Reconstrução! De casa; de um monte; de um projecto; de um percurso; de uma carreira!

Integrating Technology Hosting and Consulting Services

Integrating Technology Hosting and Consulting Services

Nesta canção Zeca despede-se. E fá-lo a cantar deste modo comovente e arrebatador. O poema convida-nos a entrar numa comunhão panteísta com ele, connosco e com as fontes, as oliveiras que testemunham a nossa passagem sem se emudecerem.... Meus amigos ..... ZECA AFONSO compôs,  escreveu e cantou a nossa intima voz.

Today I finished reading Martin Amis's " Yellow Dog". Four entangled novels; the characters establish connections among the four stories.  Noone gets out safe and sound. Monarchy; family life; generations interference; marriage; parenthood; fatal attractions...

M4T Workshops

M4T Workshops

A Bit of Fry and Laurie...Tricky Linguistics

High schools not ready for technololgy

My current high school has asked me to stop using the computer lab and only work in the traditional classroom. I am not going to stop using technology. Starting September 1st, my students and I will only be connecting from home. I may be able to get a few computer classes to get the students started but that's all. I guess I am lucky that I am very experienced so I can manage such a program, but some schools are just not ready to accept technology. Am I alone in believing that technology can facilitate and improve the quality of instruction and learning in the K-12 setting?

Storytelling and Cultures

Storytelling and Culures by Nellie Deutsch

Get your own Virtual Classroom

Wikieducator and Action Research Project on Improving Writing

Improving Student Writing

Teaching is an ongoing learning process. Teachers are generally keen on helping students improve their writing skills, after all they are in the business of "change". I have been teaching for over 30 years and have spent most of my teaching career asking questions about best practices. How do I go about making changes in the way my classroom is run or in the way my students behave or in the way my school is run? These are some of the questions that go through most teachers' minds. However, how many questions do I ask before I start getting some answers?

Problem

One area that has bothered me is student writing. How do I improve their writing? However, as much as I had tried, students kept making the same basic grammatical mistakes and mechanical errors. I would scream if it helped. Last year I decided to try using wikispaces and Moodle to encourage and help students improve their writing. Well, I did see students getting a bit more motivated with online writing, but some were still making the same grammatical errors. This year, I decided to stop using the Moodle and try another wiki called Wikieducator. Furthermore, I decided to conduct an action research project and document my work to see if I could track the changes in one of my grade 11 5 point classes during the next two years. I had done an action research project in the past and found it helped me learn how to make improvements.

Solution

For those who are not familiar with the term, action research is a way for teachers to analyze the issues they may be experiencing in their classes. Action research is a way for teachers to find answers to questions on how to improve instructional design. By collecting data and analyzing the results, teachers can change the practices they use in the classroom. The principle behind action research is to plan a change, implement the change, collect the necessary information, and analyze what happens.

Literature-based Learning

Finally to make life more interesting, I decided to combine literature with the action research project by connecting with a school in the US through an international book sharing project on Night by Eli Wiesel. You are invited to join me in researching how we can improve our students' writing.

Wikis in collaborative writing

I haven’t created a wiki yet (hopefully will, as soon as possible) although  I have contributed to the wikis other people have done. According to all that I have seen so far, wikis are obviously a great tool which can really help students not only to learn, make progress and see the progress,  but in this way wikis can assist  them to become more aware of their own learning. This is, I think, very important and in this regard  I see a huge role of wikis: it is their contribution to the process of enabling students to become independent learners.

However, I don’t believe that wikis alone will ‘push’ our learners into the deep sea of learning: in order for that to happen the content  should be good,  too. Wikis certainly will be more motivating a tool than a traditional text-book or work-book, for example, but in my opinion it is also very important to use the wikis for activities that are motivating, engaging and worthwhile. So, what matters, as much as the tool itself, would be  the  activities/tasks suggested, the topics suggested/chosen, the instructions/guidelines and help provided by useful references, etc  (apparently, the same as in a f2f classroom).

Having said that, I return to our weekly assignment in Collaborative writing workshop: adding up our sentences in order to make up five stories. They all turned out to be  a kind of “creative writing” pieces, deliberately or not, I don’t know. I agree that collaborative writing may have the potential to produce fantastic results in creative writing, and so have the wikis in providing the platform for collaboration. However,  I think that something was missing there.

