Window

Dear All,

There's a window, actually, a pull-down menu at the top of the page in Moodle which lets someone who has administrator's rights or a teacher see the content of the page as 'a student', 'a teacher or 'a non-editing teacher'. Each of the roles allows a different depth of the view of the page content and a different degree of intervention with the page content.

This is very much how I feel upon leaving this course. It has given me an opportunity to switch from my usual role to that of a learner and see how it feels to be 'in class' again, also through observing other teachers teach and learn next to me. I have often been told that language teachers should occasionally take up learning a new language to become more aware of the challenges their students have to face as well as to get the first-hand experience of the phenomena of second / third etc. language acquisition. This course was very much in that vein: a consolidation of some of the focal points of SLA accompanied by the joy and pain of learning to do things I had not used before or thought of before in concordance: aspects of technology and methodology.

I have painstakingly tried to keep a record of those moments all in my blogs. Owing to their wonderful variety, combining the data from our weekly posts a three dimensional image of each week and many learning experiences emerges. Perhaps even more than that: at times this output is so rich that quite a few virtual reality moments could be constructed on the basis of it. All our interpretations and reflections, dialogues skilfully scaffolded by our moderators, sometimes also by some of our colleagues, combined with our memories of the course, the fears and sighs of relief, the I-made-it! pride, the knowledge and skills that have been augmented so much that we are almost afraid of losing them, forgetting that knowledge (as well as love) is one of the few things 'they can't take away from you'. Of course, it can dissolve if not taken care of, therefore we have to persist and keep learning. There is so much around the corner already, we already ahve glimpses of those new developments: iPhones and iPads in schools, for instance.

I was wondering what my piece of advice may be upon completion of the course: I was looking for a piece of advice to give to myself in the first place. I know there is a spring cleaning ahead of me: cleaning my room, tidying up my desktop (both virtual and real), organizing my papers, going back to my exams and many other things that I somehow kept at bay having committed myself to this course. After this course, there will be 'before' and 'after', as this immersion has been so powerful. Yet I imagine that, although the road ahead of us is just as full as surprises and bumps as it used to be, I feel that I am better at seeing ahead and listening to what is going on and that my ideas can form a more solid structure now, rather than branch out in too many different directions.

My word of advice would therefore be to try to keep a kind of record of what we do. How can we do that? In any way possible. Doing research along with teaching is awfully difficult, but keeping a diary of changes, doing class surveys (even as part of the teaching, through short self-assessment) and accumulating results helps us see where we used to be and how we got where we are now. It may be a form of our permanent practice. Even venture out and try out something new, comparing the expectations against the outcome. Keep track of changes that we invest so much into anyway it would be a pity not to let others know if something really interesting happens. It is easier said than done, but I am at least going to try to develop a habit of it.

Another word of advice to myself, which is just as hard to do sometimes: appreciate what you do and the progress you are making, even when things do not work out as well as you want them to. Set achievable goals. Go up one step at a time, following levels of complexity and refinement. Ask for assistance and cooperation – there may be more opportunity for that out there that we sometimes believe. Know that there will be ups and downs. Focus on the ups, learn from the downs. That is already too much advice for one day, I guess.

As these are our last posts on this course this time, many of us have expressed their feelings by means of delicate pieces of poetry and wisdom. I myself could describe my feeling as a passenger changing trains at the Grand Central station (I imagine it to be an architectural masterpiece). I know this is an outstanding moment of my life I will remember for a long time but I am somehow reluctant to leave my by-now comfortable compartment. I know that this is just a beginning and that learning to dance to the tune of tomorrow’s challenges that have nested inside me will continue. I hope we may accompany each other some time.

I will finish by expressing gratitude to all of you, my dear coursemates amd teachers. I could paraphrase Jack Nicholson as the unforgettable Melvin Udall in as Good As It Gets who, in one of the crucial scenes of the film, pays a compliment to Carol (Hellen Hunt) by telling her that she 'makes him want to be a better man.' Love or not, this is one of the true gifts of this course: it certainly made me want to be a better teacher.

What more can I say but: Thank you all.

Lots of love,

Andreja

P.S. My email contact used through Nicenet is likely to remain the same in future. Let's keep in touch.

