"Second Life" Life in the virtual classroom

"Second Life" Life in the “virtual classroom”

Today I would like to share my feelings about a virtual game called "Second Life". In order to understand its benefit and harm in case of using in an EFL classroom I decided to play it myself first.  During playing the game I experienced both some beneficial and also disturbing procedures. There are many opportunities given in this virtual field that can be used for collaborative work. The audio and written chat settings let the students connect with each other, and why not, also people from different countries that allow them communicate and practice the language freely in addition to that getting acquainted with other cultures. While I was playing the game I managed to talk to people from Russia, Spain and Australia and ask some questions connected with the game and they suggested the links to places they liked. Moving from one place to another and discovering new places will be interesting to teenage and adult students which also I think can improve their creative thinking and problem solving skills. They may also share their feelings with their classmates, as well as with the teacher getting some advice and feedback from her. So, as we can see if not the whole but the part of the classroom procedure can be spent in the “virtual classroom” with unusual conditions (E.g. students can be at the seaside or on a dance floor). All these things sound perfect and joyful learning atmosphere but there may also be some negative influence of teaching through virtual games.

The first and important problem I faced during the game which I think my students will probably face in the future too was the pace and the quality of the game. I think it can depend on both my computer and the internet connection. I had to wait for a long time for my avatar to move or change the clothes or car or to type a message to a person because he/she answered immediately and I was hardly typing for five minutes because of the pace. I think the latter can be a serious reason for some teachers that will not use this type of teaching tool in their classroom in Armenia because this problem is common here and also having lack of computers in many schools of Armenia this is hardly going to become commonly used technology tool here. But anyway I hope that someday I can use this type of games in my teaching without having fears that my students will face problems with it.

Digital Games

Digital Games

I suppose most interactive way of teaching English  is doing it through digital games. 

First time when I heard about teaching through digital games, I thought "how can playing a game on the computer help to learn English".

Based on  the literature reviewed and my own experience of  playing digital games, I came into a conclusion that it can help to improve spelling and reading skills . When someone opens the game for the first time and wants to play, first thing he/she does is reading and following steps. If the game has audio instructions it may also build and improve listening skills. The way that IF works helps to improve spelling and writing skills because the player writes instructions for the game character. So one can completely build all four skills through playing computer games.

Along with making positive impression and being beneficial, digital games may also harm or have no results in ELL in case of not using them efficiently. First of all, the interactive part of digital games is more than learning one, so the children can get addicted very easily. Secondly, the little children may not benefit from the perspective of language not being able to realize what is their main task to play those games.For that reason I think that the digital games should be applied with the children above 15 years old, when they  will realize the purpose of the game in EFL classroom.
Finally,  here the role of the teacher  is also  very essential  to choose and assign  his/her students properly selected games, where the main focus will be on using language and imagination rather than mechanical actions.
So, Digital games in TEFL can be very effective and engaging  tool when teachers use them wisely. :)

Creating Videos

Creating Videos

To feel yourself a director for several moments is a wonderful, and enjoying the best results of your own film brings wonderful feelings but what about the sufferings before that?

The first and the vital issue for video creation is to decide the topic which should be interesting to our audience and close to our hearts, and  which is the most important for us- English teachers, is that it should include language-meaningful language. Having all above mentioned prepared, after comes next step to consider

Having thousands and thousands video shootings that need to be cut and adjusted proper to the logical sequencing and pleasurable to different eye sights. That is where the most complicated procedure comes and it brings with it a lot of technological barriers that the video creator can face. The latter for use takes time to be solved.

Apart from the all above mentioned shortcomings that video production can have it may also lead to creation of very essential and educational materials that can be used in an EFL classroom not only from the language perspective but also the topics that are alarming nowadays. For example, being creative and unique personalities, students, acting as producers, can touch upon different problems that our world is under threat to and suggest various solutions to them trying to “save the world” somehow(e.g. environmental issues -pollution, Global warming etc.). 

So we can conclude that although creating videos for EFL classroom may be time consuming and sometimes hard to get along with the technology, it can be very useful and informative guarantying for students never forget the material they have made on their own efforts.

Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling

          When we hear the word storytelling, we immediately imagine lots of children sitting in the classroom around the teacher and the teacher enthusiastically reading the story for them. Digital story-telling is a little bit another type of storytelling that teachers are unable to imply without technology.

According to Robertson, (2010) Digital storytelling is the art of combining storytelling with some mixture of digital graphics, text, recorded audio narration, video, and music to communicate information about a specific theme or topic. So here we combine new and old: technology and traditional storytelling.

As in Armenia it is less developed and almost not implemented in an EFL classroom I cannot say how well it can be accepted by the Armenian students, but one think I know for sure that is Armenian students need more collaborative and cooperative projects which digital storytelling can supply.

Using digital storytelling in an EFL classroom is very engaging and inspiring. Most often children interview their parents and relatives, come to the classroom discuss the scripts and make their group digital storytelling project together with their partners.

According to Robertson, (2010), students who work together on long-term projects are less likely to be absent. They also develop cooperation and communication skills, practice problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, and improve their test scores. When students integrate technology into their projects, these benefits increase.

For me as a teacher will be pleasure to teach my students with new technology and tools, besides I thing that students in Armenia will also enjoy learning how to make their own stories and have something to remember that they will include there and of course keep it for future because technologies change very quickly and may be some day people may forget about such kind of teaching technology tool as digital storytelling.

Wikis

Wikis

A wiki is usually a web application which allows people to add, modify, or delete content in 
collaboration with others.

 It is generally used as a natural tool for distant education and not only, that enables instructors to create collaborative activities for their students. Students are able to present course and project information, add links, ask and answer each other’s questions. (Linda Scwarts et.al., 2004)  

Here you can go to this link and watch an interesting video bout wiki history http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVFPW0r4jWk

Based on the classroom discussion and my personal experience of using wikis I found out some interesting, positive and negative sides of using wikis.

First of all, it is interesting to follow and continue someone’s idea. In this case students are obliged to read their peers’ work before writing something, so it can be very useful for practicing reading and writing.

Secondly, Students are learning new ideas from their classmates.

Finally, in general cases collaboration may highly occur and students sometimes can come up with the new topic out of the one that the teacher gave to them, which leads to raise their creativity very often.

While talking about wikis it is also worth talking about some things that I didn’t like.

As most of my classmates, I also think that it is not fair to edit someone’s work in wiki account i.e. delete pictures that he/she uploaded, change the sentences etc. because I suppose that the person spent time on searching the picture/link/video and also on coming up with some ideas that s/he wrote, so I would not let my students to do that in order not to be disappointed.

Besides, I think that the teacher should be very careful while signing up the assignment and take into consideration all the criteria of assessment (word count, content etc.) that assignment may need.

Finally, we are not guaranteed from technical problems that may occur while working with wikis. For example I had to write the content twice because first time I wrote, it sucked and didn’t save the content, so had to do the same work twice wasting my time.

In general, as teachers we should concern about our students’ need of using wikis in Armenia because it is not widely used tool in our schools and universities.

According to Linda Scwarts et.al., (2004), wikis are more often used by specific departments for specific information and discussion topics  than for  campus- wide uses.

So, we can suppose that anyway wikis can be a strong tool that  teachers might widely use.

As for me it is qwite difficult to say whether I am going to use wikis in my teaching or not because I need to explore more and find out more about them, but I hope that I will reflect on it  in my further reflections.