How to Embed a Storybird Tale

In order to embed a story you have created in Storybird you can follow these steps:

1.  View the title page of your story.
2.  Click on the three-pronged icon on the bottom right of the screen which displays the word share when you mouse over it.
3.  Copy the embed code.  It's quite long!
4.  Go to the Blogger blog post where you want to embed the story.
5.  Click the HTML tab.
6.  Choose a place in your post where you want to embed the story and paste.

Growing, Changing Syllabus

This is an exciting time to be a teacher!  The internet now allows teachers to innovate, collaborate on, and share ideas for using technology to meet learning objectives.  I have been teaching courses about the use of the Internet in second/foreign  language teaching through the State University of NY at Buffalo since 2004.  My course became an online course called Educational Uses of the Internet in 2006.   The present online course is called Technologies in Second Language.

Who were my students?

Since the course deals with ever changing tools for learning, I find myself updating the syllabus before  each new semester.  Before the upcoming fall 2013 semester, I thought it would be a good reflective activity to see how the course has changed over time.

What resources did we use?

In the beginning students from many different disciplines took my course because of a dearth of courses on using technology in their own fields.  I encouraged students to tailor each mod to their own interests and I felt that all the participants in the course learned a lot from having multiple viewpoints. At that time the text was Egbert and Hanson-Smith's (1999) CALL Environments: Research, Practice and Critical Issues  and articles which students could find on reserve in the campus library .

However, in 2006 I began to use Will Richardson's text  Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.  His book was unique in that he discussed the tools in K-12 school contexts, giving many examples of what teachers had been done and could do with Internet tools in the future.  I used Richardson's text in its many revised editions until this semester (fall 2013) and supplemented it with online articles dealing with second language learning and technology. 

Unfortunately like all texts dealing with technology, Richardson's text became somewhat out-dated, so I have begun to use only online articles and videos.  There is no longer a dearth of information or courses on educational uses of the Internet, there is an explosion!  So I am now narrowing the focus of the course to second/foreign language learning.

What has gradually become more important?

Over time I have put more emphasis on the visual aspect of learning.  Throughout the course, the students use Voice Thread and, eventually, they create their own Voice Thread lessons.  They also craft digital stories using tools for creating photo-stories and comic strip generators.  They also have to include images in their blog posts  and curate website through Scoop.it.

Who did students collaborate with?

Another change that I can see is in my course is that over the years there has been a shift in the types of collaboration..  In the first few years my students interacted primarily with the other participants in the course.  For example, they created detailed webquests and gave each other feedback.  They were also encouraged to join appropriate listservs.  However, the emphasis in the ensuing  years has been on requiring the students to widen their own PLNs (personal learning network) by joining  Nings, following educational bloggers and attending Twitterchats.  In that way, they will be connected educators in the future and will be able to stay up-to-date.

What's the latest new thing?

One of the newest mods in my course is "Games in Second/foreign LanguageLlearning.  Although gaming has been a growing force in education for the last few years, little work was available on its application for language learners.  However,  that is beginning to change and there is now enough information  to include a mod on gaming.

Reflections

These are the two biggest gradual changes that have occurred in my course:

• An emphasis on having the students create an effective personal learning network.
• An emphasis on having students learn about digital tools not only to use them personally but also to teach their own students to use them creatively.

Gaming to Change the World

I have long been interested in the use of games as learning tools.  So I recently read two books on video games, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal and Video Games and Learning by Kurt Squire.  I'll focus on the first book in this post and save the other for another time.

Jane McGonigal is the director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future and makes an excellent case for using games to solve world problems.  Although her book does not focus on education, I learned a lot about the  mechanics of what makes games (especially online games) so appealing and tried to make my own comparison to traditional educational activities.

McGonigal starts off explaining that all games both on and off line from the simplest to the most complex possess 4 features: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.  (p. 21).  Then she spends a good deal of the book describing how research has shown that games create positive emotion.  Games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves, and it turns out that almost nothing makes us happier than good, hard work (p. 28).  Unfortunately, while many classes are hard work, they are usually required not voluntary.

In McGonigal's book I  learned that there are three things that make online or video games so compelling:

• Feedback
• Flow
• Fiero

Feedback

The 3 types of feedback these games  provide are visual (perhaps by something appearing or disappearing, ) quantitative (a score) and qualitative (a steady increase in the challenge level).  This feedback allows you to always know how you're doing.  In contrast  in a class in the feedback is often sparse and delivered well after something is turned in.

Flow

 McGonigal tells us that In a good computer or video game you're always playing on the very edge of your skill level, always on the brink of falling off.  When you do fall off, you feel the urge to climb back on.  That's because there is virtually nothing as engaging as this state of working at the very limits of your ability - or what both game designers and psychologists call "flow."  When you are in a state of flow, you want to stay there ...(p. 24).  Although some classes are very energizing, others tend to make students keep looking at the clock hoping that the period will end.

Fiero

Fiero is what we feel after we triumph over adversity (p. 33).  It's the feeling that makes us want to throw our hands in the air or do a "happy dance" because we have truly accomplished something.  How often does that happen in a class?

McGonigal both explains the appeal of video games and poses a provocative question.  What if we decided to use everything we know about game design to fix what's wrong with reality?  What if we started to live our real lives like gamers, lead our real businesses and communities like game designers, and think about solving real-world problems like computer and video game theorists (p. 7)?

I still have a lot to learn about video games and education.  So I plan to continue reading and to play several video games like Civ IV in the summer so that I can experience the feedback, flow and fiero that McGonigal describes.  In the meantime, however, I heartily agree with her goal of using games to change the world.

Tools of Engagement Project

  I have been participating in professional development for faculty at the State University of NY at Buffalo through a site called Tools of Engagement. Although previous mods proved interesting, this morning I viewed the mod on collaborative spaces and was disappointed.   Although I was glad to see that my favorite site, Voice Thread, (VT) was featured, I was dissatisfied with the examples that were provided.
    Unfortunately some of the links for examples of VT did not work, but for those that did, the examples showed very little interaction between creator and audience.  The threads showed the creators using VT as a substitute for Power Point.  In my opinion the presenters were ignoring one of the main features of the program -comments.
    In my own online course I use a class Voice Thread for students to post their reflections on certain activities they have done or tools they have explored.  Here is an example from a previous course.  The students in that course (who were all present or future teachers) were also required to create their own Voice Thread to use with their own students.  Learning L2 Culture: More Than Words is an example created by one of the students in which he used VT to elicit comments about French culture.

   Personally I feel that I have just begun to utilize all the features of VT and hope to soon incorporate more.