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:

New Year, new adventures.

OK, ACADEMICS, IT IS 2018. REPLY ALL AND REPLY DO TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

— thelitcritguy (@TheLitCritGuy) January 12, 2018

I spent hours on Friday and Saturday this week in Groningen - one of my favourite places. Of course, I was teaching in Warwick too so my attendance at the EVOLVE kickoff meeting was virtual but no less real.

Here you can see my colleagues: Elke, Gosia, Sake, Mirjam, Fran, Sarah, Tim, Shanon, Steve and many more. All experts in their fields, a dream team. I feel honoured to work with them. We share a commitment to a plan - to scale up virtual exchange in order to increase international understanding in a world where barriers to empathy are rife, where "America first" (insert nation of choice) has become a slogan which justifies hate speech and discrimination. 

Of course none of us in the room (whether in real life or virtually) think this will be easy. We are all experienced in the trials and tribulations of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). We are nonetheless up for the challenges. This new project reaches across disciplines, it brings expertise in conflict resolution and social justice together with linguists, learning technologists, researchers and practitioners. We recognise that together we can have a greater impact. We are all heartened by the knowledge that scaling up virtual exchange is seen by the European Commission as a feasible model to support intercultural understanding and to create more cohesive societies. 

We will each be recruiting in our institutions, offering free online training and accredited participation in virtual exchanges, not just in language learning contexts but as an integral part of university curricula in order to show that academia realises the importance of global dialogue above and beyond local interests. Participation supports the achievement of SDG4  , it upholds the rights of all (including those who cannot participate in physical exchanges due to cost or personal circumstances) to engage in sustained, transformational learning experiences. To use today's tools to make the future a better place.

It's good to try to make a difference, especially when everything around you in bleak. I heard that when you are feeling at your lowest, it helps to give to someone in need. It makes the world a better place. 

Living in the wild

'There are better ways to think of languages than as rules-based systems': a torrent of language & ideas from @stevenlthorne at #Eurocall17 pic.twitter.com/q7olusAOD8

— Paul Kaye (@PaulKayeEUlangs) August 25, 2017

Tomorrow is the final day of the #eurocall2017 conference. Time for a few reflections. The conference has had a packed schedule as usual and there are a few things I have noticed this time which indicate a greater level of technical engagement from participants. Clearly the focus of this conference is technology enhanced language learning but the shift is towards greater use of "wild" technologies. It may just be my impression but I think there has been a mood of determination that what we do is important. I think Graham Davies would have been proud. There was:

• lots of interest in social media and web tools
• a dynamic group of MALL (mobile assisted language learning) CMC (telecollaboration etc)  VW (virtual worlds) users and lots of PhD students too
• a real interest in open practice as we are all keen to continue to connect and collaborate despite travel bans, brexit and other threats to mobility
• great examples in the keynotes of how the web has transformed learning

I have two further sessions tomorrow. 

A session on CMC in the open

A Virtually Connecting session to reflect on the event before we all bring this year's event to a close. 

I have a feeling that the connections will continue through social media in the coming year too...watch this space!

#BYOD4L: Thoughts on collaboration

Student created logo for the Clavier Project

As a language teacher, connecting internationally has always been at the heart of my work. My degree required a year in France (my second year was spent teaching English - mostly pop songs and popular culture) in Châteauroux, France in 1980. When I took up teaching I got involved in regular exchanges with our partner schools and accompanied the various associated trips such as the history department's visit to world war battlefields. 

In my teaching role in Higher Education I wanted to continue to give students opportunities to work on their language with real French speakers. Fortunately we have a very cosmopolitan campus and there were lots of opportunities thanks to a great student network. However, increasingly I was finding that the internet offered me lots of ways of keeping in touch with friends and trends in France and french speaking cultures. The skills I needed were relevant and I thought this provided a good way to cross formal and informal boundaries to support deeper language and intercultural understanding. I got involved in developing a virtual exchange in 2010 having met a colleague teaching in Clermond Ferrand by chance on a blog by Steve Wheeler. Explaining virtual exchange is not easy as many in HE are quite reluctant to take computer-mediated communication seriously. 

Over recent years, through my role as a learning technologist I have been able to bring my expertise in telecollaboration and computer-mediated communication to bear in a wide range of projects and collaborations. Most recently this has involved collaborating with colleague from the Open University to publish on the use of open badges in Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE) and working with colleagues from Australia (Monash) on papers to do with produsage and sustainability of teaching. I really enjoyed these collaborations, but collaborating can be very challenging. The language research community has been instrumental in producing research into the experiences of computer-mediated communication which provides great insights into success factors in this area. I am delighted that it has also now established a cross-disciplinary academic organisation to support all HE colleagues who wish to collaborate internationally called Unicollaboration. Please share the news with your telecollaborative colleagues as this will be a great way of sharing best practice and extending internationalisation in HE. 

