Based on today's readings and podcast as well as your own personal experience, post a comment in response to the following questions. I also encourage you to provide links to any online sources or sites that are relevant to your answers.
- How have you seen social media and/or gaming (MMOGs) used in language teaching?
- Could these serve a role in your classroom?
- What type of learning could students engage in through social media and MMOGs? How is this similar to or different from the type of learning they could achieve through more traditional means?
3.
1. No, I haven't, not the way they describe in the articles. I have a few colleagues who use facebook with their students, but this is mainly for communication. If you want to reach a whole group of students quickly fb is very useful, they are always logged in to fb but they don't check their email that much.
ReplyDelete1. I have never used gaming (commercial) myself in language learning, in school. However, I am fully aware of the fact that some students have benefited from playing games in their spare time. Some students have an immense vocabulary when it comes to certain areas.
ReplyDeleteI have not used Facebook either. I have only heard about teachers using it as a way of getting hold of their students more easily. The project we read about for today, the French course, was really interesting to read about. I wonder if it is easier to conduct such a project with students of a higher level of proficiency. What do you think?
I agree Henrietta! Really interesting! I think you could use it with students at steg 3 at least, if you adjust the level so to speak, what do you think?
DeleteMost projects described in literature seem to be for fairly proficient speakers of a language. I'd like to see something for new-beginners.
DeleteAbsolutely Kent. Also the students studied are probably motivated since they choose the courses...
DeleteI know something good for beginners! Our Spanish teacher for level 1 and 2 make online cartoons with her students - they end up with short cartoon films that they can then e-mail or save. Really cute. Like "vokis" but films. This is, admittedly, not so interactive, but you could probably plan your teaching around this in order to make it interactive. I'll try to find the link
DeleteI think it might have been www.goanimate.com
DeleteStorybird is something similar that you can use at beginners level. The students can publish their stories and comment on each others, I used it with steg 3 and it worked well.
Deletewww.storybird.com
I used Storybird as well and it worked really good. We usually work with a theme and pupils have to create a story to illustrate what they have worked with. I think the big advantage of this program is that you can use it with pupils from all levels.
DeleteAnd I like the fact that the students can reed each others texts, it is not only me. I think that is an important advantage with this.
DeleteIf you use Fronter, there is smth similar called Creaza.
DeleteI posted a comment further down this post - silly me! I have used blogs in this fashion, asking the students to write smaller texts and then asking them to comment on eachothers products. It might be the novelty of using blogs or the fact that they got to use computers, but the students really seemed to like it and most of them posted more comments than was necessary.
DeleteI think something like www.viki.com could also work well with level 3-4 Spanish.... We are constantly looking for TV shoes and such material but it is hard to come by.... We have used everything UR has to ffer already...;-)
Delete2. I am not sure that they will serve a role in my classroom. As Sykes and Reinhart said, gaming is just one thing you can do in order to improve language proficiency. I think we all struggle with the fact of always having few hours of language teaching and in this context, I am not sure that I will give priority to gaming, in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteThe games that are designed for education might be useful, at times though.
The different authors and persons from the podcast gave me the impression to be experienced players that knew the games enough to make something great out of it. I think it is an important aspect in our discussion. If we want to use gaming in our language classes, we have to know how and why we use it.
DeleteYes, this goes for everything we do in our classrooms really. What is the objective?
DeleteYou're right Henrietta! I was thinking about a popular game that I haven't tried myself but which seems to be the perfect game for our objectives in our language classes, although I don't see it named somewhere: SIMS. What I know about this game is that the player create avatars who will "live" and interact which each other. It sounds like the perfect game for language learning. Does anyone know why it isn't more used in language classrooms? Or if it is, did it work?
Delete1) I haven't really seen social media/gaming used in language teaching, apart from my own use of blogs. (I currently use, although not much, http://spanskisimo.wordpress.com/ for my group of Spanish pupils, as a means of communication and information and to make them publish short texts online.)
