How Do You Spell Frustration? Wiki!

In 2006 I created a wiki called SUNYAB in Wikispaces.  I planned to use it to store my syllabus for use and for further revision.  I was also hoping to include a mod in my online course in which the students would create wikis for their own use.

However, I became frustrated with trying to figure out how things worked.  Thinking that perhaps the problem was the software, I then tried PBWorks, only to suffer the same frustration.

Now since I am following an online workshop called Tools of Engagement, I thought I would try again.  However, I've run into the same problems. Such simple things as centering text or switching to an HTML view are some of the functions that have me baffled.  In an article on wikis that I found through the Tools of Engagement, Teaching History with Technology, the author compares wikis with Google Sites.

An increasingly popular alternative to a wiki is Google Sites. Formerly known as Google Pages, Google Sites is a free website creation tool that has incorporated features commonly associated with wikis. For instance, Google Sites includes a "revision history" of edits and provides the ability to insert comments. A significant Google Sites advantage is that multiple people can edit a web page at exactly the same time. Multiple people can edit a wiki page, but not at the exact same time. Google Sites is also intuitive and arguably less "clunky" than a wiki. That said, Google Sites is not a true wiki editor and lacks some of wiki features and flexibility.

 I have not yet tried Google Sites, but if it is as easy to use as Googledocs, I would probably prefer it to Wikispaces.  I realize that it takes a certain amount of time to learn any new online tool, but I've now invested several hours without any real success.  So, for now, it's no wikis for me!

Another Step Toward Gamification

We are now beginning week 4 of GamesMOOC and I've had an epiphany regarding gamification and language learning.  For years I hesitated to include a games mod in my online course because I felt that I didn't have any experience on MMORPGs.  However, as I tried out some of the single player games suggested in the GamesMOOC, I realized that for language teachers, the game itself doesn't have to be the where the language learning occurs. The language learning can be before, during or after any game. 

Actually I had read Kyle Mawer and Graham Stanley's book, Digital Play, and have Mawer's blog of the same name in my RSS feeds.  They suggest ways to use many genres of games such as "hidden objects", "dressing up", and "escape the room" for language learning, but  I think that I was hung up on the multi-player idea and was blind to other ideas.  Lee Sheldon's book The Multiplayer Classroom also discouraged me because the examples of coursework as games was directed at teachers who were real gamers and that's not me!

I think that I was under the impression that it was the vocabulary used in the games that would be important for L2 learners, but I have realized that the vocabulary can be pre-taught in the same way as pre-teaching vocabulary before any assignment.  What can add to the language learning experience are the pre- and post-game activities which may be oral or written learning tasks about strategies used in the game, obstacles encountered, or whether someone liked the game or not and what could be done to make it more interesting.

In the past week of the GamesMOOC, however, guild officers have focused on the elements of a game that make it engaging, the basic game mechanics.   I'm going to try to apply the rubric they provided to a number of the games in  the Digital Play book and see how they measure up.

Baby Steps into Gamification

As I approach the end of week 2 of GamesMOOC, I am almost ready to really try out one of the suggested games.  I have read Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirkey,  A New Culture of Learning by James Seely Brown, The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game by Lee Sheldon, and Digital Play: Computer games and language aims by Kyle Mawer and Graham Stanley.

I have always subscribed to the concept of gamification (gaming for education), but have been afraid to actually try out online or COTS (commercial over the counter games).  By participating in this GamesMOOC, I think I may finally be ready to jump in!  I'll keep you posted.

Six-year Blogging Anniversay

I just realized that I have been blogging for six years.  My inspiration for starting was Will Richardson's text Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools  which is now in its third edition with Richardson promising another update.  

I particularly like Richardson's distinction in the book between what blogging is and what it isn't.   Here are some examples of what blogging is not in his view:

Posting assignments. (Not blogging.)

Posting links. (Not blogging.)

Journaling, i.e., "This is what I did today." (Not blogging).

His list of "real blogging"on the other hand, includes reflective, metacognitive writing, and extended analysis or synthesis over an extended period of time.  Most important is that a blog post should be a reaction to something.  It could be a reflection on other's posts, or on the ideas in a book.  It could also be a reaction to a video, conference or webinar.  The idea is that a blog post should be part of an ongoing conversation whether this means a conversation with oneself or a conversation with others.

I have an RSS feed that includes many educational bloggers.  They are a constant source of inspiration and new ideas.  However, I don't often leave comments on their blogs or write posts about my reactions to their ideas. My lack of posting is probably because like any reflective writing blogging is hard work.  However, as I write this post I am reminded of a useful suggestion offered by Harold Jarche that one should establish a schedule for blogging.   So my promise to myself is to keep  track of good  I read in my Diigo account and try to blog about what I've read every Friday. Wish me luck!

New Threads

Old Threads, a photo by fras1977 on Flickr.

I sometimes think of the ideas I get from educational posts and webinars as multiple threads that I would like to weave together and incorporate into the online course that I teach.

Let me name some of these threads:
Mobile learning
Gaming
Self-directed learning

To be continued:

Try, try again.

This is a description of my unsuccessful attempt  to motivate the students in my online, graduate school course to write more insightful blog posts.  The course I teach is about integrating technology into the k-12 classroom. and the posts are usually reactions to specific Internet tools that the students had tried out in each mod.  After reading two of Daniel Pink's books, A Whole New Mind and Drive, about motivation, I decided to try to encourage students to give each other Kudos for exceptional blog posts.

Here is the situation.  Students were required to post to their individual blogs one or two times for each mod.  All students who posted on time (with good links, an image and multiple tags) received the same score.  However, the result is that those who blogged with really insightful ideas and those who did the minimum received the same score. 

I did not want to use a rubric because I feel there is too much subjectivity involved in judging "insightful ideas" and because it would require reading each blog post with much more scrutiny to arrive at a score.  As all teachers who evaluate essays know, this is a very time-consuming process.  So I decided to have the students give each other kudos for great posts and I created a Kudos forum in the learning management system.  Let mention that the students were not required to read each other's posts, but it was very easy to do so, since they each had a blog role of the blogs of all their classmates on their own blogs.

The result was very disappointing.  In the Kudos forum on the learning management system, there were very few kudos.  I wrongly supposed that a sort of competitive spirit would encourage students to try to write great posts in order to receive the adulation of their classmates and that they would read at least some of their classmate's posts in order to see how theirs compared.  That didn't happen.

I am rethinking the event and going to revamp it in some form in the future.  Any ideas would be most welcome.

Bring Your Own Popcorn!

Popcorn, a photo by Enokson on Flickr.

I recently learned of two great websites for using movie segments to teach English as a Second or Foreign Language. Claudio Azevedo gave a presentation through the Becoming a Webhead (BaW) course of the Electronic Village Online. Claudio is a movie buff and EFL teacher and teacher trainer at the Casa Tomas Jefferson Center in Brazil. He has created Movie Segments to Assess Grammar and Movie Segments for Warm-ups and Follow-ups which offer not only movie segments, but lesson plans and downloadable worksheets.  What a treasure of a website!