Learning Twigs

Applied #Literacy as integrated and integrous

 

 

Image: Werner Kunz

 

 

I stumbled upon a neat way to apply literacy today in our applied learning context, thanks mainly to the initiative of a colleague responsible for teaching technology and design to our students.

 

We are in the middle of writing mid-term reports for our learners, and this teacher thought it would be an interesting exercise to have his students compose their own reports (about themselves) in relation to their performance and learning in his subject. He initially did this to create a comparison with his own assessments of the learners, but as we were to later discuss and ponder, this turned out to be a brilliant way to have the students reflect on their own performance in a much more salient way. Our students are fairly unlikely to read or take on board the formal reports written by their teachers, but when they do them for themselves there is much more likelihood of real reflection and uptake.

 

This in itself was something I thought of as being 'blogworthy'; it is a great example of what I like to call 'integrous teaching' -- a process that facilitates and promotes learner integrity.

 

The learners completed a paragraph about themselves addressing 3-4 key points suggested by the technology and design teacher in relation to performance in that particular subject. This teacher then approached me to see what we could do with this work  in terms of facilitating extensions into literacy development. I was happy to give this a shot, and the initial integrous activity then became an integrated one (from subject to literacy skills).

 

Based on the initial paragraphs of about 100 words, I had the learners extend them to about 300 words basically by identifying the key ideas and thoughts, turning these into topic sentences for independent paragraphs and then 'growing' each paragraph to include supporting details and examples. They were then shown how to add short introductions and conclusions, along with signpost language to create progression and cohesion across the body paragraphs.

 

This created a 3-4 draft process (relatively untaxing based on the electronic format of their texts) which was precious in terms of meeting our VCAL literacy outcomes but also developing and applying real literacy skills in a fairly logical and organic fashion. From single paragraph 100-word accounts we had grown 4-paragraph essays of about 300 words in length and it was interesting how much easier for the learners this was compared to the 'traditional' approach of planning out a full essay in advance.

 

Aside from the literacy skills perspective here, I think this was really valuable from the integrous and reflective angles as well. By visualising and describing actual behaviours and experiences to support their initial assessments of themselves, it forced them to not only rationalise them but also genuinely notice their own performance.

 

This application across two teachers and two subjects was particularly fruitful. Like so many of my better teaching experiences, it sprang out of someone else's initial application and then grew in a very collaborative way. Cheers Robin!

 

The really juicy thing to consider is how this could be extended and reapplied across other subjects and tasks as well. For now and the future, I think I'd like to bear in mind those two terms 'integrated' and 'integrous'; I think there's a tremendous amount of potential mileage there for the applied literacy teacher.

 

 

=D

 

                                                                          

The notion of 'wepth' in social media (and the Facebook X-factor)

 

 

Image: Kaafoor

 

 

I'm working with a new crew of colleagues at the moment, and some of the things I'm being asked about (when it comes to this whole 'social media thing') include beautifully simplistic questions like "so why the blog?" and "what exactly is twitter for?"

 

Having become very accustomed to (what I call) edublogging and edutweeting, I find such questions refreshing and thought-provoking.

 

The most common response I give -- beyond just the notions of connecting with other educators around the world (twitter) and engaging in reflective practice (blogging) -- is that using the different forms of social media is all about achieving both width and depth. Integrating the two results in what I like to call wepth.

 

I mean, it's great to have the width of something like Twitter, and the thousands of educators it can put you in touch with, but it becomes pretty feather-light (and perhaps even pointless) 'touching' if there is nothing of substance to connect to.

 

Likewise, it can be a wonderfully therapeutic thing to blog about your experiences and thoughts, going into a reasonable amount of detail both in the posts and the discussions that can end up attaching themselves to them, but without a reasonably wide potential audience a lot of excellent reflective practice can end up feeling pretty lonely.

 

Hence the notion that you can achieve wepth by maintaining a wide network on Twitter and referring to your own and others' blog posts, which in turn become the fodder for more extensive reading and discussion on specific discoveries or issues.

 

However, I've started to question my own theory here...

 

First of all, I don't think Twitter automatically excludes depth and nor does blogging necessarily avoid width. Picking and choosing your contacts carefully on Twitter results, at least to some degree, in a kind of depth because you are targeting your network (for me it tends to be educators and writers). And with blogging, the public nature of it and relatively rapid pick up from search engine spiders mean that you are achieving a certain width by making your posts accessible to a range of readers whom you might not have actively targeted.

 

Perhaps, with things like blogging and Twitter, wepth ends up working both ways or in a variety of ways. I think, however, it would be fair to say that overall wepth is limited when one or the other is excluded from the overall package.

 

What has started to fascinate me is the way that Facebook has come marching along and taken big meaty bites out of both blogging and Twitter.

 

As comment threads on blog posts diminish and interaction on Twitter heads more along the lines of basic link-sharing and updates, we see more of those behaviours (commentary and discussion, informal interaction) becoming the staple of Facebook.