ReplyDelete2) I like the idea of blogs in language teaching, as a way to make pupils interact on texts and ideas - it doesn't work very well, though, maybe due to lack of time or because the pupils aren't used to working like that (or they don't enjoy it?). I'm very sceptical to using games in my teaching, it's something I don't enjoy myself and I can't see myself spending the time getting to know the games sufficiently before introducing them in my classroom practice. The right game for the right pupil, though, I'm sure it can be very instructive and fun - but I feel it's something better dealt with outside school as a way to learn more.
The Facebook project described in the article by Mills got my attention - I've done similar things on a smaller scale, offline. I'd consider doing a similar online project, but I'm not very keen on using Facebook or making my pupils set up imaginary accounts.
3) The articles talk about the social interaction made possible by social media and games, meaning-focus, negotiation for meaning etc., which I think may be easier to learn using these kinds of tools rather than in a traditional classroom situation. It depends however on what other people the pupils encounter online. As heard in the podcast, the games provide certain types of vocabulary practice, which may be very useful, but cannot be seen as the only way to practice interactive language skills. The best mix is probably engaging online language practice and traditional classroom teaching. If we can use social media and/or games to enhance communicative skills (and thus make pupils less afraid of using the language to communicate with "real people" all over the world), we can perhaps find more time in the classroom to focus on form - often neglected - and thereby enhance alround language skills. It's worth considering.
Like you Kent I have tried to use a blog with my students in order for them to produce and publish texts in Spanish: www.engelspanska.com
DeleteWe just started it this year, so we are still exploring the possibilities.
www.engelspanska.se
DeleteWow, Kent. I have to go through your blog one day. There seems to be loads of interesting material..
DeleteFeel free to browse it, Henrietta, and to leave comments. I'm interested to know if other teachers find something useful in the blog.
Delete2. I really like the fb project in the article by Mills. There is not much available in Italian so I think this a good way to use social media with my students. I liked the way the students in the project took on different characters and let them develop through writing different posts and comments to each other. This is definitely something I could use with my students in Italian.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to online games I don't know if there are games like that available in Italian, it was not mentioned as an example of languages that the players used.
Back to fb, I would like to get in contact (I know a teacher in Italy) with an Italian class that studies English. I was thinking that my students could write in English and the Italian students in Italian, to make them practice comprehension. Maybe this could be done both synchronous and asynchronous.
1. Most of what I have seen has been in the form of research presentations at conferences as few of my colleagues have used gaming or social media in their teaching. One particularly innovative study concerned the use of Facebook among a small class of learners of Korean (Ryu & Reinhardt, 2012) for the purpose of teaching pragmatics - specifically the use of the very complex honorific system. It followed a 3-stage process where students first examined the use of honorifics in Korean FB accounts in relation to age and kinship. Then, dummy FB accounts were created in the name of several Korean celebrities of different ages and genders. Students role-played using these accounts so they could experiment with using honorifics and politeness forms. They then did a follow-up analysis to see if they used these accurately.
ReplyDelete2. I have been looking to the types of games and activities carried out by online media fandoms as a model for social-media driven activities in the language classroom. So far, most of my teaching has not been language teaching, so I have not had as much chance to experiment, but when I taught German, I looked to the threaded games found in online discussion boards as models for language games that could be played using a variety of different asynchronous textual mediums. One game from the Harry Potter fandom, "Finish This" was a popular grammar game among my 2nd semester students. There are examples of this in the powerpoint slides, but whether they played the game word by word or phrase by phrase, it required them to pay attention to the grammatical gender and case of prior words in the sentence before they could continue. At this level of proficiency, I think that MMOGs like World of Warcraft could have been beneficial and interesting as a way to also practice preposition use and case markings in giving or following directions in a game, but I don't think they would have been ready to keep up with the pragmatic requirements and linguistic demands of more proficient German speakers that they could have encountered in such a context.