Weaving

Dear All,

My 'Send to a Friend' word for this week is: integration. Making as many pieces as possible fit together. Seeing team members collaborate. Making the tasks and the content work go hand in hand. Making next week lessons follow-up on what we did last week. Seeing what we expect and what students deliver somehow compatible. Making a language teacher and, for that matter, any teacher, embrace what technology has to offer, inasmuch as the resources allow it. Seeing students taking the leap guided by the teacher. Seeing the teacher taking the leap with the students. Seeing the teacher scaffolded by fellow teachers.

These are the colourful yarns I have found in my box this week. Not all of them can be included in the fabric we as teachers have to weave. Not every one of them actually fits the pattern of our everyday classrooms, staffrooms, schedules, our students' schedules, educational policies and reforms, syllabi, and the ever-changing tide of technological and methodological developments. Some of these yarns can only be used as an ideal to aspire to in our professional practice. Others will lose their beauty and even wear off when fitted in that fabric. Some of them are only there to add the flair and sheen to the fabric and are to be used sparingly. Some are essential, so without them the fabric would fall apart. There are also a couple of loose ends at the end of each day – the reminder that our mission is not accomplished.

I have looked at the repertoire of human occupations this week to look for a new one that being a teacher involves and found that of a weaver to fit into my disposition. Writing a report of what I have been doing in my class was a challenge even though I had been taking notes from the very start. One of the reasons is that I knew I would have to make it as clear as possible to the reader – my peer reviewer, our moderators and, ultimately, my coursemates. Another reason is that, little by little, an image of the last month in my classroom started to emerge, the image that I and my students created, but had to write down to actually see it. Another experience which contributed to seeing my own class project and project report more clearly was reading my peer reviewer Dilip's report and taking a glance at those published early in our Wiki. On my way from the draft to the final report I felt I actually modified it quite a lot. Writing the report was a strenous task, as I tried to consider the reality of the project, precious recommendations from my peer reviewer, the rubric, the template, while also imagining the reader and listening to my inner voice. Integrating all of them, trying not to leave too many loose ends. I am very curious to see whether the image of my class project can be reconstructed effectively by means of the report I wrote.

Another opportunity for us to play at the weaving loom was using an online tool to generate an exercise or use one of the suggested services to create a class website. Among this week's resources I was attracted to the website that integrate a variety of really different tools: SMILE was surprised that the tools offered there are not limited to classic authoring tools tasks such as Multiple-choice, True/False, Drag/Drop, Sentence Mix, Paragraph Mix, Cloze, Multiple-Select (which are available in My Activities section), but also include a surprising array of Rich Internet Applications, about a dozen of them. They could be classified as Web 2.0 tools, as they enable the creation of tasks that are open-ended, and involve active participation of both creators and users /students. Moreover, it is not just an authoring website, but an initiative. A historic overview of task types development over the last 15 years is available here!

I was so enthusiastic about SMILE that I initially set out to create a mash-up containing a video, a graphic, record a couple of questions for students about the video to answer asynchronously and add a matching exercise and a cloze. I wanted to integrate all of them onto one page. Unfortunately, I could not finish my first Drag/Drop matching exercise, as it would not work properly. As I did not want to give up on the matching exercise, I tried Hot Potatoes, where I managed to create one, along with a sequencing exercise. I have learnt a lot form the SMILE website for the time being and will try to do the mash up on another occasion shortly.

So the image that my memory makes of this week is a very positive one. It contained a very significant moment – submitting our project, and another 'first' in my professional biography: my first online exercise in an authoring tool. More importantly, I managed to integrate the exercise into a particular lesson on the great Weaver of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee.

It is amazing how much weaving and technology actually have in common. The Jacquard loom, the first device used to make the process of manufacturing textiles with complex patterns easier about 200 years ago, was actually one of the first machines to use punched cards. The rest of the textile industry development is history of course. Yet to think of Mayan textiles in Guatemala still made without any computer technology by weavers each and every one of them is an artist – what does it teach us? It shows us the importance of the human creativity, vision and – inevitably, hard work – coming first and technology, with all its wonders, coming second. I see our authoring tools this week in this light as well: our tasks are the artefacts coming out from our workshops, for each of which a 'mechanical' tool, rather than a pre-programmed solution, was used.

