There were fewer students present this time around … but I don't think they were frightened off by the assessment! I'd heard from three of them that circumstance prevented their attending, and I'm going to organise a new meeting next week for those that had to miss the meeting.
Most of the activity was concentrated on the presentations themselves (you can read about the formalities of that on the How to Pass! page within the Business Pages section of the course web site. These assessments pose something of a lesson-planning problem, since you have to give each student enough time to present, to ask questions and to receive feedback. Everyone who presented exceeded the limit of 5 minutes by about 30 seconds (they were very regular!), and each 'package' (of presentation and feedback) took about 10 minutes in all. That means that a group of 24 students would need the entire two hours in order to present.
As it was, we started with a warm-up, and finished with some practice for the role play exam next time around, so you would realistically need 2.5 hours to assess 24 students.
This assessment process makes very high demands on the teacher. You have to be fully concentrated all the time, and be able to give both instant and detailed feedback, whilst managing to record everything, and avoiding making statements to the students which bring them down, rather than lifting them up! Who says men don't have simultaneous capacity! I prepared a new layout on the course database (and upgraded it this morning), to make my marking clearer both to me and to the students. I showed everyone a copy of my marksheet before they began.
This morning I added a field for my detailed comments, and so was able to generate a .pdf document for each student with her mark and my comment on it. I refrained from giving numerical marks publicly yesterday evening. This is an ethical question for me: specific judgements should be made privately, in my opinion, although making more general statements about how I felt they did is part of my public job.
I haven't heard yet what the students think about my marking and feedback … but I daresay I will soon!
One magic moment last night was when one of the students let us all know where she was in real life last night. She usually logs in from her office just across the yard from where I sit … but last night she was at her sister's house just outside Tel-Aviv in Israel! We wouldn't have know if she hadn't told us …
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
Thursday, 13 March 2008
Getting ready for Assessment 1
Once again, things have been really hectic since I last had a chance to give the Oral Production course some attention (I've just given feedback on about 55 Business Writing Warm-Ups …). However, things have been fairly quiet on that front too. I've been contacted by one worried student who wanted to know when the extra Assessment 1 material would be put out on the web site … and now, finally, it is.
What I've done today is to construct a page of hints and tips about making presentations (which is what Assessment 1 is all about), make a blog entry on the course blog and a podcast which is now out on the podcast site.
What happens next is that I plan the lesson in detail. One of the tasks I have is planning the activities for the people who aren't making presentations at a given moment, and another is creating a well-balanced lesson which doesn't *only* deal with presentations.
The assessment is going to need to be handled sensitively too. I feel that it's important that feedback is given individually and privately when you're allocating marks to people, but, on the other hand, both the presenter and the listeners want some kind of indication from me of what I thought of it. I don't think there's an instruction manual for this kind of teacher activity - I'll have to rely on my experience …
I've also got a couple of role plays to get out on the course web site: a practice one for Course Meeting 3 and the exam one for Course Meeting 4.
What I've done today is to construct a page of hints and tips about making presentations (which is what Assessment 1 is all about), make a blog entry on the course blog and a podcast which is now out on the podcast site.
What happens next is that I plan the lesson in detail. One of the tasks I have is planning the activities for the people who aren't making presentations at a given moment, and another is creating a well-balanced lesson which doesn't *only* deal with presentations.
The assessment is going to need to be handled sensitively too. I feel that it's important that feedback is given individually and privately when you're allocating marks to people, but, on the other hand, both the presenter and the listeners want some kind of indication from me of what I thought of it. I don't think there's an instruction manual for this kind of teacher activity - I'll have to rely on my experience …
I've also got a couple of role plays to get out on the course web site: a practice one for Course Meeting 3 and the exam one for Course Meeting 4.
Friday, 29 February 2008
Course Meeting 2: Thursday, 28th February
We had seven students present, and were joined by one of the US buddies later on in the session. The lesson plan is out on the course web site (Meeting 2 link), together with a couple of pages about the different activities we completed.
We started in Peer Gynt with a run-through of the evening's activities: Picking out the Porkies, practice presentations & a practice role play. I also took the students through the marking criteria for Assessments 1 & 2 (take a look at the Business Pages section of the course web site) as a preparation for the evening's activities.
Then we moved over to the campfire, where I told them tall stories of my experience as a teacher, slipping in one outright lie. The actual task for the students was to practise interjecting comments and questions of their own, but they also had fun trying to work out which one was the lie (they failed miserably!). You can read which stories I told in the Meeting 2 section of the course web site.