3. In many ways the type of language learning that seems to be promoted in these contexts involves much more of the way of sociolinguistic and strategic competence than the typical grammatical competence and discourse competence facilitated by other types of instruction. A number of other studies, cited in the powerpoint slides and referenced in the Thorne et al (2009) article describe language learning in these contexts that takes place outside of class and the language socialization that learners can achieve when interacting in a particular online space (e.g. fanfiction).
1. How did they succeed? (the Korean course)
DeleteDummy accounts would be one way of getting round the fact that not everybody wants to be on Facebook :-)
Henrietta, based on my recollection, the purpose of this was very much about awareness raising and attention to linguistic form. Since the researchers took a more sociocultual approach to analyzing learning, they found a great deal of success in that even though learners were not always accurate in their use of the honorific, they often became aware of it in the third stage.
DeleteUsing dummy accounts did get them around the account set-up thing, but it did mean the accounts violated the Terms of Service of FB and could have potentially been shut down. It also meant that other Korean speakers who were fans of these celebrities also wandered over to check things out and interact with the students. I don't think there were any major problems that came out of this, but there was the potential for problems in that some fans can get very annoyed at seeing fake accounts for their favorite celebrities and could have set about having the accounts shut down.
Oh, I misinterpreted you. I thought their accounts were mock-accounts, i. e. that they were not online at all. I see the problem with dummy-accounts that others can see.
Delete1. We have used facebook between language learner of Spanish who live in Sweden and Spanish English-learners in Spain, to share short films about their daily life. The students like it but it takes a lot of time and you have to be sure to include exactly what they need to show in the film manuscripts, grammar -and vocabulary wise. Like we sais last time - this is easier to do with older students since there are some ethical questions of i.e who owns the content? We have also used youtube for this. I tried to use the online game that I evaluated before with my students at level 5 spanish but their plug ins crashed so we had to give up eventually. I have also used vokis with them, they had to give some advice to some people with certain problems and sens their vokis by e-mail to me and some others in the group
ReplyDeleteI agree with Henrietta "upstairs"; the students do need a certain level already. With English, I have gamed so much more than in Spanish. There are some good Shakespeare games online, for instance. But for the beginners...?
DeleteI am intrigued by games like world of warcradt - they seem to really attract a certain group of students. But I also think that the type of language and culture trained in these fictive world are... fictive. These games do train a capacity to adapt oneself, to align with others, to decode cultural rules etc, but they do not train "IRL" langauge and culture knowledge. Questions: is this possible at all to do through the computer? (Not speaking about adobe connect-like meetings)
Something else is when students themselves pick up something and start their own fanclubs. For instance, we have recently watched some dorky sessions with a British exchange student in Spain. Some students have now started their own FB group, celebrating the dorkiness of this program - they start "pelota" activities, they comment on things from the programs etc. Way to process lesson materials!;-)
DeleteI would love for my group to be in touch with a Spanish group and to build a world together.... Trying to decide governing rules, what you need to survive, etc etc. A little like the hunger games (;-)) but safe and online. With the common goal of everyone surviving, not just one ;-)
DeleteSkyping, of course is perhaps a more "safe" way to use social media in the class room than FB.... This is also something I have used more in English than in Spanish (for the simple reaso that I have more frieds that are willing to skype with my students in that language). For instance, when we had a project dealing with global warming, we skyped with a Berkely researcher doing field work in India... And whenever I have a student going abroad for a year or on a long vacation, (recently Chile , Cuba Peru) they are required to skype at least one class with my langauge group, in the target language.
DeleteGreat idea Lisa!
Delete
ReplyDelete3. What type of learning: Interaction, "try their wings", experiencing a cultural environment depending on what they are doing.
"More traditional means"- meaning what? Not using computers?
"More traditional" to me means not using ICT. I guess I basically think of "katederundervisning".
DeleteInteresting, Kent.
DeleteWhy do we always put the use of ICT on one side and the "katederundervisning" on the other? Is there nothing in between? ;-)
I think this was an imprecisely worded question on my part and may reflect my own biases, but as you point out, it's not one or the other. Within ICT, there are different types of learning that can be fostered by different tools. It would have been better if I had said "How is this similar to or different from the type of learning they could achieve through other means of instruction?"
