By Barbara Dieu · December 10, 2008
Hot off the press, Bill Fitzgerald’s (FunnyMonkey) Drupal in Education and e-Learning, a book designed for people new to Drupal, with no prior development experience. Bill explains in this podcast interview with Jeff Robbins (Lullabot) how Drupal is being used in universities, high schools, and other educational institutions.
Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim are using it with Youth Voices, a meeting place where students and their teachers share, distribute, and work in a variety of creative endeavors, from blogging to video production and discussions of video to digital photography. They were interested in embedding and sharing video on the the site so they put Bill in contact with the Voice Thread team. The result of this collaboration was an extension that can already be downloaded and will likely be bundled with the Embedded Media Field module.
At Dekita, we worked on Drupal from scratch as from August 2007 and prepared it to host the Social Media in ELT EVO 2008 collaborative session that ran from January 14th to February 24th, 2008. In spite of the team being a bit put off by the “hysterically hierarchical” wiki structure, thanks to our ghost in the machine’s help, design and expertise, we managed to navigate forward and experiment with the various basic modules offered.
Differently from Moodle, an LMS platform which tends to replicate the school classroom control mode with its hierarchical, calendar/teacher driven course management, Drupal allows for both teacher-directed and student-directed learning.
Drupal Ed (and other experiments like, for instance, the Social Media Classroom) may provide a compromise or a transition phase towards change between the traditional LMS systematization of education, with its requirements for structure, control, accountability and manageability and the PLE’s informal, individual and peer network agency model.
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By Barbara Dieu · November 04, 2008
During the 2005 WiAOC conference, we introduced, explained the P2P concept and showed why / how it could be incorporated in language learning. We also set up the Dekita Exchange project for learners, which unfortunately came to a halt earlier this year for lack of interest and participation.
Today, I have just come across a series of other P2P presentations and initiatives. During the E-merge Conference in July 2008, Robin Good and Michael Bauwens discuss P2P Models in Education, demonstrate that P2P is far more than technology and file sharing and describe the collaborative social arrangements which are necessary for large scale voluntary projects such as writing and editing Wikipedia articles.
The P2P Virtual University is about to be launched in February 2009. Similarly to the EVO sessions, the P2PU courses will run for 6 weeks and be open to anyone with a computer and Internet connection. Learning, however, will take place in small groups of 8-14 students and will require the payment of a small sign-up fee and an application as a way to ‘assure’ learner commitment and motivation.
As Alastair Creelman states in his post
The whole concept relies on committed tutors who use P2PU to enhance their academic reputation and the opportunity to work in communities they would not otherwise have access to. The role of the “sense makers” is more to provide academic depth to the courses and to liaise with the tutors. Whether these people will get some kind of financial reward for their contribution in the future depends on the success of the project.
While George Siemens questions the notion of “sense makers” (no one makes sense for us) and centralization, the Chronicle of Higher Education points to some of the obstacles to such project.
Although the initiative signals yet another movement towards openness, de-institutionalization and personalization, like Siemens, I still see it as linear, top-down and very teacher-centred. The content and design are laid down beforehand and precede the learner instead of respecting truly self-determined learning and reflection.
I wonder whether I will see the day when learners themselves discuss and write down their own curricula on a wiki according to their passion and needs, and then, interact in diverse communities to seek out experience, discuss and collaborate with feedback from tutors, experts and peers in order to make sense and achieve their goals. Their certificate, whether accredited by an institution or not, would then be their personal learning process and trajectory documented through their interactions and artifacts on the Web/f2f.
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By Barbara Dieu · August 31, 2008
SUGGESTAN
1. geo. A little country where everyone is suggesting something.
From the same developer of Rare Words, Suggestan is another application which taps into crowdsourcing and a bit of semantics.
According to the author, it is “define a thing” project, where you can find or share knowledge about the subjects/hobbies/professions/ideas that you know in form of suggestive questions. It will also try to define some relations between these words, ideas and places.
