‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات collaborative learning. إظهار كافة الرسائل
‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات collaborative learning. إظهار كافة الرسائل

Peer editing in digital and mobile environments

For years now I have been happily using EtherPad based services like http://primarypad.com/ and http://sync.in/ to get participants on the training courses I deliver to work collaboratively to create and peer edit texts. Increasingly though I've been having problems with the reliability of the free services these companies provide and the lack of reliable compatibility with mobile devices.


At last it seems that now I have a very elegant solution in the form of https://quip.com/.
Quip looks a lot like Evernote and has a similar interface with documents contained in notebooks, but one of the big differences is that Quip was designed specifically to enable peer editing and collaboration on documents and has a very clear way of showing and tracking the changes.

Here's a short tutorial showing you how it works:


Why should we get our students peer editing?
  • It improves their awareness of accuracy
  • It can improve the quality of their writing
  • Pushes students to accept that writing is a process that needs revisions and redrafting
  • The ability to collaborate in digital environments is likely to be an important real world digital literacy

What kinds of peer editing activities can we do with students?
  • We can give them texts with planted errors (10 - 20) in to work on a find and correct together. These could be the lyrics of songs they like or stories or articles they have read.
  • We can get students to correct each others' compositions before we look at them.
  • We can give them texts with specific features missed out and get them to work together to add them. These could be linking or referencing devices, punctuation, vocabulary words, grammatical features such as prepositions or articles etc.
  • We can get them working together to rearrange parts of a text into a better order or structure.
  • We can give them the bare structure of a story and ask them to embellish it and make it more descriptive and interesting.

What I like about Quip
  • It's free
  • Nicely designed interface
  • Works and looks well in both tablet  app form and in the browser
  • Clearly tracks and highlights changes to documents by different users
  • It looks secure and enables you to limit who sees and works on the document while editing
  • Has a kind of chat messaging feature which works along side the notes for changes
  • We can use it to get students collaborating and working together outside the classroom

What I'm not so sure about
  • It requires registration, which can slow things down in class, but it does also add a degree of security
  • I haven't tried it with larger groups yet so I'm not sure how reliably it will function when scaled up to say having a whole class work synchronously on a single document
  • Not sure how long it will stay free (There is a Quip Business already available)
I'm now looking forward to my next course so that I can try Quip out and get a bit more experience with it. I hope you also find it useful with your students. Do drop me a line and let me know how it goes.

Related links:


Best

Nik Peachey



    3 Tools for Exploiting the Wifi During Presentations

    Coming as I do from a background in language teaching that emphasises that the teacher should shut up and get the students to do the talking, I often feel uncomfortable doing conference presentations, many of which still follow the format of; speaker gets up in front of audience with presentation - does presentation - audience listen (try to stay awake) and desperately try to think of a few questions at the end to prove they were awake and listening.

    One of the gifted- Jamie Keddie.

    There are of course a few gifted speakers who can hold the audience’s attention for a full hour and keep most of them listening and awake. If like me you’re not one of those, then here are a few tools that, thanks to the increasing availability of wireless connectivity at conference centres these days, might help to turn your passive listeners into a bunch of multitasking audience collaborators.

    Set up a backchannel
    One of my favourite tools to use during presentations is Today’sMeet http://todaysmeet.com/ . It’s a great tool for setting up backchannels. A backchannel is basically what your students create when they talk among themselves or text each other during your lesson.
    • The advantage of setting one of these up to allow your audience to do this is that you can capture and share what your audience is saying while they are listening to you and enable them to collaborate and share with each other what they know about the topic and links to any relevant resources.
    • It can also help them to type in questions as they think of them rather than waiting for you to ask at the end, and for me it’s a great way to pass out URLs to interesting websites to give the audience some hands on participation during the presentation.
    • It’s also a good way of getting the audience to brainstorm and do tasks together, just ask a few questions and get them to type in answers, and they’ll appear in the backchannel window for everyone to see.

    Setting up a back channel with Today’s Meet takes about 60 seconds. You just type in a name for your channel and launch it. You can select how long you want the channel to be available (from two hours to a year) and if you have people in your audience posting updates to Twitter, you can select a hashtag (#) specific to your talk so that their ‘tweets’ appear alongside the backchannel chat window.