DeleteYes there is, of course, and pupils are well aware of what they want: variation and good quality.
DeleteThanks Shannon :-)
DeleteYes Kent - quality and variation!
Variation is very important, that comes up in all the evaluations with the students.
DeleteWhat I enjoy with all possibilities named in the articles and podcast is the variation they offer. The (boring) risk is that without any introduction, teachers that are not used to those "methods" won't try it (and I feel like one of those)... I looked at different games after my reading and listening but didn't dare to go further... If you don't have children or friends that can initiate you, what could be an effective way to get to know all this new world... Time is precious...
DeleteBut... would it really take that long? Could we not do something similar to what we ourselves did in the course, and have the students couple up and try different games out out, in pairs? This could become the topic for some really interesting oral presentations, I think. Where the students kind of like become our assistants in evaluating the different games. 2-3 lessons with home work time in between, tops.
DeleteLisa, what you propose is something that I and other teachers of CALL classes have done. We have partnered students with gaming experience with those who are novices with specific quests to figure out in a new game that they needed to negotiate together in English and then report their findings back to the whole class in English. This then became more about learning about the game and how to play it than in actually playing it and students were only interacting with others in the same classroom and not in the game space.
DeleteInteraction is good, and that they can actually come in contact with native speakers of the target language. I liked as well the part in Sykes article where they wrote about the motivational factor, the American and the Russian and how their conversation was a motivating factor for learning languages. One interesting aspect of motivation though is for how long the motivation stays with the students so to speak, is it only temporary?
ReplyDeleteI think that you should also be aware of the fact that many of our students already spend many hours playing games of different kinds on the computer. We have had "game addicts" at my school, and a few of them can't cope with school because of their playing.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very big issue and one I haven't seen addressed anywhere in the CALL literature. Some of the points that were raised in previous class meetings about the sheer amount of time children are expected to spend on computers also concerns me.
DeleteI've seen some concerns in literature about ergonomic matters - young people with back problems from sitting hunched over their laptops all day at school. Looking at my school, no considerations have been made to adjust tables, chairs or even lighting to the sudden huge increase in computer use.
DeleteIndeed. Also physical problems, their necks and shoulders, as well as mine :-), suffer from the position in front of a computer screen.
DeleteI agree. Having your own computer can be extremely addictive, not only for gaming, but when everyone else is on FB during the lessons you loose out if you do not keep on checking... Kent: our school IS aupposedly adapted to the use of laptops - but still, a lap top is.... small. hunching comes with it, even if the tables and chairs are good.
DeleteI agree with Linda that this is a huge problem. I also agree with Lisa that this involves so much more than just gaming. I have students waking up in the middle of the night posting comments on fb. This then becomes a ripple-effect as one post wakes up all 200 friends of the first student - all of which have to answer right away of risk being left out at school the next day...
DeleteA potential problem in one to one schools is also how students use classroom time. When you have access to a computer all the time it is easy to get distracted from your school work and do other things such as check FB or your mail and play games. This problem should also be addressed whwn evaluating the use of computers in school.
DeleteI agree.
ReplyDeleteHelena:
ReplyDeleteI have no experience using social media or gaming in the classroom, but I am open to try if I could figure out how to connect this to the learning objectives, as well as how to do it.
When it comes to gaming I have no experience at all. I would not feel comfortable unless I got to try it first. From the readings I understand that you need many hours of practice in order to be digitally literate and well versed. Facebook for instance might work, IF they would actually do it in their TL, and not in Swedish.
If I found out about a school context or teacher that has experience I would love to visit and see how it works in the classroom. I need more "hands on" real examples of projects that have worked and been assessed. Then I would be able to answer if this could serve a role in the classroom. I am definitely open for it, but it has to be used for meaningful purposes.