I may be wrong and I would not like this to sound as criticism but rather as a lesson to learn from (at the end of the day, we are all learners, aren’t we?): I think that  we should have done something before we started adding up our sentences. What kind of writing are we going to produce? What are our preferences (creative? formal/transactional? which topics would be interesting to explore in such a task? etc.)  Or, we could have been given pictures or a thought provoking article as a starting point.  These are just some suggestions (they can be suggestions for the use of wikis in a language class as well).

Creative writing is usually preceded by extensive brainstorming, and so is the formal essay writing. It may seem difficult to induce brainstorming among people in such a diverse  group from all different parts of the world, but wikis might be just an ideal tool for the kind of brainstorming needed in collaborative writing. So, this would be my suggestion for some future collaborative writing group task: use wikis to brainstorm the topics, ideas, negotiate them, select the best or the most inspirational ones, group them, decide on the ones suited to most participants, etc. And only then start the actual activity of  (collaborative) writing. I am quite sure that the results would be more interesting and the activity itself enjoyable (well, this is my personal opinion which may or may not be relevant).

Using wikis

Although I have seen wikis before, this was the first one I participated in. I have actually done a similar activity with students but on a blog. I teach formal academic writing, so I gave the students a topic sentence in an original post to start with and asked students to write an appropriate sentence to build a paragraph--each student could only write one sentence at a time--we used comments to build the paragraph. The students had to obey the rules of formal paragraph organization. Again, the fact that my "class" changes every month (revolving door phenomenon), and that students are all working at their own pace, makes it more difficult to do a task that requires cooperation from a number of students.

Using a wiki to do this type of exercise is obviously easier. However, I found it difficult to do with the "creative" writing task we were given this week. That's definitely not my forte! However, give me something expository to write, and I don't know when to stop;-) Next time I want to do an activity similar to the one I did on the blog I mentioned, I will use a wiki instead.

Wikis in the classroom

I have never used wikis in my teaching practice. I see the advantages of wikis in collaborative project work. And what's more I have always wanted to learn how to make them.
I know how to work with blogger and it doesn't take much of my time to publish what I want. To learn something new you have to stop and think and try it - and there is nobody to help you. I'm very glad to be here - every week I learn something new for my work.

EFL writing using wikis by Berta

I would say that one of the best features Wikis provide for writing courses is that students can see their progress. Every change they make to their page is registered in its history and nothing is ever lost (if saved properly). Students start by writing a draft, then revising, after that they can go to their page with a classmate and they can both revise it together; the student might work on it with the teacher at a student-teacher conference, and the process can go on and on until the student and/ or teacher is/are satisfied with the piece of writing. The student can go to the first version and see how it has changed, identify what mistakes he had originally made and appreciate his progress.

Wikis can also work as online classrooms where there can be a main page with the syllabus and links on the sidebar for the activities for each week, tutorials, collaborative exercises, other external class sites such as blogs, bookmarks, aggregators to keep track of several sites simultaneously, etc. Pages can hold videos, slideshows, chat boards, images, hyperlinks, voice threads, in sum, anything that is embeddable.

I have already mentioned a wiki we had in our last EFL writing course where the main objective was reflecting on EFL writing, what it meant, what it involved and how to get more self control in order to learn to revise one´s texts, revise that of peers, write for a real audience beyond the teacher and even beyond the classroom through collaborations with EFL students abroad, etc. Here is an example of activities for a given week, materials needed and the weekly list of benchmarks.

The tool my students always find the most useful is the chat board. There, all members can communicate with one another, ask for help, send quick messages and write their ideas in a few words. Every message is recorded and students can go back and re-read instructions, previous threads, etc. The chat board we use is Cbox, a free tool that can be embedded in wikis or blogs.

Something that happens to me over and over again is that whenever I start using a new tool, it is very difficult for me to change to another. I started working with wikis in Wikispaces and although colleagues have mentioned the benefits of Pbwiki or Wetpaint, I stick to Wikispaces, even if it has ads on the right sidebar. The same with blogs at Blogger. I have tried Wordpress and Motime and Blogger is still the one for me. Does this happen to you too? or are you more flexible and adaptable?

Wikis and EFL (by Mariel)

I have never used a wiki in my classes, but like Joel I have been experimenting with the Multilit wiki and I believe they have a great potential for EFL.

In fact, a couple of weeks ago I created my first wiki for a class that begins in March. I have made it private, but feel free to request me access. Do mention that you are a member of this EVO Group in your message. I would seriously appreciate your feedback.

