Answering questions in a VLE

Had a conversation today with the participants in the VLE about how they felt about answering questions in 'text chat' mode.  I can see that the advantage of this pedagogically is that more people get to answer, and it does help to show up any misunderstandings or misapprehensions that they are labouring under. On the other hand, it's more of a permenant record of a mistake and it's very public, so I wanted to know how people felt about this.  The people I asked acknowledged that this was true, but didn't find it too embarrassing.  Other things that were mentioned, however, were that :

• some people don't type fast, and so the touch typists have an advantage and that
• sometimes people don't know whether to type or talk. 

Re the second point, I think it is an idea to make this explicit and to 'train' people to understand that:

•  text chat works best as a whole group
• If you want to speak you should put up your hand or a confused icon etc
• When you're not speaking, you should turn off your mike -this is causing some problems in the breakout rooms with feedback.

What we did do today that was a great success was that the participants wrote on the whiteboard screen to provide answers and this worked very well, both in the breakout rooms and in the main room.

Beth Grant's thoughts on on-line teacher training

Hi, I am Barbara, half of the Bethandbarbara double act but we haven't yet learned the art of writing together when physically apart. Beth is at home in Cheltenham recuperating from a knee operation and I am in Northamptonshire, blogging and wondering who I am 'talking to', if anyone at all. Not that I am averse to a bit of talking to myself but for the real joy of communication I do like to know who I am talking to, to gauge reaction, to have encouragement to go on or even to see a glazed look to shut me up. The Microsoft dog barking at my typos is just not the same as a live human being. But that is the way it is these days, - we must use technology to communicate, to teach, to discuss, to keep up with friends, and even for language teaching and teacher training, the twin loves of my professional life.  So here are a few thoughts from this grumpy old teacher trainer.

Now I am not against computers, - in fact, one of my best friends is a computer, -well, I spend a lot of time with it, - but is this insistence on everything 'on-line' really the best way forward in teacher training?

I know, I know, -you can work in the comfort of your own home, at your own pace, in your own time…but lets consider a few aspects of teacher training that might want to get the teachers out of the comfort of their own homes and at a pre-set time not of their choosing, -what are the benefits?

People need people.- real voices,  real emotion, real smiles ,-the  demented smileys jumping up and down are a poor substitute. And when did a computer last pat you on the back or console you with tea and biscuits when you failed? The printed word is stark, nuances of intonation are lost and spur-of-the moment comments hard to include, - indeed, they rely on the toing and froing of ideas at the speed of sound.

The value of doing a taught teacher training course, be it CELTA, Delta or in-service courses, is surely the learning from colleagues and sharing ideas and experiences. Talking is a highly effective way to learn and I am not convinced that on-line discussion is the same. When I have taken part in moodle teacher training discussions, it seemed to me, comments have lacked depth (and dare I say it, wit?).

Cambridge ESOL no longer holds assessor meetings for standardising CELTA and Delta, - it's all done on-line with a brief feedback to tell assessors they have 'passed'.  I find it quite dispiriting, - I miss the contact with other professionals, I miss listening to other trainers' observations and experience, I miss the many good practice ideas I used to pick up. I know, the cost…. but is it relatively any more than it used to be?

Another concern is that lesson observation could move to videoed lessons rather than live observations, - video always seems to render lessons more boring, it can't capture the atmosphere, cameras can intimidate the learners and there is a danger that the trainees are jazzing up the lesson for the camera and reducing the learners to the role of wall-paper.

What about lesson feedback? How do you feel about lesson feedback via e-mail rather than a face-to-face discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of a lesson? Do you feel something is missing or are you relieved it's more impersonal and takes the sting out of any criticism? What about communicating with tutors and colleagues by e-mail? E-mails are undoubtedly quick, maybe too quick to judge by the appalling grammar and spelling often seen in them, -great for a bit of information but they always leave me feeling a bit cheated, especially when sent as a thank you or birthday greeting.

Finally, the 'virtual' staffroom. Of course, the websites run by the publishers are a huge benefit to teachers and trainees but in addition to and not instead of a real staffroom. Don't teachers benefit from the collegiate aspect of the staffroom, the buzz as teachers share successes in the break and the lesson ideas picked up at the photocopier? And how do you have an after work coffee/drink on line?

Well, that's my first blog finished, - it took much, much longer than speaking it would have done,-and worryingly there is now a permanent record of what I said, -but on the plus side, no-one interrupted, heckled, sent surreptitious text messages, nodded off… or maybe they did, how will I ever know?  Do tell me what you think.

Till the next time, happy teaching.

First session in Pilot 2!

Just finished the first session on the 'big' pilot.  A bit wierd because I don't know people, I have to say - a bit impoersonal - it's better in the breakout rooms.  Still, 10 people came plus one of the trainers who is interested popped in.  The big thing is just that there still is too much information in that frst session  it took an hour and a half and couldn't have been done in much less.  It would be good to ignore articles, but they're so important.  Could they be moved to the third session? 

Working blind, as it were, it's difficult to judge the level that people are at. Big difference between this and f2f is that you can't easily tell how easy/ difficult they are finding it.....

I sent out a quick review type homework (two sentences to parse) afterwards, and I thik that's a helpful idea. 

Transmission vs collaborative learning

One of the things I'm noticing is that on-lin teaching is probably better suited to a transission model, or at least, that's where the balabnce more naturally sits.  It's easy to tell people things, but the pairwork is harder. This doesn't sit easily with me,  as it makes for a much more teacher centred classroom and I felt last night as if I were dragging them through it (another lesson to keep learning is to limit the amount of material.....

The main problem is that the breakout rooms are a bit isolated - you can't keep your eye on them in the same way that you can in a class, and it's less easy to see whether they are stuck/ finished etc. One of the suggestions from feedback was to put a timer on the breakout sessions, so that they knew when they were coming back.  I did this last night and I think it was a good thing overall, but one comment was that in one case, they were given too long (it was only 2 minutes...) for a particular task.  You can easily move between rooms to check out how they are, of course.  The difficulty when they don't have microphones is that the breakout rooms are laborious for them and difficult to quickly assess for me.  Hopefully, in the next group, I've emphasised sufficiently that they need a mic and they'll mostly have one...

Thoughts from Nik Peachy

This was posted on the IATEFL ttedsig group  - digest number 1206  - 9th Feb 2011.  Thought it was interesting.
"Teaching is (broadly) a transferable skill and a good face-to-face teacher will
usually (not always) find that they are able to transfer
their good practice to new environments; their ability to reflect will enable
them to deal with the
difficulties / obstacles they encounter. "

This one I tend not to agree with. I think there are some teachers, possibly
exceptionally good ones, who will work best because they have a very direct face
to face connection to their students in class and for these teachers I think it
can be very difficult to transfer that to the online environment which can seem
very 'cold' and devoid of the kinds of paralingusitc 'clues' that many teachers
depend on. Teaching online can also undermine many of the very physical gestures
and techniques that classroom teachers use. It can be difficult and take a long
time to rebuild these and develop the same degree of comfort with expressing
yourself through your computer and digital tools.

These are just a few examples. I think it's a bit like saying that somepone who
is a good cyclist can tranfer those skills to become a good lorry driver. Well
yes, many of those skills are transferable, like respect for other road users,
knoledge of the rules of the road etc, but they also need a lot of support and
training to develop new skills and techniques too and time to adjust to a very
different environment with very different sensory indictators and connections.

best

Nik Peachey