I ask myself the same questions they did in the POD-cast, what language skills will be developed, and how can those skills transfer to real environments?!
I am more than open to do something THROUGH language, and using language for relevant purposes (Hence my interest in CLIL/immersion)!!
About the last question, what type of learning, I guess direct synchronous response (sociocultural learning)and real context to motivate students is part of the answer...
This whole discussion makes me really think (again) on what school context is. People often separate "school context" with "school knowledge" from "real life". Here, in online gaming, and using it in school, those boundaries are really blurred. For instance, if my students chat with Spaish students, and they use "ke" in stead of "que" etc, no upsidedown question marks, no capital letters, etc etc, this is real AND school language. But if they write it in a paper, I would mark it wrong. I find it inriguing how online gaming, fanfiction etc, provides some kind of topic and field but is still clashing to what people perceive as "school"....
DeleteYes, they encounter another type of language "on-line". But the students need to know when it is ok to to use "ke" and when you should use "que". That is why "school knowledge" still is important.:-)
DeleteGood point!! It's all about communication, isn't it? Let's not forget.
DeleteI like your discussion about what "real life" is Lisa. I'm not sure I agree 100% and still reflect on how "those blurred boundaries" will affect our pupils... It is an important question...definitely! What should we prepare them for when we know so little about what will be expected from them...
DeleteOh, this is an interesting issue!
DeleteYes, what is the objective of school in general? Can we prepare them for smth we do not know of? So what should we give them then?
I would love to have a discussion about this, but maybe this is not the place :-)
Henrietta, feel free to continue the discussion here or to start a new post in the blog on this very topic.
DeleteI have also used fb to communicate with students and to upload photos and links to students, but not really in connection to classes. I really liked the study done with fb in Mills, but I agree with Henrietta that this is probably a lot easier to do with student of a certain age and with a certain language proficiency. The fact that the students themselves chose to interact and enforce their roles in the "building" was really interesting, but I doubt this can be expected of all youths engaging in such a project. I think again this has to do with motivation aswell as proficiency.
ReplyDeleteI have used Social media as a theme to work with in my English class. We have read articles about social media, watched film clips and students have discussed their use of social media. Then I let the students write a discussion essay as a final examination of the project. The students were supposed to discuss advantages and disadvantages with social media in today's society and give examples from articles that we had read together in class or find their own examples.
ReplyDeleteI have never used gaming as an activity in my teaching, but since I have a lot of students who play games I have let them analyze games and write reviews as well as present their favourite game in an oral PowerPoint-presentation. In that way they can benefit from their experience of and interest in games in studying English as a subject in school.
I also talk to my students about gaming and the disadvantages and advantages. Students usually say they meet a lot of English-speaking people through the games and talk to them. This seems like great speaking practice. A disadvantage, however, is that the kind of English they learn and use is limited. Therefore students need to practice other genres and use a more formal style and register when studying English in a school context.
1.Sofar I have not used FB or games in the classroom. For one thing, we don't have enough computers to go round. Furthermore I often feel this is part of the pupils' private world... Not everyone likes playing computer games, not everyone wants to (is allowed to?) be on FB - so how can I, teaching 12-16 year-olds make that part of compulsory education? I do believe, however, in connecting to pupils' own experiences of this by discussing, reading, play acting, etc around games and FB in the language classroom.
ReplyDelete2.By referring back to these phenomena (FB and games) and pupils' own experiences they can play a vital role int the langugae classroom!
3. Social media is the obvious way to interact with people outside the classroom and can thus add all kinds of perspectives on the language to be learned7taught! I disagree with Thorne/Black/Sykes when it comes to focusing on the specific language used in social media and games, though. I agree on the importance of addressing this special type of language, but would rather see it as a vehicle into a deeper understanding of language as such and a more developed L1, L2 or L3...etc.
