Stretching students' comfort zones

I have aimed at renewing some of my classroom practices with the help of social media to create authentic foreign language situations for my students, instead of the traditional learning in a void with a course book and only other speakers of your native language. I have believed that communicating in an online network/community with young people from many countries, as part of your course performance, would excite and motivate students. This week I was proved wrong, however.

Due to the lack of funds to pay for subsitute teachers, while attending a conference last week, I activated my students online. An extra bonus for them was that they didn't even have to go to school for the first two morning classes, but could 'take' their English lesson at home. They all registered as members on our international project Ning, and I posted 2 prompts with links to texts and videos plus discussion questions for them to reply. Naturally, I also hoped that some of the foreign project members would participate to make it the authentic situation I had in mind.

Today I met the group for the first time since last week. Only 10 out of 21 had written a reply on the Ning! Some pretended they hadn't understood what they were supposed to do, others simply shrugged and avoided my eyes. In other words, they had just taken the time off without doing any work at home!

Another disappointment - none of the foreign members have taken up my challenge of joining us in these environmental discussions, at least not yet. That is the trouble with asynchronous communication - our fast-paced 6-7-week grading periods don't allow for hanging around waiting! What's more, I only realised in hindsight that building a conversation online doesn't come naturally to my students. I should have provided them with clear guidelines and expected outcomes for this exercise. Next time I do anything like this I will prepare an assessment rubric together with the students, so there won't be any uncertainty about the expectations.

Mind you, it wasn't a total failure. I am just feeling rather pessimistic at the moment for some reason.Even without a rubric, some students did still do quite well, and managed to express themselves clearly and interestingly in English. It was the indifferent slackers and those who wrote very short and superficial comments, mainly just repeating what somebody else had already written, that really frustrated me. For them, it was nothing but another boring teacher-assigned homework exercise they weren't in the least interested in. I should probably blame myself for once again giving them schooly, unmotivating assignments. What should a task be like to make them want to do more than merely go through the motions to avoid the nagging of the teacher?

The next complaint came when I started showing them where to type their blog post that is due next week. Some of them started asking if they could just do it as a traditional handwritten paper assignment instead, and bring it to me in class. When I inquired about this preference they said that they didn't want anybody else to see what they wrote and maybe laugh at them! Fair point, although I tried to convince them that surely all of them were mature enough not to laugh at other people's writing.

At first all this made me quite angry, then discouraged. I feel as though all my efforts are futile. My attemps of practising what I preach, ie. being myself a model of a lifelong learner with a semi-active online presence, is making no difference to them. They probably need peers as models, and not a nutty middle-aged teacher. I'm beginning to lean again towards only offering online work as an option to those students who feel comfortable, competent and at ease with such environment, and are possibly drawn to the chance of interaction with international students. In this old blog post I felt like that very strongly last year, but then changed my mind after reading about many inspirational examples from around the world of how students enjoyed being active online participants (for example this one).

Then I started thinking that maybe it's a question of national mentality. Stereotypically (but with a lot of truth in it, too!) Finns are notorious for needing a lot of personal space, wanting to blend in and not stand out, keeping very private about their thoughts, and generally refusing to step outside their comfort zones. All this is emphasized manyfold when it comes to active foreign language use, despite all the efforts of modern language teaching focusing on communicative skills in addition to the traditional translations, grammar and deadly gap fills. I would like to push my students' beyond their comfort zones at times, because you simply have to if you are to actively engage in communication in a foreign language. The undeniable fact is that many Finns still come across as painfully awkward when speaking English or other foreign languages. They will politely give perfunctory answers when asked, but who would want to continuously keep asking if there is little input from their conversation partner? This is one of the lessons Finns find extremely hard to learn. What's more, it's glaringly obvious that they have no chance of developing these skills if all they do in language classes is read ready-made questions printed in the book or a worksheet prepared by the teacher. It's all just one-way and no real discussions are built. Question-answer-question-answer, perfunctorily do what the teacher tells you to do, but no more. The sooner you are finished the sooner you can sink back into your own private world and just sit there quietly or start leafing your diary, texting friends on your mobile phone or gossiping in Finnish. Regular scenario I encounter in class every day. Exactly the same pattern was repeated by some of my students in the online discussion.

