applying multiliteracies in collaborative learning environments Vance Stevens Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE The Language Centre 6th Annual ELT Conference, 19 – 20 April 2006 Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman http://tinyurl.com/m4ow6
Dec 19, 2015
Effective strategies for applying
multiliteracies in collaborative learning
environments
Vance StevensPetroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE
The Language Centre 6th Annual ELT Conference, 19 – 20 April 2006
Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman
http://tinyurl.com/m4ow6
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
The UAE contextHooked to the Net by Manal Alafrangi,
Gulf News, March 2, 2006 -
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/03/02/10022377.html
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
The survey In the UAE, 1,384,800 people use the Net It was a YouGov survey 779 UAE residents answered questions on
their online experiences. 33% Arab expatriates = 260 (rounded, estimated)
33% Asian expatriates = 260 16% Western expatriates =125 18% remaining ??? UAE Nationals?? = 140
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Findings: VOIP and blog proclivities “As many as six out of 10 respondents
said they are familiar with the term VoIP.” “When it was explained, an overwhelming nine
out of 10 said they found it appealing” “With the inevitable increase in awareness and
improvement in technology, some say restrictions on VoIP usage will be difficult to maintain.”
“more than half the respondents were supportive of blogs once it was explained to them (with only one in 10 respondents being unsupportive).”
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Findings: Chat proclivities Net primarily used as a medium for
communication (chat, e-mail, VoIP and blogging)
“Almost half the respondents engage in online messaging” “some (especially respondents aged below 21)
considering it a good way to make new friends”
“only 19 per cent of Western expatriates agree with this opinion (24 of the 125)”
(I think it’s good for making friends of professional contacts …
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Web 2.0 as a social phenomenon Making friends of professional contacts
http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/chat2005/chat2005.htm#elderparty_marquee
Vance and Eric Baber have collaborated for 5 years online - met first time at this conference May, 2001 conference in Nicosia webcast over
WMP/Encoder server (Webheads had been experimenting with HearMe and Excite voice chat rooms)
Eric presented via Netmeeting at the The Teacher to Teacher 2001 conference
Stood ready to webcast CALL-IS Academic Session at the 2002 Salt Lake City TESOL Conference
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
The Oman context @ SQU ELT conf Samia Kara – IT and women empowerment (established that
female subjects felt empowered with CMC vs. F2F) Al Dhahab and Al Ghassani – Join the podcasting
revolution: Walkaway content (showed how easy it is to use podcatchers to catch podcast feeds, and have students create them for global audiences)
Unissa Siyadath - Reading Skills: Traditional vs. Online (crucial multiliteracy skills required for reading on the Internet, strategies for teaching these)
Jacob Cheruvathoor - Multimedia annotations in TEFL: Role of ICT in everyday classroom (Most number of positive responses were in being able to integrate IT skills with LL and communicating with others using emails and making friends from other countries
Eric Baber’s plenary: Web 2.0 – True Interactivity at Last? (same as this presentation? – question from audience: How do teachers ‘train up’?)
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
What is (are?) multiliteracies? From:
http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/multiliteracies/index.php “The term multiliteracies was coined by
the New London Group (1996) to highlight two related aspects of the increasing complexity of texts (reference): the proliferation of multimodal ways of
making meaning where the written word is increasingly part and parcel of visual, audio, and spatial patterns;
the increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity characterized by local diversity and global connectedness.”
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Aspects of Multiliteracies Stuart Selber. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. Southern
Illinois University Press
develop file-naming schemes that can be searched meaningfully write effective email messages participate appropriately in asynchronous discussion analyze currency, authority, and reliability of website content
(Reading Skills: Traditional vs. Online – Unissa Siyadath) generate visual images that represent data relationships
accurately and convincingly situate technology in social, political, and economic contexts
Multiliterate individuals can, for example …
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Connectiveness Connectivism George Siemens: Connectivism:
A Learning Theory for the Digital Age http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm“The pipe is more important than its content”
"At first people used to say it's not the e that's important, it's the learning. I don't think that's true. I think it's the e that's important. It's networking, it's management, and it's learning how to deal with computers." - Jay Cross, in Abu Dhabi for an eMerging eLearning Conference, quoted in the Gulf News, Sept. 13, 2004, p.6
George Siemens: Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation http://www.learningcircuits.org/2005/nov2005/seimens.htm
This last has implications for curricula …
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Implications for curricula? From: http://www.learningcircuits.org/2005/nov2005/seimens.htm “Instruction is currently largely housed in courses and
other artificial constructs of information organization and presentation. Leaving this theory behind and moving towards a networked model requires that we place less emphasis on our tasks of presenting information, and more emphasis on building the learner’s ability to navigate the information—or connectivism.
