When I first heard the mysterious title ‘Interfacing with Public Space: Embodied language learning with mobile technologies’ of Paul Driver’s session I couldn’t have felt more out of my depth. Though I may appear as fairly ‘techy’ it is probably only by comparison with me colleagues who are twice my age and .understandably, insecure about change.
The session looked at several projects Paul came up with to engage his students. From truly uplifting Urban Chronicles, revealing use of maps and smartphones to ultimately innovative Invader game I found his ideas fascinating. Though am still to experiment with various apps with my future classes, the real inspiration came after his question about authenticity or rather validity of input.
Who has the right to write history?
We found the answer to this question through his projects. One which has definitely moved me most was The Urban Chronicle. The idea of a popular interview activity taken to a whole new level through the use of different media. Almost completely student-led it enabled the teacher to be a guide rather than an instructor. Giving students choice of a topic they wanted to focus on meant they were internally motivated and therefore engaged throughout.
This project reminded me about another infinite source of teaching material: our surroundings. Paul also talked about different types of memories and their powers to bring up feelings, stories and concepts. Memories ‘hide’ in architecture, communities, journals, tattoos, souvenirs etc. And thanks to technology those could be easily brought into our classrooms as a prompt for communication.Technology has the power to stimulate all of our senses. Mental geotagging mentioned in the session described how a sound or a smell can immediately transport you to an experience. Similar idea was expressed by Bergen (Embodied Simulation Hypothesis) who claimed seeing=thinking, as both activities engage same parts of our brain.
This session has not only given me ideas to take into the classroom but, more importantly, encouraged me to rethink my attitude towards fast approaching ‘techier’ EFL. Maybe, just as any change, it is greeted with EFL’s hostility because it is just so new and so vast. It seems to me, it throws what we know as teaching out of the window by changing the focus away from the comfort of content to the unknown of interaction. Whatever claims have been made through past perspectives they do indeed heavily rely on input. Technology moves to onus onto the learners and turns anything into input. I would like to therefore embrace the new EFL as it not only develops learner’s but also teachers’ competencies. I hope workshops such as Paul Driver’s on will be offered on a regular basis during Sussex DoSa sessions in the future. Just as we expect our learners to simple immerse themselves in English language, we should seek for opportunities where we can collaborate with ‘techier’ colleagues and learn by doing, exchanging and sharing innovative practices.
Interesting projects/APPS
Yellow Arrow, Streetseats.org, Blast Theory, Tale Blazer?, Glimpse, Spywalk Project, Google Tour Builder, Aurasma, ARM Cubes, 365 Grateful, TED AR, basketball origin
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Browsing away 21st February 2016
So today I clicked on a link to a summary of tweets from the EdTec session last week. Having never used Twitter before I was simply amazed at the number of hashtags people used in their comments. Still unsure whether you supposed to click on them I did just that to those ELT-themed. I stumbled upon Paul and Ben’s (http://www.digitalv.net/) blog which shows sample lessons from their book as well as possible extensions.I can’t wait to use some of the ideas in class.
Though I often use YouTube in class as a discussion prompt or fancy audio I find the selection and planning process incredibly time consuming. One clip blends into another and finding one fit for a particular class can prove challenging.Then there’s also the question of ‘What’s next?’. Our teacher training courses hardly prepare us for classroom’s reality of an increasingly ‘techier’ audience. We are showed how to deliver a ‘bog-standard’ coursebook-based lesson where use technology is limited do using a CD. So figuring out what to do with this widely available, authentic, current & stimulating media is down to our infinite pools of creativity. As most less techy teachers are keen to include EdTec in their classrooms it is often easier said than done. Apart from obvious tech limitations there is also the whole process of putting it all together and marrying it with formats (such as PPP or TBL) we are more familiar with. This is where ELT blogs such as Jamie Keddie or Kieran Donagthy come in handy. DigitalV blog has now turned into another of my go-to sites for inspiration. Though all come with a lesson plan they, more importantly, simply show various ways of exploiting videos. This helps me equip myself in various activities I could do before/during/& after a clip. One to sleep on tonight would most definitely be ‘Comment on Comments’ idea. It basically encourages students to discuss or maybe explain various points of view expressed by keen followers or haters. Amidst rude and inappropriate comments there are plenty of gems to be found, all for free and many even 2016!