Let me mention the main advantages of a wiki, in my view. It allows you to insert images, embed videos, create links, like a blog, though it is true the "visual" component is not so strong. Unlike blogs, you and your students can start new pages (and comment on existing ones, obviously), and place them in folders, which I believe can make for much more "organised" work - in a traditional sense of the work "organised", I admit. But I think (though I haven't tried it yet), students may find it easier to go to the "right" place and see what is expected from them.

I see the main advantage in connection with process writing. The whole process can be clearly traced (reversed if necessary) and collaborative documents can be produced.

I can't wait to implement this wiki.

I'm detailing a project in my blog. Perhaps you could give me some feedback?

The use of Wikis - Joel Bloch

Our university recently has begun developing a wiki that could be used as an alternativel to our course management system. In the past I have used a wiki for having students post their essays,and as part of the EVO multiliteracies class, I have been experimenting with wikis as an alternative to blogging.  As far as all these possibilities, I have still found that the Wikipedia model is the best use for wikis in the classroom. When Wikipedia first became popular, I asked my doctoral students to write an encyclopedia-like article that they could post to Wikipedia. I figured that these students had the most knowledge across a variety of subjects. They work on drafts and I edited their final draft and then posted them to Wikipedia. Some got accepted and some were instantly rejected. The ones that were accepted were all removed a few weeks later. Some of the explainations would have been useful for the students to think of what writing is but unfortunately we did this assignment towards the end of the course and the studentsdidn't follow up.

The next time I used a Wiki, I still followed the Wikipedia model but focused on skills rather than on publishing. They had an assignment to write a definition paper and I asked them to post it to the wiki. Then I had other students come in and edit their papers and then I graded them directly on the Wiki. The assignment went okay, but not well enough that I felt the urgency to repeat it the next time I taught the course.

There were some advantages in using the Wiki over the coursemanagement system but again how my university implemented the Wiki created some of the same problems I had with the CMS. Obviously, the ability to do peer review was better with the Wiki. Also, I felt it was easier to manage individual Wiki pages than individual blogs; however, I have been play around with Netvibes and Pageflakes in the other EVO class and they seem to solve some of the problems with using individual blogs. 

Ana Paulo & Tatiana

Word processors

When students are asked to write their assignments using a computer they are doing much more than merely typing a text. They can have spelling aid, synonyms aid. We can edit their texts by using the commentary key, by changing the colour of the letters so as to stress out what we want them to notice and reflect upon.
We can easily show them the reasons for using italics, bold and underlining. Quite often the students need to be guided in summary writing which requires specific reading tools, as well. By using the possibilities mentioned above (italics, underlining, bold and a different colour for meaning) they are simultaneously acquiring strategies, which enable them to practise reading for learning.
By guiding learners in the editing of their writing we are making it possible for them to reflect on what writing is about and on how they should do it. It develops autonomy.
I inserted a commentary so as to illustrate its possibilities which do challenge our creativity.
As one authentic activity with word processing we could do what we usually do by hand, send the assignments back to the learners with the repeated errors signalled (colour, aesterisk, here I am following Veronica’s ideas, because I hardly ever mark tests or assignments by computer) according to a code previously arranged with them. Then, we could ask them to edit their work for publishing in a class blog. Here, I should mention my students are intermediate and upper intermediate.
I found Renata’s article quite useful in providing practical tips that we can easily adopt. I know I will try out her suggestions of categorizing words by means of chart creation and the other tip to organize a text by supplying its parts in a jumbled way, which learners will have to drag, cut and paste.

Beyza & Andrea

We are both interested in learning new strategies for student collaboration and thought the ideas presented in the articles by Renata Chylinksi and Vance Stevens were interesting and simple to duplicate as word program is present nearly in every computer and it is a basic tool. Andrea had not thought about using the word processor to jumble sentences and categories of words or by having students to replace nouns with pictures. Beyza has some experience in using word processors for jumbling sentences and adding comments to her students’ first and second drafts but using it for replacing nouns with pictures is a new idea for her.

