Connecting Learners Online: New Challenges and Opportunities for Teachers and Learners

Robert O'DowdUniversidad de León, Spain robert.odowd@unileon.es@robodowd

Teachers are obviously interested in ICT– you’re here today! But are you actually using ICT in your classes?

• “While 70% of teachers in the EU recognize the importance of training in digital-supported ways of teaching and learning, only 25% of students are taught by digitally confident and supportive teachers. Most teachers use ICT mainly to prepare their teaching, rather than to work with students during lessons (European Commission: Opening Up Education, 2013).”

• “Teachers are always trying to keep up. They generally have a great deal of authority in their classrooms, but may feel vulnerable in situations with technologies, where they may feel more ignorant than their students (Hanson-Smith, 2006:308).”

Presentation Outline

• Outline what me mean by ‘telecollaboration’ or ‘Virtual Exchange’ – one of the key activities of the iCt – Improving CLIL through technology project

• Explore some examples from different learning contexts and different educational levels

• Examine what competences teachers need to set up and run such projects

3

Successful language learning (Jane Willis, 1998)

Conditions for successful

language learning

Motivation to listen, read, speak &

write the language

Sufficient exposure to real but

comprehensible spoken

& written language

Sufficient opportunitiesto use the foreign

Language to do things

Focus on form / formal study

How does CLIL meet these requirements?

• Motivation:– Can learning content in the FL give students a reason for using the foreign

language?• Sufficient input/exposure to the foreign language:

– Are learners exposed to much more content in the FL than normal EFL learners?

• Focus on form/ formal study of language:– Time to study vocabulary and grammatical forms and use?

• Sufficient opportunities to use the foreign language: – Do learners get many more opportunities to actually communicate in the FL

and to develop speaking and writing skills?

“…in contexts where an L2 is learnt through content, students are not offered enough chances to speak or initiate a conversation, hindering their speaking and writing outcomes” (Sonia Casal: “Cooperative Learning in CLIL contexts”)

Does this sound surprising?

How can we adapt CLIL methodology to give more opportunities to use the foreign language?

This is where Virtual Exchange (and iCt for CLIL) comes in…

Virtual Exchange involves online intercultural interaction and collaboration projects between classes in geographically distant locations under the guidance of educators.

What’s in a name?•Telecollaboration•COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) - •OIE (Online Intercultural Exchange) –•eTandem, eTwinning, ePals

Different set-ups which Virtual Exchange can take

1. A class of learners in Spain carry out collaborative tasks via webcam with a class of learners in Holland – using English as a lingua franca

(e.g. iCt - improving CLIL through technology)

1. A class of learners in Spain carry out collaborative tasks via webcam with a class of learners in Holland – using English as a lingua franca

(e.g. iCt - improving CLIL through technology)

3. Before leaving on Erasmus to the UK, university students from Spain are ‘matched’ and interact online with British students

planning to travel to Spain.

3. Before leaving on Erasmus to the UK, university students from Spain are ‘matched’ and interact online with British students

planning to travel to Spain.

2. A class of pupils in Spain collaborate online with a class in Ireland via whatsapp and youtube videos. This is combined with week-long

study visits by both groups to partner schools.

2. A class of pupils in Spain collaborate online with a class in Ireland via whatsapp and youtube videos. This is combined with week-long

study visits by both groups to partner schools.

Why integrate Virtual Exchange into your classrooms?

• Watch some telecollaborative teachers on UNICollaboration.eu talking about the benefits of online exchange:

• http://www.uni-collaboration.eu/?q=node/818

• What benefits do they mention?

Plenty of Support for Virtual Exchange in Primary and Secondary Education

Example 1: Primary Exchange through Epals – Noelia looks for partners on epals

www.epals.com

Noelia from León receives contact from the USA

• Hello Ms. Iglesias,

We are a class of 23 students ages 5-6 years old in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, United States. My students will finish their first year of school in just a few weeks and they are eager to share some of their favorite memories and experiences from this year.

• In addition to sharing their favorite kindergarten memories, we will be taking a field trip to the zoo next week. I'm sure my students will want to write about it and send pictures.

• Even though we will only be able to communicate a few times before the end of our school year, I think it would be a valuable experience for both sets of students.

Please let me know if you are interested and have a wonderful day.

