Blogging with students 1

This school year, I am experimenting with a totally different approach to language learning. I will try blogging with students, either through a joint course blog, in which students will write one or two assignments, or through individual student blogs, which will eventually be a kind of whole year's online English portfolio. In the Finnish senior high school system, the groups a teacher teaches change 5 times a year, and each course with a group only last 6-7 weeks. To make it worth the effort of setting individual blogs up in that system, all my English teacher colleagues should be willing to collaborate and do blog work. Last spring I envisioned setting up an individual blog for all first-graders, which they would then keep adding to all through the 3-4 years in our school, irrespective of who their teacher was. Unfortunately, my colleagues didn't buy the idea, so for the changing groups, I will have one class blog per course. Luckily, with the favourable support of my school administration, I was allowed to design three new courses that first-graders with advanced English skills could opt for. Here is some more background information for this experiment. I now have a small group of students who will stay with me all through this first year, and they are the ones that will have their individual blogs.

I set up a system of teacher blogs on Wordpress to coordinate all the different courses. Only time will tell if my system will be feasible, and work in practice! I did draw several mindmaps for myself, to maintain some logic in the system. Yet, I have already found some pitfalls in it, and will have to keep tweaking it.

I also set up a wiki, in which I will try to collect useful links and more general EFL tips that will hopefully be valid for years to come, too.

Setting everything up takes a fair amount of time but I feel quite excited about it all. It pushes me to think about foreign language teaching and learning in a much wider context. Simply following the textbook, and the teacher's material accompanying it, won't be enough any more!

New school year - new approaches under construction

Pheww, it's been a while since I've posted anything here, for a variety of reasons. Mostly it's because of a loaded spring term with this, that and the other. I should know better to learn to say 'no' at times! I tend to pile on extra work and responsibilites, without thinking of the inevitable consequences, ie. tiredness, exhaustion and no time or energy for the so much needed reflection.

But all that aside, it's the beginning of the school year, in which our first-graders will shift into 1:1 laptop learning. Two weeks back at school, and no sign of the shiny new tools yet! Also, a brand-new learning management system was to be implemented for the teachers during the summer break, to facilitate the transition into some kind of blended learning/teaching. But even that is still in the development phases, and not ready to use! It will probably be rather chaotic, introducing such big changes in the middle of a grading period, when everybody has already started off as usual. Oh well! When would anything go according to schedule in schools? What's more, the new media class, which is being constructed by covering our mostly unused inside yard, is still heavily under construction. And on top of everything, we don't even have working air-conditioning at the moment, and are suffering from the last heatwaves of the summer. Business as usual, in a school environment, I guess! 

This space will, hopefully soon, be a new-style learning environment, not a standard boxy classroom

Nevertheless, I am quite excited about the changes the 1:1 environment will bring. I can feel some anxiety building amongst colleagues, though. Just today, there was talk in the staff room about doing a student poll to ask them how much and how exactly they would like to start using ICT in their learning. Although I am all for involving student in the decision-making as much as possible, I don't think following their preferences should be the sole guideline for designing new learning/teaching approaches. We teachers, as adults and educational experts, should have some initial direction in mind, shouldn't we? Many students tend to be rather conservative, and don't like to be shaken off their comfort zones (just as many of us teachers are, too). What if such a poll indicated that the majority of students are not that keen on using ICT at all? Would be abandon the whole thing then?

Last spring, some of my students reflected on their learning in their English essays, and I copied two revealing paragraphs:

I am a bit worried about the fact that next autumn every first-grade student in our high school will get their own computer and that the teaching will eventually be moved to the internet. Today's youngsters, including me, are already spending too much time online, so what will be the consequences of internet education? Will we forget individuals?

Here in our school we students use mini-laptops to "study" although what we really do is update our facebook. What kind of education is that?

Valid questions but also an indication of how much learning, UNlearning and rethinking lies ahead, for both us teachers and the students.

Support for Japan

The terrible disaster in Japan has deeply touched many people around the globe. Personal connections to Japanese friends added to my own distress, and made me want to take some action to help the victims.