We are French, and English teachers and have some different ideas about how to use word processors with our students. Andrea is going to be working with students on the past and compound tenses and having them analyze the text and associate different colors for different tenses is something she will be using in the very near future. She wants to use green for the imperfect (the continuous past) and red for the preterit (narrative past tense in French). She will need to come up with different colors for the pluperfect (the past perfect). For her novice learners, she wants to use drop down text boxes to scaffold their writing. She believes having the students to select the correct verb and adjectives and then to rewrite the entire sentence correctly gives the students the firm base on which to create their own sentences with the correct sentence structure. Beyza has similar ideas on how implement some of the activities mentioned in two articles... In the future, she thinks she will use it for peer check through track changes option, use color codes for correction and punctuation exercises as she do believes punctuation is not taken into account by most of the students. She also thinks using tasks enabling real communication is also a good activity to be carried out with word processors. She usually uses her class wiki for such activities but she does not think there is a track changes option in it. Therefore, she believes it can be a good idea to use word processors for such activities as the students are more aware of the changes and therefore understand there is some kind of communication going on in such kind of activities.

Sheila & Bertha

Using Word Processors in the EFL classroom

Having read both the articles, Vance Stevens and Renata Chylinski, the idea of teaching word processing and writing skills together is quite surprising, although it seems to be a valid idea.

As Kenan and Sedat have mentioned, students with no connection to Internet could benefit from word processing since it is an excellent way to handle collaborative writing and if the task is motivating to them, they will enjoy working together. However, in some cases if they don't have access to Internet, chances are they might not have access to a computer either, unless the institution provides them with space in a computer lab or if they work in the teacher's office. So it might not be very effective to use Microsoft Word in all cases.

With regard to Renata's piece, the same activities could be achieved with Hot Potatoes or any other tool where one can play around with graphics and words to fulfill a specific objective. The use of word processing for the particular tasks Renata mentions does not seem completely pertinent.

We both feel this approach is not relevant for our own students. Most of them are adult learners who use computers and so practice word processing in their native language at work all day. Their English is generally at the B2 level and above. We are convinced that they know already how to use the basic functions of Microsoft word or other word processing programs. They probably know more about them than we do, especially on German computers in the case of Sheila. In Bertha's case, her students have preferred Googledocs once they know it works online. In individual teacher-student conferences, she has learned a great deal from her students and has been able to enjoy sitting next to digital natives at work. They pick up everything related to technology really fast and use tools well.

There are nice activities in Vance's article that can be followed using Word as a tool. Vance's article, however, seems to have been more relevant for students in the late 90s or early 2000s. Students nowadays might not be so in need to be "taught" word processing skills while learning English. Of course each group of students is different and maybe it would be good to have them share their tips on how to use Word while writing collaboratively on a topic and sharing will probably come up naturally.

One or two of Vance Stevens ideas could be used, particularly the ones from Claire Bradin. (By the way Sheila could not get that link to work in Firefox). Students could work on the group's errors, though they would have to do this for homework as there are no computers in the classrooms. Peer correction is not popular with most of these groups as they do not like to criticize a fellow student, but if the errors were anonymous then they might be prepared to correct them.

Sheila can see a possibility of using cross class interviews especially across cultures if this were possible, this might work well in a blog.

Another exercise to use with exam classes might be jumbled texts where occasional sentences have to be replaced. This could replicate an exercise in the exam and could prove very useful, again for peer correction.

Having PC’s, especially with internet connection, in class is a dream for Sheila, the best they get is her laptop and her personal connection stick to give the students access to an online dictionary.

Some of the activities that could be assigned - either using Microsoft Word, Googledocs or any other collaborative tool- are the following:

- narrate an event where both students were present (another class, Election Day, a national celebration) mixing their experiences in the texts.
- write a poem on a topic they agree or disagree with.
- write the editorial of a newspaper on top areas to be improved in their community, institution, country, the world, etc., and ways to achieve this.
- write an ad about their country trying to persuade readers to visit it.
- write about things they wish they had known about when they were children.

Yulia & Joanna

I have never used collaborative writing tools before, I even was unaware of them. So now it is my first try.