Blogs, wikis, and other open, collaborative platforms are reshaping learning as a two-way process. Instead of presenting content/information/knowledge in a linear sequential manner, learners can be provided with a rich array of tools and information sources to use in creating their own learning pathways. The instructor or institution can still ensure that critical learning elements are achieved by focusing instead on the creation of the knowledge ecology. The links and connections are formed by the learners themselves.”
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Manifestations in curriculum Examples … The Multiliteracy Project in Canada http://
www.pkp.ubc.ca/multiliteracies/ Cheryl Oakes’s blog (an example of putting it all
together) http://coakes50.suprglu.com/ Maria Claudia Bellusci uses a Frapper slide
show at: http://e-toys-ar.blogspot.com/
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Impact on TEACHERS4 questions to ask ourselves: Do we teach what we know (already)? Or what we should know (and others appear to
be discovering)?
But how do we figure out what is important enough to teach? (given the
plethora of information available) How do we learn new concepts ourselves,
new techniques, well enough to teach them?
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
How can TEACHERS stay current?Costly, time-bound Attending conferences / presentations Enrolling in face to face courses Enrolling in online coursesFree, any-time Becoming involved in Communities of
Practice Harnessing Pull information technologies
as opposed to Push
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Communities of Practice A community of practice forms when participants
in an online community evolve a working relationship that leads them to focus spontaneously on shared tasks and problems
Constructivist zone of proximal development established scaffolding enhanced through developing interpersonal
relationship of the participants Model constructivist techniques to use in
teaching Friendships develop, affective filter diminished Training is by-product of queries, discussion
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Communities of Practice for IT Webheads in Action, hundreds of members since
2002 http://webheads.info TESOL sanctioned EVO (Electronic Village Online)
each January to March http://www.tesol.org and http://webpages.csus.edu/~hansonsm/What_is_EVO.html
Eric Baber’s ExtremeTechnoELT.com(not for the fainthearted)
RealEnglishOnline at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Real_English_Online/ a YahooGroup with a focus on video & hotpotatos
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Pull info technologies vs PushWhat IS a blog and why is it PULL? It runs on ‘blog’ software installed on a
server somewhere It allows postings It archives postings It allows comments to postings Crucially, it generates an RSS feed
This is WHY is is ‘pull’
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Pull vs Push – RSS Jay Cross: Push and Pull, Informal
Learning February 8, 2006http://internettime.com/wordpress2/?p=14
Will RichardsonGave up daytime job to become full-time blogger
RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators http://www.weblogg-ed.com/rss_for_ed
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Info Management - AggregatorsAllow you to PULL information as preferred Several available; e.g. Bloglines Stephen Downes's Bloglines links: http://
www.bloglines.com/public/downes Suggestion:
Have students address some assignments in blogs,
have their postings appear in your / each other’s aggregators as they are made
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Why blog? Anyone can publish (students, teachers) Students have a voice, an audience For both students and teachers:
conducive to Communities of Practice For serious bloggers (tend to be teachers)
Instant communication. Echoes reverberate around the world, literally
An up-to-date and critical literature emergesSpontaneous, creative commons (shared)
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Are blogs the new literature? Stephen’s Web http://downes.ca (in hiatus) Will Richardson, Weblogg-ed Jodie Fraser Edublogs Harold Jarche’s Conversations at the intersection of
learning, work & technology http://www.jarche.com James Farmer George Siemens Jay Cross, Internet Time Blog Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow
http://www.worldbridges.com See International Edublog Awards Winners for 2005 at
http://www.incsub.org/awards/ Etc. etc.(easily found in Google searches and references to
one another)
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
What kinds of BLOGS are there? ‘Standard’ blogs like Blogger Photo blogs like Buzznet HTML Blogs like Live Journal Audio blogs Video blogs Podcasts
Gigadial http://www.gigadial.net/public/ Juice Receiver: http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php Doppleradio: http://www.doppleradio.com/
(thanks to Al Dhahab and Al Ghassani)
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Podcasting characteristics Work through blogs Essentially, audio postings to blogs Thus, can be harvested through RSS Can be downloaded for listening later Podogogical resources
Randy Meredith’s Podogogy http://www.podagogy.com/pedagogy.html
Learncasting & Podogogy in Language Teaching [03-04-2006] by Graham Stanley, Allan Carrington and Randy Meredith http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=1151315
Graham Stanley, Podcasting: Audio on the Internet Comes of Age, Volume 9, Number 4: http://tesl-ej.org/ej36/int.html
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
The Voice Michael Coghlan: Is Voice Online for You?