The next activity was for the students to present their experiences on SL to each other (in one group of 3 and another of 4). Then they had to produce a summary to present at plenary session. One group stayed around the campfire, whilst the other moved to Yggrasil, where they could sit around a table (I haven't worked out how to send the tables up into the air yet!). That way, they didn't disturb each other whilst they spoke … but they were sufficiently close to each other not to waste time when they met up again.
I learned a new technique for monitoring: at the campfire I hovered in the air above them, and was thus able to hear, without being an obtrusive presence; at Yggrasil it was even more fun, since I could stand on the canopy and hear without being seen at all! In general the technology worked even better this time - no-one had any technical problems, and we're working out an etiquette of turning off your mike when you're not actually talking (so we hear less about the domestic arrangements of the students as we work!).
The last activity was the first practice role play: Poisoning the pigeons in the park (thanks to Tom Lehrer!). You can read about the situation on the course web site. Once again, they worked in two groups. I briefed everyone in Peer Gynt before we got going and allocated people to roles.
We used Yggrasil again, and I sent the first group off there first to get themselves sat down and prepare for the activity. Derek had turned up by this time and followed what we did with great interest. We used the convention that the active participants sat down, whilst the observers remained standing, and concentrated their attention on the inputs of the person who was playing the same role as themselves.
The first group were very combative and communicative - but not so good at using the right kind of social discourse language. Derek gave his feedback too about how he experienced the tone of their conversation - and he said all the right things about needing more 'lubrication' to avoid insulting people. I gave the observers (students) the opportunity to give feedback first and then I gave my overall feedback.
The second group was then very subdued, and incredibly polite and careful with each other! Perfect! It gave me the opportunity to talk about calibrating your language properly (we're going to need a session about this next time).
After I signed off, some of the students carried on with individual sessions with their US buddies. I recorded the podcast, made an electronic copy of 'what you said …' and amended the web pages (which I'd managed to put on line only just before Meeting 2).
Things get a bit more relaxing now, so I'm hoping that everything will be up to date in good time for next time (when I'm actually going to be allocating marks to Assessment 1 and giving feedback …).
We started in Peer Gynt with a run-through of the evening's activities: Picking out the Porkies, practice presentations & a practice role play. I also took the students through the marking criteria for Assessments 1 & 2 (take a look at the Business Pages section of the course web site) as a preparation for the evening's activities.
Then we moved over to the campfire, where I told them tall stories of my experience as a teacher, slipping in one outright lie. The actual task for the students was to practise interjecting comments and questions of their own, but they also had fun trying to work out which one was the lie (they failed miserably!). You can read which stories I told in the Meeting 2 section of the course web site.
The next activity was for the students to present their experiences on SL to each other (in one group of 3 and another of 4). Then they had to produce a summary to present at plenary session. One group stayed around the campfire, whilst the other moved to Yggrasil, where they could sit around a table (I haven't worked out how to send the tables up into the air yet!). That way, they didn't disturb each other whilst they spoke … but they were sufficiently close to each other not to waste time when they met up again.
I learned a new technique for monitoring: at the campfire I hovered in the air above them, and was thus able to hear, without being an obtrusive presence; at Yggrasil it was even more fun, since I could stand on the canopy and hear without being seen at all! In general the technology worked even better this time - no-one had any technical problems, and we're working out an etiquette of turning off your mike when you're not actually talking (so we hear less about the domestic arrangements of the students as we work!).
The last activity was the first practice role play: Poisoning the pigeons in the park (thanks to Tom Lehrer!). You can read about the situation on the course web site. Once again, they worked in two groups. I briefed everyone in Peer Gynt before we got going and allocated people to roles.
We used Yggrasil again, and I sent the first group off there first to get themselves sat down and prepare for the activity. Derek had turned up by this time and followed what we did with great interest. We used the convention that the active participants sat down, whilst the observers remained standing, and concentrated their attention on the inputs of the person who was playing the same role as themselves.
The first group were very combative and communicative - but not so good at using the right kind of social discourse language. Derek gave his feedback too about how he experienced the tone of their conversation - and he said all the right things about needing more 'lubrication' to avoid insulting people. I gave the observers (students) the opportunity to give feedback first and then I gave my overall feedback.
The second group was then very subdued, and incredibly polite and careful with each other! Perfect! It gave me the opportunity to talk about calibrating your language properly (we're going to need a session about this next time).
After I signed off, some of the students carried on with individual sessions with their US buddies. I recorded the podcast, made an electronic copy of 'what you said …' and amended the web pages (which I'd managed to put on line only just before Meeting 2).