I have not thought about using word processing in a class and these activities are new for me. Some of them are not necessary for my students as I work at a technical university and there is no need to teach them word processing, in fact, they know computer much better than I. But I found some tasks that I can adapt with my students- these are narrative and descriptive writing, different types of letters ( Vance Stevens). In general I think grammar and vocabulary exercises together with word processing are interesting for young school children and can replace traditional workbooks.For example, I jumble up words in sentences or sentences in paragraphs. Or order of instructions. Or paragraphs within an essay. And then ask students to unjumble these, again using dragging or cutting or pasting.» I think this an interesting task that would very well work with my students

As far as word processing tools for collaborative writing are concerned I think they are wonderful for project works. We do with students project works when they study a topic in small groups, write together a summary and present to the whole group. Such work can be organized with Google Docs (for example). First, students may generate ideas, share them, make a plan, then write each point of the plan simultaneously without need to type, compare in class, retype. I think about another way to use it in my class. When we get ready to FCE there is a task to describe a picture and comment your partner description. For more practice and more accurate speech it can be a home writing task. I need to divide the group into pairs, post a picture for them to describe and comment collaboratively.

Nadia & Veronica

In second language writing, as much as in second language teaching in general, any piece of practical advice, suggestion, idea or tip on “how to…” appears to be very important and, actually, indispensable for a language educator. Therefore I find these two articles useful and worthwhile reading even though many, or all, of these activities are updates of pre word-processing/computer lab activities that many of us have used in the classroom. In many cases, these papers seem to be “killing two birds with one stone”-- teaching keyboarding at the same time as language.

I have used these types of activities with my ESOL and Literacy (mainstream English) junior classes and now with my L2 French students. I use them in a traditional classroom f2f, simply because there is only one computer lab in our large secondary school, and I don’t get much chance to spend a decent amount of time in it (hopefully there will be more labs in future). In a pre-computer/no-computer f2f setting there are a number of variations on how these activities --minus the key-boarding skills--can be presented. However, my students do spend more hours in the lab in their Social Studies or English classes, and the students are generally highly literate in word processing (in most NZ schools it’s being introduced at primary level).

From my own experience I know that most of the activities mentioned in the two articles work well with the students and are very useful in developing their literacy skills. I presume that using a word processor would make these tasks even more attractive and desirable from a student perspective. However, in a larger classroom, it would be good to develop different levels of activities and have students work from lower to more demanding levels.

From the list of activities suggested by Renata Chylinski, I am particularly in favor of those that use highlighting to indicate different grammar structures, categories of words, or parts of a paragraph. So, my own example would be to give students a model paragraph (preferably, more than one) and ask them to identify the structure of the paragraph using different shades or some other method (underline, bold, italicize, etc). I usually teach paragraph structure to the formula: 1. topic sentence/or statement, 2. explanation, 3.example/or evidence. Having discussed the ideas, in relation to the model paragraph, they can write their own on different topics and swap in pairs to highlight the peer’s work as a form of peer editing and pair work.

Similarly, from the list of activities in Vance Stevens’ text, I have also used almost all of them in ‘pen and paper’ conditions. Some of these activities I use as speaking practice in my French classes, for example description of a picture or famous people, or cross-class interviews – with the only difference that instead of writing my students do all this orally. It’s usually quite fun. I have also tried and used different kinds of narrative based on pictures. They can easily be designed as ‘focused tasks’ in order to elicit the use of a particular grammar structure (very useful with verb tenses if there is a suitable picture-based story).

Since I am personally very much in favor of respecting the genre and register conventions, I like the type of tasks such as Writing a letter in Stevens’ article. I think it is very important for second language learners to master control over the differences between formal and informal registers in letters, speech, etc. Personal experience tells me that students at all levels usually enjoy such tasks.

To wrap up, the two articles we have focused on this week, may give some ideas to those who teach at lower levels. Furthermore, they have helped me to revise my own ideas of collaborative writing. I have realized that actually my idea of collaborative writing has been rather limited – to the collaboration in writing essays, reports, academic papers or pieces of creative writing, but now I’ve seen that many of the ‘normal’ everyday activities I am practicing with my students are, in fact, some kind of collaborative writing. What a relief! It’s also interesting to see that these activities seem to be updates of the activities many of us used in the classroom in pre-computer days; they give a new twist to old ideas.

P.S. A bit off the track, or out of context, anyway, I’d like to comment on Renata Chylinski’s presentation of her text. I don’t know what others think but I suppose that all those “ums” are meant to be there for the sake of authenticity. (By the way, I usually use “ums” and “uhs” when transcribing a spoken text but in this article I cannot see anything else that would signal a spoken text.) To me it seems a contradiction with the content of the text – because we are still teaching our students to follow the conventional ‘rules’ of discourse, be it grammar, or genre, or pragmatics…if they are to succeed in life. Apparently, her text is exactly about that.