Social media proved its power once more. Not only could I keep up-to-date with the events more quickly than with traditional media, but educators also shared some great aid ideas for schools. Derek E. Baird's (@derekeb) tweet and blog led me to the website of Students Rebuild, and their project 'Paper Cranes for Japan'.

I used several resources to make the following lesson plan for one of my EFL groups last week.

1. Talk about the students' knowledge and feelings about the catastophe.
As Finnish young people often find it hard to put their emotions into words, I used these photos from the Big Picture as prompts. Especially the photos of children, and people in need, loosened the students' tongues to express their deep sorrow, and compassion for the suffering of others.

2. Introduce the paper crane project.
We looked at the above-mentioned website, and I was pleased to realize that even the rowdier boys seemed to take the project seriously. I had taken my own 'Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes' book to school, to introduce the old Japanese myth of the paper cranes. We briefly talked about history, the Second World War, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

3. Fold our own paper cranes.
At the back of my Sadako book, there were detailed folding instructions in English, which the students followed in pairs. We also watched the video tutorial from the link, provided by the Students Rebuild website. Unfortunately, we didn't have the nice, thin origami paper used by the Japanese, so the thicker copy paper at school had to do. At least, we had it in several colours.

It really was heart-warming to see even the clumsier 17-year-old boys carefully fold their cranes. Quite a few students hurried to fold several to put in the envelope. It was then sent off to Seattle, where the Besos Family Foundation has promised to donate $2 for each crane they receive. Our small group finished 24 of them.

4. Upload a photo to the Facebook page, with a message of support.
Some students, whose fingers just weren't nimble enough for the folding, wrote our message, which, after some joint discussion and several improvements read: Our thoughts are with you, and we wish you strength to carry on.

Reflections
I found this a meaningful English lesson for several reasons.
1. It was full of authentic language use, reading, speaking and listening.
2. It was hands-on, which is always a welcome change to the too much text-based language classes.

3. We managed to make our tiny gesture towards supporting the thousands of victims in Japan. Although our contribution was mainly symbolic, it was still worthwhile, and something our rather spoiled teenagers, here in our safe country, need every so often.

4. But most of all, as a language teacher, I want to foster intercultural understanding and awareness, whenever possible. This lesson did it very well. It truly created an atmosphere of sharing a global village, and caring for fellow villagers, even far, far away.

THE BOYS!

I've voiced concerns about underachieving boys at school before (blog post from last summer). I've also been toying with ideas to improve their performance in English classes, and was reminded about some of the key problems by a TED Talks video that I came across some time ago. In the video, instructional designer Ali Carr-Chellman, highlights some of the reasons why boys are tuning out of school.



Most boys simply don't fit the obedient and conscientious girl mould of doing what the teacher tells them to do. For many of them, sitting in class, fiddling with textbook exercises, is totally boring. Even sitting still for 75 minutes at a time, and on a small hard chair, is torture for many! As a consequence, they get restless, start looking for distractions, and eventually underachieve.

One size doesn't fit all, and we can't force all learners into one mould. Why is it so daunting to stop controlling and allow multiple approaches and learning paths instead?

Writing for a purpose does make a difference

In my constant search for authentic language use opportunities for my students, I engaged one English group in a small project, proposed by a colleague in Sweden. Actually old-fashioned letter exchange. We received letters, written in English, from a Swedish class before Christmas, which I then distributed to my students to read and reply to. They were ordinary introductory letters, in which the students colloquially wrote about themselves, their school and studies, family and hobbies. In addition, my colleague had asked them to reflect on the similarities and differences between the cultures of our two neighbouring countries, and insert a picture depicting something typically Swedish. All this went quite nicely with our curriculum, and the syllabus of the course we are studying at the moment.

I was positively surprised that my students seemed to take a genuine interest in this task - in contrast to the common boredom with textbook exercises. The letters they received were quite long, and interesting, and the familiarity with Sweden was another positive factor that made them read with enthusiasm. As for writing their replies, the fact that the recipient was another young student in another country, made them tackle the task differently from ordinary homework. We discussed aspects of politeness, political correctness, cultural sensitivity, and trying to be interested and interesting in general. As the letters were typed on the computer, I also reminded them about the use of automatic language check programmes to avoid spelling mistakes, for example. I also asked them to add a similar picture of Finland, and we discussed 'Creative Commons' and the preferable use of their own photographs, to make it more personal, and to avoid any issues with copyright.

