Podcasting

When I go back in time and remember my language learning, I realize it was quite a boring experience. It entailed doing the same thing all the time - reading, retelling, memorizing words and grammar rules, practicing by means of non-meaningful exercises. We did not do any listening activities, little speaking was involved in classroom activities. Now, with this in mind, I look at the present opportunities that the learners have and I am happy that I will at least be able to use the actual technological tools as an EFL teacher.

Today I will write about podcasting and its effectiveness.As Christopher Shamburg states in his interview, podcasting helps to repackage boring classes. It really does... Podcasts are so so great! Why? Well, first because podcasting provides students access to authentic listening materials. It is like a radio broadcast. The difference is that you can pause and replay the recording any time and you can find a recording on any topic you want thanks to RSS feeds. Besides, now it has become very easy to create your own podcast by recording yourself. Sometimes you need to have some specific content for your students and creating your own podcast can save you in that situation. We should not forget as well that students can also create their own podcasts. Jeff Mehring used this tool very effectively in his integrative course (http://moodle.aua.am/file.php/28/Course_Materials/Podcasting/ESLEFLpodcastingActivities_Mehring.pdf). One of the activities created by him asked students to create a recipe via podcasts and then other students would critique the recipe in the same manner. Well, this is such a good idea! It is so authentic, so meaningful, so much more motivating for students. It develops students' listening and speaking skills in a very natural way.

 As an EFL teacher, I am certainly going to use podcasts in different ways and for different topics. For instance, students could listen to one or more podcasts and reflect on what they heard by recording themselves. I would assign students roles and ask them to interview each other via podcast. There are so many activities that we can do using this tool. There are so many topics that we can address, like legal and ethical questions of intellectual property as Shamburg did, or the life of koalas in Australian forests, and so on and so forth. Actually, podcasts could help learners to be multidisciplinary.

Another trend that makes me very happy is that, with these digital media tools, we can finally pay attention to developing all the four skills equally without any discrimination. One important thing to keep in mind is that the teacher should not forget about pedagogical objectives when using podcasts. He/she should clearly imagine what it is going to teach his/her students and how. 

I consider myself a teacher who is always open for new ideas from which, as I believe, my students will benefit.

Using Blogging and Microblogging in EFL Classrooms

It goes without saying that using technologies in EFL/ESL classrooms is indispensable today if we want to keep up with current trends in teaching and students' interests.

Today I would like to write about blogging and microblogging, and what implications they might have for teaching English as a second or foreign language.

Blogs are really a fantastic way of sharing resources and ideas, learning through interaction with others. I fell more in love with the practice of blogging after reading the chapter on Weblogs from the book "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms" by Will Richardson. I like how Richardson makes a distinction between blogging and 'journaling'. Journaling is just the accounting of the events of the day or one's feelings. Blogging engages thinking. Blogs give us the opportunity to follow various weblogs and websites that contain information we are interested in by the help of the so-called RSS feeds. It is just so much easier to collect all the information you need on your aggregator rather than visiting websites or blogs separately in a desperate search for what you need. Real blogging entails a comprehensive process of reading different sources, synthesizing the information and writing a reflection on what has been read. So, if we look at this process from the perspective of an EFL teacher, it is difficult to think of a better and more authentic way of teaching students to scan, analyze, synthesize information. Is there a better way of developing students' critical and analytic thinking skills?

As mentioned by Richardson, there are a number of ways in which blogs can be used in the classroom. They can serve as filing cabinets, e-portfolios and simply as a collaborative space for the instructor and for the students. Blogs are also useful in terms of ensuring transparency and accountability. The school administration, the students' parents will be able to keep record of the learning process. Blogging is much more interactive than writing on paper. It is in fact a conversation, rather than a monologue. When writing a blog post the learners know that they have a much larger audience. I think this might motivate them to approach the writing process with more care and more responsibility.

EFL teachers should clearly realize that students do not have to learn only in the classroom. The technology allows them to be self-learners, and blogs could allow teachers to guide the learning process. For instance, we as teachers can connect students to resources that we believe can teach them. We can suggest RSS feeds to which students can connect and withdraw necessary information. One of the most important ways in which blogs differ from writing on paper is that you have the option of adding links, pictures, videos. Students can read, listen, reflect in written form or orally (for instance, recording themselves speaking).
It is also important to determine the age and level of students with whom I would use blogs. I wouldn't introduce blogs to young learners as it is unreasonable to demand deep reflections from young learners who haven't developed critical and analytic thinking skills yet. Besides, they might not have necessary computer literacy yet to be able to handle it. It could be a stressful experience for young learners who are accustomed to routine activities. As for the level, i believe it is possible to introduce blogging at all levels of language proficiency as far as the learners are old enough to be able to reflect on what they hear or read. However, the optimal level for introducing blogging would be at least the pre-intermediate level. At this level of language proficiency students already have enough linguistic knowledge to be able to express themselves more or less freely. Of course, only short simple reflections would work in this case. What refers to evaluation, I consider that the teacher should make comments on content only. In this case there might be an issue connected with disregarding accuracy. To solve this problem, the teacher can comment on the most salient grammar errors by sending a private message to the student or during the individual conference with the student. otherwise, the teacher can point out the most common errors in the classroom without mentioning any names.