You may consult a list of suggested random topics on the main page or create your own in the sidebar on the right by starting your sentence using “If you …”. eg. (if you) are dating online . The bold part is all you need to type to start a new topic. The second step is to click on the link created and add suggestions according to the prompts given.
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By Barbara Dieu · August 19, 2008
Have you ever seen 10,000 students learning English from one teacher – all at the same time? Have you ever met a detective whose mission impossible is to arrest bad grammar? Or encountered a 74 year-old retiree who thinks nothing of ambushing foreigners on the streets just so he can practice his English? Or heard a Chinese policeman speak English in a New York Bronx accent?
Mad About English, a film by Singaporean filmmaker Lian Pek, humorously documents China ‘s passionate love affair with the English language and their obsessive quest to learn it (some through very unorthodox methods).
This TechCrunch article shows another opportunity to_grow_ your_ career by pointing to a very grammatically (and politically) incorrect website, EngrishFunny, to which users send in photos of poorly translated or odd variations of written English in products, signs or instructions.
Deivis Pothin, a student of linguistics in London, shares his impressions and worries about the underlying message.
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By Barbara Dieu · July 25, 2008
Many teacher or ELT consultant blogs today either link to content listed in institutional portals or to suggestions coming from group lists, bulletin boards, conferences ,blogs, etc with the purpose of filtering and interpreting the never-ending stream of information, while suggesting examples of best practice.
At Dekita, more than giving recipes or pointing to stimulating or controversial uses of the web, we have sought to highlight such good practice by showcasing how EFL/ESL learners themselves make use of the Web environment, discuss issues that matter to them and reflect on their language learning experiences. The Exchange and the Orchard project were an attempt at facilitating connections, recording and aggregating such instances. However, they have not managed to gain momentum so we have decided to close them, at least for the time being.
Examples of open, participatory Web publishing amongst English language learners (and teachers) are still scarce, resulting in a dearth of authentic voices. Also lacking are evidence of observation, description, comparison and a critical reflection on everyday practice and learning processes. Most coordinated teacher-driven activities arising from classwork result in learner-generated content that does not seem to stretch beyond the cookie-cutter model of the standard pre-packaged coursebook topics.
What do learners have to say? What makes them tick and connect? Where can we read them and listen to their voices? What environments do_ they_recommend and why? How do they observe, describe and learn from their interaction with the diversity of people, stimuli and situations they encounter? How do they search and filter the web? What language do they use to communicate? Are they encouraged and envisage participating in the design of their learning process?
Is it possible or just useless to develop together open architectures of participation where experts, practitioners and learners mingle, guide and scaffold each other outside institutional gridlocks and gatekeepers, walled gardens, ELT methodology marketing trends and the edutainment tech consumer bandwagon?
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By Barbara Dieu · May 16, 2008
In the article Who Comments on Blogs, and Why?, published on March 15th 2007, journalist Stephen J. Dubner (co-author of Freakonomics) admits that although he enjoys reading blogs and has quite a lot to say, he hardly ever comments. He challenges non-commenters to answer his question and gets 135 replies in the span of more than a year (last comment is from May 13th).
Incentives seem to be the cornerstone of modern life. On the Web, memes, friendship and love chains and challenges abound. In the educational arena this is exemplified by the Comment Challenge, coordinated by Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, Michele Martin and Kim Cofino.
The organizers challenge the 123 participants to be better blog citizens by engaging them in a 31-day round of activities with the aim of later tracking who is the commenter with:
Monetary prizes from coComment and other sponsors have been secured.
What do you think? Comments welcome :-)
Comment [6]
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By Rudolf Ammann · January 17, 2008
It’s happening here on Dekita as we type: Social Media in English Language Teaching (SMiELT) is a six-week workshop sponsored by Tesol CALL IS and conducted as part of the Electronic Village Online (EVO) sessions. It runs from January 14th to February 24th, 2008.
The course is designed for teachers who already have a level of familiarity with blogs, wikis and related technologies and who would like to review, extend their technical/pedagogical knowledge and develop a critically reflected understanding of social media, focusing on their use and implications in language teaching.
