I really enjoyed reading what Julia had to say about LAMS in her post The Wolf and the LAMS. It has a lot of potential for helping students to learn languages as it is interactive and allows for a lot of communication based activities and tasks. Christopher Alexander gives an easy to understand overview of what LAMS is and explains the benefits that it can have for teaching and learning, An Overview of LAMS, which I found very useful as I was not at all familiar with this program before. I can see very practical uses for it in the classroom, especially the opportunity to use it as a learning network between students here and in other countries (as mentioned in my previous blog modern day penfriends). Again it’s emphasis is on the autonomy of students and encouraging them to take control of their own learning and extend it as far as they can. Another important feature of LAMS is that it is not just for students’ learning, teachers can also access LAMS to find lesson plans, resources and innovative ideas for using LAMS in their classes. There are several sites (like the youtube video above) to help teachers get started with LAMS and to continue to expand their own learning along with the students.
I have recently read some very interesting studies by Mark Warschauer (see Computer-Mediated Collaborative Learning and Computer Learning Networks and Student Empowerment) about the positive effects that learning networks have on a student’s autonomy and learning skills. Unfortunately during prac I didn’t have the time or the means to set up that sort of connection for my students but I can’t wait to have a go when I get my own class. I think that not only is it a great way for the students to take their learning into their own hands, most importantly it is an opportunity for them to experiece the culture and the language in an authentic environment. With the technology that is now available, students can begin speaking French with French people immediately, they don’t have to wait to bump into them on the street or search them out, they can connect to the internet and they are there waiting for them. There is a chance for relationships to develop thanks to the rapidity of e-mail and instant-messaging, and the fact that students are already communicating with each other through these mediums. Gone are the days of long and laborious letter writing, that was only for the really motivated students, now everyone can benefit.
According to the co-creator of Webquests, Tom March, a real WebQuest is a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students’ investigation of an open-ended question, development of individual expertise, and participation in a group process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding (see March’s blog post The Learning Power of Webquests). There are many elements that go into making an effective Webquest and yet when I did a google search to find some on the internet none of them fitted the description. True the tasks required the use of the internet but only in order to look up basic information. A cloze passage or a find a word would have been just as effective in achieving the same educational goals. Here is a link to an example of what I am talking about, French Speaking Countries Webquest, it directs the students to the exact place where all the information canbe found and they simply transfer this information into a powerpoint presentation, hopefully osmosis will have caused them to retain some of what they have learned. Now there are endless possibilities for the students to be exposed to authentic French texts via the internet (as opposed to ratty old copies of newspaper the French teacher pulled out every year when I was at school). What they are learning about can be current and relevant to their everyday lives. These webquests are another example of teachers being on the right track and wanting to incorporate the technology into the classroom but not realising the potential it actually has for authentic learning.
Al Upton has been very vocal in the positive aspects of using technology in the classroom. In this interview for E-learning Insights he discusses the success that his class has had using blogging as a learning tool. The simple truth is that students are already on-line. They share their lives, interact with peers and they have personal spaces on a range of different web-sites. Despite teachers perhaps not being as technologically savvy as their students what they can offer is their life skills and wisdom. They need to direct the students to make correct choices about the way they use the internet and ensure that they are learning from the tasks that they are doing. Teachers should not be afraid to let go of control and allow the students to teach them something. Another important aspect of blogging or publishing work on the internet is that the students now have an audience for their work and therefore take pride in what they are doing and are more motivated to do the work. It is inspiring to hear Al Upton talk about the enthusiasm his students had for their blog project both before and after the project took place. He also mentioned a tool called voicethread which is amazing. It is a great way to safely collaborate on projects either with people in the same class or members of Ed.voicethread. I googled it to find out more and am really looking forward to using it in class.
There are a number of reasons why googledocs is a practical way to access all of your documents (see tutorial above). Personally I have found it helpful because I have been living between two destinations and two PCs which means I either e-mail myself the work I have been doing, creating many copies of the one document, as in the video or I save things on my USB key which, despite being the super-organised person that I am, I do not always remember to pack, which leaves me in a difficult situation. Googledocs is great because as long as you are connected to the internet you can access any of your documents and as mentioned in the tutorial, it is not just word documents, you can do spreadsheets and presentations. Miriam’s blog posting about google docs was really helpful as it explained how this program can be used to help students too. It is a great way for students to work collaboratively on projects, it is free and very easy to use and most importantly students will no longer be able to use the excuse “I forgot my homework”, everything can be seen in their googledocs account. I also appreciated Miriam’s points about the downside to googledocs. It is important that teachers be aware of both the positive and negative aspects of the technology they are using especially when working with young people. It is a good idea to seek professional opinions from peers or to do some research before using the software in class, just in case.
