My name is Adriana Paez de Blair, currently studying MA TESOL at Brighton University. I have to admit that a task of writing a blog is a new learning curve for me, especially on the use of technology. This is a concern but at the same time a challenging experience in learning. For that reason, I read some blogs in advance before even considering starting it. In such a short time, I found several blogs of innovative researchers who blog about teaching and learning practices.

As a postgraduate student the purpose of this blog is to strengthen my teaching and learning experience. During this process, I found many teaching materials posted in educational blogs such as; TES Big Ed Blog, Tom Sherrington blog or headguruteach-er.com. In the past, every time I found resources I copied and pasted them in my cloud Diigo (a website that works like a library) and they would be forgotten. Therefore, I will use a different approach this time; I will assess teaching materials and put them into practice. This blog will have an audience of course colleagues and tutors from Brighton University.

Event + workshop/ tasks

As part of a module called Teaching Materials for my MA TESOL, we could attend an event named Interfacing with Public Space: Embodied language learning with mobile technologies. Paul Driver was the speaker, on Saturday 13th February, at the University of Brighton’s Grand Parade Building. Paul Driver is a language teacher, educational technologist, who presented some of his dazzling materials for Second Language Learners of English. As well as this he gave an interesting talk about the in-depth analysis behind his work.

This workshop was inspirational since it motivated my colleagues and I to create tasks for ELT learners. Our group created a first project named ‘A missing person in Churchill Square’ with the aim to teach directions and personal description to intermediate level students. Thus, the materials suggested for this project were mobiles, iPad, and photographs. This idea was based on Driver’s project called ‘Spy Walk’, which is a location-based urban game designed to link the affordance of physical setting. By choosing Brighton as a setting this allows students to interact with each other and locals in the given environment.

Our second task was named ‘Online Antique Museum’, also set in Brighton. We suggested the use of the Google Tour Builder and transmedia storytelling. This was also based on Drivers’ tasks of experimental location-based interactive story, with the description. In our case, the learning outcome would be to ask students to write a description of antiques, with the history behind each object. The students’ movement around Brighton antique shops would allow them to write about their findings in detail. All this preparation made us discuss and learn how to frame these tasks to support EL learners, with the idea of location-based experiences to motivate them. Thus, in our practical workshop we achieved with collaboration and a with productive learning result.

 

 

Theory Behind Technology Materials

I have to recognize that this event not only helped me to gain practical knowledge about innovative materials, but also aided me to learn about in-depth theoretical knowledge. This was due to Paul’s teaching approach with many technological resources. He pointed out that is not a question of having resources to be able to use in the high-tech environmental class-room, but it is about using those materials within the environment given space-task base. Paul called this ‘hands in action’. The teaching materials for ELT classroom given by Paul included the use of; augmented reality, green screen and digital video production, GPS-based pervasive games, project based learning and tactical urbanism. All of these resources could be found in his blog: Digital Blog-Digital Debris.
Digital materials are used in education because of their advantages in creating stimulating learning environments for students. Cuendet et al. (213:557) argues

“Augmented reality (AR) allows learners to interact with the real world in ways that were not possible before.”

The term AR, and Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) refer to technologies that project digital material onto real world objects. According to new research on AR-Based Simulators as Discovery Learning Tools of Ibáñez et al (2014), there are benefits of adopting these materials. Ibáñez et al (2014:208 ) argue that AR and TUIs provide

“contextualized information and allow the visualization of invisible phenomena and the interaction with 3-D objects in real-time.”

Beyond what has been said, teaching tools that heighten the learners’ experiences could be found in Drivers’ blog. Alternatively, in reading his paper on Pervasive Games and Mobile Technologies for Embodied Language Learning (2012), I have encountered how Driver explores the benefits of technology-enhanced pervasive urban games for L2 learning, by addressing their pedagogical and philosophical origin. In this paper, there are some examples of location-based research projects, that he has updated throughout the years. During the aforementioned event, Driver said that certain researchers and philosophers, had inspired him in creating his work such as; Dewey, Heidegger and Dourish. I would agree that some of those names are always in the education literature such as Dewey, J. (1997:30). In Experience & Education, he argues that:

A coherent theory of experience, affording positive direction to selection and organization of appropriate educational methods and materials, is required by the attempt to give new direction to the work of the school. The progress is a slow and arduous one.

 

There are emerging changes since Dewey (1938) said this, with the implementation of technology in education. Besides, Dourish’s (2001) paper is based on human and computer interaction. Dourish (2001:229) research on Seeking a Foundation for Context-Aware Computing argues:

“the context-based computing should be extended to include not only ubiquitous computing, but also recent trends in tangible interfaces, as well as work on sociological investigations to organize interactive behaviour.”

There are some factors that ought to be highlighted such as the context that surrounds the human and computer interaction. The context-aware computing has been an opportunity granted by falling cost of computational devices, with the advances in sensor technology. This has allowed us to develop new forms of embedded interaction. According to Dourish (2001:229), there is increasing understanding among developers that humans are enmeshed in various practices and relations that make them meaningful.

Writing this blog has motivated my learning and helped me to expand my knowledge. As I read from others, such as Hsu and Lin (2008), who state

“developed a model of motivation for participation in blogs, focusing on technical acceptance, knowledge sharing, a social influence.”

I will be more into blogging. The contribution of the event and recent research has helped me to develop a deep understanding of theoretical knowledge. This is vital to grasp why and how to incorporate Teaching Materials in Second language practices.

Reference

Cuendet, S. Bonnard, B. Do-Lenh, S, Dillenbourg, P. (2013) Designing augmented reality for the classroom. Journal SciVerse ScienceDirect. Computers & Education 68 (2013) 557–569 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.02.015.

Dewey, J. (1997) John Dewey Experience & Education. New York: Touchstone.

Diigo (2005)- Diigo Inc., United States. Available <https//www.diigo.com> accessed 12/11/2015.

Dourish, P. (2001) Seeking a Foundation for Context-Aware Computing. Human-Computer Interaction. 16, 2-4, 229-241, Dec. ISSN: 07370024.

Driver, P. (2012) “Pervasive Games and Mobile Technologies for Embodied Language Learning,” International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching (IJCALLT) 2 (2012): 4, accessed (February 15, 2016), doi:10.4018/ijcallt.2012100104.

Driver, P. (2016) Digital blog-Digital Debris. Available<digitaldebris.info/digital-debris/>Access 13/02/2016.

Hsu, C-L., & Lin, J.C-C. (2008). Acceptance of blog usage: The roles of
technology acceptance, social influence and knowledge sharing motivation.
Information & Management, 45(1), 65–74.doi:10.1016/j.im.2007.11.001.

Ibáñez, M., Di-Serio, A., Villarán-Molina, D. and Delgado-Kloos, C. ‘Augmented Reality-Based Simulators as Discovery Learning Tools: An Empirical Study’. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 58, NO. 3, Aug. 2015. DOI:10.1109/TE.2014.2379712

Sherrington, T. Blog (2012) Available <http://headguruteacher.com/2016/01/10/principles-of-effective-teaching/>access 13/02/2016.

Shklovski, I., Troshynski, E. and Dourish, P. (2015), Mobile technologies and the spatiotemporal configurations of institutional practice. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66: 2098–2115.doi: 10.1002/asi.23321.

TES Big Ed Blog (2013) Availa-ble<https://www.tes.com/article.aspx?storycode=6312965>access 13/02/2016.