Answering the Questions – Fieldtrip to Kirchhain

Finally we made it to visit the Alfred-Wegener school in Kirchhain to find out more about the possibilities of using new media in school. We went to Kirchhain because the school was „Medienschule des Monats Januar 2009“. Beforehand we were demanded to think about some questions we can ask our guide Mr Schouler. Now I am going to write down his answers to our questions:

Do you offer any voluntary courses for students who want to expand their skills using the computer for educational purposes, such as how to prepare a presentation, how to use the internet for research or even for self-directed learning?

• An introductory course is offered for all fifth grade students. This course is hold in an additional lesson and last for six weeks. Within this course the students are introduced to the basic information and processes on new media usage.

Has the teaching staff been properly introduced and trained to work with the computer lab and to use the new media effectively in teaching?

• There was an introductory course for the teachers as well. This course was hold seven years ago within the project „Schule der Zukunft“. The course was voluntary and the teachers could take part by their own choise but many teachers participated. If there is still a lack of new media competences an extra course will be hold if required.

Who is responsible for the administration and maintenance of the computer lab?

• In the past the teachers primarily with the subject of computer sciences monitored and repaired the computer labs but this was a lot of more work for them. For this reason the school appoint a special administrator who cares for the computer labs.

Does the school provide portable video-projectors and laptops and is it possible to access the internet as well?

• Both teachers and students have the opportunity to borrow laptops and video-projectors for in-class purposes. This material is often used and therefore it needs to be booked beforehand!

How often is the computer la used and for what purpose and subjects?

• This varies! Some teachers use the computer lab quite often and others (mainly older teachers) don’t use it that much. Mr Schouler told us that the lab is used mainly for subjects like computer science and for subjects of the humanities like English or German.

What experiences in using the computer lab and the new media teaching do you have and for what purposes do you use the computer lab?

• Mr Schouler said that he thinks new media is an enrichment for school but only when it is used in an effective and suitable way. This means you should not only use new media tools because you have the possibility to. You should use them only hen it is appropriate and effective! He for example uses new media to run a blog with his students or to compile an own Wiki entry.

WebQuests – useful in the Foreign Language Classroom?

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet, optionally supplemented with video conferencing.
(Bernie Dodge, inventor of the WebQuest, on http://webquest.sdsu.edu/about_webquests.html)

In this  article the benefits of using Webquests in school will be discussed.

Before the advantages of WebQuests are presented, it has to be clarified what a WebQuest is and how it looks like. A WebQuest can be compared with a website, whereas its only content is the topic  which the pupils have to deal with and the problems and questions they have to solve. Although its look and its content depends on the person who creates it, i.e. mostly you as a teacher, it usually consists of the following parts. An introduction gives a short overview on the topic, it tells what the WebQuest is about. This part should be both informative and motivating. It is followed by the section where it is clearly explained what the pupils will have to do in general and how the WebQuest basically works. The explicit working tasks are presented step by step (or as groupwork) in the following sections.  Ideally every task is linked with sources where the pupils can start searching and working,m which does not mean that they necessarily have to only use these sources., unless the teacher wants them to do so. A last very useful part is the support section, where you can find out how to contact the instructor, where you can discuss further questions and find any other support you might need.

As far as I am concerned WebQuests are a special and useful medium to use in the Foreign Language Classroom. Pupils can work and learn independently, at their own pace and on topics they prefer. The sources to be used can be either well-selected by the teacher or freely researched by the pupils. Pupils can work in groups, for instance connected via internet, also at home and autonomously. Teachers can easily share WebQuests, so they can be edited, improved and made suitable for different kinds of learners. Results can be presented in any way

Another Online Game tested

It is not so easy to find good, i.e. those who are of pedagogical value, Online Games in the Internet. A reason for this is to be seen in the big quantity of available games, since only few of them are suitable for the classroom. A first constraint for my search was that I was only looking for Online Games which are free of charge. In addition they should be easy to handle both for the pupils and the teacher. Most important, they have to support the learning process of the pupils, be motivating and not just a waste of precious time.

On http://www.playkidsgames.com/vocabularyGames.htm I found a collection of three Vocabulary Games.

The major advantage of all of these games is that you can use your own vocabulary within the game. Simply add words or phrases with their meaning or explanation and create your “own” individual game. Your set of vocabulary can be presented and tested within three different contexts. In first game, which is called Stingray Chaser, you find yourself in the situation of a submarine. You have to “chase” letters which are attached to the backs of Stingrays. They can be freed by bubbles you can “shoot”. But be aware, don’t touch the harmful algae! Remove them from the screen using your bubbles. In the game Vocabulary Pinball, the letters are to be collected in form of lights in a Pinball Machine. If you have collected the letters of a word in either of the games , you have to find the corresponding explanation. If you can’t answer the question correctly, you will lose a life. In the Game Word or Problem Scramble you have to reorganise the letters of words.

