Video in language teaching

The video above is a remix which uses extracts from RIP: A remix manifesto in order to convey the importance of copyright knowledge to the teaching profession and to explain how Creative Commons licencing can support a creative, sustainable learning environment online through open educational practice. I created it as a contribution to the ViLTE project, funded by the British Council.

Further detail about the importance of creativity in the digital domain and its relevance to language teaching in particular is explained in this jointly authored article on Produsage  published in the education policy analysis archives journal. 

I was also involved in the EU project Video for All where lots of teaching resources were shared for language teachers to help them cope with the complex landscape of digital media production in their teaching. Unfortunately for us the site (hosted by a pain project manager) has been taken down at the project's end of life as the budget has run out. I find that outrageous and I am trying to bring it to the notice of the funders. The resources were created as open educational resources and  need ongoing support. The Wordpress site which was the host for our work would not be expensive but I do not have any say in budget, I am just a teacher. Does seem strange to me though that tech companies and even project managers of EU projects proclaim their interest in education but often do little to support the real needs of educators or to maintain resources we need. It bears witness to the fact that some are clearly only in it for the money. 

The key word in all of this work is the word open. Kaltura have worked hard to support open standards in video, as a practitioner I work in the open because I believe everyone should have access to education and I also believe that through an open web I can network and learn from other educators. If you get the chance to watch the whole of the RIP video on Vimeo you will see that openness (open data, open education, open source, open access, open practice etc) are key to making headway in solving big problems. Problems we should no longer assume will be solved by politicians - that ship has sailed and we can be clear that they also by and large are busy protecting their own interests. We need to ask ourselves what really matters.  I have of course kept a copy of my video, added it to my YouTube channel and Kaltura gallery and shared widely as well as passing the file to the ViLTE project to help ensure its existence as an OER beyond the confines of a project. 

Update: March 2019 - Kaltura have now closed my free open gallery - so just as well I maintain other ways to share my work!

CALLing to TELL ALL !

I have been invited to meet with trainee language teachers at the Centre for Professional Education here at Warwick this week and I will be taking the WIHEA #knowhow message with me. I will be telling my personal language teaching journey and will also attempt to demystify a bunch of acronyms. This is in order to make it easier to see the paths that exist to finding suitable networks to support their work in schools. My professional journey has involved twists and turns and sharing will I hope make it clear that the most interesting journeys can arise from indulging in a little "flâneurie".

The session will demonstrate heutagogical principles, providing a set of resources for exploration covering "old school" Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE), Mobile Assisted Language learning (MALL), Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL) and many more! Possibly the most important acronym we will meet however will be the PLN - Professional Learning Network.  Embarking on a career in teaching will leave very little time to draw breath. Connecting with others who can support and share the journey will ensure that each individual will not find themselves alone as they make their way through the challenges that lie ahead. A vital network for me when I started that journey as a Secondary School teacher to Head of Languages many years ago was the Association for Language Learning (ALL) which still is there today. Life is more complex 30 years on and the haystack we know as the internet not always the easiest place to navigate. Together we will explore the many possibilities for creation and curation. I hope I can provide a touchstone which will help to illuminate their future path.

#BYOD4L: Thoughts on creating

What a week! As my head cold finally withdraws I am returning to the last of 5 hectic but rewarding days working with the #BYOD4L team and turning my thoughts to our last topic, Creating. It was my first time moderating/facilitating on this digital ideas fest and the fact that it coincided with a heavy cold (not unusual given the time of year) just revealed how online practice can have a major advantage over the face to face - no one else was put at risk of contagion thanks to my sniffs and sneezes and I was able to participate fully despite everything, assisted by regular medicated hot lemon drinks and the encouragement of others!

I'm no artist (I may well have mentioned that before) but I do enjoy the visual, particularly when it communicates ideas which may be difficult to express. We are surrounded by visual communication, as indeed was predicted some years ago. I remember when the "new" GCSE for languages was introduced some 20 years ago we were told to expect greater use of signs and visual media. I was asked to provide practitioner feedback on a French course book in development at the time based around minitel which had taken off in France. A precursor to what was to become the game changer in communication technology, the internet. 