 

A recent post on this blog received more 'likes' on Facebook than it did 'retweets' on Twitter, and there were about twenty times as many comments/interactions for it on Facebook than we saw in the blog's own comment thread. And it certainly wasn't an isolated example; looking at blog/Twitter/Facebook activity over a period of about 6-12 months, this appears to be the direction in which things are heading.

 

Is it possible that Facebook's format/approach is achieving something closer to the wepth many of us appear to be looking for?

 

If so, can we reconcile this with the uncomfortable thought that (for better wepth) all we need is more Facebook friends and less concern about our own privacy and content?

 

 

Mmmm.

 

 

=D

 

                                                         

Confessions of a pre-set curriculum chuck-outer (Part 1)

 

 

Image: Patrick Hoesly

 

 

Those readers who were familiar with this blog before my switch out of EFL/ESL into Applied/Vocational Literacy won't be surprised to see me post about emergent learning and teaching; there is ample evidence of my inclinations in the Teaching Unplugged directory on this blog...

 

Well, I've been up to '(no) good' again. I threw the regular, highly pre-set curriculum for our literacy program right out the window today to tackle writing with a group of quite reluctant literacy students. The ones who have become quite infamous for spending as much of their time in class playing simple browser-based computer games as possible, only ever retrieving their writing document when a teacher walks past or actually sits down right beside them. Even then, it's basically a waiting game (the very literal pun intended there).

 

I started by gathering them all together at the start of class today to have a chat about these games they like to play. They were hesitant at first, and some were even bold enough to feign looks of sheepishness; they figured this was some sort of friendly build up to a stern (but pointless) lecture about classroom behaviour and dedication.

 

After our little chat, I announced that I wanted 300-word written pieces from each of them describing in detail what their favourite online games were, how to play them, and what the best tips were for excelling at them. I wanted final drafts from each student by the end of class.

 

They were gobsmacked.

Then they got to it.

Eagerly.

 

Seventy-five minutes later I had final drafts from eight of the ten students. They were more than passable at Intermediate level in the VCAL Literacy program (their designated level), meeting the outcome of writing for practical purposes, with full evidence of planning, drafting and editing (as well as teaching/feedback from myself).

 

That's all well and good, but selected texts from this stash can now be uploaded and used as reading for practical purposes (another outcome) -- with a fair chance the students will be willing to read them. We can then have some discussions together and cover oracy for practical purposes, and most probably oracy for self expression and oracy for knowledge as well.

 

We might finish with a discussion and debate about whether students should be allowed access to online games at school. From that can stem oracy for public debate and writing for public debate, and reading for public debate as well.

 

In essence, with this one particular fire, I can probably cater to up to eight of the twelve official VCAL Literacy outcomes over 3-5 lessons with these chaps (more if they need it and the engagement is still running hot; if not, out the window it goes and mind that pre-set curriculum stuff on your way out, if you please!).

 

I've seen the same group struggle along like Frodo and Sam across the plains of Mordor for similar periods of time (3-5 lessons or even more) and not complete a task that met one of the twelve outcomes.

 

 

My point in writing this wasn't to slag off pre-set curriculums. Some pre-set tasks work quite well. Others don't, and need to be put to the sword. The pride that accompanies selecting and designing all the tasks in advance needs to take a back seat when it becomes obvious it is sneezing into a strong wind. The quite unfounded need for (and belief in) authority/control based on this sort of program design needs to be relegated to a Pink Floyd song.

 

The starting and finishing points are the learners. We can't keep excluding them from what is supposed to be their curriculum -- especially when we are working towards outcomes that are officially described as being necessarily flexible and designed to be adapted to meet the needs and interests of learners.

 

 

I deliberately added (Part 1) to the title of this post. In reality, it isn't my first time as a pre-set curriculum chuck-outer (or chucker outer, or chucker outerer, or whatever works best here), and it most certainly won't be the last time, either.

 

See you later down the line for (Part 2)!

 

 

 

=D

 

                                                     

 

If you teach writing...

 

 

Image: Gep Pascual

 

 

... but don't do much of any sort of writing on a reasonably regular basis yourself (and school reports and comments on students' essays can't really count here), I figure you have basically two options -- not at all mutually exclusive -- to redress this potentially distressing situation:

 

1. Get to it, start writing regularly and make sure you experience at least as many writing genres and outcomes (and word counts) as you expect your students to tackle;

 

2. Be willing to negotiate the writing curriculum with your learners, at every stage and every layer.

 

 

I'm not going to feel comfortable or committed to learning something like automotive skills from someone who has never actually fixed a car (or only fixed one decades ago as a contrived demonstration activity) and figures, on account of his/her shinier and more spectacularly emblazoned overalls, that I have no right to venture some opinions of my own about what may or may not need to happen under the bonnet.

 

Are you?