The playful approach to vocabulary training will be quite motivating for the pupils. Older pupils may find it a bit childish. A real advantage is the fact that the teacher can decide which words are included and how the possibilities of answers look like, i.e. how difficult the tasks are.

WebQuest – Evaluating Online Games

We came up with six key aspects to evaluate online games:

• program specifics
• type of program
• field of application
• design of program
• quality of content
• didactic aspects

We had a look at several pages with online games that our course instructor had prepared for us. Finally we decided to evaluate the game collection provided by the CBBC, a platform especially for children by the British Broadcasting Corporation, which is a highly reliable source and offers authentic language material.

Questions for the Fieldtrip

Next week we are going to visit the Alfred-Wegener Schule in Kirchhain to take a look at how the new media could actually be used in school. Therefore we will take a closer look at the technical equipment the school has to offer and speak with a teacher about how the computer and other media can be integrated into the teaching process at school.

As a preparation for the trip we should think of some questions concerning the use of the media in teaching. Here are the questions we would like to ask:

General Questions

1. Has the teaching staff been properly introduced and trained to work with the computer lab and to use the new media effectively in teaching?
2. Are there any further training possibilities for teachers who would like to learn (more about) how they could make use of the computer lab and the new media for their teaching subject (more effectively)?
3. Do you offer any (voluntary) courses for students who want to expand their skills using the computer for educational purposes, for example how to prepare a presentation, how to use the internet for research or even for self-directed learning?
4. Who is responsible for the administration and maintenance of the computer lab?
5. Does the school provide portable video-projectors and laptops to show presentations, movie clips or audio data in the normal classroom and is it possible to access the internet as well?

How to … WordPressTV

This is a short screencast on how to sign up for WordPress.com and create your own blog.

On the WordPress.tv – How to site you can watch many other video tutorials of this kind (for beginners and experts). Check it out if you have any question or problem using WordPress or just browse through it to learn more about what is possible.

A Digital School Bag

In our third in-class session we talked about the digital school bag (“digitale Schultasche”). The digital school bag is a collection of open source software that is installed on a flash pen drive that can also contain all the required personal data of the user. The use of the digital school bag offers a highly flexible and consistent working environment since you can work with it at home and in school and basically on any computer with a Windows operating system. Besides the fact that you have all the data and programs you need on a small portable device this method offers many additional advantages. The digital school bag is free of charge and since no additional software has to be installed, there are no problems concerning the incompatibility of documents and programs and no additional disk space on the operating computer is required. However the digital software is only available for windows and depending on the speed of the pen drive used, the programs may work slower then usually.

The digital school bag can be downloaded from the German website of the Medienzentrum Kassel. The only requirement is a flash pen drive (at least 20 MB/s reading and 10 MB/s writing) with a capacity of at least one Gigabyte (however a two Gigabyte pen drive is recommended) that should be used only for this purpose. The website also provides a short manual und some frequently asked questions.

New Blogroll Categories

Hello there. As you may have noticed we have added two blogroll categories to our right sidebar. The first one contains links to all the other group weblogs from our seminar. The second category is called “Teacher Weblogs” and lists interesting and useful weblogs  mainly authored by English teachers.

Learning with ESL PodCards

In our second in-class session we dealt with a very interesting topic concerning learning activities with so-called PodCards. On the page www.eslpodcards.com you can listen to audio postcards that can help you to improve your listening skills with various practice opportunities. The auditory postcards contains a lot of fun topics and interesting information on particular towns and famous people of a certain country, movies and events. For every PodCard there are three to four worksheets which teachers can use in their classrooms as learning material while dealing with the audio files. The learner can check his knowledge on a certain topic by filling in gap texts or answering questions about facts mentioned in the spoken text. Additionally, it is possible to work on your English skills outside the classroom because you can download the auditory postcards to your iPod and listen to them wherever you like! I really like the idea of the PodCards because this method of learning includes a few features of New Media in FLE. For example, because of its audio-visual organization it activates more than one sense and thus related to multi-channel learning. Another motivating fact of this aim is that the learner can choose individually the topic he likes most among the audio postcards.

Link Page

We have created a new page where you can find an ordered collection of links we considered very useful for teachers and students. The collection subdivides into various topics and every individual link will be followed by a short description. We will try to keep it up-to-date and add new links from time to time.
If you encounter any dead links or have further suggestions to extend this list please let us know.