I wish us all a wonderful week ahead of us!

Best regards,

Andreja

Acknowledgements:

• The picture in this week's blog was found on a website of a US fabric artist. It is actually a quilt, so consider it a variation on the texture theme.
• I picked up the story of life (and why not teaching?) as fabric weaving from a recent book by a person I admire, Professor Mirjana Krizmanić from Croatia, who happens to be a psychologist and a great teacher.

You can lead a horse to the water …

Dear All,

'You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink'. What light does this old saying shed upon this week’s discussion on learner autonomy? It is a meaning-rich light for sure, as for me it sums up some of the crucial points of the teacher’s role in motivating the learners. In that interplay the teacher provides the learners with the indispensable means for coping in the language learning adventure, if no longer with all the building block themselves. Students’ willingness and capacity to take control over their own learning may arise as an added value. It is great that I found these very words - motivation and their willingness to take responsibility of their own learning – voiced in Nina’s blog as well.

This week I have been reminded that, as teachers, we cannot expect students to act neither unanimously nor reciprocally to our prompts, tasks and expectations – because each student is different, and students, taken collectively, are different than we are. Their motivation differs too – some like learning the language for the fun or even the beauty of it. Some do it because they know it is an asset they can’t do without. Some, of course, do it because they simply have to. I assume that, as professionals, we have to respect these differences and try to direct the learners by trying to engage different learners in different ways.

In his article Engaging students as learners Jeremy Harmer refers to one of the features of an engaged and autonomous learner as that eager to ‘take over agency’ and, consequently, ‘responsibility for one’s own actions’. Autonomy is primarily discussed in the relationship of the student to himself/herself, or to the teaching material, or the teacher, for that matter.

Yet, learning is a process that heavily relies on the interaction with the environment, and in ideal circumstances, this joint effort, massive input and output, feedback and scaffolding, implies the learning community. Therefore it can be compared to ‘an orchestra’ (another term Harmer uses) in which everyone is a ‘player’. Still, there are students who refuse to take agency and become players, preferring the role of listeners. Interestingly enough, Harmer suggests that such students are necessarily no poorer for that.

Although my reflections so far seem to be more illustrative of engaging learners than encouraging their autonomy, the two processes are actually intertwined. Over the last few weeks all of us on this course have agreed that one of the benefits of technology is that we no longer need to be the sole source of linguistic or cultural information for our learners. On the contrary. What we can and should do is to direct, recommend, and help student aggregate and critically approach what they come across. Besides, technology enables students to be involved in learning even when the teacher is not there. So it is access and exposure that are vastly augmented owing to ICT. The sense of student’s individual ‘voice’ is further facilitated by the Internet’s democratic nature.

Yet where does this abundance often leave us? Sometimes students will take shortcuts on their road to autonomy – rather than taking trouble to perform their own searches, to take one example, they will happily embrace the most obvious search results. The ease of use is the king. Also, if not reminded that ‘learning is discovering things we already know’, students may feel they have learnt enough and stop being curious to explore further, having reached a kind of a plateau.

Our role as teachers is by no means diminished by no longer being a sole linguistic authority. There are many other, just as complex roles, we need to take on - equipping the students with strategies, be it cognitive or metacognitive. Also, the fact that human communication is being increasingly exercised through technology, makes the socio-affective strategies no less important – they are very much needed by our homo zappiens students to both cope and strive in the classes of the future. Personally, I find it extremely daunting, as a lot of our assumptions we gained during our professional growth need to be redefined. Also, there are some novel issues, like the large-scale introduction of iPads, for instance, mentioned by our moderator Jeff Magoto this week, which are bound to change the learning landscape ever further. The idea of a teacher as the students’ companion on this ever more demanding road to learning seems plausible to me.

There is more information around and more hunger for it than ever. Hoping that the thirst for knowledge will not cease either, I would like to conclude by saying that the hardest thing for us as teachers to do is probably to tell at which point our ‘leading to the water ends’ and our students’ ‘drinking the water’ starts.

I am giving final touches to the draft of my report as well. Like Zlatka said, it seemed easier to do than it turned out to be – the hard part being focusing on the important bits and making them understandable for the reader. Having the opportunity to exchange feedback on my own work with one of my colleagues here certainly helps me understand my students more.
Yet it is an inevitable part of our learning experience.