Yo go, Maria! ;-) I completely agree
Delete1. I haven't really seen any gaming used in language teaching contexts. Like many of the others I have only seen fb used to communicate with students and now also blogs. Blogs and webpages have become very popular at my school and there almost seems to be a contest among teachers who can create the most online :-) The consecuences of this is starting to show among the students who now find it hard to keep up with 16 different webpages and blogs for all their subjects.
ReplyDelete2. A few of us had a discussion on Skype (Celine, Linda B, Maria and myself) about using gaming in the language classroom. One of our conclusions was that the language used in the gaming world is not always appropriate in the real world, especially not in the context of higher education. My fear is that if we focus too much attention on this type of language, which is used in gaming, some of it might "stick" and become a hinderance when said student wants to, for instance, write academically.
The main function of the blogs I use so far have been the possibilty to recap if you have missed a class or to practice a grammatical element more (I sometimes post different language exercises) or to have interactive writing assignments. I would like to know how I could expand the blogs to include more language acitivities, but maybe this will develop with time.
3. I think one of the big advantages when using social media and MMOGS is that the student can take on a different role and develop a new identity. Students that are shy might find it easier to communicate in this way. When it comes to students in junior high I find that many of the students take on roles in the classroom and this role could then be changed online, for instance the student known to everyone as the "class clown" has the opportunity to try on a different role online by remaning anonymous. Maybe this can encourage the students to "talk" more, whether this means writing or speaking, synchronous or asynchronous and using the language more. Even though as a teacher you always try to establish a "forgiving" climate in the classroom and not just allowing for mistakes but encouraging them, some students are always less inclined to talk...
1. I think I'm the only person who doesn't have a Facebook account. In the early days of Facebook I created an account and after two days I had to friend requests...by pupils of mine. When that I happened I realized that dealing with whom to invite or not would become a problem, so I closed down my account. Reading Mills (2011) article and the idea of using Facebook for a project like L'immeuble intrigues me. I used to do a project with beginners in Spanish called Mi Barrio (same concept) where the pupils had to create a character and describe this character (appearance, personality, family etc.). They saved drawings and texts in a portfolio and the kids loved it but I thought they spent too much time drawing and not as much time as I intended on language. Using Facebook for a project like My Barrio together with form focused instruction would be great! Linda suggested story bird which was the site that I evaluated and I am going to use this with my pupils this term!
ReplyDeleteI haven't used gaming either but after listening to the Callspot episode I really want to try to integrate MMOGs in the classroom and the question to ask oneself would be where it would fit? I guess one of the most important advice given by Julie and John is to PLAY, PLAY. PLAY to understand how the game works and what learning objectives can be achieved! It would also be interesting, as suggested in the episode, to see if the skills developed can be transferred into another context.
2 & 3. I think they could serve a role in the classroom since they allow real time interaction, motivating features, task based language and learning, developing strategic competence and allowing for creating and exploring new identities. MOOGs can also be the content for discussing language and different kinds of texts.
I think exploring whether the skills developed in a gaming context transfer to others is a terrific area of research and one that Jon is working on. There are a few studies that address some of this in this recent edited volume including one conducted on Swedish school-aged learners of English: http://innovationinteaching.org/books/#http://www.innovationinteaching.org/wp-content/themes/default/images/digitalgames%20cover.jpg
Delete
ReplyDelete1 . 2 - It's often the easiest way to reach pupils so we have a FB account for our class (information, videos, discussions, etc.) Teachers and pupils are running it and enjoy it (I think....) I loved "l'immeuble" and would love to try to use FB like a pedagogic tool. What I liked the most in this project was the interaction and the freedom students had to create something... I'm not sure my pupils would have the motivation and engagement but the best way to know is to try...
3 - An important part of our language courses (and I think about "moderna språk") is to give our pupils the possibility to interact, to use the language as much as possible, etc. It takes a lot of effort to listen to or watch something in French or Italian in Sweden. I can see there that social media and MMOGs could help us a lot. But like Kent wrote, every pupil needs a different approach. This one could work for some of our pupils. I would love more concrete examples for teenagers that are not extreme motivated. Someone?