http://users.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/mater/easy_voice.htm
Michael’s Podomatic voice synthesis test:http://michaelc.podomatic.com/entry/2006-01-19T05_36_13-08_00
Finding your Voice Online – An Inquiry into the Use of Online Voice Applications in Higher Education by Michael Coghlanhttp://www.elearn.wa.edu.au/kt/edition05/download/Coghlan.pdf
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Podcast and other voice examples Aiden Yeh’s
http://www.aidenyeh.podomatic.com Students post speeches others respond with recorded comments
Odeo, Springdoo, Handybits A ‘threaded’ voice chat:
http://odeo.com/a/UE66smL4kL3flKZHCP6f8ibGLmlwQ8PO5iK4xjff/#cmnt6800
John Taylor-Johnston’s Odeo assignment http://jtjohnston.ca/recording_odeo.php
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Other content managers Moodle e.g. Multiliteracies for Collaborative
Learning Environments http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=23
Elgg? (Drupal?) http://www.eflbridges.com Facebook (see Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_(website) Bedo (see Emma Duke-Williams, Show and tell online:
http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/?p=390
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Content management and CoPs What do Learning Mgm’t Systems do?
host some kind of content Provide teachers means of manipulating content provide means of access of that content Track student progress
Foster communities when they: allow users to maintain their own profiles associate faces with events allow tagging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del.icio.us It might host user’s blogs
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Characteristics of community-friendly content mgmt 2.0 Free Open Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software Creative Commons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons You can set them up on your own server …
Venny Su. (2005) An Open Source Portal for Educators. TESL-EJ Vol. 9. No. 1, On the Internet http://tesl-ej.org/ej33/int.html
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Raising multiliteracy awareness Student threatens on Facebook to kill
presidenthttp://www.oudaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/03/08/422db16170829?in_archive=1
One issue (meaning of terms of use) picked up in Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%27s_use_in_investigations
Implication: Educators may need to take on more responsibility for raising such awareness
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Web 2.0 eLearning 2.0 Links to lists of tools:
Graeme Daniel, Web 2.0 and Education (Feb 14, 2006) in WWWTools for Education http://m.fasfind.com/wwwtools/m/2756.cfm?x=0&rid=2756
Stephen Downes From EduBlogs to the Collective Consciousness: Director's Cut http://downes.jot.com/WikiHome
Some I use YahooGroups e.g.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/efiwebheads/ Frappr e.g. slide show at http://wiaoc.org PBWiki; e.g. http://baw-06.pbwiki.com/ Ajax (I got this one from Eric - Used in Google home
page creator and in microsoft's live.com)
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Other technologies Buthaina AlOthman’s Easy Technologies to Teach and Learn EFL/ESL
Across Different Cultures:Using new methods of webcasts (cell phones)http://alothman-b.tripod.com/tesol06_callis_acsession0316.htm
Tony Vincent’s site on handhelds:http://www.learninginhand.com/
iPod-learning Greg Kessler’s TESOL 2006 presentation , and Duke University, in the US, has distributed iPods to 1650 new students,
pre-loaded with useful orientation information. Students can download from the Duke Web site, similar to iTunes, where they will find orientation schedules, audio books, language lessons, lectures, even the University song! http://www.epic.co.uk/content/resources/white_papers/iPod.htm
Georgia College Pushes for IPod Ingenuity By GREG BLUESTEIN http://tinyurl.com/h8hvr
Curtis Bonk’s OOPS, Did I mean to share that: Opensource, Opencourseware, and the learning objects of tomorrow https://www.elluminate.com/site/pmtg.jnlp?psid=d2036466210.348289 (recorded presentation with numerous examples)
Kerry’ Hargreaves’shttp://web.mac.com/kerryhargreaves/iWeb/Site/Photos%202.html
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
Conclusion Those concerned about the decreasing half-life
of information see little point (apart from the pleasure of paging through glossy photos) in subscribing to magazines or any other media that has a production run that delays news getting to you when you can get instantly updated constantly through the blogosphere.
The blogosphere has emerged as the library of quality and of record, and it's not all text, but decidedly multimedia (aud-blogs, video-blogs).
Being multiliterate means knowing where the library IS in the first place, and then organizing access to it, then utilizing and interacting with it.
Vance Stevens - Petroleum Institute - SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006
PP 107: Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning Environments This presentation has been developed over
the course of two years teaching online in the TESOL Certificate Program: Principles and Practices of Online Teaching
http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/portal2005.htm
Presenter information: http://vance.webheads.info