Best regards,

Andreja

Like a wheel within the wheel

Dear All

Every week on this course brings up issues that coincide with some of the concerns I have been having related to teaching, technology, classroom management etc. Right from the start I knew that ‘Interactivity in large classes’ would be another such topic. The connection between interactivity and PowerPoint seemed self-explanatory until I took a better look, a fresh look, and realized nothing is obvious. The fact that I have been using PowerPoint for several years (after a crash course on how to do it and then learning by watching others do it – including my students) does not mean I can not use it more effectively to reach my students. Moreover, to make them ‘lean in’ for better understanding and tap into each other’s knowledge and ‘maximize their own’, in the words of the physics teacher .

As there are three basic components to any situation in which PowerPoint is used, there are at least three different aspects to using it more or less successfully: the PowerPoint show itself, the speaker / presenter, the audience. This is what books on presenting usually focus on, and this is where most of my focus has been going into. But this generic approach to presenting, as a business presentation is definitely not the same as the one in class, does not fully meet our needs, no matter how well it works elsewhere. In the classroom it is more about ‘give-and-take’, something you would not expect to have while presenting a paper at a conference. I think this conceptual watershed was very important for me this week. Next step was to try to translate this into practice. In that, adopting the guideline in Deborah’s presentation Interactive PowerPoint - Not your usual approach to ‘Use the PowerPoint as an organizer’. I had it in mind while creating my own interactive PowerPoint show. Watching my colleagues' work mademe even more aware of the possibilities.

Establishing interactivity and ensuring students would ‘plug in’ was one of the goals in the first week of the implementation of my class project, which also overlapped with my students’ first week on the course. Having set up the social network and see all the students sign up and create profile, I started activating the short reading and writing assignments (language profile and wiki) and was also quite content to explore other possibilities, like optional features that would make them visit the network more often.

By their second class last Thursday most of the students had completed their assignments. I did take a lot of trouble to contact them and encourage them by using network email and notifications. I also motivated them to try to improve their posts, which some of them did. So I guess this online communication, and having all the students in one place, able to see each others’ work as it is being published, was received quite well, as the turnout shows. The students received feedback in terms of credits published in Moodle, also through my comments on their Network profile walls, where their peers were also free to comment.

The second round of tasks was published the day before the class in the Network Forum. Each of the two tasks, which have to be submitted by next Thursday, was only started in the computer lab – so that I am sure they know what to do and where to continue once they have made the first step under supervision, Task 1 being a follow-up on someone else’s article in the course wiki and Task 2 starting a blog to report on the learning experience so far and the business topic covered, as well as adding a comment to another student’s blog. In the blog post both video and text are required.

Two most sensitive parts of the tasks to be done for next week are using the video widget integrated in the Network and ‘swapping’ the topics in wiki. My colleague (an ICT teacher) and I gave a video demonstration in class (not a hands-on one, though) and re-assigned the wiki topics. I find such organizational things need to be done face-to-face in class, if possible, to avoid conflicts and misunderstanding. The tutorial on recording and publishing videos was prepared by my colleague and is available to students.

So, there’s momentum and I hope we won’t lose it. I feel I am walking around with my little toolbox dotting my i’s and crossing the t’s. It is very demanding in terms of time. I am trying to make myself feel more like a part of the Network – they certainly do feel cozy already, creating events and groups, exchanging comments. I myself want to channel their good will and motivation by giving them prompts which are language- or learning-oriented, and not merely part of their general interests. So, apart from having them communicate in English about business topics, I am going to try to use the Network for their language learning awareness, as there is a lot of potential for that. One of the students formed a ‘Group of people who often find themselves thinking in English’. I responded by starting a forum discussion on ‘proficiency’. I wonder whether they will post any comments.

Channeling the way some of the students communicate, using Netspeak, is what I also have to deal with and hope to improve. Differences in their personalities and learning styles are also very visible in some cases. I’ll have to think about how to try to harness those differences.

This week I am looking forward to seeing more of their work: it may seem a lot to do, but I tried to plan everything carefully. and provide demos, I am only afraid they may leave it all for the very last day, which is when things often go wrong. Two students reported possible difficulties with Internet access, but otherwise this particular aspect should not be a problem.