    Live polling
    Getting audience response during presentations can be done quite easily by getting a show of hands, but I tend to find that pretty unsatisfying in terms of capturing and sharing data, so I’ve started using a polling / survey tool called Urtak http://urtak.com/ during presentations.
    • With Urtak you can prepare a number of short online polls to to get your audience to do during the presentation.


    • Just send the URL to them using your backchannel and then you can show and capture your audience response live during your session, as Urtak collects and shares results as soon as people vote.
    • If you are logged in during your presentation it’s even quick and easy enough to create short polls on the fly and pass out the URL through your backchannel.
    Here’s an example one I created for a presentation on digital teaching skills that you can look at: http://urtak.com/u/1826 . Urtak even enables the audience to add questions if they register and log in.
    Make note taking collaborative
    Many listeners at presentations do their best to keep notes during presentations, so if your audience has wireless connectivity why not get them to do this collaboratively? A great tool for doing this is Sync.in http://sync.in/ .

    • It has a desktop launcher that your simply click to create an online collaborative note taking pad. You then share the URL for each pad with your audience and they can then work in groups to assemble notes and comments on your presentation as you go or work on collaborative tasks that you can set them.
    • The texts can then be saved by each person at the end of the presentation or they can even continue to refine the notes after the presentation is over. Sync.in also has a handy text chat room which runs alongside each document that’s created, so collaborators can discuss things and ask questions as they work. See Collaborative Text Editing Tool for more information on Sync.in.
    Of course these tools aren’t just useful for conference presentations, but can be used for online training webinars as well as classroom teaching if you work in a wireless enabled classroom environment. Be sure to practice with them one at a time first for short tasks as you gradually build them in to your presentation skills repertoire.

    Good luck and I hope you find these tools useful and soon have your audience multitasking as well as listening.

    Related links:
    Best

    Nik Peachey

    Brainstorm and Debate Collaboratively

    This morning I spotted Solvr on MakeUseOf and decided to give it a try. Solvr is a free easy and interesting way to collaboratively brainstorm and attempt to solve problems online.

    It's very simple set up. You just got to http://www.a.freshbrain.com/solvr/ type your problem into the field and then click 'Start'.
    You will then see your problem with a number of options underneath.


    You can add different elements of the problem, make suggestions by adding ideas and leave comments.

    The collaborative part comes in when you share the URL with someone, then other people can come and join in the problem solving and brainstorming. Here's the URL for the 'Making a living 'problem I set up.

    I also set up a problem earlier on today, which was about integrating technology into the ELT classroom. I added a couple of elements of the problem and then posted it to Twitter. With a few minutes, the problem started to develop as people added in comments solutions, and even started to vote on the solutions.


    If you would like to see how this problem is developing go to http://www.a.freshbrain.com/solvr/d/eltrilxlwu and feel free to contribute.

    So how do we use this with students?
    We can set up a whole range of debates and online collaborative tasks.
    • You could set up debates on the environment or other issues that your students find relevant. Here's an example on how to end world hunger. Each students could have their own topic to brainstorm the elements and causes of the problem, then students could exchange links and try to offer solutions to each other's problems.
    • You could use Solver to get anonymous feedback from your action research tasks. This would also enable you to enter into debate with the students and get a deeper level of understanding of their responses.
    • You could use it to address classroom issues or learning issues and explain some of the rationale behind activities. This would enable students to safely and anonymously discuss the issues with you. Here's an example We don't like reading in class
    • You could use it to brainstorm vocabulary around a topic or theme and then get your students to add definitions, and other elements of information about the words, like their parts of speech, collocations, example sentences etc. Here's an example on politics. Feel free to add to it.
    • We can get students to share their strategies for learning English. Example: How can we improve our English?
    • You could use Solvr to plan an events like a class outing, party or doing a play. This way you can get students to think about the different jobs involved and decisions to be made, decide who will do them and explore the potential obstacles.
    What's so good about it?
    • It's free. very quick and really simple to use.
    • It encourages critical thinking skills and the breaking down of problems into manageable elements.
    • It encourages debate and interactive discussion.
    • It's very versatile.
    • Great for interactive homework tasks
    • It can be used synchronously or asynchronously.
    • It can give students time to think about and review what they write.
    • Students can see the ebb and flow of ideas and opinions and the way they interact.
    • Solvr also seems to work in Second Life. Check out Peter Miller's posting: Problem Solvr
    • It's anonymous so students can be honest without being identified.
    What I'm not so sure about
    • It's anonymous, so can be open to abuse.
    • It shouldn't be used to replace face to face debate in class, where that is possible, but could be useful to prime students before class so they have more ideas when they come to class for discussion.
    • Carries some advertising, but students can be asked to ignore the ads.
    • It's still being tested, so you debates could disappear or there could be bugs.
    I think Solvr is a really useful addition to any teacher's technological tool set, especially if you are involved in any kind of distance learning courses. I hope your students enjoy it and that you think of other useful ways to use it.

