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USING ICT WITH Young Learners
Moderated and summarised by Wendy Arnold
| KEY: green
= request for help; purple
=
dilemmas/questions/considerations; blue
= hyperlink to websites
ROUNDUP - ICT/IT can be used with chat rooms, emails, chat with voice but at what age can you effectively use ICT/TI with Young Learners (YLs)? - caution that YLs cannot respond quickly enough in 'virtual time' - can be expensive - advantage of emails is that they can be written at YLs own pace and sent to known people - don't make assumptions that everybody has easy access to computers - caution about how 'interactive' using ICT/IT really is with reference to YLs - caution about information overload - suggestion that teachers ought to experience the various websites themselves to have a better understanding of the possibilities - be aware it is not foolproof and sometimes technical problems arise - caution that IT is a 'reflection of true reality' - caution to avoid 1:1 computer:YLs situation in order to enforce YLs interacting with another YLs - caution about copyright! - a stimulating and helpful tool NOTE: this particular discussion is an excellent example of the usefulness of using ICT/IT! Mario Jordano in Spain asked the following question: ' ...Have you ever used TI with children? In that case, among what ages?...' she also asked: ' ...Do
you have any kind of feedback about isolated collaboration ' ...Do you know if a child bt. 6 and 8 years would be preapred to chat in a foreign language? ...' Maria also shared this information about definitions with us: CMC stands for Computer Mediated Comunication, and basically these kind of tools are used either synchronously or synchonously to approach in some way any kind of f2f communication, or, in this case, class. They were not invited for this academic or educational aims but the more we know about them, them more uses we teachers find in order to improve the learning ans teaching of a second language. These are mainly mail and forums (asynchronous) and chat & MOO (asynchronous). This last one is TI (http://ti2.sri.com/tappedin/index.jsp) and it is this, that it has been created for teaching. look at my website: www.mariajordano.com and click on a link where it says WIA, the community of practice where I have learnt how to use most of these CMC tools. CMC tools are every different type of communication you find in the internet. So that I use emails for improving formal writing and accuracy, forums as a braimstorm of ideas, chat as a way of getting fluency and spontaneity in the L2, chat with voice for very advanced speakers in order to listen and speak in the L2 in a more natural way and a in a native context, MOO to create environment an a place confortable to meet and achieving proffesional development, webcam to study other cultures (by showing different stYLse of houses in other countries, schools, etc...). Gordon Lewis in New York added: ' ... I am currently completing a book
on using the internet with YLs's and I have had lots of discussions on
this issue. Ultimately, I have decided not to work very much with
chats and instead rely on asynchronous activities. Here are some
reasons: With traditional e-mail, students can create messages and have them posted later by the teacher or someone else with a computer. I would be interested to learn from the
list to what extent
you teachers out 3) how many of you have
experience working with the medium. If you have Mario Jordano in Spain responded with:- ' ... The only material article I have about chat with Young Learners is this http://www.infogreta.org/magazine/articles-9-2.htm, from published in GRETA magazine. But I have thought you would like to read it since some of you are showing so much interest on this topic. Dealing with whether teachers have access to PCs and Internet at school... I must say, that I am not an exception here in Spain. I am working in a computers' lab and I have am 24 hours connected to the net at home. So... I couldn't live without Internet. But I think, though most of the teachers have access at school at at least one computer, most of the schools here do not have a computers lab (I work with adults), and there are many teachers who still do not have an email account... that is one of the first problems that I have to face when giving a teacher training course on IT for School teachers... ' Johee Hong in Korea added:- ' ... I have introduced this project to my graduate students and they seem to like this idea. http://www.monsterexchange.org/ Basically what students do is exchanging emails with other students in other countries and they all should use English regardless of their first language. They draw pictures of monsters and describe their monsters by email, then later after several exchanges, their key pals draw the monsters described by the kids, and compare the original pictures and the ones drawn by the key pals. :-)) Cute, huh? ...' Johee had a request: How do you run a teacher training course using CMC? I'm very interested in Virtual Classroom and have tried it once with adult students, but it was for their language learning rather than teacher training. I'm hoping to run an online course for teachers who can't commute to the teacher training institute... Could you please give me some ideas of that? Maria Jordano in Spain responded with:- ' .... there are many way, depending on the possibilities on your institution, your knowledge on ITC and CMC, the aim... But I'd your invite you frst to participate as a student until you get familiarized with both synchronic and asynchronic tools. I