My project implementation results will thus only be visible on Thursday – their deadline to submit. So far, they seem to have warmed up to it, one of the students even called it constructive. Not everyone will probably like and readily accept and participate in everything but seeing others doing it is a major boost, I think. In terms of affect and cognition.

Let me wrap my Week 7, as a lecturer, task designer, project coordinator and network moderator (in my Business English course) and a participant on this course, by referring to what Sandra wrote in one of our discussions this week – it is good to be reminded of all the possibilities we have as teachers. I cannot but agree with her on that – we try so hard to learn so many new things, but they will work best if we can fit it into the underlying structure of what we are doing, thus gradually improving our ways and alternating different solutions from our rich menus of options.

Reading Md. Mahamud Hasan's blog reminded me of another essential thing: that everything I have prepared, planned and learnt over these weeks would not have been possible without the people who accompany me, encourage me, teach me and guide me - all of you being among them.

I wish you all see more of all the little gears on your projects fit together in the week to come.

Best regards,

Andreja

The learner in me

Dear all,

So many of our thoughts and practical solutions about teaching has revolved around a very important question What ‘kind’ of learners are our students? To the issue of learning styles the need to adapt our teaching styles has been added. And finally, the question: What kind of learners are the teachers themselves? Mahamud Hasan quotes Terry O'Connor in ‘Using learning styles to adapt technology for higher education’ who commented that people rely on personally constructed filters to orient their relationships towards the world. As a result, we are very likely to teach the way we like to learn and expect our students to like things and methods we would like.

I myself, like Hassina, definitely learn best by reading / writing about it, that is, by visualizing and verbalizing and believe that input does not need processing but also outputting in our own way for something to be learnt. So learning by doing, whether it is ‘knowledge’ or ‘skill’ is very productive for me. I know that my students are visual/auditory types – lots of them – as they grew up watching English and listening to it. This week gave me a hint about why I do not seem to do a lot of listening tasks in class: I myself prefer texts, pictures, slides. So I will use this revelation as the basis for change and try to use more audio, whether pre-recorded or recorded in class. Also, the reflective / active learning style dichotomy offered me an answer to why I sometimes find it hard to respond to our discussions in the first half of the week – I start my reading and plan my task, watch my understanding of it grow and take shape before I write it down and post in it concrete terms. I will try out the proposed approach – take notes and summarize more often.

The fact that people are combinations of several learning styles actually helps, as chances are that by how we do something in class at least a part of a student’s individual disposition will be engaged. But awareness on the part of the teacher as well as learners certainly helps and may lead to fewer questions like: Why do we have to do it this way? Technology offers alternatives, in and out of class. One thing that George and my coursemates taught me in the discussion is that ‘technology’ in class is not only a computer. Cell phones, which I have not used so far but am eager to start using, and in close future, convertible PCs, add another dimension to fostering individual differences.

Another point of view we had to consider our students’ involvement from this week was designing assessment rubrics. Defining objectives, then dimensions, then descriptions, of course, which are then shown to students, seems a logical order of events. It is amazing that such an approach is totally ignored in so many educational systems, as Dilip and Hassina’s blogs seem to suggest. What the teacher expects students to do is not the teacher’s exclusive right to know. Also, by creating rubric we as teachers get an idea of what we expect from students. I have developed my rubric for assessing participation on a social network and along with it, for their text/video blog. I am afraid the descriptions are still too long, but am sure that presenting them to the students will be just as useful as task instructions they will get. Best of all, I saw how much I learnt from looking at my peers’ rubrics – I constructed my own rubric by using that knowledge just as much as the original tutorial.

By doing the second stage of my mini-project in class this week, I will try to build on what we started doing last week and expand the existing lane, as well as introduce another one. I think that on the social network there should be a combination of obligatory and optional contributions; activities that will make students ‘go back and forth’ and not just be involved in their own present task; it hope the communication will be even better and have tried very hard to post feedback to their posts. Most importantly, I want to use this network with a clear goal in my mind, but also by being attentive to the way they respond to it and create part of activities based on that. Finally, a teacher has to balance their own expectations against the students’ capabilities and willingness – and styles. (I wonder how making mini-videos and blogs will fit in this picture. Presentation of the task will be very important!)