Things get a bit more relaxing now, so I'm hoping that everything will be up to date in good time for next time (when I'm actually going to be allocating marks to Assessment 1 and giving feedback …).
What's been going on since Course Meeting 1
The brief answer is: I've been busy! However, the Oral Production course has also been fairly quiet, as the students have been busy getting together with their US counterparts, and exploring SL.
The student in Estonia has run into a common problem: her working schedule has changed and Thursday evenings are now difficult to impossible for her. The question, then, was: can I still study the course? My answer was 'yes' - it'll cause me a little bit of inconvenience, but I'm sure I can rustle up a small group of students who can converse with her at other times than the ones in the schedule.
Two people had problems getting in touch with their buddies, but I managed to liaise with Bryan about this and put people into contact with each other.
I've also been booked to present 'cross-cultural communication' on the OP course at a conference in London on 15th March. I'm going to use Adobe Connect (since I haven't got time to go over to London for the weekend), and I've booked Luisa Panichi (Pisa) and Bryan Carter (Missouri) for an iChat AV three-way recorded video chat about how their students have experienced the various contacts. This'll be available as a Quicktime movie file, if anyone's interested.
My next post will be all about Course Meeting 2.
The student in Estonia has run into a common problem: her working schedule has changed and Thursday evenings are now difficult to impossible for her. The question, then, was: can I still study the course? My answer was 'yes' - it'll cause me a little bit of inconvenience, but I'm sure I can rustle up a small group of students who can converse with her at other times than the ones in the schedule.
Two people had problems getting in touch with their buddies, but I managed to liaise with Bryan about this and put people into contact with each other.
I've also been booked to present 'cross-cultural communication' on the OP course at a conference in London on 15th March. I'm going to use Adobe Connect (since I haven't got time to go over to London for the weekend), and I've booked Luisa Panichi (Pisa) and Bryan Carter (Missouri) for an iChat AV three-way recorded video chat about how their students have experienced the various contacts. This'll be available as a Quicktime movie file, if anyone's interested.
My next post will be all about Course Meeting 2.
Friday, 15 February 2008
Lessons learned from Course Meeting 1
• Course information needs to be both more and less specific. I don't think that many students have read (and/or remembered) either the Welcome letter or the Business Pages on the course web site. This doesn't mean 'abandon them', but rather 'take steps to ensure that the right information gets to the students at the right time'. Too much info too soon is a waste of time, but it's difficult to know in advance how much 'too much' is.
• I need to be both clearer in my instructions about 'micro-level' tasks, and more disciplined about timing and outcomes. There seemed to be very little 'what does he want us to do?' yesterday, but I want there to be none. This is a disruptive environment for instruction-giving (which is why it's so useful for its present purpose), so that requires me to be absolutely tight in my planning and execution … paradoxically, that's the only way I can retain the chance to be flexible!
• I need to explore the group room area on Kamimo. I don't actually know how it works right now - but I'll learn before next session on 28th February. This may well remove the problem that students don't move sufficiently far away from each other when they break up into small groups, so they disturb each other's discussions. I'll get on to Judith today to book a time when she can teach me.
• The environment really came alive last night. Several people mentioned spontaneously how much more fun Kamimo is than most of the other places they've visited in world. I suspect that one major factor is Design Container's and the Kamimo team's (but not my!) sterling work in designing the environment. Another is probably the 'magic' of being able to just talk to people in a natural way, despite their being in completely different geographical locations.
• I started addressing people by their avatar names, rather than their real names yesterday …
• Keynote is a great programme for making visuals to go on the whiteboard. I exported my presentation as .jpg (having first learned not to fill the screen too much, since the Kamimo whiteboard is both narrow and shorter than a Keynote screen), and then uploaded them to my Textures folder. This costs L$10 per .jpg.
• I need to be both clearer in my instructions about 'micro-level' tasks, and more disciplined about timing and outcomes. There seemed to be very little 'what does he want us to do?' yesterday, but I want there to be none. This is a disruptive environment for instruction-giving (which is why it's so useful for its present purpose), so that requires me to be absolutely tight in my planning and execution … paradoxically, that's the only way I can retain the chance to be flexible!
• I need to explore the group room area on Kamimo. I don't actually know how it works right now - but I'll learn before next session on 28th February. This may well remove the problem that students don't move sufficiently far away from each other when they break up into small groups, so they disturb each other's discussions. I'll get on to Judith today to book a time when she can teach me.