have had the possibility to combine both in EV On-line 2003, held at the begining of this year http://academics.smcvt.edu/cbauer-ramazani/TESOL/EVOL/evol2003.htm by TESOL Spain. They were on-line pre-conferences (previous to the one held in Baltimore this year). The common methodology in all the different sigs were giving some feedback in the group (a yahoo group like ths) for a week in order to be discussed during the whole week and then have a chat at the end of every session of any doubt we could have. There are many event like this, some of them are very short, consisting on just a 1 hour on-line session and others are longer (I will show examples other day). But first, as I told you before, log tappedin www.tappedin.org/new and be a student... That is the better way to learn and get ideas for later moderation. Obviously, If you have access to educational platforms such as www.webct.com or www.blackboard.com in your institution, much better... but that is more difficult and you need some training...' Wendy Arnold in Hong Kong questioned: ' is ICT/IT really interactive? ... I've observed parents buying the latest 'interactive' action and educational games with the rationale that plonking them in front of a screen and letting them 'interact' with the programme equals learning. I'm not convinced.... From an adults perspective I can see advantages, especially using ICT for training (of a wide range of disciplines) and widening the scope of training to others who cannot attend a course in person. I did my MA with York as a distance learning course and I have to say I really did not have too many problems in NOT having group interaction. I actually rather liked having my OWN time to process my thoughts and then my tutor at the end of ether to bounce ideas about with. By contrast the course I've just completed had 'efforts' at getting us to interact in groups but it was an up-hill battle for the tutor - I wonder why this was? My reservations about ICT for YLs is that it is not 'authentic' interaction and the YLs know it! To a certain degree (in the action games) it is rather predicable (I rather like the playstation games with a story and action because they are more than mastering your motorskills). I define 'authentic' as linked to real life use and having seen quite a few games which only seem to involve killing and jumping over things, I'm not sure how useful these skills are ... prove me wrong please. I like the idea of YLs searching for information themselves, I guess in a low tech situation it is the same as visiting the library, and the speed that you get information is fabulous. The downside is the AMOUNT of information and being discerning about what you've found...' Johee Hong in Korea added some more descriptions of the definitions: ' ... CMC stands for Computer-mediated Communication. CMC tools include online chatting (IRC: Internet Relay Chat), email, BBS(Bulletin board system) and there may be more these days. Some of the most common tools are MSN messenger, Yahoo messenger, emails including hotmail, yahoo mail, aol.... and all those communication tools through the Internet/computer are CMC tools. Wendy Arnold in Hong Kong backtracked! ' ... OK I take it all back - using ICT/IT can be interactive. What a fabulous 'monsters site'! I just loved it and I can see how this would motivate and stimulate YLs of all ages. I loved the idea of having the world map to show the countries of schools who have taken part already. I also liked the encouragement to respond to other monsters. The writing was a fabulous idea as well, so basically a simple picture can take you through so many processes eg. recycling or introducing parts of body colours shapes likes/dislikes eg. food, colour etc. adjectives names of clothes and for the older pupils, to write something creative about the monster they invented. I don't think this idea is limited to ICT/IT, I think you could probably do it equally well within a school, large or small with different classes responding to each others work. The ICT is just the icing on the cake for those who have access to IT... ' Sally in Korea added a note of caution about using Harry Potter:- ' ... Just a note of caution....J.K.Rowlings
is very sensitive on copyright issues, we were told quite directly
that we were not allowed to use any Harry Potter visuals etc. in our
classrooms. Chris Etchells in the UK shared his Harry Potter site:- http://www.countryschool.com/flying_harry.htm Jennifer Dobson in ... added this:- ' ... We use ICT with kids from the age of 4. IŽve found it an amazingly helpful and stimulating tool to compliment the classes. IŽll just mention a few things weŽve done/found in the hope it may be of some use to others. With teens there is a lot of online material that provides here and now topics and songs that are unavailable to them in text books. The MTV website has videos that can be watched with real player (free download), and lyrics can be found on lyrics.com. So, you can make nice worksheets and activities. The BBC website has some already made material with match up etc. Teens have particularly enjoyed chat, (again great for here and now language) and the Englishclub site has chats plus lots of other games. In our initial stages we had to be quite strict with them not abusing the sytem and free surfing the web. However, they seem to learn this well with time, and no longer seem to have the uge to show off to their classmates, and now show respect for the medium. IŽve found pairs work better than one person pc, and often mixed boy/girl. With the younger children we tend to use more cd roms. They seem