Here are some reflections on the pluses and minuses of this small project.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Authentic language use for a real purpose.
• An assignment that required a personal response from the students - not just totally disconnected exercises from a textbook. Real interaction called for a more creative approach, sometimes also humour.

Dear Finnish random awesome person
REPLY: Dear Swedish not such a random person anymore

• Most students paid special attention to writing correctly.
• Many students wrote much better, and more interesting and entertaining letters than they would have done if there was no real recipient.
• The realization that it does matter what you produce, and it does reflect a lot about you as a person.
• I learned that the Swedish class used Google Docs and process writing for their letters. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to incorporate the full cycle of process writing this time, but will definitely look into using Google Docs in this way in the future.

CHALLENGES

•  In every group, there are always students who just won't make an effort - some letters were short, off the cuff, and consequently not very interesting.
• Despite all the coaching and preparation of the task, some of my students produced letters filled with typos!
• Some didn't bother to attach a photo.
• Uneven numbers of students in the two groups - I had more, so some of my students ended up writing a reply to the same person. It didn't matter for this one letter, but having 'personal penfriends' would be difficult to carry out in the long run.
• I think, interest would soon fade we the letter exchange was continued. It was a good, one-off project, though.

Hopefully we will be able to continue and develop our collaboration in some way in the future!

A mission for foreign language teaching in Finland

 

Towards the end of last year, the Finnish country brand delegation published their report. Amongst missions and challenges set for different sectors of society, they also addressed schools and teachers. Most of all, of course, I was interested to find out what they said about communication and foreign language skills.

‘We have the best school system in the world!’ baldly boasts the report. Why is it then that the ‘products’ from these top schools in the world, after finishing their compulsory education, then struggle to keep up with the rest of the world? What happens to the smart 15-year-old Finnish students in the years between finishing comprehensive school and entering working life? The country brand report tackles these same questions:

Finland has achieved excellent pedagogical results for its comprehensive schools. The reason for this is especially down to skilled teachers. The challenge is that enormous potential is wasted because upper secondary schools and higher education institutions are not able to train enough of the world’s best students supplied to them as world-class scientists and experts.

To my mind, the PISA results only measure a very limited scope of students’ capabilities. I think one area where Finnish students, still, fall short of many of their peers around the world, is in their communication skills, both in their mother tongue, but also, most importantly in foreign languages. In English, for example, many of our high school graduates master the structure of the language and possess an impressively wide vocabulary, but unfortunately fail to use all this in active communication.

Our comprehensive schools are praised for the lack of standardized testing. Maybe one of the problems in the senior high school (or upper secondary school) level is that they prepare students for the national final exam, which in languages has hardly changed since the late 1970s. The exam is mainly multiple choice, spotting the right answer amongst given alternatives, ie, testing only that passive understanding. Indeed, spoken skills have never been tested in the final exams. If they were, obviously more time would be spent developing them at school. I am not sure what the situation is like in Finnish higher education institutions, but I know for sure that when graduates enter working life, their employers expect them to be confident in, at least English, possibly in other languages, too. But many of them are not. This essential fact was duly noted by the country brand delegation, too.

The delegation has also vowed to make Finland's strengths even stronger. For instance, Finland has a topnotch educational system. But Finnish students are not required to participate in classes like speech and debate. Encouraging students to hone their oratory skills could prevent public speaking shortcomings in the classroom from entering the boardroom.

The scenario described Mr Jaakko Lehtonen, director general of the Finnish Tourist board, and a member of the country brand delegation, in YLE news (Finnish National Broadcasting company) in September 2009 is very accurate, in my experience:

Lehtonen says Finland suffers from a dearth of confidence when communicating its strengths to the rest of the world. “We don't have the guts to go out there and bravely boast how good we are. We stand in the corner with our hands in our pockets and hope that somebody will pay attention to us, which is a pity,” he says.