I knew that Friday night's chat would be a challenge for me, juggling practical tasks with tissues and feeling pretty tired after a busy week but it was great fun and has left me reviewing all I do through the lens of creativity. I couldn't manage to edit and share images in the time frame allowed (see the rather bland pic above for evidence!), it was all rather frantic but I was inspired by those who did - at least one of whom did so on a mobile phone whilst on the touchline of a child's football match! When I accepted my limitations I just settled in to enjoying the creativity of others including the #creativeHE gang who shared the chat too, whilst listening to a playlist shared by @BYOD4L. 

All this activity has left me pondering more deeply about creativity and I am taking those thoughts on to my other blog Espace Sisyphe. Thanks to Neil, Sheila, Deb, Chris, Alex, Rebecca, Ellie, Emma, Chrissi and Sue for the great company and inspiration, a fabulous CoP for digital skill enhancement.  

#BYOD4L: Thoughts on connecting.

Image: Flickr Pandora connection issue CC BY SA 2.0 by Abraham Williams 

A grey Monday morning has been enlivened today by my participation in the Bring your own device for learning #BYOD4L activities. Today we focus on connecting - spending time in various online spaces encouraging other teachers, researchers, students, learning technologists or other interested folk to connect to the #BYOD4L event: 5 days full of online activities exploring how we can make use of technology in our professional roles to increase our impact across our sector, discipline or even just within our institution!

Connecting has been a major focus of my professional life over the past few years. In particular, making computer-mediated connections to enhance my professional activities and researching how such connections can best work for my context. This work has completely transformed my life as an educator and I would like to share some of the things I have learnt. 

• Birds of a feather flock together!

Human beings like to join others with similar interests. You can't insist that everyone connects through decreed spaces in order to talk about something - well, you can but ultimately you will fail. You get a kind of begrudging compliance unless there's a real shared purpose which everyone buys in to. It's not all about the tool or the schedule, although thinking about such things may help. You have to create an atmosphere and those you wish to connect with have to believe it is worth investing their time connecting. You may have to accept that only those like you will come along. Of course this leads to the accusation that some spaces are echo chambers and some are hijacked for less than illuminating purposes.

• Keep an open door and an open mind

Connecting through open groups on social media platforms reduces the barriers to connection. Don't think everyone will flood in, most of us prefer to "lurk" watching what is happening and forming opinions about whether or not to join in. By providing a welcoming presence and dealing sensitively with all new arrivals, gradually you will see discussions taking shape. It is vital that responses are timely, immediacy is known to be key to engagement. Keep an open mind on migrating discussions to other digital spaces, do your research on your connections and find their networks if you want to engage more deeply. You may find that your connections lead to serendipitous encounters and developments. Mine certainly did. You may also experience the demands of such nodal activity. 

• Go global!

What is to stop you! Once you have an online presence and connected devices there are no borders preventing you from following your disciplinary interests around the world. There are many networks which connect for fellowship, interaction and mutual support so follow your interests. If you are interesting in telecollaboration for teaching and learning in Higher Education check out this new academic organisation: Unicollaboration.  You can enhance your language skills in the process!

Clavier No Boundaries from Teresa MacKinnon on Vimeo.

Walking the walk!

We should never underestimate the power of imitation! Human beings don't always learn well from following instructions, from listening to advice or from doing as they are told - far from it! The most profound impact we make on each others' learning comes from what we do in front of them. I think that is what my Dad was trying to teach me when, in an attempt to get his rebellious daughter to stop smoking he (a 20 a day man) said:
"Do as I say, not as I do"

Of course, despite promises otherwise I did not give up. Years later though, divorced, newly single and on the lookout for the man of my dreams (now hubbie no.2, non-smoker) it was not difficult to stop smoking to join the pub trips which facilitated our getting together :)

In education, we call it "modelling". No, not the glossy magazine sort, with its unrealistic portrayal of life that crushes the soul. The simple human process of leading by example, sharing what we do (including the mistakes and how we improve) and encouraging others to try it too. We do it to inspire, hoping others see that we value our activity and it brings us joy. That's what I try to do in my language teaching. 