 

 

=D

 

             

(Ouch! Twisted my bloody ankle getting down off my soapbox!)

                       

                                

The Librarian

 

 

Image: chotda

 

There is certainly a lot of talk about the place concerning the Internet and access to content, and while that is all absolutely interesting and exciting, I got an avid reminder of the relative value of (physical) libraries and librarians today.

 

A wonderful librarian by the name of Jan helped me find more (and better quality) resources for a range of specialized subjects in 45 minutes this morning than I'd been able to come up with scouring the Internet on my own over a period of more than two weeks.

 

She also made me feel very welcome there, and that this was a nice place to come to for information and help.

 

Let's face it: even the supposedly all-powerful Internet doesn't often leave you with the same impression (or such an excellent use of limited time)!

 

If you haven't visited a library for a while, do so. If you haven't chatted with a librarian for some time, give it a whirl.

 

You might be surprised...

 

 

=D

 

                                       

A League of Extraordinary Colleagues

 

 

Image: wilhei55

 

 

Have you ever had one of those rare Fridays when you actually go home feeling more positive and 'charged up' than you did coming into work on Monday morning -- and not (just) because you have the weekend to look forward to?

 

I had one of those Fridays yesterday. It also came with a poignant reminder of what actually contributed to making an average teaching day go so smoothly and so well.

 

For me it began with the realisation in the morning session that some of my learners are actually starting to go online and submit writing tasks to me during their own time at home, without any prompting (or even necessity) whatsoever. That may not sound like anything grand in your neck of the teaching woods, but in mine it is like witnessing a genuine miracle.

 

Attached to that was the discovery that several learners are requesting, in other teachers' classes, when they have finished their designated work or can't participate in that subject for some reason (for example, physical injuries preventing gym work), to go on the computer and do some more English. For vocational students preparing for the 'hard' trades, this is another small miracle that has me hopping for joy.

 

But the biggest celebration of the day came when I took our most 'complex' (I'm reserving the description 'difficult' for other aspects of my work from now on...) group of learners for the first time, the group we would normally split into two groups to make them more manageable (but couldn't yesterday on account of some scheduling challenges), and got every one of them doing solid literacy work for 80 minutes straight, in something very close to a pleasant and positive spirit.

 

I was totally pumped after that, I can tell you. I'd seen that group lurking on the schedule for Friday afternoon and been quite frankly dreading it all week long. To have the class go so well and see them produce so much quality work... These are the moments teachers wait weeks, months or even years for.

 

BUT!

 

On my way home from work, as I started stretching and warming up the muscles in my shoulder to help me give myself a whopping big and very self-indulgent pat on the back, I had a bit of a deeper think about just what exactly it was that made this teaching day go so well.

 

First of all, I've been extremely lucky in a new teaching role to have a boss and a fellow literacy teacher who have been really receptive and encouraging with regards to my digital endeavours with our curriculum and classroom application approach. It's not often you can walk into a new job and have supervisors and subject colleagues who are so immediately ready to take on your (new, sometimes quite revolutionary) ideas and let you run with them.

 

Then there have been the teachers in other subjects who have been open to letting our students go online and do English work once they have finished (or somehow been precluded from) the set tasks in that subject. That has been a powerful example that I've in turn been encouraged to follow. For example, I've been letting certain students go on to do design and technology tasks during my class if they're reasonably up to speed with the literacy task workload, and/or have important work due in those other subjects. I think when an overall curriculum is facilitated in this way across teachers and subjects, the flexibility and cohesion start to kick a lot of positive goals.

 

With the 'complex' group of learners I referred to (and had such success with), during the week in the lead up to that class I had at least six different colleagues gently feed me information about the class and certain students. That allowed me to basically walk in with the teacher's equivalent of a geological map of the group. I knew who to separate, who would need help, and who would need help to avoid themselves (so to speak).

 

Prior to my class (after lunch), this group had Maths/Numeracy. They played up an absolute treat in that lesson, and the Numeracy teacher gave many of them a reminder about why they were there and how they were to conduct themselves by keeping them behind to complete all their unfinished work during the lunch break. In many ways, he took the brunt of a lot of negative energy, took the edge off it, and had a state of mind in place before these kids walked through my classroom door.

 

And then there was the colleague -- our PE/Health and Wellbeing teacher -- who offered to swap classrooms with me on the day, so that I would have a better room for effective classroom management. Being in a smaller room with computers around the walls made a huge difference to my ability to monitor and move around, help individual students without losing sight/track of the overall group.

 

But this colleague went further than that. He indicated he would be taking his group to the gym about halfway through the lesson. If I had any particularly rowdy learners who obviously had too much physical energy for their own good (and certainly more than usually works well with literacy activities on a Friday afternoon), I could always send them down to join his group in the gym. Certainly made for a positive alternative to confrontations and isolating students in the corridor.