It is widely believed in Finland that it is only the older generations who struggle to communicate in foreign languages, because in their time, language teaching was based on translation, not communicative skills. Yes, it’s true that some of the language teaching has changed, but I would argue that after comprehensive school, the focus is still on passive understanding. I have witnessed this ‘hands in your pockets, hoping that somebody will pay attention to them’ syndrome too many times when taking my students abroad on student exchanges. Sadly, our bright youngsters are best at understanding everything that is said to them in a foreign language, and answering simple yes-no questions. Thereby, most of them soon appear to be unable to convey their personalities in any way, in a foreign language. They rarely initiate interaction, nor do they keep the conversation going. But if their conversation partner perseveres and keeps asking them simple questions, they will politely answer. If they get more confident, some will no go on the opposite direction, and suffer from a monologue syndrome, and get very disturbed if, as is often the custom in other language cultures, anybody interrupts them with a comment or question. In effect the Finnish communication culture, simply transferred into other languages, doesn’t easily work.

How to improve this situation, then? I’m afraid I share the skepticism of the country brand delegation (from the above-mentioned YLE news article):

But changing deep-seated cultural norms could be challenging. Even if the plan works, it could take generations for Finns to become natural marketers. The delegation itself says 20 years could go by before the results of the project are known. "It is not impossible but it is a hard and demanding task. And maybe Finns don't want to change," says Jukka Hienonen, a member of the delegation and outgoing CEO of national carrier Finnair. Asking Finns to transform a central part of their identity could be calling for too much. Despite their humility, Finns are a rather proud lot.

Interestingly, I read an article about Hannu Rajaniemi in our local newspaper yesterday (Turun Sanomat, Jan 8, 2011, p. 28). After living 10 years in Britain, this Finnish mathematician and author says that his British personality is much more outgoing than his Finnish self. I think this is the crux of the problem.

We need to be more outgoing when speaking English. It’s a pity that Finns, who want to improve their international presence, either cannot or refuse to acknowledge this simple observation. But at least we should appreciate that people in influential positions have finally recognized this, and brought attention to it. We need to make our students aware of how our Finnish communication patterns may be perceived by outsiders. If you are aware, at least you have an idea what might need changing. We also need non-native teachers to challenge Finnish students to improve their communicative skills. With a classroom of all Finns speaking English, the Finnish patterns just get reinforced. Online collaboration, videoconferencing for example, might be one solution here. Secondly, employers need to understand that, with a high school diploma, and possibly a university degree, their employees’ spoken language skills are likely to be lacking. They need continuous language training, preferably with native speakers, to keep up and improve.

From teacher to 'learning coach'

For a long time, I have felt that the title 'teacher' (in my language, Finnish, too - 'opettaja') is misleading or wrong in the 21st-century context. A teacher is somebody who has sole access to secret knowledge, and stands in front of the classroom giving lectures. He/she is the deliverer of knowledge, in a one-way process, which was believed to automatically lead to student learning earlier, but which we all now know is not necessarily the case. Wouldn't it be about time to think of a new, more appropriate title for ourselves - one that would describe what is expected of us, to make education more learner-centred?

Today, I came across an interesting article on the World Future Society website: The World is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning by Maria H. Andersen. And there it was - the title I've been trying think of: LEARNING COACH! Ms Andersen describes the new role like this:

As the learning coach, my job is no longer to “deliver content” to the students. ... Now I can use my time to help students search for good questions, help them to understand the content they are learning, provide activities to help them work with the concepts or connect the material in an applied way, and foster discussion with other students on these topics.

Ms Andersen's model for personalized learning sounds really fascinating, although slightly sci-fi at times, too, but that's what futurists of education should present us with, to boldly go where no teacher has ever gone before.

A system for personalized learning will not grow from inside formal education. Education is like a field that’s been overplanted with only small patches of fertile soil. Too many stakeholders (parents, unions, administration, faculty, etc.) compete to promote various ideas about how to change, acting like weeds or plagues that choke off plant growth. The fresh and fertile soil of the open Web can foster the quick growth of a personalized learning system. Then, like a good fertilizer, it can be used to replenish the soil of formal education and help us to reach that “Holy Grail” of education: personalized learning for all.