What the teacher and the learner in me learnt this week from everyone on the course – our moderators, my coursemates, my colleagues at work (who I relied on a lot too this week) and my students (through the network) was very powerful. I can not wait to see how it will materialize this week. Then again, I guess that’s how all of us feel!

Best regards,

Andreja

In the pipeline

Dear All,

My Business English course starts tomorrow night. I have to admit that I am very excited about seeing my (new) students and telling them about the activities they will be involved in. I am confident that there is a sound balance between how I am going to start the course this time and how I would 'normally' do it, so the whole thing should not be too overwhelming.

Over the last few weeks, ever since Deborah and Sandra set us reflecting on spotting the room for improvement in our class, I have been going back to the previous years that my course had been run. The formulation 'this should be something new, something you have not been using so far' yet, evidently, something that can be set up in a couple of weeks and performed in only two of them forced me to think in very concrete terms. It is amazing how close deadlines can prevent us from getting carried away!

The combination of the existing resource (wiki) and a new one (social network, already has three members!) will hopefully prove an appealing, constructive and, most importantly, useful mix for the students. What needed figuring out was how to integrate the two. It took me some time to formulate the tasks that would be comprehensible to students – they are posted in the network Forum. I also wrote 8 questions students need to fill in at signup – their language learning profiles. The network, of course, needed setting up and customizing a little. After a crash course on social networking, I have a social network profile – what a wonderful experience. I have spotted another one on the Web already that I would like to join.

The course wiki took searching so that I would come up with topics that are searchable. I took care to prepare sample answers to questions and a sample article. Of course, this much handholding for the students (and myself, coming form my colleagues) may not be necessary in future, but right now I want to be sure they know what I would like them to do.

The feedback I have received so far from my colleague who has been helping me with implementing the network and my student assistant has been very positive, so that's what keeps me going. Besides, it is only now that I see how immensely useful the experience of being on our discussion forum and blog is – even more so considering this is the first time I have intensely participated in any such service. While expecting my students to do similar tasks, I have my own experience to rely on. I am a cat lover, yet have to subscribe to Mark Twain’s words, ‘If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.’ (May all the cat lovers among you forgive me, as it is a figure of speech anyway.)

Of course, the objective – emotions aside – is to provide the students with activities that would make them familiar with the course syllabus and with each other and do some reading, writing and speaking while doing so. I never thought you could do this in one go. So let's wait and see.

The preparations have also kept me from actively participating in other E-teacher assignments, so I'll commit myself to it as of tomorrow. I was thinking about learning / learner styles as I was cutting out some questions for my students tonight, thinking what difference it would make to have the questions scattered on the desk rather than listed in a neat predefined order. So my lesson outline is coming up!

I hope everyone else has started carrying out their plans successfully. I will keep in touch. We are in this together, so I am trying to imagine every one of us finding their way through the classes that took so much meditation, mediation and imagination as well as the hard skills to prepare. Owing to this, it has to be a week to remember, as some of this week's blog posts seem to suggest.

Best regards,

Andreja

Casting a new eye, making a difference?

Dear all,

how amazing it is to see little pieces start fitting together – if you are into 'little pieces' forming 'the big picture', like I am. This week I tried to search for ways of adding a sense of relevance to my English classes, as their role in providing an opportunity for them to learn a foreign language is hardly plausible, as they are surrounded by so many different Englishes outside the classroom as well. Of course, it is the classroom where things will be done systematically and therefore yield results, but adding the element of 'meaningfulness' combined with enjoyfulness, intellectual enterprise and a goal applicable to at least other subjects they learn or even a wider community – what else could we ask for as teachers? This week we have seen possible ways in which it can be done, even without assistance of ICT. Yet if we include the technology, then chances of getting more relevant input needed to do tasks and making output accessible are increased. So reaching out to your peers, other classes, even wider community (as some outlines of this week's WebQuests and PBL lessons demonstrated) becomes more possible. To make it work, everyone needs to be aware of the possible benefits it may bring.

Of course, there is a question of how to integrate that into the curriculum. Does your system acknowledge service learning? There is a website I came across a webpage that deals with such projects. Is it compatible with academic goals we set for out students? How do they fit in with the learning outcomes? I was convinced such projects would be reserved for some alternative extracurricular courses for enthusiasts. And guess what, I got a notification about a workshop to be held at one of the faculties in Zagreb (i.e. under the umbrella of the University) which is exactly about this kind of orientation – integrating teaching and learning with products applicable to our student or wider community!