So, this week I'm joining the #BYOD4L team as a moderator and over 5 days we will indulge in a feast of lively activities on 5 C themes, linked here to some of my earlier musings on this and other virtual spaces:

Connecting - let's be open and accessible to all! 
Communicating - informed by my experience with computer-mediated communication
Curating written some time ago now so a good reminder of how it felt! 
Collaborating takes time and interpersonal skills!
Creating made this brief alternative CV as part of #digiwrimo 2 years ago. 

I hope that we will all walk the walk, listen to each other and be ACCCCCE! 

Coalescence

Strategic #Narrative Embodiment: group shift from potential community to coalescence https://t.co/jNn0ddcXFh @elmibester #Knowledge #KM #SNE pic.twitter.com/AxBKl9e82v

— Alexandra Lepercq (@Espenel) October 1, 2016

 I found this graph illustrating the development over time of a Community of Practice (Wenger) very helpful as I prepared to deliver a workshop for tutors this Christmas. In many ways we are a diverse group, international colleagues coming from a wide range of teaching traditions and with varying levels foo interest and expertise in technology enhanced teaching and learning. What unites us is a love for supporting language learning and after recent developments a degree of clarity about how we assess language progression. 

I analysed our progress towards becoming a Community of Practice (Wenger) in a paper delivered at Eurocall in Evora, Portugal some time ago. Time now to revisit this. In the paper I talked about the importance of "tending" the community through shared activities. Several of our "technology enhanced learning" champions achieved recognition for their professional development through fellowship of the HEA (Zhiyan Guo, SFHEA) or are working towards this. Others have taken advantage of the open courses shared through our 101 news forum (e.g. Chiyomi Duble completed the Blended Learning Essentials mooc) Since the paper was written there have been institutional changes which intervened making the TEL meet-ups a more challenging activity. As our operating unit (the Language Centre) was merged into a new wider School of Modern Languages and Cultures, new pressures arose :

• a loss of budget allocation for our activity reduced the security of the future of the Languages@Warwick project.
• Institutional implementation of a central platform provided a new location for student courses, dividing our community activity over different platforms.
• a push to move teaching resources into the central moodle made TEL advocacy a rather political activity, internal discussions became divisive and sometimes unpleasant. 

However, the shared commitment to a good blended learning experience for our students remains. Our "champions" have continued to engage and develop their practice, putting our TEL activity amongst some of the best on offer for language learning in HEIs. An emergent group of practitioners are working at the leading edge of TEL through Online Intercultural Exchange and the use of video creation and creative online assessment techniques such as the e-portfolio project flourish. And so I can see that we have moved along Wenger's graph towards coalescence and that is gratifying given all the contrary influences which threatened to unpick the progress made. Tomorrow we all meet up for our annual Christmas show and tell session and continue our journey learning together disseminating through a co-authored blog aimed at increasing student understanding of TEL in language learning.  

Open Education #FOS4L Getting creative

Open Education is dear to me, creating tailored learning resources has always been one of my favourite aspects of teaching, But what's the point of all that creation if you can't share it widely and be inspired by others who critique or improve on it? But the concept of open is often misunderstood. 

Since the advent of digital I have not only been able to clear out all the ancient worksheets from under my bed (25 years of dust collecting under there!) but I have also been able to refine the best ideas and develop them for digital practice, sharing using slideshare, TES resources, scribd, issu, dropbox, flickr and other sites and the engagement with them has helped me to realise how useful they are to others. It's not always easy to find sites that display the creative commons licence obviously, hence my campaign on slideshare recently. 