Sincerely,

Emily Tomkins

• HI EMILY! My pupils are very happy. I told them about the new friends in Dakota and they feel very excited. We were looking in the map where South Dakota is. They want to know something about all of you and your school. We were negotiating the questions in order they can improve their English. Besides this, they want to "teach" you some Spanish words.

I wrote all the questions on the whiteboard and now you will see all of them below: What are your names? What is the name of your school? What colour is your classroom? What´s the weather like in Dakota? How old is your school? Good bye, kisses Oscar, Sofia C, Sofia V, Alvaro, Loreto, Fernando, CArmen y Lucía. Teacher: Noelia SPANISH WORDS THEY WANT TO TEACH YOU: HOLA (Hello) ADIÓS (Good bye) BESOS (Kisses)

• Hello Noelia!

My students were so excited to read your letter last Friday! We loved all of the good questions your students thought of. My students are going to have to do some research to find out how old our school is. It was interesting for them to try to develop a plan for how to find that information. Some of them are going to ask their parents to help them find the answer on the computer and others have decided to interview different staff members at our school.

They loved learning new words. That was a great idea! My kiddos thought it was very interesting that your students were learning English in school. They are excited to learn a new language too.

We put a sticker on top of Leon on our world map in the class room as well as a sticker on top of Sioux Falls. They were amazed to see how far away you live. …

• Have a wonderful weekend and adios! Emily

• Reflections by Noelia in Spain:•• This has been a wonderful experience for me as a teacher, and for my

students.

• Anyway, we could exchange some information and my children could realize the main purpose of learning English: communicate with people from other cultures. Learning this language let the children know more about other children, just like them, who live in other countries and who love to have new friends and have fun.

• I was surprised how my students were thinking about the questions to ask them in order to get some information from them, from their school and from their classroom. The brain storming first and the negotiation next, let me feel so proud about them because they were doing a very good cognitive process…...speaking English for a real purpose!!!

• My students were very involved in this experience. Everyday they asked me: “Teacher, ¿Nos han escrito los amigos de Dakota?”. I girl told me she had told her mum about the new experience and she did not believe her.

• I could never imagine it was going to be so excited, easy, quick, attractive and useful . My students and me could be in touch with another culture, another country, another school, another classroom with twenty three children and a very kind teacher with out living our school!!

Some models suited for secondary education –1) The Cultura Model

http://cultura.mit.edu/

Questionnaires for both groups in mother tongue

Answers to the Questionnaires

Written Discussion Forums

http://www.cisi.unito.it/tandem/etandem/

• Two native speakers of different languages communicate together with the aim of learning the other’s language (e.g. Spanish-English)

• Based on the principles of autonomy and reciprocity – Responsibility rests mainly with learner

• Partners provide feedback on content and foreign language performance

• Teacher’s role is limited – learners keep a diary and/or portfolio of their work

• [American-Spanish eTandem]• Hey Pablo!

It was great to receive your letter. I was so happy to see that you responded to my questions. Thank you. Your responses were very informative and definitely showed me that family life in Spain was not all I'd expected it to be (I was surprised, for example, that your family is not religious. I assumed that most families in Spain are, and I'm sure you have many assumptions about life in America as well). Your English is very good. There are only a few suggestions that I have to correct it. Some of your sentences are too long, and would make more sense if you separated them into two or three sentences instead. For example, "My parents are not divorced in Spain there are very few cases of divorced" could be rewritten as "My parents are not divorced. In Spain there are very few cases of divorce." Your letter was great and made sense despite these things. Good work. Las fiestas en the ciudad de Nueva York son muy locas y emocionantes. Voy a las discotecas con mis amigas los jueves, los viernes, o los sabados. Vamos a los bars tambien. Nosotros volvemos a nos salons de dormitorio a las cuatro de la manana. Queremos bailar a las discotecas. Necesita tener veintiuno anos por beber el alcohol pero la mayoria de estudiantes en las universidades tenen los "fake IDs" y ellos beben el alcohol. … No sabo mucho de Espana. Sabo que hay un museo de Guggenheim en Bilbao y sabo que hay muchos castillos bonitos. Que sabes de los Estados Unidos? Como es la fiesta en Espana? Elena

