We all have read poems when we were young students and
some of us are still fond of reading them. The beauty of poem is that it
conveys powerful meaning in few words; it has ability to touch our heart and
convey our deepest feelings. But have you ever heard of Robotics Poetry? No? Well neither did I, till I came across an
amazing article
talking about 7th and 8th graders developing deep
understanding of poetry in Allegheny Valley School District, Pittsburgh, by
playing around with robotics. Rather than focusing merely on STEM this school
district is working on STEAM where ‘A’ stands for arts (creativity). The
emphasis is on integration of left-brain and right-brain so that A Whole New Mind mentioned by Daniel
Pink can be developed in the students. The thinking that is emphasized over
here is that capacity to innovate, create will determine the jobs and salaries
of people in future.
Students created awesome dioramas with robotics
tool kits containing sensors, motors, LEDs and a controller. These students
spent two weeks analyzing the poems - The Pasture by Robert Frost, The Human
Seasons by John Keats, El Dorado by Edgar Allan Poe…..and creating visual
imagery for their dioramas. They recorded themselves reading the poems aloud in
‘Audacity’; these voice files turned on the LEDs and motors leading to change
in light and movement of different objects in their dioramas! Out of all the
dioramas I liked The Pasture by Robert
Frost a lot. Take time to watch these beautiful artifacts and share your
thoughts!
Technology has given momentum to self-expression as well as
communication. In response to current trends towards increasing
connectivity, German-American industrial designer, inventor and founder
of Frogdesign Hartmut Esslinger has come up with idea of wearable technology called Datoo or DNA tattoo. According to him ‘The
idea of ‘Datoo’ is to use the human body itself as hardware and
interaction platform through use of minimally invasive, recyclable
materials’. Datoos will be created on the body or clothes or
accessories so that users can have constant access to them. Energy will
be pulled from human body to run the programs. At the end of the day
these tattoos can be washed off and next day, user can order a new one!
I fell in love with TED talks when in one of the courses of CTER we
were told to watch a video of Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on ‘Changing
Education Paradigms’. Since then I have viewed so many TED videos and
found each one so unique. It’s a nice learning experience for me when I
listen to inspired people talking passionately about things that matter
the most to them.
Few days back, one particular Twitter feed relayed information that TED has
teamed up with PBS to deliver talks on education. On April 16 of this
year PBS is going to air the first televised TED event, TED Talks Education.
The first three speakers booked for this event are: Geoffrey Canada (of
Harlem Children’s Zone), Bill Gates and my favorite: Sir Ken Robinson!
These speakers will discuss and share their ideas on the ways to curb
the high school dropout crisis in USA. I think this is an apt topic to
start talks on education because despite taking so many measures and
adopting different strategies to keep students in school, it still
remains a significant national problem.
Today I came across this very interesting website: Visuwords
It is an online graphical dictionary. The users can not only look
up the words but also the relationship of that word with other words.
The diagrams are produced in a mind-map format. Each word can be clicked
on to discover its meaning, additional word associations, synonyms and
antonyms. Take a look!
After completing one year in Grad school and having read variety
of articles on education, I find they all are an attempt to answer this
question- What is the best way to teach children of today to prepare
them for the World of tomorrow? Everyone seems to agree that old ways of
teaching are not going to lead us on right path. Digital Natives cannot
have an authentic learning experience if you ask them to sit quietly
and listen to a teacher lecturing on a topic.
All this reminds me of a person born in India around 150 years ago, who
also disliked the conventional methods of schooling, got educated by
private tutors at his home (being a rich landlord’s son) started his own
school and later a university where learners were not confined in the
four walls of a classroom but were allowed to sit on tree branches and
read, touch the flowers and leaves, chase butterflies….in order to learn
science, literature, social sciences. Find it incredible?
Well, I am talking about Rabindranath Tagore
(1861-1941), Asia’s first Nobel Laureate (1913). As a young student he
found formal schooling very boring because of its dull curriculum. He
observed- We sit inert like dead specimens of some museum, while lessons are pelted on us from on high, like hail stones on flowers [1].
It’s not that he disliked learning; in fact he enjoyed learning at his
own pace at his home which was a meeting place of intellectuals and
artists from India as well as Western world. Dynamic learning
environment of his home permitted him to experience an open model of
education. He composed his first poem at the age of eight. By the end of
his life he had written 25 volumes of poetry, 15 plays, 90 short
stories, 11 novels, 13 volumes of essay, composed more than 2000 songs
and that’s not all; after the age of seventy he created more than 2000
pictures and sketches.