The new affordances of digital tools increase the impact that can be achieved from a teaching perspective considerably. Using digital video for example can revolutionise the authenticity of language teaching and learning scenarios. I have been involved in the EU Video for all project over the past year and a half and I have conducted piloting sessions with colleagues in HE to get their impressions of this approach to encouraging creativity. Of course using commercial video or "finding images on the web" can be problematic and sometimes teachers get caught like rabbits in the headlights, afraid to create or encourage creativity in case copyright is infringed. So for that reason I took one of the Video for All examples made by one of my students (using poetry for student creation) and made some resources about Creative Commons (including a wiki page here) to support language teachers in embarking on their own make to suit their context. 

I believe that supporting the confidence of teachers to create and within their Community of Practice is very important. We have been disempowered through a series of bureaucratic practices in education for too long, good teaching is a fundamentally creative process and skills development in the digital era should be a priority. This is why I embraced Terry Loane's suggestion of Open Guilds and participated recently in the webinar. I also set up an open badge for other language educators (see below, designed by @mearso) so we can start to build a cross sector CoP to promote such activity. If you know a language educator who practices openly, please share the badge claim link with them!

Flexible pedagogies FOS4L

An invitation to join #FOS4L this week arrived just as I was coming to the end of a week's leave and returning to work to catch up on over 300 emails! (most were quickly deleted thankfully). As I catch up on open discussions taking place within the #fos4l spaces online and I see happily that it will involve interacting with some of my favourite folk in #edtech and making new friends I am instantly inspired to get involved. The suggestions for activities over the short 5 day course coupled with the fact it is already day 3 meant I decided to draw together my reflections together on the first 3 topics through this post. 

Digital literacies and identity:

My professional identity puts my role as a language educator before my learning technology role, although both are clearly very closely connected. I have reflected on this before for #ocTEL last year. My access to French language use afforded by the interenet feeds my language teaching identity, leading to an ongoing connection to the language as it continues to evolve - see this for example on authenticity. I also curate content to help other language teachers explore and manage their journey towards greater digital awareness. I very much welcome the inclusion of Wellbeing in Jisc's digital capability model as a recognition of the time it takes to acquire skills and knowlege necessary to be an effective digital practitioner. 

Flexible pedagogies: 

I am not sure I like this term as it implies a kind of fuzziness around how learning happens. Personally my learning since the arrival of the internet has been best described by the term heutagogy and I feel this is a useful learning theory, essentially reflecting the ease with which we can follow our own learning paths since the advent of ubiquitous access to information. As I have worked using this to inform my practice with students I have certainly found it to increase their autonomy and engagement. If we direct our own learning it follows however that we can refuse to learn should we choose to do so, no amount of teacher encouragement, threat or reward can force an individual to learn something that he doesn't wish to. I see this in my own refusal to learn that eating chocolate is fattening! However, I have to accept that heutagogy is a newcomer. The HEA have a very useful site on flexible pedagogies which I see as an umbrella term to encompass the sort of toolset I have always supported. Flexibility, willingness to adopt a learner-centred approach, devolve the locus of control to them and learn from them are all positive in my opinion. It is time to change our understanding of how learning happens but change stands little chance of success institutionally despite the helpful advice in this report unless they accompanied by a flexible approach to assessment. We get what we assess, our assessments also show what we value. 

Supporting learning:

I am going to reflect on this with respect to my leadership role in supporting digital engagement with my teaching colleagues. I have adopted the following principles:- autonomy, mutual support and connected, open practice.

• provision of self-service, just in time rescoures for skills acquisition e.g how to tutorials sandbox course spaces on our VLE and a central sharing community for all tutors to build a community of practice.
• show and tell sessions every term for dissemination and celebration of the best teaching and tool use. (see slides below)
• encouragement of PLN development through social media tools and open networks

Seems to be working for those who are prepared to accept that you have to make time in order to avoid reinventing square wheels.  A shift away from silos and towards a more open mindset are also required to value connecting for professional development.