The e-Twinning schools modelhttp://www.etwinning.net/ • “Direct interaction with pupils

in partner schools is still not frequent. Synchronous work by pupils in different countries appears to be unusual, constrained often by timetabling, time differences and lack of appropriately robust ICT infrastructure, and in most of the case study schools, email was the only form of online communication between pupils.” [eTwinning Impact study 2013]

Study of Telecollaboration in European UniversitiesINTENT : Integrating Telecollaborative Networks Into Higher Education

Three surveys: Experienced teacher telecollaborators (102 responses) Inexperienced teacher telecollaborators (108 responses) Experienced student telecollaborators (131 responses)

Qualitative Case studies: 7 representative examples of telecollaboration around

Europe Aims:

Identify telecollaborative practices undertaken by European university educators

Explore the barriers to telecollaboration and the strategies used to overcome these barriers

“Telecollaboration Is worthwhile”: Experienced university practitioners give their feedback on telecollaboration

What students learn from Telecollaboration

Students’ comments on what they learned…

• I've been practising a lot of English. I know how an email conversation is like in English. I realized I should be less influenced by cultural stereotypes.

• Cross-cultural dialogue skills -negotiation and facilitation skills• Patience and cooperation.

• My English skills, both speaking and comprehension and some language teaching techniques. • I have developed the ability to work in a group.

• I believe I‘ve developed my ability to write in a foreign language and my knowledge regarding the use of ICT in foreign language teaching. I’ve been able to expand my vocabulary.

• Coordination and group work mainly (I was group leader)

• J`ai developpe la capacite de travailler en groupe.

• Je crois avoir developpé mon expression écrite en LE et mes connaissances par rapport à l'emploi des TIC dans l'enseignement en LE. J'ai pu enrichir mon vocabulaire.

•

So why isn’t everyone doing it?

In your opinion, what are the reasons why telecollaborative exchange is not more popular in university education?

__________________________________ (Mentioned by 49/ 98 practitioners)

__________________________________ (Mentioned by 28 / 98 practitioners)

__________________________________ (Mentioned by 20/ 98 practitioners)

__________________________________ (Mentioned by 19 / 98 practitioners)

__________________________________ (Mentioned by 9/ 98 practitioners)

So why isn’t everyone doing it? In your opinion, what are the reasons why telecollaborative exchange is not

more popular in university education?

Time necessary to set up and run exchanges (Mentioned 49/ 98 practitioners)

Difficulties in integration & assessment due to institutional requirements (Mentioned by 28 / 98 practitioners)

Lack of pedagogical knowledge about how to run and integrate exchanges (Mentioned by 20/ 98 practitioners)

Teachers lack e-literacies/ required technological knowledge (Mentioned by 19 / 98 practitioners)

Difficulty in finding appropriate partners (Mentioned by 9/ 98 practitioners)

Educators’ comments:• “From my perspective, having done 5 different telecollaboration projects, I

feel now that they are not good “on-the-side" projects because there is no time to really bring students' attention to the communication taking place and the language being shared. All of my projects felt rushed. It was frustrating, though I will say there were also good things that came of all of them.”

• „...weil es sehr schwer ist, Partner zu finden.“

• „...weil solche Projekte extrem aufwendig sind (Zeitaufwand, technologischer Aufwand, Anwesenheit, technische Infrastruktur vor Ort bzw. Mangel daran).“

Challenges for teachers: Connecting classes in Spain, UK, Germany and Israel

Koblenz

León

Coventry

Tel Aviv

Number of students participating:

Spain: 90-100Germany: 160Israel: 60UK: 100

Timeline: Late October – Mid-December 2012

Tools used: Moodle platform Blogger

Tasks:…

A Practical Example: Connecting classes in Spain, UK, Germany and IsraelA Practical Example: Connecting classes in Spain, UK, Germany and Israel

Task 1: Create a blog to present aspects of your local culture and provide feedback

Task 2: Carrying out group interviews based on cross-cultural themes of interest

Task 3: Use online content to create academic essays and presentations

The Challenges of Virtual Exchange for Teachers- Critical Incident 1

• E-mail from a coordinating teacher during the blog task…– Hi Everyone

Task one is going well with my students who are really getting into it. However just to let you know, for the second week running we have experienced problems with the Moodle site which just crashes at the beginning of our session (at about 12.00 German time). This is a real problem as we can't continue and the students get frustrated....

