Old meets New(s)

Old meets New(s)

Here’s something I’ve had in my ‘Drafts’ section for many months now – it’s been a busy school year!

It’s nothing very groundbreaking; just a short presentation illustrating one way of taking an existing assignment (in this case, newspaper cutting responses) and taking it online, allowing students to look at (and comment on) each other’s work as well.

I suspect that oftentimes, when it comes to adopting technology in the classroom, teachers are wary of adopting newfangled and untried methodologies to replace their tried and tested strategies. However, these don’t neccessarily need to be exclusive – I’ve found that technology is sometimes able to augment existing strategies pretty well, and the advantages can be worth the time and hassle spent adopting old stuff to a newer platform.

Class blogs as mobile apps

I recently read this article with great interest – apparently, there exists a service that allows you to easily convert websites into smart phone apps. This means that you could easily (for instance) create a class blog and turn it into an app for the iPhone (and other devices), enabling yourself and students to use it conveniently, on the go.

While this is extremely cool in theory, however, I’m not sure I’m willing to go ahead with this. I haven’t really explored in detail (it got to a point where they asked me to create an account), but I suspect this isn’t a free service. Additionally, to publish on the Apple App Store you’d need to pay US$99/year for a developer account. Not sure if there’s any other way to distribute the app on iOS without jailbreaking?

Potential cost aside, the situation in the typical Singaporean secondary school classroom isn’t one where every student has a smart phone; I don’t think it’s even a majority! Taking all these factors into consideration, it doesn’t seem to make sense to try this out. Perhaps if conditions were somehow different, I’d have loved to give it a try…

Affirmation

I don’t think I’ve been very focused this year in my teaching, but it’s heartening to see the students mostly found it alright… gave them a simple online survey to work on for post-examination subject review, and it seems I’ve received a pretty good score!

(Just one of the survey items, it wasn’t THAT simple)

Now, I know that student ratings don’t mean everything (they might not even mean all that much), and this might not really be representative of all my students’ opinions (only 71 of 96 students responded), but simple things like these really do help in encouraging me to work harder at improving my teaching…

iPads in the classroom?

With the not-so-recent news of iPads being used by the Singaporean military for training and communication purposes, I thought it would only make sense to re-examine its possible utility in mainstream education as well.

Previously, the iPad had impressed me as mainly a consumption device, with less capability for productivity. Having more recently played with apps such as WordPress, Keynote and Pages, I’ve changed my mind about this – the iPad does have great potential for content creation. I’ve barely scratched the surface here, but as a language teacher my primary focus is really just text editing – everything else is a bonus! Typing large chunks might be rather painful on a touch screen, but having tried the device I can say it’s not quite as bad as I’d feared – I suspect that students are quite happy to type on it. Furthermore, bluetooth keyboards can be used to increase typing speed/comfort as well.

I also initially had reservations about the difficulty of bulk-purchasing apps for organisational use, but recent developments seem to have made that less of a problem, too.

As suggested by other educators, the cost issue of a 1-to-1 programme might be minimised with a “Bring Your Own Device” philosophy, but without standardising the hardware used (and bearing in mind that not every child will have devices with the minimum required capability), it seems to me that we won’t be maximising the potential of using internet-enabled devices in class. It’ll be great if we could just get students to use their own devices (that they’re familiar with and aren’t being forced to use), but if that’s not the optimal solution for whatever reason, perhaps we should consider using a device that a large majority will be happy to own and use?

Teaching to (the) text

Was skimming through something one of my students wrote for an ongoing blogging project (more details to come, perhaps) which led me to an interesting piece on the NY Times entitled Teaching to the Text Message. Essentially, the article suggests that essay-writing is not a particularly useful skill in itself these days, with the opinion that we should focus more on authentic (and relevant) tasks such as writing YouTube comments, Amazon reviews, and cover letters.

This isn’t a particularly new idea – it’s the purpose of the functional writing component (aka letter writing) of EL exams, except vastly updated to better suit the new generation. Essay-writing probably isn’t going anywhere just yet, but I do think there is merit in the idea, and that even though current exam requirements do still require students to be competent in essay-writing, such authentic tasks certainly have a place in practising grammatical structures, particularly for the weaker students.

Although I can’t quite think of a way to integrate it just yet, perhaps even text messaging should have a role in such a syllabus!

Marking with technology

Hey, the computer gave me an A for my essay (The Straits Times, 14 Feb 2011, full text) talks about how some schools are already using computer software to help reduce their marking load. While I was aware that such technology existed already, I hadn’t realised that local schools were already utilising it.

English teachers’ jobs are still secure (for now) – as mentioned, style is something that machines can’t handle just yet. Still, I do think it’ might be a useful marking aid, if the software is able to help correct lower-level mistakes.

(That said, I wonder how different the system is from Microsoft Word’s grammar check? Is it merely a more powerful/precise version of that?)

Gaming in education

Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom – A rather fascinating read that mentions a school that employs the playing and design of games as the primary mode of education. In theory, a great way to engage students and impart skills – but is this really the way to go? Especially beyond the elementary level, will gaming suffice in the realm of education?

As a language teacher, I remain somewhat unconvinced that gaming can stand alone as a form of pedagogy – language itself is used for many purposes: to inform, to persuade, to argue, among others. It seems a challenge, to me, to incorporate all of this in either the playing or design of games. Furthermore, if we are hoping to train up future researchers who will be able to further expand the realm of human knowledge in the sciences and arts, our students will still need to learn relatively advanced concepts that might, again, not come up in games.

Organic chemistry in a game? How about thermodynamics? Rather difficult to imagine, I think.

Gaming is probably a great supplement for attracting interest, teaching and perhaps even testing students, but as of now I find it hard to believe that it will be able to completely replace classroom-based lessons.