 

In the end I never needed to resort to that option. But it was very encouraging and helpful to know it was there. Halfway through the lesson, the teacher actually appeared (discretely) in the doorway of my classroom, just to see how I was doing and whether I was going to need that option. No words were needed. Just an appraising look, my thumbs up, an encouraging nod, and then he was gone.

 

 

So yeah, I had a really great day.

Thanks, of course, to many of my own initiatives.

But mostly, I think, thanks to being part of what I like to think of as A League of Extraordinary Colleagues.

 

 

It's important to think about what goes well for you, but just as important is noticing and remembering how much of it came about thanks to outstanding colleagues. The simple little things add up.

 

At the end of the day: how can we in turn create days like the one I had yesterday, for other teachers?

 

 

=D

 

                                    

A challenge to teachers: Trying upside down and inside out

via jasonrenshaw.typepad.com

 

My great mate Cecilia Coelho (@CeciELT) from Brazil used this post as her #FollowFriday post suggestion (in response to the #FFSpinOff challenge suggested by Tara Benwell on Tyson Seburn's blog)...

Original Post:

A challenge to teachers: Trying upside down and inside out

 

It is actually one of my favourite posts, mainly on account of the great discussion it generated (and still generates), so thanks Ceci!

=D

                   

The Negotiator

 

 

Negotiating with learners should never reach this point, if at all possible...

Image: Andrew Becraft

 

 

 

It's a volatile situation.

 

Jim's fortified himself in the back corner of the classroom. He's taken hostages -- a good half dozen classmates -- and he's threatening them with distraction and possibly worse (like a virus, whereby they start to develop Jim's feelings about learning on an ongoing basis; the pedagogical equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome).

 

The teacher stands near the doorway to the classroom, looking relieved now that a few co-teachers and the head teacher herself has arrived.

 

Negotiations are well under way. Jim's being encouraged to surrender, through the megaphone of authority wielded by the head teacher. In her other hand she grips the shiny black barrel of suspension; she hasn't pointed it at Jim yet, but she will if she has to. Parents will be notified either way.

 

 

Rewind. Three weeks earlier...

 

Jim's looking down at the writing task. The word count stipulated has filled him with a sense of woe, and the 10 pointers outlining elements to appear in his report swim like black sharks in a milky bottomless sea.

 

Jim's despair is acute, almost like a knife. He wasn't ready for this surprise. He's been doing well all through the preceding class time, getting answers down to questions, receiving moderate praise from the teacher. He's not all that keen on reading and writing, but he appears to be holding his own.

 

Until now. Until this.

 

Screw it. Can't do it.

 

The teacher eventually appears over his shoulder, offers to help. But nothing the teacher says really seems to help at all. Jim tries to give it a bit of a go, trying his best to take on board the seemingly irrelevant advice, but it's just not happening.

 

"Can I write about something else?"

"No, unfortunately. But if you just... (assortment of Greek, Latin and Swahili drifts past Jim's ears)."

 

A little later: "Could I just, you know, change some parts of it a bit, to make it a bit simpler? I mean, I think I could maybe still write 400 words, but --"

"Look, I understand it's a bit hard, but no -- you really have to do it this way. That's the way everyone has to do it. So bear with me, Jim. You need to think about... (more Greek, Latin and Swahili)."

 

Eventually the teacher takes Jim's silence to be agreement or acceptance, and his baffled (frayed around the edges with frustration) look to be one of thoughtful deliberation. That's if he actually took a proper look at Jim's face. He wanders off towards another student's bowed head.

 

 

 

Tragically, the laws of this particular realm did in fact allow for (and even encourage) plenty of scope for task adaptation and personalisation. It isn't always the case, but in this instance there was actually more than one potential path through the forest.

 

 

The all-important negotiator just arrived three weeks too late, dressed in the wrong clothes, trying to measure temperature with a metre ruler.

 

 

 

=D

 

                                                                      

 

A price to swear by?

 

 

Image: sewitsforyou

 

 

Our state government here in Victoria has recently decided to go ahead with policy and laws that allow police to apply on-the-spot fines for foul language. The basic fine is about the same as what you'll get for speeding in a motor car.

 

This is an interesting issue in itself, but given that the lads I teach do have recurrent problems with swearing, I thought this would be excellent fodder for reading and discussion materials. As part of the general VCAL Literacy outcome requirements, learners are always asked to compare texts on topics, and I have sourced the following:

 

1. Big fines for those who cry foul (General expository news article)

2. I say fiddle sticks to your swearing fines Mr Baillieu (Opinion piece A)

3. Stop bans on cursing? Bugger that (Opinion piece B)

 

 

Swearing is one of those public issues that has resonance across language and culture, so I thought these articles might be of interest to teachers in other parts of the world as well. They basically provide a fairly neutral expository text followed by two different opinions/reactions to a rather strict public policy.

 

See what your students make of it all!