39

The Challenges of Virtual Exchange for Teachers- Critical Incident 2

• E-mail from the Israeli teacher when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict broke out…– Interestingly, yesterday I had to deal with a few upset students in a blog

group who were responding to a comment [from Germany] regarding the war situation, which they felt was insensitive. .

• The German comment:– …. I can understand that the rockets are very scary and i'm very glad that we in

Germany don´t have war like you. And i think Israel isn't alone in charge for this conflict. But can you understand the people in Gaza? Is it ok to keep these people there like in prison ? And why it isn't possible or why it´s so complicated to find a solution for all the people in your region? And why the people especially the young don't do something for the international understanding between these cultures? So it´s time so sit together, talk and finish this war. And both parties must grant facilities. Greetings from Koblenz…

40

Critical Incident 3 (intercultural faux pas)

41

Critical Incident 4 (intercultural faux pas)

42

Critical Incident 5

• E-mail from a coordinating teacher explaining lack of participation from her students:– ...some of my colleagues have not been very supportive of

this initiative... I was speaking to XXXX about this earlier today and she told me it had happened to her as well on some telecollaboration projects.

43

What differentiates Telecollaborative Competence from ‘Traditional’ Online Competence for FL Teachers?

• Telecollaboration is inherently ‘intercultural’ – both in practice and in its underlying pedagogical principles

• The telecollaborative teacher is not alone – usually two or more teachers working together from different cultural and institutional contexts - requires of the teacher keenly refined intercultural skills and attitudes of intercultural competence

• Telecollaboration tends to be a long-term, complex activity which permeates the whole FL course – themes, tasks, classroom interaction etc.

• In telecollaborative set-ups, teachers need to be able to react quickly to emerging problems, issues and new learning opportunities.

The Telecollaborative Teacher…• Can negotiate effectively with the partner-teacher the structure and

organisational technicalities of the exchange which take into account both institutional contexts (calendars etc.) as well as the needs and interests of both sets of participants

• Has a willingness to look for compromise with the partner-teacher in relation to task design, exchange structure and other issues

• Can integrate seamlessly and effectively the content and themes of the telecollaborative exchange into his/her contact classes before, during and after the exchange itself.

• has knowledge of the common causes of organisational and intercultural problems in online exchanges and can apply a series of techniques and strategies to deal with these problems

46

An Add-on or Integrated Approach?• There is a significant difference in educational outcome depending

on whether a teacher chooses to incorporate online classroom connections as (1) an ADD-ON process, like one would include a guest speaker, or (2) an INTEGRATED process, in the way one would include a new textbook. The email classroom connection seems sufficiently complex and time consuming that if there are goals beyond merely having each student send a letter to a person at a distant school, the ADD-ON approach can lead to frustration and less-than-expected academic results... On the other hand, when the email classroom connection processes are truly integrated into the ongoing structure of homework and student classroom interaction, then the results can be educationally transforming.

(Bruce Roberts in Warschauer, 1995, p. 95)

• So put your foot in the water!• Look for partners• Learn from others • …and share your experiences…

Some questions for discussion:How would your students react to participating in an online exchange?How would your institution react? Would there be support for such an

initiative?What questions come to your mind about how to plan and set up an online

exchange?

Thank you…• Contact:

– robert.odowd@unileon.es– Publications: http://unileon.academia.edu/RobertODowd– See this presentation again: http://www.slideshare.net/dfmro

• Read our Report on Telecollaboration in Europe: – http://www.scoop.it/t/intent-project-news – INTENT Project news: http://www.scoop.it/t/intent-project-

news

• The INTENT project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This project reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

• Other critical incidents – and learning opportunities

• A German student writes this opening message to her new partner in Ireland:• Hello, how are you? I study English and history at the University of Essen and I want to

become a teacher. This term we do some cultural studies concerning Ireland and I very interested in it because I actuallly do not know much about it.

• Now I would like to ask you some questions.Do you live in Northern or in Southern Ireland?How many people live in your town? Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?

•I have heard that regular churchgoing declines more and more in your country-is it true?What are you doing in your free time? Do you often go to pubs? What do you think about Germans? Irish people have the reputation of being very indirect and polite in their speaking style. I have read that there was an enormous economic change in Ireland.

•How have you or your parents experienced the social and economic change in the past 20 years? That's all for now. I am looking forward to hearing from you!