to gradually find their way of working round the CD, finding their favourite a tivities, and once they get bored of these theyŽll find a whole new range of others. The tiny ones pick up mouse skills surpirisngly quickly, much quicker than adults!!! They need a bit of basic help at first but soon get it. I mentioned before about top down skills. I think using ICT is one very clear example of this. it is amazing how the kids will learn unconsciously to cope with bits of reading, listening writing etc. that are way above their level, in their keeness to use the technology and partly because of certain repetitive patterns in the cds. Technical problems sometimes arise. Sometimes in the earlier stages things can be a bit chaotic (especially with the tinys). But, are our classes also totally smooth running all the time? I know mine arenŽt! Is it not also a bit more chaoctic at the beginnnig of the school term until the children and we know the routines etc? Sometimes tech problems can also be used imaginatively, just as you might use a mistake in class imaginatively. e.g. yesterday with a class of 6 year olds we didnŽt have enough headphones to go round, so some were reading the games and the others dictating, a kind of jigsaw confirmation pairwork...' Denise Hannaoui in New York shared:- ' ...I enjoy using, and even making, web quests with my students. It takes a lot of preparation when you make one up on your own, but it is so much more structured than just letting students "explore" the internet for answers to research questions. For those of you that are not familiar with web quests--basically, you can make them in a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word. I type in a question, then add a link to a particular web site that HAS the answer to the question. Students read each question, click on the link to the web site, then they have to READ the site to find the answer.They copy the answers onto a worksheet, or copy and paste the text directly from the site. After they've gotten the answer, they go back to the quest page and work on the next question. I've capitalized "READ" because so often students go to web sites and never READ what they see. They look at graphics, then find something else to click on. A quest gives them a purpose to explore and an excuse to read the material. There are many web quest sites on the internet...check out http://webquest.sdsu.edu/. Gordon Lewis in New York added: '... you bring up a couple of good points here. In using IT as a presentation tool: it is quite effective if you have a projector which displays your computer screen to the entire class, but these are still very expensive. In general, I try and avoid any 1-1 interaction with child and computer. I have the children work in groups on each terminal, taking care, of course, that each child gets a chance to manipulate the mouse or type in. In most classroom situations I know, groups around one terminal will be a necessity, regardless of choice as their simply aren't enough computers to go around. I like the idea of connecting Realbooks and IT. There are many wonderful sites on the WWW that can be nicely used for our EFL purposes. Many children's authors (see Eric Carle's site) have their own websites with lots of resources and suggestions. Children can also create content on many sites. take a look at www.dfilm.com This is highly popular with 10 year olds I work with.In my opinion we mustn't forget that IT is merely a reflection of "true reality". It isn't a separate universe. Therefore, any activity that takes place electronically must have a shadow in the non-computerized world. The big question for educators is to decide when the IT components adds to the value of such an activity and when it is merely an example of unnecessary bells and whistles...' Gordon also added some more websites for webquests:- http://trackstar.scrtec.org or filamentality http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/index.html Wendy Arnold in Hong Kong responded: ' ... also agree with you Gordon that the activity applying ICT should have an inkling of a 'real life' use and not doing it just for the sake of doing it. My biggest worry about it being used in HK is as a replacement to a coursebook BUT the approach being used (by some teachers ... not all) still seems to be transmission. This doesn't particularly surprise me as I've seen (what is obvious to me) task-based learning turned on its head and transmitted. This just re-confirms to me the absolute importance, when introducing innovations, of teacher training going hand in hand to explain that this is NOT the same, the whole concept of teaching is different ... ' I think Gordon also makes a valid point of avoiding 1:1 YLs:computer and gets the YLs to work in teams taking turns - I guess this also solves the lack of equipment dilemma that some might have, but pedagogically if you buy into Vygotsky's ZPD theory and Bruner's scaffolding theory then working in a group is essential...' Nik in ... suggested some websites:- ' ... we have two British Council
sites tailored to the needs of young learner teachers: http://www.britishcouncil.org/languageassistant/
which has weekly Nik added some websites for teachers:- I'd just like to make you aware of three free
websites that provide services Maria Jordano in Spain requested information:- ' ... Do
you know of a good place to get a template to colour and cut or Paul Ashe replied:- http://www.cartooncritters.com/ http://www.freecoloringpages.com/ http://members.tripod.com/%7EESL4Kids/ Claire Cacoles in Germany added:- Maybe you'll find the following site useful: |