 

 

=D

 

                                      

How to make fantastic screencasts using Screenr

 

 

 

Screencasting is a process of recording what is happening on your computer screen, accompanied with ongoing audio commentary. It is a fantastic way to pre-record lectures that involve text or visuals, provide audio-visual feedback to learners based on their original work, amongst a wide variety of other applications.

 

The screencast above (essentially a screencast of a screencast!) demonstrates, through a simple step-by-step procedure, how to access and use Screenr, my all-time favourite quick screencasting tool. There are a couple of reasons why I would recommend Screenr over other screencasting tools, and I explain and demonstrate them in the video.

 

Click on the HD option and arrows at the bottom right of the video to get a high definition full screen version of the tutorial.

 

And feel free to add any comments, questions or suggestions!

 

 

=D

 

 

Are you a maths/numeracy teacher using edtech?

 

 

Image: Matt Cavanagh

 

 

If so, I would really appreciate some advice!

 

At my new workplace, I've managed to infect a colleague (responsible for teaching numeracy at years 10-12 level; I teach the same cohort literacy) with some initial curiosity and enthusiasm for exploring the potential of doing some of his maths instruction with the help of online/tech tools.

 

Given this is his first major move away from purely pen-and-paper based maths instruction (and given, being a literacy teacher, I have no particular knowledge of maths-oriented edtech tools), I thought my first stops should be the twitterverse and blogosphere to see what other maths teachers out there are using and recommending.

 

Do you have any tools or sites you would recommend to my colleague?

 

We'd dearly love to hear your advice!

 

 

Thanks in advance,

 

- Jason (and Brendan)

 

 

=D

 

                               

writing (r)evolutions

 

 

Image: Neil Girling

 

 

Is it truly so surprising and remarkable that the current generation of teenagers, finally given genuine purposes to write for genuine audiences of peers in something close to real time (but without our direct involvement or interference), are seeding what is possibly the greatest (r)evolution ever known in the written forms of our languages?

 

It oughtn't be (surprising), really.

 

The real question, perhaps, is how long we will continue to insist that they scratch away at five paragraph essays, the same way we had to, for no other audience besides a teacher, in styles the vast majority of us never saw come to practical fruition in our daily lives.

 

It has never been a more interesting and challenging time to be a teacher of literacy than now.

 

 

=D

 

                                           

A super simple demonstration of how to get started on Twitter (for educators)

 

 

 

I'm starting to meet a lot of educators who want to get started on Twitter, but aren't really sure how to do so. The screencast above is a super simple demonstration that begins at the very start and progresses step by step through the processes of signing up, setting up a profile and starting to find relevant people to connect with.

 

I recommend watching the full-screen version (just click on the four little arrows that appear at the bottom right of the video there). Oh, and also click on the HD option (also at bottom right) which will render a high definition version for you to view on the fullscreen presentation.

 

Having watched the screencast after making it, I would add that the advice I give for setting up a bio doesn't necessarily suit everyone. As in, I recommend being open and frank and informative about your line of work and even where you work, but many educators actually keep this information limited to profession and general location. That's up to you really, and how inclined you are to watch your p's and q's whilst tweeting!

 

But I do think a profile pic and informative bio are absolutely essential if you're an educator and really want to connect with other educators.

 

A little later, I hope to do a follow up screencast demonstrating how to actually use Twitter effectively and productively. In the meantime, if you've successfully set up a Twitter account and want something to go on with, there is a tutorial I produced here last year which also demonstrates some of the basics but featured the older version of the Twitter interface. That one also demonstrates things like responding to tweets, retweeting, etc.

 

Hope this helps any of those educator-tweet novices out there!

 

 

=D

 

                                    

 

Typolution

 

 

 

 

Thanks to an old PLN mate of mine, Mike Harrison, for passing this along to me (as a response to my recent post about punctuation issues!).

 

 

=D

 

                      

im afraid i cant agree with all of david crystals observations abt punctuation

 

 

I swear this is what many of my learners think when they are forced to read or (heaven forbid!) produce traditonal/formal text.  Image: Kevin Trotman

 

 

 

I recently retweeted a link to a quick video featuring David Crystal and his thoughts on how the English language is changing as a result of the Internet Age. I'm quite a fan of Crystal and enjoy hearing his observations; it's worth reposting the video in question here:

 

 

 

 

I'd be inclined to agree with most all of what Crystal claims here, except for the small point he makes about punctuation. He states that there have only been relatively minor changes to the ways people are using regular punctuation, and that punctuation is more noteworthy in terms of how it is being used as an expressive device in its own right (he uses the examples of 'smileys' and emphatic repetition of things like exclamation marks).

 

Based on the learners I teach (native speakers in the 16-18 age bracket) and what I see them producing in written texts, this is definitely not the case.

 

Their punctuation hasn't undergone a few minor changes; their punctuation has gone almost completely out the window.