• The environment really came alive last night. Several people mentioned spontaneously how much more fun Kamimo is than most of the other places they've visited in world. I suspect that one major factor is Design Container's and the Kamimo team's (but not my!) sterling work in designing the environment. Another is probably the 'magic' of being able to just talk to people in a natural way, despite their being in completely different geographical locations.
• I started addressing people by their avatar names, rather than their real names yesterday …
• Keynote is a great programme for making visuals to go on the whiteboard. I exported my presentation as .jpg (having first learned not to fill the screen too much, since the Kamimo whiteboard is both narrow and shorter than a Keynote screen), and then uploaded them to my Textures folder. This costs L$10 per .jpg.
Course Meeting 1
Dr Samuel Johnson once used this simile of a dog walking on its hind legs (to illustrate some sexist point or other):"… It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." I didn't feel that my teaching was at its best yesterday evening when we had our first proper teaching session on Kamimo … but I think the students got by very well.
There are still uncertainties in the exact class list. One student popped up out of nowhere at about 4.00 pm yesterday (there have clearly been some problems with the on-line application procedure) and turned up quite out of the blue about halfway through the lesson. Another student appeared late too, with the voices of his kids coming across loud and clear! However, this is about par for the course with an ICT-based distance course - the administrative procedures surrounding them are still back in the dark ages.
I can see, though, that students are going to need a touch more specific instruction about setting sound levels, etc. Not much, but some. I gave two of the participants last night on-the-hoof instructions about how to get voice chat going, and it worked fine, but I could equally well have directed them to a web page in advance with the same instructions on it.
We followed the lesson planning more or less exactly. There were just two activities which switched places (breaking in and active listening). I also demanded less of the students when it came to making their own presentations, but concentrated instead on getting them used to the environment, and getting used to the idea that there is a different pattern of social interaction in English when it comes to listening and speaking in more informal groups.
The video recording worked fairly well. SnapzPro also behaved itself, but I restricted each recording to just over 10 minutes to create smaller file sizes. Then it took at least 10 minutes for each Quicktime movie to be processed and saved. The net result was that I managed to make four files of about 12 minutes each during a 120-minute lesson (i.e. not quite half). I'll experiment with SnapzPro when I'm off line to see what happens when you make a two-hour recording (I suspect that it's not going to work, since 12 minutes = 1.2GB).
I used my 'on-line lessons' kitchen timer to make sure I kept to my times too - it's very easy to lose track of time when you're on line.
I'll make another post about lessons learned.
There are still uncertainties in the exact class list. One student popped up out of nowhere at about 4.00 pm yesterday (there have clearly been some problems with the on-line application procedure) and turned up quite out of the blue about halfway through the lesson. Another student appeared late too, with the voices of his kids coming across loud and clear! However, this is about par for the course with an ICT-based distance course - the administrative procedures surrounding them are still back in the dark ages.
I can see, though, that students are going to need a touch more specific instruction about setting sound levels, etc. Not much, but some. I gave two of the participants last night on-the-hoof instructions about how to get voice chat going, and it worked fine, but I could equally well have directed them to a web page in advance with the same instructions on it.
We followed the lesson planning more or less exactly. There were just two activities which switched places (breaking in and active listening). I also demanded less of the students when it came to making their own presentations, but concentrated instead on getting them used to the environment, and getting used to the idea that there is a different pattern of social interaction in English when it comes to listening and speaking in more informal groups.
The video recording worked fairly well. SnapzPro also behaved itself, but I restricted each recording to just over 10 minutes to create smaller file sizes. Then it took at least 10 minutes for each Quicktime movie to be processed and saved. The net result was that I managed to make four files of about 12 minutes each during a 120-minute lesson (i.e. not quite half). I'll experiment with SnapzPro when I'm off line to see what happens when you make a two-hour recording (I suspect that it's not going to work, since 12 minutes = 1.2GB).
I used my 'on-line lessons' kitchen timer to make sure I kept to my times too - it's very easy to lose track of time when you're on line.
I'll make another post about lessons learned.
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
Course Launch Mark 2
Students from Partille and Molde turned up (but not my student from Lund). The Snapz Pro recording seemed to work this time, and both students managed to get their audio chat to work in the end.
Then there was an interesting diversion: a Canadian from Montreal turned up, who only spoke French! I ended up putting her in the dragonfly, so that she could take a look around … This is one of those 'etiquette' problems we'll have to deal with …
Then there was an interesting diversion: a Canadian from Montreal turned up, who only spoke French! I ended up putting her in the dragonfly, so that she could take a look around … This is one of those 'etiquette' problems we'll have to deal with …
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