Saturday, June 5, 2010

New Learning Environment at my institution



This is an important attempt given that the school where I work is too traditionalist. What I propose is to implement a Virtual Language Resource Center that I designed in order to help my students to enhance their English skills, besides in that way children can be able to experiment other ways for learning and not to be dependant of the teacher and the work in the classes, they can go beyond by exploring by themselves the activities proposed in the VLRC, what help them to develop autonomy and reflection about what they want and what they need to learn.

The idea of this project is also to motivate learners to be involved in their own learning, due to the fact that technology is now an important tool that catches students' interests and that open different doors for many practices and information.

Coping With Emerging Technologies


Imagen retrieved from http://archivesoutside.records.nsw.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Senseable-at-Emerging-Arts-Fest.jpg


Technologies are always changing; day by day they are improving with more advanced tools and software. Technology involves effective communication which is an important tool to face the challenges for technological changes, people who are always sharing with others and exploring what technology offers, are up-to-date because they have the possibility to know what is new and how to deal with that, with is the product of effective communication.

Nowadays technology became an essential tool for high level education, for the school and also for the industry (enterprises) given that being trained for using emergent technologies is a matter of being part of the competent world, and people who are engaged with technology are supposed to be able to face challenges of the new networked world due to the fact that they are exposed to more information about the world.

Talking about the internet, and taking into account that it is a competitive totally different environment is necessary to establish a few rules among people who use it to develop learning environments because in that way it can be useful for learners and also for teachers to face the “emergent” characteristic of the internet; after establishing those rules of participations, it is possible to apply emergent technologies such as messaging, gaming, peer-to-peer sharing as a language learning strategy for catching learners' interests of the millennial generation.

References:

BECTA, (2008). Emerging technologies for learning. Retrieved June 4, 2010 from

http://partners.becta.org.uk/upload-dir/downloads/page_documents/research/emerging_technologies08-2.pdf

Prensky, M. (2008). The role of technology. Retrieved June 4, 2010 from

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-The_Role_of_Technology-ET-11-12-08.pdf

Digital Game Based Teaching for language learning



Imagen Retrieved from http://www.sharewarebay.com/images/screenshot/space-time_associates/American_Hangman_-_Presidents_and_States.jpg

There is a nice propositon by Prenksy (2001) “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing” (Dale Carnegie), that is a common point among learners and workers, people who are engaged and interested in the things that they do are really motivated to continue working and doing the things well. That is also an issue of learning languages, because children, young and adults need motivation to learn another language, and it could be possible if the material, tools and strategies used to the teaching and learning process catch their attention and their interest. Because of that learning a language using DGBL’s can be a good strategy and resource to involve learners in the process given that:

· Games make the learning a meaningful and enjoyable process.

· People can define what they want to learn and how they are going to learn, they can learn what they want.

· Games take a wide variety of forms and allow learners to engage in the game while they learn to reflect, interact and solve problems.

· Games are a good way of motivation.

However, some difficulties can arise from learning with games such as the lack of interest for hearing others and people learn to be isolated learners. It can be considered also the possible addictions to use those kinds of digital games, people spend lot of time playing and they forget important things of human contact for learning from experiences.

References:

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game based learning , New York: McGraw Hill Press
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants: A new way to look at ourselves and our kids. On the Horizon, 9(5). Retrieved on May 02, 2010 from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Are communities of Practice here to stay?

“A community of practice is a group of people who share knowledge, learn together and create common practices. Communities of practice share information, insight, experience and tools about an area of common interest.” (Richard McDermott), this group of people is also integrated according to the concerns and passions that they have (Wenger, 2006), their reason for being together is the learning and it can be enhanced with the members’ interaction.

Knowledge is integrated in the life of communities (Cross, 2003). This is not a new issue for education, theories in second language acquisition such as the socio cultural theory (Vygostky, 1978) evidences that since many years ago the social learning has been studied in order to find why people learn more during the practice and real experiences than attending to other instructions. The socio cultural theory is based on the asseverations that human mental functioning is a mediated process which is organized by cultural artifacts, activities and concepts which are the base for cognitive changes as a result of using cultural tools in social interrelation. Besides, although human beings have neurobiological abilities for learning, it is more important the interaction within social and material environments to develop cognitive activities (VanPatten, B. & Williams, J. 2007).

These aspects, just mentioned, are closely related to the communities of practices’ characteristics of interaction with other for learning for each other, in order to learn together, that means building relationships to share information and develop discussion for mutual help, which are a kind of mediation where factors such as social, cultural and environment tools facilitate learning. Another important aspect is the reality in which members of a community are immersed, if they are thinking about the same issues and they have similar ideas to support a topic or a project, or they are looking towards the same interests, the interaction and fluency of knowledge will allow better interchange of knowledge and at the same time enhancing of learning processes. In that way, learning is much more accurate and valid, this is because it fosters (produces) a transformation where all the members of a community are committed to enhance their performance and their learning environment.

With this background it is possible to say that learning is social and is an act of participation. As Cross (2003, based on Charles Handy) argues the learning given in real contexts, with real situations of the life and real problems is the best way of learning. in this way, meaningful learning takes place, since between the relationship teaching and learning the social context and the environment provide enough elements for learners to appropriate of the knowledge in a effective and efficient way.

Possibly, that is the reason why Bronwyn Stuckey wrote “Much of what is made explicit in Communities of Practice happens at coffee, over lunch or at the famous water cooler. People chat and share ‘war stories’ and volunteer information to support colleagues and collaborate in informal ways. Do you believe we can formalize this process? How can we use online technologies to do this? How can we make use of these powerful and supportive sharing experiences for learning in distributed workplaces and for professional development?”.

On the other hand, technological tools have improved the channels to share information and communities are easily established with many people from different parts of the world. Day by day communication is easier and faster, it is possible to interchange information (any kind of information) and the only thing is to find the tool on the web, tools like Moodle, Ning, Twitter, blogs, wikis, podcasts and micro blogging have opened up a wealth of opportunities for professionals and learners to learn from others. That is a great advantage for people to develop communities of practice, given that many people around the world have the same interests, needs, concerns or passions. Therefore, it is relevant to mention here the social networking which is helpful to share with others in casual conversations the different experiences that in different ways can help to improve others’ practices and performance and the most important issue to build knowledge.

Finally, after a depth analysis about the communities of practice description, a question arises: are communities of practice here to stay? Maybe, this is the moment to talk about lifelong learning that is a continue process where people learn from own experiences and others’ experiences by implementing personal learning strategies. For lifelong learning the community is very important as a big part of this process, and as an important mediation between people and learning. So, the answer for this question can be YES, however, the characteristics and the ways of working will be changing day by day according to the communities’ necessities and the technological tools than are constantly advancing.



References:
• Cross, Jay (2003) Informal Learning – the other 80%. Retrieved from http://www.internettime.com/Learning/The%20Other%2080%25.htm
• Wenger, E. (2006). A community of practice. A brief introduction. Retrieved of may 23rd, 2010, from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm
• VanPatten, B. & Williams, J. (2007) Theories in second language acquisition. An introduction. New Jersey. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. publishers.