 

The way I have written the title of this post is pretty darned close (I would imagine) to how most of my current learners would write it. What has been striking to me, however, is just how systematic and regular these punctuation omissions have become across a wide sample of my learners.

 

Here's a quick list of what I see on a constant basis:

 

i (I)

im (I'm)

ill, well, hell, shell (I'll, we'll, he'll, she'll)

dont, cant, wont, etc. (don't, can't, won't, etc.)

hes, shes (he's, she's)

george connolly (George Connolly)

tims (Tim's)

workers (workers')

are u ready (Are you ready?)

 

 

Evidently, the apostrophe is obsolete to my learners, as are capital letters for proper nouns (though, curiously, they do occasionally capitalise the starts of other words for what appears to be something along the lines of emphasis).

 

At sentence level, commas are very infrequently used and even full stops are sporadic at best (and almost never followed up with a capital letter to signify a new sentence). Question and exclamation marks are seldom employed; colons, semi-colons, dashes and brackets are quite positively extinct.

 

Where things get interesting (for me at least) is how my learners account for this.

 

They do, in fact, have some awareness of punctuation (at least in terms of capitalisation and apostrophes) but inform me that they rely on programs like Microsoft Word to either automatically correct their writing or at least show them where their mistakes are before they submit any writing.

 

My current literacy program involves text input boxes that have no auto-correct or error notification functions. In addition to all this punctuation-free text flowing through, it is alarmingly evident how much spelling has gone to literacy's equivalent of hell. (But then again, English has gotten away with a ludicrous spelling system for far too long now; it seems almost fair to see young native speakers sending it on to hell!)

 

Some of my learners even accuse me of getting what I deserve, because I don't feature auto-correct or error notifications in the online literacy program I use. In other words: "Let us use the regular typing programs we have at our disposal and you'll get less spelling and punctuation errors to deal with." It's a fascinating accusation to observe as a teacher.

 

Other conversations with them have yielded other interesting information.

 

For example, they are more accustomed to texting than typing on a keyboard; texting doesn't feature punctuation as a sentence device but as a 'smiley/emoticon' device. With most phones (smart ones or otherwise), using punctuation involves flipping back and forth between different keyboard screens, making quick messaging a bit of a chore. I can actually sympathise a bit on this front, recalling how frustrating it can be to try and type I'll or we'll or even Fred on my smartphone when I'm in a hurry. This also results, some of my learners inform me, in a situation whereby they sit down with a computer keyboard and don't even 'see' any of the peripheral punctuation keys around the main letter keys -- unless, of course, they're ready to use an emoticon-style device in their communication.

 

And relatively (or even wholly) punctuation-free text doesn't look or feel wrong to them, no matter what context they are using it in.

 

This goes far beyond my admittedly 'non academic' vocational students. I now see this sort of text being produced regularly in the comments sections of online newspapers. The more it is published online, I think the more accepted it is becoming.

 

My final observation about my students' writing and their thoughts about it was possibly the most striking.

 

"People know what you mean," one student told me. "They just know. Or should know. We don't need to use all those symbols and stuff, do we, if people already get what we are saying?"

 

This reminded me all of a sudden of my own days as a university student studying Old English, Old Norse and (yes, believe it or not), Runic Scandinavian. On the old parchments (Beowulf, for example) and on the rocks where runic messages were inscribed, there was very little indeed in the way of punctuation. In fact, with Scandinavian runes, they even used the same letter for multiple sounds (b/p, g/k, etc.). There was, at least to some degree, an assumption that the reader would know where to pause and how to interpret the written text, making punctuation relatively unnecessary. Perhaps there was even the assumption that there was more onus on the reader to correctly read/interpret the text than there was for the writer to assiduously transcribe it in a way that left as little to doubt as possible.

 

In the hands of the Internet generation, is English heading towards (or back to) a similar orientation? With the expectation that machines and programs will do the translating back over to a more traditional form of literacy for those who require it?

 

 

=D

 

                           

 

Writing: Engaging one block at a time

 

 

English composition? It's all Greek to many of the learners out there...

Image: J.Smith831
 

 

 

I think one of the most challenging things about teaching writing is that, as someone who enjoys and has few inhibitions about doing a lot of writing, the writing teacher can be universes in distance from learners who have little time, patience or inclination for it. For example, being asked to write a 5-6 paragraph essay of some sort appeals to me as an opportunity. For most of the learners I have encountered over the years, it has been received like some kind of long term penal sentence (pun somewhat intended).

 

One of the ongoing challenges then, to me, is to think outside the box and come up with different ways to present and organise writing tasks. And by 'outside the box', I mean the rather crusty academic cardboard one that stipulates that one shall plan, draft and re-write all in one sequence until a particular topic is addressed in full and a certain kind of text has been ticked off in the preset syllabus.

 

I've been experimenting with this recently with VCAL learners who are preparing to enter the traditional 'hard' trades (building, plumbing, electical, automotive, etc.), and while far from being perfect in approach, I do seem to have struck upon something that is starting to yield positive results.