As an alternative to the existing forms of education, he started small
school at Santiniketan in 1901 that later developed into a University.
Here he tried to develop an alternative model of education based on his
own learning experiences. His concern with education got reflected in
his writings, speeches, debates, and in his establishment of
Santiniketan University.
Today I would like to share with you all a short story written by him- ‘The Parrot’s training’,
which provides an incisive look at education. Let me know your thoughts
on it and if you wish to read more about his thoughts on education then
this is an interesting article to read!
Present day world appreciates the extroverts who have the ability to charm the crowd. As an educator, I feel we tend to pay more attention to the students who are vocal and love the group activities in our classrooms. So is being an introvert a matter of shame? Do they have no place in today's fast-paced world? Susan Cain holds a different opinion about them. I loved watching this video!
Technology’s role in augmenting the learning process of students of different cultural background in K-12 classrooms of USA
Image source:Brand New World
Scenario:
Students of Ms. R’s classroom are from different cultural background. They have to write a different story version with same theme of 'Cinderella' (a folk tale). These students have to prepare a presentation on Solar System for their Science class also. They are expected to understand, write and read English in order to do well in both classes, even though they still have a problem with language in their classroom. Science has a complex vocabulary that is difficult even for native English speakers to learn. Some English Language Learners (ELLs) are trying their best to catch up, but others are frustrated and don’t want to concentrate in the class. The teacher has a Smart Board and other latest technologies in her class but she hardly incorporates them in her lessons.
Instructional Challenge
Your instructional challenge as a lead teacher is to find ways to promote academic support for the students who come from diverse cultural, linguistic and racial background as it is no longer the issue of only ESL program. Your solution must have a research foundation, must include models of practice, and must demonstrate how these models could be modified for use in your own learning environment.
Solution: Introduction
Since its origin, USA's public education system has faced many challenges. One of the most important challenge has been how to teach the learners from diverse background. There are over a billion English as a foreign or second language learners worldwide. In America alone, it is estimated that over 25% of the population will speak a mother tongue other than English at home within next 10 years and be in need of acquiring English language for success in school, community and future job market. Diversity brings richness to a class, but along with it comes the challenge on part of educators: to teach their students effectively in order to prepare them to succeed in life. Please watch this short video in whichDr. Jim Cummins talks about ways to motivate and engage the English Language Learners.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 clearly set a goal for all students, including ELLs to reach high standards by demonstrating proficiency in ELA and Mathematics by 2014.The teachers apply various strategies to support the learning of diverse learners in their 21st century classrooms and they have access to a powerful tool: TECHNOLOGY! Literature is full of claims that technology has great potential in supporting second language learning and teaching. Hence, usage of technology to aid English Language Learners’ learning is not a novel idea.
Educational technology as a learning tool can increase learning opportunities for these students. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)(2000) defined curriculum integration as:
“Curriculum integration with the use of technology involves the infusion of technology as a tool to enhance the learning in a content area or multidisciplinary setting. Technology enables students to learn in ways not previously possible. Effective integration of technology is achieved when students are able to select technology tools to help them obtain information in a timely manner, analyze and synthesize the information, and present it professionally. The technology should become an integral part of how the classroom functions-as accessible as all other classroom tools”.
Efficient use of technology allows the learners to have the control over the direction of their learning by controlling their speed of learning and choice of topics. Apart from this, the technology has the ability to meet the specific student needs, encourage them to collaborate and make decisions. ELLs can learn in a rich linguistic environment, can feel safe because of privacy given to them by the tech tool and extend their language skills by taking risks since technology will not make them feel embarrassed for failing to give correct answers. Technology also provides multiple strategies for language learners to communicate their learning and comprehension of content.
Thus web and web 2.0 tools compliment the pedagogical needs as following:
Affective domain: Learners get positive feedback on accomplishing the tasks done online. Apart from this the privacy is also maintained.
Comprehensible input and repeatability: Technology provides control to the learner as well as feedback in terms of new vocabulary, mastery, speed of speech and comprehension etc.
Testing and assessment: Learners need to be constantly challenged and they should be able to gauge their progress. Web tools accomplish this task well.
Content and curriculum: The content should allow for much user choice and this is what internet offers as well as encourages.
The theoretical foundation-
1. Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development
According to Vygotsky, when children have helpers (skilled-children in the peer group) who are able to assist them and skilled person such as teacher who can provide good guidance then these children who has supportive guidance and a nurturing social environment can forge ahead and build strong social competences. They can extend their social skill with others, and are interested in their subject.