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By Barbara Dieu · December 23, 2007
This is an end of year homage to Teresa Almeida d’Eca, one of the most illustrious and hard-working members of the Webheads in Action Community of Practice.
Teresa, whose students have been featured on Dekita in a previous post, has been involved in ICTs since 1996 and is working against all odds to implement these new technologies in her EFL classes at the Escola EB 2,3 de Sto Antonio in Parede, Portugal.
I am very happy to report that Teresa was one of the 13 finalists of the international eLearning Awards 2007 and that her CALL Lessons 2005-2007, a curricular blog for 5th & 6th graders (1st-2nd year EFL) for learning English with the help of different Web 2.0 tools, has won the SMART Technologies award for the school of the future at the e-Leaning 2007 event organized by the European Schoolnet during the Eminent Conference held in Brussels on 6/7 December 2007.
Teresa, who has been documenting the work Webheads of many WiA along these years, shares a more detailed explanation of her own success on a wiki she opened to register the event.
Congratulations Teresa on your prize, given as a recognition to your diligence, inventiveness and commitment to your students and ELT.
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By Barbara Dieu · December 02, 2007
Larry Ferlazzo’s blog Websites Of The Day For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL has been nominated as Best Resource Sharing Blog in 2007 the Edublog Awards, organized by Josie Fraser with James Farmer’s Edublogs support
Larry, who teaches beginner, intermediate, and advanced English language learners (as well as native English speakers) at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California, has written a number of articles on community organizing methodology for ESL teachers, classroom strategy and leadership. Every month, the ELL/ESL/EFL Carnival highlights blog posts teachers around the world have found particularly useful and insightful.
These kind of initiatives, enabled by social media (pdf file), federate and feature the work and creativity of talented educators, who would otherwise remain closed and isolated in their own institutions or contexts.
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By Barbara Dieu · September 19, 2007
Claudia Ceraso, the Argentinian blogger behind The FCE Blog , makes a post referring to the European Day of Languages. The event, promoted by the Council of Europe, has been celebrated every September 26th since 2001 to foster plurilingualism, diversity and life- long language learning.
I notice the link announcing the event takes me to a page of European Centre of Modern Languages in Graz, Austria. This triggers memories and sends me me back in time to 2001-2003, when I participated virtually in a series of surveys and discussion forums led and moderated by Peter Radai and team around The Status of Language Educators . These outline the views, perceptions, questions and daily professional activities of language educators and the project was launched with the mission of drawing national and international attention to the profession of language education, and to its implementers, language teachers all over Europe.
The results were published in a book of the same name (French or English version available), which can be bought online or downloaded as a pdf file .
Although many of the issues brought up then, like the existence of teacher power/influence/ability to empower students/solidarity and the role of the teacher as a an agent of change in their own institutions remain the focus of many of the edublog discussions nowadays and have not been solved, I am optimistic and see an evolution.
There is a growing awareness that schooling, as it is offered now in many contexts, does not educate learners for civic participation and collaboration in a knowledge society. There is a recognition that at work, much of the learning occurs informally through conversations with experts, peers and tutors, independently from the formal courses offered by traditional training departments. Participatory media has allowed many educators from around the globe to connect to a growing network, start conversations, exchange ideas, develop professionally beyond the institutional walls and actively co-construct knowledge.
Alexander Hayes, the organizer of the Future of Learning in a Networked World , advances the following questions on the group list :
Do you believe that the future of learning in a networked world is a bleak one…..a souless online virtual connection, a facile attempt to build community where only self serving individuals oscillate in ever increasingly smaller circles with shorter interactions and a senseless lack of ‘human-ness ?
The burning questions I put forward back in 2001 are still topical:
What steps have you taken in your language classes to promote cooperation, tolerance, respect towards the other and individual development? How responsible do you feel socially?
and to them I add:
What are the key literacies needed in the 21st century and can participatory media help us, life-long language learners, develop them? How?
Comment [3]
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