How to activate them? How to come up with meaningful activities for them, and most of all, how to help them develop and get the point? With Finnish students another important learning experience would be to be positively supportive and encouraging towards others - we tend to be rather judgmental, negative and critical. I wonder whether this is why some students feel reluctant to publish their work online.

It will be interesting to see next week if most of them will now resort to the traditional paper version and not bother about the Ning blog? I didn't want to force them to publish anything against their will, so I left the choice of medium up to them. Now I rather regret not sticking to my convictions. I think I will bring it up again in tomorrow's class to try to discuss with them the educational purpose behind it all in more detail.

Only, I am on rather shaky grounds banging on about authentic situations, when at the moment it's only my students discussing the topics anyway - they might as well do it amongst themselves in class. In my previous project, dialogue between students from different countries didn't work, because of scheduling problems and overall the considerably smaller number of participants. This time there are 255 members on the Ning, which is more than enough, and only a handful of students from the Philippines have started their summer holiday so far. But still, I fail to get this more in-depth dialogue started outside the chatty teen-topic discussion forum. Possibly it's a question of drastic differences in curricula and the students' English skills plus the lack of tighter pre-project planning with all the teachers. Improvising in international projects can produce beautiful, unexpected results, but also backfire - as now.

Photo: 045/365 - Comfort Zone by TheRogue on Flickr

The magic of social media

Back from my two days in the Finnish national conference of 'Interactive Technology in Education'. First time ever for me, and being there all alone, it took me some time to get the hang of things. A few keynote speeches and then a wide variety of parallel 40-minute forums. Naturally, a lot of exhibitors marketing their products. It seemed to me as though, now that many Finnish schools have switched from overhead projectors to a combination of teacher laptop and dataprojector in the classroom, it's then the smartboard that is being flogged as the next prerequisite for good education.

I always want to question the merit of any new expensive device being pushed into schools, as to me it often serves the purpose of appearing modern and up-to-date, possibly to attract new and better students. If I think of my school, what difference has it really made in student learning whether a teacher demonstrates ideas through text and pictures on an OHP, screen or smartboard? Basically, these are still all part and parcel of the same old teacher-centred lecture-style class, aren't they? What I would like to see in learning environments, is the shift into classes that truly activate students into critical thinking, finding some structure in the overflow of information and formulating their own understanding of the world around them - briefly, transforming the passive student audience into active and curious learners, at least some of the time. I am by no means undermining the useful role of lecturing in certain circumstances.

My main interest in the conference was the forum of SOMETU - an open network for anyone interested in social media and how it supports learning. With its close to 1200 members it is quite a significant group on a Finnish scale (NB. our population is only 5 million). Active Sometu members gave several talks on different aspects of social media all through Thursday afternoon. The atmosphere in the room was very enthusiastic and positively charged. The organisers seemed to have underestimated the popularity of this topic, since, for every forum, so many attendants turned up that some ended up standing along the walls, sitting on the floor (!) or staying outside in the hallway.

True to the spirit of social media, the Sometu team had set up an arsenal of equipment and tools to dazzle the audience - ConnectPro video conferencing for those who couldn't come to the conference, two screens, one displaying the actual presentation, the other one what was going on in Sometu Second Life, video, pictures, net applications, mini laptops going round for audience feedback for those who didn't have their own to participate in the backchannels, and the list goes on...

Of course, it's to do with technology, but at the end of the day, it's not only that. I'm glad to see that at long last we are moving away from the closed land of tech geeks into many ordinary teachers of different subjects asking themselves how technology could help them motivate and activate their students.