This does not mean doing things 'on the side' of making a commitment to 'serve' and expecting our students to do so. This would be harmful for our professional autonomy as language teachers. The motivation to reach out should by no means arise only from our own ambition or our teaching style (complex as they are, I agree with Manana).

It is our students we have to put first. I believe it all starts by asking yourself 'How is what I am going to do with my students going to benefit my students, the students who will come after them, the students who have specific difficulties learning English, different groups outside this course, students in other areas of education, the general public, similar groups of students elsewhere. As Kazumi reminds us, one of the overarching questions for the teacher is ‘what do I want students to learn through the inquiry I present to them?’.

Focusing on one of the target groups over a period of time is essential, of course. For the time being, I have no idea about how this can be done without severe trade-offs, but I like to believe it is possible and hope it is not (only) a dream that will wear off that easily.


I wish us all a lot of luck with implementing our technology-supported changes next week. If things get tough I will remember Aleyda's tiger image.


Best regards,

Andreja

On a Quest

Dear treasure hunters,

This week's assignment and discussions did not only make me focus on the present state of my own teaching practice and the very near future – the following two weeks is when the implementation of our tech-based ideas is due – but also, at least for a second, made me think of the treasure hunts of the past. Pen-and-paper ones, of course, with a question sheet in one hand, getting to know my own town, and later on, the capital. Later, there would be poster exhibitions in the language school lobby where I used to work – I remember the 'Wordplay' expo provided by the British Council. Our native speaker colleague compiled a quiz even some of us teachers found hard to complete by searching the posters, as some of the questions required drawing linguistic or logical conclusions from several posters. Then there were treasure hunts for my teenage students on a summer course in Oxford – some questions related to Egyptian cat statues in the Ashmolean Museum, others to prices of bus fare for senior citizens. One thing they all have in common is: they all took place before the Internet era and, as far as I remember, there was an element of fun and discovery that the participants enjoyed.

How do the WebQuests of the present differ from their predecessors? Until this week I associated web-based treasure hunts with virtual tours around galleries, colleges, sights. So imagine the surprise when I encountered all the amazing projects submitted by fellow teachers in different languages and a dozen different subject areas at Zunal. There are so many different ways in which the knowledge in each of them is first collected and then processed into something inherently new and, ideally, applicable to real world.

Are our students ready for such tasks? Are the teachers ready too – not only to create their own WebQuest but also conduct them, even the ready-made ones? This is the question I have been considering – it probably takes getting used to. I sent a link to the Kabuki lesson to one my students who is an avid fan of Japan and he loved it, said he would do all the steps. Like all the new activities (web-based quests will be relatively novel in my educational environment), it is good to prepare students for this new way of thinking and relating facts and ideas.

What I occasionally do with my ICT students to make them think 'outside of the box' is make them write answers to 'Find the connection between ...' questions. Sometimes they assume they are trickster questions but when they give it a try, they come up with amazing (and diverse) answers. The questions include: 'What is the connection between climbing Mt Fuji and a job interview?' or 'Find the connection between Africa and open source'. (If you want to know what my original answers are, I would be delighted to tell you). I was inspired for this exercise by M.J.Gelb's book How to think like Leonardo da Vinci.

There is a ludic element to learning that we should not neglect and that does not disappear with technology. On the contrary. That, along with excitement and discovery can result in motivation mobilizing all the knowledge that would otherwise remain compartmentalized. I am sure that the wonderful ideas my colleagues have so far shared for their much-more-than-language-learning projects and WebQuests would / will be embraced by students. I will try to transfer the element of curiosity, collaboration and transformation of knowledge into my technology-enhanced project too, although it does not specifically include a WebQuest.

By the way, I see myself at the beginning of each week on the course as starting a new quest – we each try to find our own way through readings that direct us, the myriad of links and websites, draw conclusions and relate to each other, come up with our findings and present them – don't you feel it is a kind of a WebQuest as well?

Thank you for accompanying me on our road to discovery.

Warm regards from snowy Croatia * * *,

Andreja