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. 

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 :)

going global

Post inspired by @mrkempnz a fellow tweep and inspiring edtech educator.

From Lone Wolf to Hunting with the Pack - becoming a globally connected educator http://t.co/LlB2Uz9tZq what’s your story?
— Craig Kemp (@mrkempnz) August 9, 2014

Working as a teacher can be a lonely and somewhat insular occupation if you are not careful.  Whether you work in a school, a university, full time, part time or freelance you are assuming a role that puts you under the spotlight and your learners have expectations of you. Over a 30 year career I have worked in a variety of contexts with different age groups from under 10's to over 50's, one to one to one to many, responsible at some periods for the language learning of over 1,000 learners a year. I think I have a reasonable understanding of a range of learner expectations. I have definitely not "seen it all" and I learn more each year from my learners who now tend to be international students following an accelerated learning pathway to French in Higher Education. I am a co-learner with them as we explore the world of resources available to us thanks to the internet and computer-mediated communication (CMC). I try to contribute to my communities, both local and global. 

My PLN, (here's a Top Trumps I did a while back) gathered gradually over more than 5 years through interaction online, lots or reading and great networks of professionals, have broadened my outlook, inspired me to examine my assumptions more closely, to engage with debates central to my chosen career path, and to grow as an educator. Blogging and micro-blogging have helped make explicit the ruminations and half thought through ideas, reflecting and connecting in order to better understand where I stand (split infinitives are OK BTW) . Participating in synchronous and asynchronous CMC has taken me beyond the boundaries of my classroom experiences and those of my immediate colleagues into global interactions and contexts, beyond the UK and Europe. I collaborate with teachers in Australia,the US and around the world in #globalclassroom chats, extend my student connections through the #clavier virtual exchange, and explore the potential for language learning CPD through informal online networks. I have developed my use of technology for teaching, gaining a professional qualification in learning technology through the ALT CMALT scheme and now I research and publish in CMC for language learning and the emerging area of Online Intercultural Exchange (#OIE). 

I had no idea where my early tweets would lead. I followed my head and my heart and found a world of inspiration digitally enabled just a keyboard away. My students and I are the richer for it, my CPD is constant and relevant, my learning lifelong and lifewide. Connecting globally allows us to rise above the immediate, often political nature of our national context and focus on the real issues in education. We need to support the next generation as they discover the realities of sharing the planet and meeting the needs of humanity in challenging times. We promote mutual understanding, communication skills, empathy, openness and creativity. Going global has helped to reignite my passion for education.  

Reflecting on my practice

So here I am again, my head stuck in the waters of my practice whilst at the same time having an out of body experience trying to better understand what I do and why. I found this week's webinar really helpful even though it overlapped with another important one for me (on eportfolio practice). This meant participating live for the first 30 mins then reviewing the rest of the session from the archive. A little disjointed but it is great to be able to return to the recording.

#ocTEL is just one of several online communities (or are they really collectives as defined by Thomas and Seely Brown in A new culture of learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, 2011) and I discover and experience a great richness of discussion and debate around education and learning in online communities through these. So compelling sometimes that it is really difficult to stop and look around above the water level! This week I have been struck by the similarities in the 4 way diagram shared by Sally Chapelle (and others) as they reflect upon their teaching and course design and the one provided by Ernesto Macaro in 2003 representing the polarisation of theories of language acquisition, crucial to my M.A. a few year's ago:

The horizontal axis represents the polarisation between theories of language input. Implicit input arises from natural exposure and sub-conscious processing, explicit from teaching and conscious processing. The vertical axis represents the concept of how language input is processed. Nativist implies that language learning is an innate skill, interactionist that language is a specialised form of knowledge that is acquired through interaction with the environment. This goes to the very heart of what it means to be a language teacher. Thinking through all these quandrants and realising that learning can and does happen best when we have the opportunity to activate all the areas - the informal learning that happens through social interaction as well as the formal directed space, the autonomous self directed activities we do alone or with others - only then do we optimise our learning potential. This has huge implications for the role of the tutor and in my own practice I have been working to support language tutors in considering their place in the learning of their students, facilitating the adoption of technologies for interaction to help redress the balance in favour of the social and the interactionist, the self directed and the personal . 

In #ocTEL it was good to come across other language teachers with similar concerns such as @dustinaced in the language teachers group  and we have produced a couple of shared docs together, a work one shared in my last post and this #eurovision themed one for fun-It remains open, hispanists welcome :)

My reflections lead me to remind myself of the importance of play in learning. We're born to learn, we can potentially learn desirable and undesirable things from the world around us. One of my other communities (or collectives) twitter, reminded me of this today and I shared the source (RSA):

analogy from theatre applies well to education 14 mins http://t.co/TKWzyZY9AH all that counts are the actors
— Teresa MacKinnon (@WarwickLanguage) May 11, 2014

We are all actors in our learning and the learning of others. Taking everything else away (yes, including the technology) what matters are the relationships we build together and the nature of the interactions we have. This I believe needs to be central in our learning design, we need to connect and collaborate with our students and each other with open minds if we are to grow together if we are to be ready for the challenges of the future. The models have lines and limitations, human interactions can transcend these and create truly inspirational learning. 

