seen the development of new IT roles, often combining the skills of technical staff and teaching staff working side by side. This is not always an easy relationship but does provide a bridge between the two areas of activity, allowing (at best) increased understanding of how to provide engaging online systems which meet user needs. 

However, we are rapidly moving to a new reality. 

The era of UT - ubiquitous technology. Our smartphones are often all that is needed to capture and share a learning opportunity. We share and message each other, building our own personal learning environment as we select our preferred tools, sources of information and interactions. The educator's role in this context is changing, no longer the sole purveyor of wisdom (if we ever were) we have to keep pace with the ever proliferating access to more interesting content in order to engage our learners critical skills and earn our place in their information eco-system. The image below, shared on Steve Wheeler's post summarises the changes clearly: 

Originally shared by Teacher Toolkit http://teachertoolkit.me/

The debates and concerns about control of IT systems are really as helpful as my tangled mess of wires. If institutions are to cope with the changing landscape, those in IT and ET need to accept the era of UT and work constructively in discourse, respectful of the rights all have to participation and preferences in choices of technology. Sure, there will be core tools we may provide but control of all technical tool use in unrealistic and undesirable, especially when you are working with young people who have only known a world mediated by the digital. There are more important things to worry about than control - the learning and strength lies in co-operation and distributed networks. Effective collaboration is the key.

As a youngster I would often sit and untangle the box of wires my dad kept for his hobby of amateur film making. Seems like I find myself in that situation professionally now. 

ST

Clicks and cliques

I suppose there is a human tendency to cluster around shared interests or passions. We form tribes, we are influenced by those we admire. We like connecting. We wear our group badges with pride, be they football team colours, fashions, preferred technologies, book clubs, sporting activities, on the whole we like to be one of a group or indeed several groups.Birds of a feather, flock together.

Thanks to the internet it has never been easier to seek out those who share interests. As #warcler #clerwar gets underway again the ease of # to find new friends is being put to good use. And so I have been reflecting on connectedness. 

I will be presenting next month on the many benefits of open practice and becoming a connected educator at the Global Education Conference #globaledcon14. There are so many great things that have happened in my life, so many new friends, new connections, new opportunities since I first "lurked" in online teaching spaces and I will be sharing those soon. One that is worth mentioning "en passant" is that, even when you need to down tools and take a break, someone out there is looking at your work and developing it further. Just such an event became apparent to me recently when a friend of a friend shared an image in a tweet:

@WarwickLanguage @sensor63 rough draft of my hack, coming soon with a blogpost to explain #ccourses pic.twitter.com/K06G0d97hC
— ℳąhą Bąℓi (@Bali_Maha) September 8, 2014

Maha's diagram is a lovely re-hacking of a blog post I had written, she was quite dismissive of it, to me it was like a gift out of the blue. A connection with Egypt that I had never made before.

But do clicks make cliques? Does our participation in online groups lead to us shunning others or being dismissive of those who are outside our connections, our PLN? Do we start to use language that distances us from others, making it awkward for them to penetrate our circle? I think we must always remain aware of this danger and willing to engage widely.  

This morning I felt the need to be alone, to wander through the beautiful autumn sunshine with my thoughts. I had come across Dunbar's number a theory which maintains that humans are limited in the number of others they can connect with. I admit to feeling at times overwhelmed by the possibilities for connection and collaboration presented by the web, but I also believe that the brain is not fixed and limiting, it is flexible and complex and I wonder if this theory will stand given the new ways of working and socialising that we are witnessing online. 

As I captured some of the colour of the trees in the park I spotted chestnuts blown down by the wind, carpeting the ground and I wondered what my friends in Clermont would make of the waste of these lovely "marrons" so I will share them here. Just a few more clicks, no cliques, lots of connections.