Microblogging tools, like Facebook and Twitter, can also be effective. However, I think they are more efficient for developing the learners' sociocultural competence, as the research also shows. I don't think that I would use Twitter or Facebook in my teaching as I don't see a clear link between using these tools and developing the students' linguistic competence.

So, I am definitely ready to introduce blogging to my own EFL class. In fact, me and my partner for the internship class are going to introduce blogging in our pre-intermediate EFL classroom right during the next class. Later, we are going to interview students to see their attitudes towards blogging. Those students who are not enthusiastic about keeping blgos will be allowed to write on paper. Anyway, they will be reminded about the advantages of blogging that writing on paper lacks. Let us see what happens.

Digital Generation

I am very excited to be writing my first blog which actually marks my entry into the wonderful world of blogging. 

The recent rapid technological advancement has made many people stay out of 'the game' simply because they do not manage to catch up with it. The globalization and the technological 'revolutions' seem to be well presented in Thomas Friedman's book "The World is Flat". Unfortunately, I only managed to watch the video in which he presents his newly published book (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53vLQnuV9FY). Friedman argues that the world is becoming 'flatter' with globalization. Friedman roughly distinguishes between three eras of globalization. He conditionally calls the first era 'Globalization 1.0' that starts with the discovery of the New World by Columbus and ends at the beginning of the 19th century. He refers to this period as 'the globalization of countries'. The second era, referred to as Globalization 2.0, lasts until the year 2000. According to Friedman, this era marks the globalization of companies that are smaller unites than countries. Finally, he mentions the third actual era of globalization- Globalization 3.0. In this era flattening occurs on the level of individuals and groups. This is a distinction I had never thought of before. Though it is still difficult for me to find connections between the discovery of America and, say, the invention of the computer (maybe I need to read the book), I anyway agree that reaching the present level of technological advancement was a matter of a long period of time. 

Friedman mentions several 'flatteners' like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the invention of the internet browser, the fiber optic cable, online encyclopedias where you can be an editor, etc. All these tools have facilitated data transmission, sharing of information transferring everything on the horizontal plane. We have many open sources that are available for free, from software to encyclopedia. I would even add here that sometimes we even suffer from excess of information, we get lost in it. 

It is really amazing how rapidly the advancement and online socialization take place. According to Friedman, success is reached only when all the flatteners work together. I completely agree with him. What would you do with your new software if nobody was aware of it or if nobody needed it? 

In order not to deviate from our topic, I would like to address the issue of application of technologies in learning. I would like to talk about this in the context of Digital Generation Project. I watched several videos about schoolchildren who have been raised in a media-rich networked world of infinite possibilities. I was struck by the technological knowledge that those children had obtained by individually exploring different tools. When provided the necessary tools, kids should be given the liberty of engaging themselves in different projects, assignments, teaching their own teachers. In this way, they automatically develop problem-solving, team-working skills. Seeing those smart kids, I realized that children in Armenian schools are such passive learners, 'enchained', deprived of possibility of exploring, creating, working in teams.This has both objective and subjective reasons. The objective reason is that Armenian schools mostly are not provided with the necessary equipment, the staff is not trained to provide the necessary guidance to the children. The subjective reason is that we have quite a conservative society in Armenia. Teachers are not motivated to learn more, to make changes in the curriculum. The school administration is also usually very skeptic about bringing innovations in the system. 

The main point in the videos is that you do not need a teacher ALL the time. And here I would like to draw parallels between "The World is Flat", "Digital Youth Portraits" and "The Hole in the Wall" project by Sugata Mitra (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRb7_ffl2D0). Sugata Mitra makes several valuable points when presenting his project. One is that remoteness of the settlement may have a negative effect on the quality of education as teachers in remote areas are not motivated enough. Based on his project results, Mitra offers a solution- introducing educational technology into remote areas first. He argues that learning is a self-organizing system and children might only need educational technology in remote areas. This is where I agree only partly. Of course technology is of great help for self-learning. But does this mean that we should totally disregard the role of the teacher? I think things are not as simple as that. I am inclined to think that we may not need teachers in some cases but they should be there to direct the students' learning, give them some guidance and help. The Digital Youth Portrait videos that I watched are a mere illustration of this point. Here we should be able to find 'the golden mean'. 

I will take this into account in my future teaching career.