Technology helps in employing the instructional scaffolding techniques throughout the lessons such as modeling, sentence starters, graphic organizers, vocabulary building which provide a great help to the learners with diverse background.(Scaffolding in child guidance is a teacher’s changing support during a discipline encounter or series of interactions).
2. Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition (SLA):
Krashen's Theory of SLA consists of five main hypotheses. They are:
a. the Acquisition-Learning hypothesis
b. the Monitor hypothesis
c. the Natural hypothesis
d. the Input hypothesis
e. the Affective filter hypothesis
This is the combined model of acquisition and production
According to Stephen Krashen there are several variables that influence the affective filter. They are motivation, self-confidence and anxiety. In terms of 'monitoring' usually extroverts are under users while introverts and the perfectionists are over users. Lack of self-confidence amongst ELLs is frequently related to the overuse of 'monitors'.
So, it would be very helpful for ELLs to utilize diverse and popular technological tools to reduce the affective filter and to optimally use the monitoring process. This will lead to increase in their 'output'.
Various ways in which technology can augment learning experience of English Language Learners are:
1. Web resources: ‘ESL reading smart’ is an online intervention that is very successful in various schools where it has been tested in. Its advantage is being an online intervention, it keeps on getting updated automatically. Apart from this, Pearson Education and Rosetta Stone are the one time software purchases which are very helpful in teaching ELLs.
2: Games and simulations: Games are structured materials in which learning can occur in small increments. They have the potential of engaging the learners to a high level of immersion and are very popular way to teach the ELLs. There are various websites where the students can go and create games by using text and voice chat.
3. Safe text/voice chat experiences: The mylanguageexchange.com is an online resource that provides an opportunity to ELLs to practice. This method provides them the privacy as well as safe environment along with rich experience in learning the language.
4. Cameras and Videos: These can be used to take digital pictures of the content they are learning and then they can make “click word books” , labels, flash cards for the classroom or they can make video presentations (interviews and skits) to use conversational English.
5. Use of Publishing software: Students can be encouraged to publish their work; such as making brochures or publishing class newsletter and stories authored by them by using software already available on school websites.
6. Twitter/Edmodo: It is said ‘Edmodo is Twitter in education”. In reality though, it’s basically a private micro-blogging service for schools with built-in security features that give teachers privacy controls over their virtual classroom. Many schools use it to engage their digital learners.
7. Digital Storytelling: Digital storytelling is a great way of teaching vocabulary to the learners. In addition to helping with the vocabulary and grammar, it can also be a source of information between teacher and the student. The visual images are used to learn and share the story, this will lead to breaking of communication barrier between students. By creating and narrating the projects, the students’ self-confidence and expression skills will also build up. They will become more organized, communicative and will improve their fluency. Example:http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/esl.html
8. Blogging: It somewhat resembles an online journal and it is easy to create and update. Blogs are great way of stimulating out of class discussions and they are really helpful in encouraging participation from shy students. They have the capability to provide extra reading practice to the students and it guides the students to the online resources which are appropriate for their level.
There are three types of blogs that can be used in language teaching:
a.Educator blog: It is run by the teacher of a class. The content can be limited to syllabus, course information, homework assignments, projects and class activity announcements.
b.Class blog: It is a shared collaborative space, with both teacher and students being able to write to the main area. Learners have more freedom and involvement.
c.Learner blog: This blog is set and moderated by the teacher. It provides the personal online space to each student.
9. Podcasting: Time is a big constraint for teachers as well as students. The numbers of school days are not sufficient to do justice to the new language learning process. Podcasting can be used to increase the student’s time allocated to language learning. They provide the meaningful experience to the students in learning English. Podcasting in education is more than extending the classroom; it enhances the potential outcomes of a course for today’s students who are tech-savvy. Learners of English can learn the language in an authentic context through the podcasts.
10. Google Docs: is an online document editor that can replace the Microsoft Word, if teacher and students don't want fancy text. A teacher can create the Google Docs for each student with his/her name on it and share it with them via email. They can work on it and the teacher can open it at her own convenience to check and assess it. There is an option of highlighting the portions of text and commenting in the margin. Apart from this the Google Docs can also be used for document storage and folder sharing.