 

Some of the basic principles here were:

- No individual writing task should take more than 10-15 minutes for the average learner to complete

- The tasks should, whenever possible, relate to specific trades or trade-related activity

- Each task should represent something new (in relation to the previous couple of units)

- Certain tasks should represent a format or approach that is repeated regularly

- There should be regular use of pictorial/image-based and video input

- Whenever possible, tasks should be digital in delivery

- There should be the possibility (later) to slot the individual tasks together to create drafts for longer texts (which in turn tick off our formal VCAL Literacy outcomes)

 

 

What eventuated was a curriculum that looks somewhat like this:

 

 

 

To keep this simple, and for the purpose of this particular post, I'd like to focus on the aspects of this approach that build on writing short chunks which can be strung together later to create longer texts (as drafts).

 

Units 1, 5, 11 and 15 represent paragraph-based tasks which slot together to create a personal text (introducing oneself, talking about background, present and future). Taking this one step at a time, but not in a direct sequence of tasks, seems to help remove the potentially laborious feel from it as an overall 'longer text' task.

 

Units 7, 8, 12, 13, 17 and 18 feature a documentary broken into six parts. In each of these units, the students quickly summarise what they have seen and their own personal reaction to it (hence two quick paragraphs). Later, this content can be retrieved and slotted together into a six paragraph expository or report-based text, or a six paragraph personal response to the documentary (or a combination of both).

 

The big plus here is that the breakdown of tasks prevents boredom and removes (at least to some degree) the inhibition associated with being asked to write extensive texts right from the get-go. It also means learners often have more initial writing to choose from than they need, which creates options.

 

The intervening units focus on other things, mostly short (real world) text tasks in their own right, sentence-level writing skills, vocabulary building, basic grammar, or discovery/noticing tasks based on re-writing short texts in various ways.

 

Enagement has been high, and there has been a good task completion rate. And in the end, it is a beautiful thing to be able to show a reluctant writer that they have already essentially written a 5-6 paragraph draft, without really realising it as they went along through the syllabus.

 

So far, so good.

 

Has anyone else out there experimented with doing a writing curriculum in this sort of way? Or another way entirely?

 

Let's see what else we can find outside the box, shall we?

 

 

=D

 

                                              

How to achieve the educator's big 'O'

 

 

Image: Jeremy Atkinson

 

 

I'm talking about OPTIMISM, of course.

 

I found an article today that talked about essential ways to view optimism and stay optimistic for entrepreneurs involved in small business. Given that most of the great educators I have known have generally had some sort of entrepreneurial spirit, I found the following list of seven tips for optimism surprisingly relevant to teaching as well:

 

1. Imagine the future

2. Expect good results

3. Find the upside

4. Self-reflection

5. Revel in others' success

6. Beware optimistic illusions

7. The right frame of reference

 

 

You can read about these seven tips in more detail in the original article here.

 

What do you think?

Do these sum up many of the ways we can maintain optimism as educators?

What would you add to the list? 

 

 

=D

 

                                            

 

Facebook and YouTube in the classroom: Bane or Boon?

 

 

Image: Rego Korosi

 

 

I've just completed my second full week of teaching literacy to what could only be described as 'challenging' learners: 16-17 year-old (mostly male) students enrolled in an 'applied' variation of the regular high school certificate which incorporates preparation for trades.

 

I wanted a challenge in taking on a new role like this, and I certainly got one: these lads can be really tough going. And literacy, in comparison to the more hands-on subjects they take, is by far and away their least favourite subject.

 

The classroom we teach literacy in has computers on every desk with full access to the Internet. That includes things like YouTube and Facebook. I've heard about and seen this issue of access to these sites discussed robustly in several places, and I might as well confess here and now: I have no major problems with my learners having reasonably unlimited access to these sites whilst taking my literacy classes.

 

Do these sites distract them from their regular work? Absolutely.

 

Would removal of access to these sites result in less distraction from their regular work? I seriously doubt it.

 

In essence, the kids I teach don't appear to be any more or less distracted from their work than my mates and I were in high school way back in the dim dark days before computers and World Wide Web in classrooms. In that respect, things like Facebook and YouTube appear to be easy scapegoats for people who want something to blame for the lack of attention and engagement on the part of students.

 

While I will freely admit that I really do wish there was some way to have my learners focus more on their set coursework, I think FB and YT represent far more benefits for the literacy classroom than disadvantages.

 

First, for YouTube, I love the fact that my students can listen to music while they do their work. Nine times out of ten, this is what they are using YouTube for in my classroom (with one headphone in). I often listen to music while I'm writing -- I'm doing so right now, in fact. If this makes them relaxed and comfortable, I'm all for it. I quite often like their selections, too!