BTW, had such a good time on twitter with my PLN during #Eurovision last night !

References:


Macaro, E., (2003). Teaching and Learning a Second Language. London: Continuum.

Thomas, D. and Seely Brown, J., (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change. (Downloaded to my kindle http://www.amazon.com/New-Culture-Learning-Cultivating-Imagination/dp/1456458884/)

 

Reflection on collaboration.

When I looked at the small group reflection task set in week 0 I knew it would not be a quick activity to sort out. I have been connecting and collaborating with international networks for some years now, and during past 4 years I have been building up an international virtual exchange network #clavier which has completely transformed my teaching practice and the experiences I can offer our students - but it took time...

• time to find people with shared interests
• time to find overlapping interests and shared purpose
• time to build a relationship of trust and mutuality
• time to locate preferred tech communication channels
• all of the above in the virtual dark of computer mediated communication

I knew very few people in the #ocTEL course so first came the challenge of finding people with an interest in language education. I was delighted to find that a group already existed on the ocTEL site. I used the groups function of the wordpress site but my lack of familiarity with the interface meant that my first post was incorrectly placed in the the status update for the group. Schoolgirl error! Scanning my twitter feed (much more familiar with this channel) for #ocTEL participants was helpful though and soon I had found a few connections. I made a forum post suggestion and thanks to the encouragement from new connection @damon_tokyo who is based in Japan we decided to set up a shared document to edit asynchronously:
shared doc

Now we are under way but a further issue is apparent, a familiar one in my context. The google doc I set up was deliberately planned to be as open and available as possible in order to reduce any barriers to collaboration. There have been several edits and contributions but none of them signed in with google accounts so the revision history just shows anonymous contributions. It would be much easier to move this asynchronous document into a proxy for making further connections and more in depth reflection if, on arrive, contributors would sign in. I don't want to force this by changing the permissions though so we will see how it goes. In my context we have a similar situation when our students of French write collaborative stories with their virtual exchange partners in Clermont Ferrand. A really interesting and engaging activity that could be even more useful if we shared connections through google apps for education accounts. Preserving the student identity to be managed as they feel is appropriate and providing a real life opportunity to interact internationally and acquire the many transversal skills they will need in their future. A wasted opportunity. 

Groups who are experienced in international collaboration such as #globalclassroom, soliya  classroom 2.0 and many more are familiar with the barriers presented by time and schedule differences, different technology preferences, language and intercultural barriers etc., they achieve a great deal because their shared passion drives them on, they are resilient, flexible and most importantly willing to put in the time.

Big and little questions #ocTEL

I get the feeling that this cMOOC organised by ALT could be a good opportunity for me to reflect and engage with the wider learning technology community, learn new things and clarify my priorities as a new CMALT holder. The process will probably require writing a blog post every week for the next few weeks, that level of discipline is something I will be exploring but I make no promises that it will last. I don't think the wider world is ready to hear from me that often!

So what are my big and little questions relating to the use of technology enhanced learning? The main one is of course related to my research into computer-mediated communication and the technologies used to facilitate it. The context here has changed enormously in recent years. When I first wrote my M.A. dissertation and identified challenges in the adoption of voip for language teaching it was unusual for institutional computers to have sound cards at all. I was told that using headsets would be unhygienic and that speaking into a computer would be distracting for others. Now of course I regularly pass students sitting in corridors having skype chats from their laptops free from wired internet connections and institutional machines, or overhear snippets of their conversations on mobile phones as they stand in the queue at the café. My son's generation (he's 20 btw) are always interacting through some gadget or another, by voice, text, exchanging images and sharing youtube clips. 

The big question? When are educators (particularly language educators) going to accept that CMC is a vital area of investigation which has direct relevance to our young people? Not just a curiosity to be dismissed by those who are "not into computers" but a vital realm already inhabited by others. 

The little questions - which are as important to the growth of CMC include:

• how do we share the existing growing body of knowledge around engagement in CMC?
• how do we mainstream the many great ideas for CMC which could help to address so many issues such as student mobility, transversal skills acquisition, intercultural awareness, the need for constant CPD for educators?
• how do we ensure that technical infrastructures provided by institutions give best value by prioritising effective ways of supporting CMC? 

Looking at the questions here, maybe they are not so little but I do at least have some directions and clues for answering some of these. If you are also interested in these questions please connect with me in the #ocTEL site or through twitter @warwicklanguage
and maybe together we can make a difference?