Using EtherPad

Whew! Looks like it’s been quite some time since I’ve posted, huh? It’s really not that easy attempting to maintain a blog for professional learning when you’ve got work to do as well. Anyway, on to the topic at hand – I’m a little slow to join the party, but recently I’ve become a big fan of EtherPad.

I was initially trying to get my students to work on a group project (about 5 students per group) using Google Docs in the computer lab – it seemed like a great idea at the time, since it allowed all group members to collaboratively work on the document and even to continue doing so from home. Much as I’m a fan of Google, however, it works relatively sluggishly on the school computers. Some of my students switched to EtherPad services such as TitanPad and iEtherPad on their own, which just highlighted to me how students are often more knowledgeable than teachers when it comes to technology.

(Funnily enough, it’s actually been bought out by Google and made open source – which is why it’s now available on so many different sites – but that’s another story altogether.)

Essentially, EtherPad’s really similar to Google Docs in that it allows the collaborative editing of text with a chat option in the right column – my students tend to play with the chat quite a bit, but I don’t see that as a problem as long as they accomplish the assigned task(s) in the process. It doesn’t handle images and formatting all that well, but I think it’s good enough to finish up the text collaboratively before individually working on the formatting and design of the document on their own clients (e.g. Microsoft Word).

As I see it, the main advantages of EtherPad over Google Docs would be that it’s…

1. more responsive (definitely a big plus)
2. keeps a log of the chat (not always a good thing, but useful if you want to monitor their progress, or if they’ve had useful discussions via chat)
3. has the option of automatically highlighting changed text, which helps to show how each student has contributed

In addition to student work, I’ve found that it’s a helpful tool before meetings. What my IT committee sometimes does is to distribute the agenda via EtherPad (we use TypeWith.me, but for some reason that often crashes my Google Chrome) and the committee members can do some online (and asynchronous) discussion before actually meeting up, theoretically cutting down meeting times. Of course, this only works if most members put in the time/effort to read and discuss the issues, so mileage may vary.

Still, a pretty useful both inside and outside the classroom!

Supporting digital writing in EL

It’s been awhile since my last post, but since I’ve got a little time on my hands before the mid-year marking frenzy begins, I thought I’d write a little on the practical aspect of bringing in technology-appropriate writing into class. I can hardly claim to be an expert in this matter, since I’m currently not giving my students many opportunities to write using computers, but hopefully I’ll get to do so next term!

Having recently gone through summary writing with my classes, I was musing to myself that this component of the English examinations is remarkably suited for computer-aided writing. Whether for extracting text from the original passage, re-ordering and revising points, or even conducting the final word count, it seems to me that using a computer for the task would only aid the summary writing process. Of course, the major stumbling block in this is that assessment is still conducted using pen and paper, so ultimately it is still beneficial for students to continue practising using the dated, inefficient method (the QWERTY keyboard comes to mind here).

In fact, many of the concerns I’ve sensed about digital writing have to do with its lack of relevance to the mode of assessment, so that’s one thing that will need changing if the intent is to further integrate technology into education. Aside from that, here are some other common concerns I’ve come across (and my comments on them):

• Ease of plagiarism. While it is a lot easier to copy-and-paste text off the internet, tools such as Turnitin help to combat this by cross-checking responses with internet sources, as well as other students’ work.
• Difficulty of marking. While I actually rather like Microsoft Word’s review functions, I would have to agree that it’s a lot easier (and effective) to just make swipes on the paper with your red pen and to annotate accordingly. More powerful annotation tools such as crocodoc allow for more versatility, though, and with a tablet PC you would be able to easily do the same using a stylus.
• Eye strain. It’s great to be saving the environment by reducing the amount of paper used, but not if it makes teachers go blind (from overuse of computer displays) in the process! I don’t have a solution for this yet (my own eyesight’s getting worse everyday), but I’m sure technology will catch up (I’m still rooting for E Ink, despite the iPad’s apparent success without it).
• Devices. It’s troublesome bringing the students to the computer lab for something that can be done in class, so it might only be feasible if the students already have devices (laptops? netbooks?) of their own to use for this.

Perhaps we aren’t ready to implement all-out digital writing in classes just yet, but if we don’t go about attempting to tackle these issues (including mode of assessment), we’re not going to get anywhere – especially if solutions already exist out there!

Pen and paper writing – a relic of the past?

A few months ago I read an article about the Death of Handwriting, which I’d found rather amusing and even quite bewildering – just what was so bad about the disappearance of longhand writing, I wonder? Admittedly I take a rather utilitarian view on this – it’s people like me who would choose to demolish buildings that would have been, decades later, marvelled as a cultural icon – but really, other than nostalgia and perhaps the ability to read old pieces of writing, just what exactly has been lost?

Dare I extend this line of thought to pen-and-paper writing? I cannot deny that the older method has its advantages, and I do think that it might still be the superior choice for creative writing, but when dealing with non-fiction expository pieces, does it really make sense to avoid the QWERTY keyboard, which to many has become a primary method of writing today? The typical office job today involves reading and generating text in the digital format. On the individual level, unless one is a published writer, your most-read words are likely to be in electronic form. As for myself, I wrote a large part of this very blog post on a smartphone while on a bus.

I don’t seek to get rid of the traditional form of writing (as mentioned before, I believe there’s definitely value in it), but I do think that schools could give greater emphasis and even allowance to digital writing, even at the pre-university level. Assuming that education is meant to prepare the student for his future work or even everyday life, it only makes sense for a portion of language lessons to be spent on writing in the format they are most likely to use today. Granted that it may no longer be as relevant by the time they start working (neural interfaces, perhaps?), but in the absence of the psychic educator, I think it is the least we could do.