 

Sure, occasionally there is the stupid clip being shown around and chortled at, but it doesn't usually get out of hand. No more than any other disruptive behaviour (like gossip or anecdotes) I can remember from my own school days. Most of the kids I teach, for all their roughness, seem to know there are boundaries when it comes to this kind of media in the classroom. Most don't appear interested in testing or stretching them too much.

 

And Facebook...

 

This one fascinates me. Almost all of my learners have it open in the toolbar and check on it regularly between tasks. They don't 'stay on' there for very long at a time, unless there is some sort of major commotion in the FB world involving their social circle(s).

 

But beyond FB not being a constant or unacceptably prolonged source of distraction, one of the reasons I don't mind it being there is because... well it IS literacy!

 

Oh, I fully realise it isn't the sort of literacy the powers that be set out in our official literacy outcomes. But I've come to the curious realisation that my learners are actually quite literate and brilliantly effective communicators online - just not in the ways that a rapidly aging previous generation expects or mandates from a postion of qualification/gatekeeping power.

 

In many ways, the 'literacy' my teenagers exhibit in FB represents an L1 (first or native language) while the literacy I'm expected to teach them is an L2 (second language). Just as when I used to teach English as a second language (and I realised how advantageous it was to learn more about my students' native languages), in this role I'm seeing how important it is to know more about the learners' native literacy before I attempt to teach them the 'other' one (the one that determines whether they graduate or not).

 

I might even go so far as to suggest that a literacy teacher who mercilessly bans something like Facebook in their class is acting rather like the second language teacher who zealously ignores and never allows the learners' first language into the classroom.

 

 

But getting back to the central issue of 'distraction', essentially I think it really comes down to how engaging your classroom activities are -- irrespective of subject. I recently (and informally) calculated that my classes went from 40-90% of class time 'off-task' to more like 10-30% off-task.

 

What caused that change?

 

It had nothing to do with access to YouTube and Facebook (or lack thereof). That stayed constant.

 

That change and massive improvement in time on-task came about when I brought in activities more relevant to their specific trades and interests, broke writing tasks down into manageable 10-15 minute activities (instead of tasks lasting for hours or even days), integrated the tasks with things like video, and made almost everything screen- and online-based (removing the requirement for extensive writing on paper).

 

And all the while, those regular forays back onto Facebook help me to continue to get to know my students as young people. People who 'speak' a different kind of native literacy to my own.

 

A literacy I need to learn (about) if I'm to ever have a chance of teaching them mine. 

 

 

=D

 

                                                        

 

500 sable feathers

 

 

Image: Marj Kibby

 

 

In one of those blatantly self-indulgent milestone reflections, I recently realised (thanks to Typepad's stats feature) that my preceding "straight back out of premature blogging retirement" post is the 500th to appear on this blog.

 

Wow. Five hundred.

 

Still trying to figure out whether I feel older or wiser (isn't the idea to embrace both?)!

 

Anyway, onward and upward (and most often of all: sideward), hopefully with many more posts to come...

 

 

 

Image: akahodag

 

                  

=D

 

                      

Embracing Wordnik (featuring BoobsMcGeee...)

 

For some online vocabulary development activities I recently developed for my classes, I figured it might be a good idea to link words to some kind of online dictionary resource so that my learners could get a better sense of them. I ended up going with Wordnik and, watching learners in class today, realised it was an excellent choice.

 

Wordnik listings have all the features of most other online dictionary providers (things like definitions, linked thesaurus, examples, pronunciation, etc.), but a couple of their own which I think are particularly useful.

 

 

First up, I love the fact that the selected word appears at the top of the page in huge letters. This is so great for creating a real impact and a visual BANG which I honestly think helps some of my learners remember the spelling more easily.

 

I also think the live Twitter feed showing your selected word in use in real-world tweets is particularly brilliant. These examples are much more 'real' and raw (sometimes embarrassingly so - see below!) and make for a very useful comparative tool alongside the more traditional (formal) examples provided.

 

My 16-17 year old vocational trades learners liked referring to this part of the page, and when they can see examples like this one:

 

 

 

Well, I can assure you that it gets their attention!

 

But sniggering and smirking aside, I love the fact that this is real world language in use, pretty much live. And truth to tell, if this is the sort of thing that makes 'disengaged' teenage learners like looking up new words in a dictionary, then that's fine by me.

 

Another advantage with the stream being live is that, as the learners tend to come to different word landings at different times, the Twitter examples are different pretty much every single time.

 

 

The other thing I like about Wordnik is the Flickr image stream associated with particular words. I'm not sure how accurate or reliable it is, but for learners like mine (who are often much more visually inclined), it creates interesting 'anchors' for remembering words and discussing their broader (possible) meanings and applications.

 

 

If you're looking for an online vocabulary reference/resource tool for your learners, I'd really recommend taking a squiz at Wordnik - I'm surprised and happy with how it has engaged and helped my students with their vocabulary development.

 

 

=D