Is it possible for today’s principles and other decision makers to agree with Perlman and Maynard who are discussing the role web 2.0 plays in shaping the future in their article, “Working in Wiki”? I think the answer could be true in some regions, but unfortunately it is not the same in many others. The examples they used of having a collaborative staff wiki for brainstorming and contributing to decision making could be ’scary’ in some cultures where the top-down structure is still the only dominating source of ‘life’ and management!

Anyhow, teachers, it is still your duty to keep learning and exploring new skills and solutions for development and improvement. You might face moments of frustration and disappointment, but you still need to explore new changes in teaching and technologies. The outcomes are always beneficial for both you and your students. Although some managers or school principles may disagree with that, it is still does not matter how much they may agree since it is your main duty as an educator and facilitator of learning to explore all possible options to provide the best possible help you could give to your learners.

So, my final word is to all who ‘care’. Keep doing what you are doing, but think of ways to do it better by continuous growth approaches and ongoing development and learning.

Tags: Teaching, technologies, web 2.0, wiki

A colleague from Brazil asks of the ways to develop help teaching to have more interesting classes. She wants to improve her teaching experience and students’ impression about her teaching. I found this question intriguing as it challenges most teachers including myself. Therefore, I wrote her this response which you can read below..

I can see how honest and simple your question is. In fact, this is the question the majority of us - juniors and seniors - ask everyday. There are many things that could affect a group of students. If you are asking how to develop your teaching skills, you may start with personal and professional development experiences. Networking with other colleagues through local communities, communities of practice, online list-serves could all help on that aspect. We should not also forget the secret our ancestors had, which is ‘reading’. It is that missing key to knowledge, experiences, motivation, and aspiration.

The second aspect would be your students population or as Holliday (1994 &1999) describes it as a “small culture” rather than a big group that belongs to a certain culture or nationality. I personally experience differences in students’ attitude and learning experiences from day to day, or sometimes from an hour to the other, according to many factors. For example, understanding students needs and interests could help a lot. Building on their motivation and understanding their differences also make it easier to interact together in meaningful learning situations. You should also remember that there is no ‘best’ or most effective way of teaching as some people like to call it. Instead, you better think of what works for your classes at a certain time. Planning your lessons, brainstorming, and adding some collaborative activities that foster autonomy and independent learning are all good starting points. Don’t forget to observe and ask people to observe your teaching. Students feedback through surveys or interviews could be useful tools for your use as well. The most important thing is to always ask yourself, how to relate what I do/ teach to meaning and more contextual situations in students’ real life. I think that is one thing we try to do through project-based learning and other similar class initiatives.

I hope these simple ideas might help as a starting point. However, I myself can’t deny that I sometimes ask myself the same question..

Tags: Improvment, Perceptions, Teachers, Teaching

It seems that there are lots of teachers who are willing and getting prepared for teaching in this new environment. Some of the articles I found recently are here: here, and a research from the BBC which is done on children using BBC adventure island is SL. How amazing things are moving into that direction!!

Tags: environments, games, LAN-Based, life, second, Teaching, video, virtual, worlds

I came across some online articles and reports on virtual worlds for learning. The first two articles, “How To Spark Remote Learning” - 2006 and “ESL campus promotes team language learning” - 2008, report Boahn’s or ‘Kip Yellowjacket’ as called in SL where he managed to implement and initiate a virtual English Language space for teachers and learners. His approach is considered ‘nontraditional’ but interesting to students. It looks like a good initiative, but I wonder how many teachers have to pay for their own islands or sim. As far as I know, these ‘virtual’ places could be very expensive for a standard teacher. A good idea might be starting a scholar world or an academic alternative where organizations and governments might sponsor their teaching experiments and pilot projects.

An interesting building tool which I learned about through the second article is called claroline. It is used as an authorware e-learning platform. The good news is that It’s an open source. The bad news is that it’s another new tool I need to spend time learning and investigating its potentials for further use and development. Luckily, there is a tutorial here to easily understand about it. An initial impression made me feel that it is similar to moodle, but I still need to know how to use it for building objects..

The third article is by Stevens (2006) who reports on the ‘huge potentials’ of using SL for language learning and educators. He describes the nature of these new environments. Regardless of the potentials or concerns discussed in the article, I was interesting in the educators’ networking aspect in this environment. Where these teacher can take the decision to safely join gatherings or educational events organized in this free environment. Stevens sheds some light on this aspect through a collaborative wiki page. It is an early initiative to reflect and compare this new world to other earlier initiatives like ‘active world’ as he reports. His second recent ‘wiki sl2ndchance‘ has more updates and reports with nice screenshots from that vague new world.

Tags: environments, games, LAN-Based, life, second, Teaching, video, virtual, worlds

After class, I just realized that my students are interested in playing games. Using a LAN network, they were able to interact together using audio and graphics in a shooting simulation game. They were all connected together either as police or criminals as part of this game.

The collaborative aspect was totally new to me and encouraged me to ask myself if I can find a similar reliable, interactive, and interesting environment for my students to use instead of online-based equivalents. The reason I thought about this is first to provide a safe learning environment for students. It is also to be able to manage their interaction and communication. Finally, to avoid any concerns that may arise from schools or administrations on that regard.

I have shared this same questions with teachers in the IATEFL conference forum, but still waiting for more responses..

Tags: environments, games, LAN-Based, life, second, Teaching, video, virtual, worlds

Last week I was able to build my first SL objects. The two objects I experimented were the speak easy hud and the note projector. The first is used to prepare a presentation-script ahead of time prior to a meeting or presentation and then be able to use it as a support of what you present/say during a meeting. It helps a lot, especially for users who don’t have access to voice in this environment. The second object was the note projector which is a nice easy tool for showing some content or simple text. It helps in providing a meeting agenda or class objectives prior to a class. This experience helped me feel more confident about building and experiementing the process of interaction and use of SL for facilitating a class or building a connected community like in this case.

I was later able to find a list of some good other tools and free scripted objects for use and integration in lessons or classes if you have a space in SL. You may download some from here.

Tags: environments, games, LAN-Based, life, second, Teaching, video, virtual, worlds