Different Web 2.0 tools can be used to scaffold for ELL. Web tools create authentic opportunities to apply English language skills. Some of these web 2.0 tools are
a.Reading and writing: Free dictionary.com, Hyperwords.net, VozMe.com, Blogger.com, ePals.com, PBWorks.com, WikiSpaces.com,Ning.com, SlideShare.com,SchoolTube.com,Glogster.com,Flickr.com, Lit2go.com (a free online collection of stories and poems in MP3(audiobook)format).
b.For listening and speaking: Audacity, Gcast.com,VoiceThread.com,Skype.com,Vocaroo.com
Please watch this video to find out how teachers can use Web 2.0 to teach English Language Learners.
Strategies for teaching Science/Math to ELLs
Apart from using above mentioned technologies there are various strategies that can be used for teaching Science to ELLs. They are:
1. Turn on Closed Captioning on Videos so that the students can see what narrator or actors are saying. Thus they can correlate the written and spoken English.
2. Emphasize visual literacy (ability to evaluate, apply or create visual representation) which is relatively independent of language, by using scientific diagrams, Venn diagrams and pictures.
3. Use Graphic organizers, charts and graphs to communicate ,integrate and assess the scientific and mathematical concepts because they require minimal use of written and spoken English.
4. Hands-on activities provide excellent learning environment for ELLs.
5. Use Pictorial guide to provide visual reference to glassware in a science class and demonstrations for labsso that students can see and understand the process.
Models of practice
Teaching ELLs with Technology in Irving ISD, Texas
Teaching Science to ELLs with technology in Ochoa Elementary School, Texas:
Learning how to Integrate Technology in the classroom
The teachers can use these resources to learn how to integrate the technology in classroom and design the curriculum to suit the needs of diverse learners :
It is a free online course, separated into two modules, on implementing Universal Design for Learning in your classroom. UDL is a framework for designing curriculum that addresses the diverse needs, strengths, backgrounds, and interests of students in today’s classrooms.
2.WestEd A collection of tech tips presented byWestEd help educators learn how to use software and other technology devices to meet the needs of diverse learners, included students with disabilities and English learners. This website, produced byWestEd, (http://www.wested.org/cs/tdl/print/docs/tdl/home.htm) contains links to a slide show, handouts, and related materials for professional developers (technology coordinators and inclusion teachers) that are helping teachers integrate technology into the curriculum to support diverse learners.
Integrating the solution in our learning environment
Our school has three computer labs which are fully equipped with the gadgets required to teach ELLs. Apart from this each classroom has two computers, a smart board and variety of other tech tools. Various techniques, strategies and suggestions mentioned above to integrate technology to teach ELLs can be implemented in all core content classes and across all grade levels with ease. The teachers have access to all the resources to do so and there are various online resources that are available for free. Teachers can also check with their school district and find out if there are any funds available for English Language Learners. They can use these funds to buy specific devices required in their classrooms. If that is not so then writing Grants is another option that can be followed. Thus, a judicious combination of above mentioned strategies and the technologies can be done to enrich the learning environment of the students who come from diverse background.
References:
Ban,R.,Jin,L.,Summers,R.,Eisenhower,K.(2005) Integrating Technology Best Use Practices for English Language Learners in Content Based Classrooms. Retrieved Feb,29,2012 from http://www.appstate.edu/~jinl/esltech.pdf
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Combined Model of Acquisition and Production (Image). Krahsen's Comprehension Hypothesis Model of L2 Learning. Retrieved March 9,2012 from http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/Krashen.htm
Cummins,J.,Brown,K.,Sayers,D.(2007)Literacy, Technology and Diversity: Teaching for Success in Changing Times. Retrieved March 3,2012 from http://www.chihtu.org/bb/etc545/lesson6/Cummins_-_Technology_PDF.pdf
Herr,N.(?) Strategies for teaching Science to English Language Learners. Retrieved March 3,2012 from http://www.csun.edu/science/ref/language/teaching-ell.html
Ipokij 82 (2009) Every Teacher- A teacher of English language learners.[Video] March 1,2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFKSM-V9Uck
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Pearson Education (2010). Empowering English Learners [Video]. Retrieved March 13,2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu-6V3N5RHI&feature=related
Power On Texas (2010). Power on Texas: Irving ISD's commitment to technology helps serve challenging population [Video].Retrieved March 2,2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRwusEf61Wc
Schutz,R.(2007). Stephen Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition. Retrieved March 6,2012 from http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html
Smart,M.(2008) The Word and the World: Technology Aids English Language Learners.Retrieved March 6,2012 from http://www.edutopia.org/technology-software-english-language-learners
Svedkauskaite,A. (2003). Critical Issue: Using Technology to Support Limited-English-Proficient (LEP) Students' Learning Experiences.Retrieved March 4,2012 from http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/technlgy/te900.htm
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