A Journey into ARG

We are organising our Yr7 programme for languages a little differently this year and this has resulted in a Term 4 where students have already chosen their language for Yr8. Their choices are French, German or Japanese and the most likely scenario for Term 4 has always been that they will work on that language in a class where not everyone is learning the same language, or where the teacher who is in the room is not skilled in that language.

Essentially, we had to come up with a Term 4 'project' that students could work on independently but also be able to receive feedback. When we, as a department, were first discussing the possibility of this new structure for Yr7, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try something new. Now, I'm just hoping it will all work.

Inspired by a conversation with Jess McCulloch earlier in the year and more recently by her fantastic Blackline Mystery, I have been slowly trying to piece together a unit of work for the 3 languages that students will be able to work on semi-independently for about 5-6 weeks. My initial plans were to simply use edmodo: students could then join, complete tasks and use the discussion threads to ask questions. But, the more I read and explored and saw what Jess was doing, the more I realised the potential to go out on a limb and try something completely new. It may not work but hopefully we'll learn from the experience. The challenges were to make it work across all 3 languages and ensure that language learning was actually occuring.

The more I have learnt about and explored the worlds of "Alternate Reality Games", "Interactive Fiction", "Minecraft" and "Transmedia", the more I see the potential that this has, and that this would be an awesome way to learn. I am by no means an expert on the pedagogy of all of this but when I start to worry about those things, I am reminded of a tweet from Steve Collis: "so many sins are compensated for by the level of engagement". For me, engagement is critical. Engagement is the first step in finding a passion for something.

So, as for Term 4, we have: characters, a storyline, a headquarters (The Bunker, more commonly known as Edmodo) which contains our 'Database' (library of links and resources) and accounts across several websites. I will try to blog more of the journey but, for the moment, this is where our Term 4 jorney begins for the students...

Next, they will receive an email.

The Basics of learning a language

I have been working on the presentation embedded below for quite a while now and had in fact forgotten about it for a while. I began working on it as a means to try and help make our Year 7 language students more aware of how best to learn a language. For many students it is their first experience in learning a language and once the year starts it is pretty full on; they learn French for the entire Year as well as a Semester each of German and Japanese. Personally, I would like them to complete an Introductory Unit on 'Learning Languages', that shows them the importance of language learning itself and introduces tips and techniques on how best to do it. But ... time is an issue; those assessments are always getting in our way. So, rather than an entire Unit, I began working on this short presentation to use as a quick introduction. I am not convinced that it is complete, so if you have any tips of your own that would be suitable for younger language learners, please add them in the comments section.

Launch your own SlideRocket presentation!

Screencasting & language learning

I've been checking out Capture Fox - a Firefox add-on that I originally came across thanks to the the Ed Tech Crew Podcast. Capture Fox allows you to very easily make a screencast in Mozilla (though only in Windows XP & Vista). Once installed, you're only a couple of clicks away from recording (with voice if you choose) what you are doing in the firefox screen or in the whole window - at this stage you can't reduce the size of the area. The only problem I've found so far is the size of the screencast files, though you can choose to lower the quality and reduce the size.

Anyway, today's brainwave centred around using the add-on to help engage my students in a bit of language learning through some "Virtual ordering at a restaurant". The plan at this stage goes a little like this ...

After installing the add-on in firefox and learning how to use it we will:

1. Go to the McDonalds website in Japan to have a look at the menu - practising some katakana script while we are there.
   
• On second thoughts, I will use 3 or 4 different restaurant / food outlet sites rather than all using the same site. My personal favourite Mister Donuts will no doubt make it onto the list.
  
2. Students will write down what they'd like to order, again ensuring they use the correct script. They will need to order more than 1 of each item to practice using the correct counter (our latest grammar point).
   
3. Finally students will use capture fox to create a screencast of themselves ordering their chosen food and drink (in Japanese of course). We will then share our creations.
   

I may need to refine the plan a little but it's a start. Could screencasts like this one day constitute a speaking assessment, or am I taking things too far with that idea? Short of skyping a restaurant in Japan (hmmm... maybe one day), this seems to be the next best thing. On face value it seems like a reasonable attempt to make Japanese more relevant to the students by showing them how they can use their knowledge to order food from a real menu, but we shall see...

Check out my attempt at the task below:

Gathering thoughts on writing a language programme in the 21st Century

I'm currently working / thinking as I blog here - it seems to be the only way a blog post gets written (most are still in the draft folder).

Anyway, I'm trying to come up with a new and hopefully more effective approach to teaching the languages that I teach. There's a lot floating around in my head that I'm trying to gather together and create a relevant 21st Century Programme with. I am fascinated by and love the work of Andrew Churches at his Educational Origami wiki and am looking forward to a time when I can delve further into the wealth of information and ideas there. On the front page of the wiki it is written quite clearly - "Welcome to the 21st Century". Happy to be here!

But what is that for a language teacher? How can we use the Web2.0 tools available to enhance our student's experience of language learning and indeed get them speaking, reading and writing the language - being able to communicate in the language. Well firstly it brings an overseas country (where they speak the language) into the classroom. But how do I put all these tools and ideas into a programme that would be accepted? Also, my programmes at the moment are based around a textbook; do we need textbooks anymore? Do parents really need (at a school with a laptop programme) to fork out more money for textbooks when all that is in them can be found for free using the laptop? Now that's a programme I want to create and I suspect that Blooms Digital Taxonomy can help us here.

There are some great tools to aid in the lower order thinking skills (when applied to languages) - remembering & understanding. I love the simplicity and fun of Quizlet and, it seems, the students find this a very useful tool; not only do they ask to use it but I happily discovered that the Quizlet bug spread to other students in the year group who are using it in a variety of subjects (unfortunately their teachers are not yet aware of quizlet or that their students find it an effective tool for 'remembering' and thus for revision). Voki is another simple and effective tool to engage language learners.

I know I'm rambling but bear with me - I am trying to gather my thoughts and the endpoint is an effective programme for teaching language in this new era of change. For the moment, let's take it back to the beginning. To be able to communicate in a language you need to remember the vocab and understand the grammar. We'll start with the vocab. Textbooks are full of lists of vocab, usually topic based. I like topic based approaches but sometimes the vocab selected in a list is a little odd (my favourite in the text I use at the moment is 'haunted house'). So, for the next unit with my Year 9s I think I'll take a different approach; trying to make it more relevant using Web2.0 tools. The first stage will go something like this ...

• The students will need to learn the skills necessary to use a bilingual dictionary - both print and online. I will create a lesson to show them how to best use each of these types of dictionary and ensure that they are choosing the correct word in its right context. They also need to be sure the online dictionary is an accurate and reliable source.
• They will then decide on the words in their vocab list and work together to build a suitable list of vocab on that topic (using Google docs). My theory is that they will choose words that are relevant to them, they they would want to use. If they thought 'haunted house' was relevant and useful, then it will go into the list.
• As they have created the list for themselves, it should be easier to remember, but quizlet can always help.

Teaching grammar is always a little trickier but I suspect an interactive whiteboard would serve as a useful tool. Hmmm... we now have one in the library. Need to install the software on the laptop and check it out.

Will have to leave this next stage for the moment ...

Flickr photo: Scattered Thoughts, Like Scattered Leaves:-)
Flickr user: mysza831