On a personal note, I have to admit that my brain is probably too old for this type of multitasking, since I found it almost impossible to follow several channels at the same time, eg. listening to the presentation and simultaneously typing something sensible on Twitter. I'm forever hopeful, though - maybe even my brain could still evolve with more practice!

Photos: 'Sometu ITK-foorumilla' by rongasanne on Flickr

Interactive technology in education - conference in Finland

This week on Thursday and Friday I will be immersed in the wonders of social media and all kinds of cool tools for education - I hope! First time ever, I am attending and ICT conference, all paid for by my school, thank you very much. I did have to do some persuading with my principal to get the green light to go, since I am a mere foreign language teacher, and this has traditionally been the exclusive area of ICT teachers only. Maybe this is a turn of the books, since this time I am the only teacher from my school attending - our ICT people are not into social media in any way. They focus mainly on technology, hardware and more traditional LMS solutions, so they opted out this year. Social media, interaction, or communication is probably considered more suitable for humanist hippies like myself, not something the more serious technical types would waste their time on. Oh well, I am looking forward to it very much! At least around 1000 educators from all fields will be there and I am keen to see how I will fit in.

One participant from a Finnish educational network I am a member of has put up a Google map for participants to introduce themselves. I've had funny experiences with Google maps before. Somehow I find the logic of placing your pin plus any other information there rather peculiar. I had at least 5-6 unsuccessful attempts before my photo finally appeared in the right place with all the introductions and links I wanted to include in it! Yet, after all that hard work, today I noticed that I had mysteriously moved from my hometown Turku further south-west to the archipelago. The joys of interaction!

After managing to bring myself back to where I belong, I noticed that some others had been moved across the sea from Helsinki, all the way to Estonia, while others had landed right in the middle of the Gulf. We could make this into a nice icebreaker introductions game to get to know each other. Just move other people's pins to interesting new locations!

Social media is like candy

As kids we were not given sweets every day, not even every week, but, in particular, never before meals. Later, when my daughter was a child, dentists and nurses used to recommend rationing by allowing only one 'candy day' a week, rather than letting children have a non-stop feast of sugary snacks - for obvious health reasons. Sweets are addictive.

For me, sugar is clearly something I'd better avoid as much as possible. If there is an open box of candy or chocolate around, I just can't keep my fingers off it. This then invariably leads to the infamous 'sugar blues' soon afterwards and a vicious circle of more hunger and craving for equally damaging white-floury foods. Over the years there will be tooth problems, an ever-expanding waistline, not to mention a senselessly unhealthy diet when, instead of good nutrients, you constantly fill yourself up with totally useless empty calories. Withdrawal symptoms are out of this world - the irritability, crankiness and headaches that follow not having the regular sweet doses. All this in on my mind now, as I have just been studying a Finnish writer/journalist/healthy nutrition promoter's article on how to kick your sugar addiction in 35 days.

Today it occurred to me that my online social media consumption habits are quite similarly revolving around getting the next fix of updates. Just like any other addict, I can't help clicking away. I might have to adopt a form of rehab here, too, as with more and more interesting social web applications on offer, setting the limits is getting too much of a challenge for me.

Ever since we got a teacher's laptop with internet installed in every classroom at school last autumn, I have found myself checking my email, Facebook wall, and most recently twitter even during lessons while students are working independently. So not necessary. The world won't come to an end, even if I wait till I get home - or even till the next day - to check all this. But the laptop sitting on the teacher's desk in class is the irresistible tempting candy box for me.

And the same routine goes on at home, too.

My super-handy small laptop that goes with me from room to room - literally a LAPtop, which I can comfortably work on in any position sitting up or lying down! - and a wireless internet connection in the whole house are a dangerous combination. Just recently, I have got into the habit of placing it on the kitchen table while cooking. Just a few minutes spare that it take for a pan to warm up, or water to boil, are just enough to check up a snippet online. Alarming!

I could probably do with 'an internet fast', just as a religious friend of mine is doing once a week for Lent.

Photo: Eye Candy by loonatic on Flickr