    Related links:
    Best

    Nik Peachey

    Create your own social network 7 steps

    Social networking is one of the key concepts that is driving Web 2.0 these days. With the opportunities social networks offer for collaboration and communication, this is certainly something we as educators should be thinking about being involved in.


    In this tutorial I'd like to show you how to create your own social network on Ning, just by following 7 steps. I've published these as a downloadable PDF with screen shots, so that you can print them up and follow them / share them.
    Perhaps though, more importantly it's worth thinking about some of the issues, and pros and cons surrounding the use of social networks.

    Some advantages of creating your own network.
    • Control over the content
      You can make sure nobody posts anything inappropriate or irrelevant.
    • Control of who joins and the ability to block or ban people
      You can protect your members, ban anyone who doesn't behave or just limit membership to people you want to invite.
    • Increased reach
      You can increase the reach of your F2F activities and get more people involved in the collaborative / collective development of your project.
    • Good for your personal / career development
      You can learn a lot through being an administrator and develop some useful skills and knowledge.
    Things to consider before you launch your network
    • Closed (just people you invite) or Open (anyone who wants to join)
      I would advise starting off with just people you invite first to see how things take off. Deciding to make the network open could take a lot of consideration and demand much more 'policing' moderation from you.
    • Do you have the time to manage the network?
      This is always a key question for teachers. Keeping the network active and up to date is going to take time. If you don't have the time / resources to put into it, best not to start.
    • Do you have or can you find content to input to the network?
      Content is still the main motivation for teachers / students to get involved, even if it's just as stimulation for communication / collaborative work, you need to have something to offer and your members are going to need to 'get something' from visiting your network, or they won't be coming back.
    • How / Will you be able to nurture collaboration between the members?
      Bit like the point above. Just providing a network isn't going to create collaboration. Ning is just a platform, you have to provide reasons, tasks, activities for members to collaborate on, or it just won't happen.
    • What functionality (groups, forums, video and photo sharing) do you want to make available?
      Providing all of these on Ning is easy, but don't provide anything you can't use. If you provide the ability to share photos / videos, make sure you have something to share and reasons for sharing those things. You'll also need to think about who can share add and create. Are you going to keep complete control or share it with your members?
    • Will you want to include advertising or ask it to be removed?
      If you are using Ning for educational purposes you can contact them and ask for advertising to be removed. You can also pay for a Ning platform and generate some money from the advertising yourself. I wouldn't recommend this as the amount may well not justify what you have to put up with from the advertisers. It's also better to get the advertising removed before you invite people to join, as some of the links can be inappropriate.
    • What information will you want members to add when joining?
      You can decide what information members need to submit when they join and decide who sees the information. You find out a lot about them this way, but people can be put off by having to give away their information, so it could be best just to let them decide.
    • How long will you want to keep the network live? (limited period or indefinitely)
      If you only intend to use the network for a specific time limited project it might be good to make this clear to your members, so they keep records of anything they develop within the network. Then when the project ends you can delete it with a clear conscience and keep the web tidy.
    Looking at other networks
    Before you start your own social network it's a good idea to have a look round at what others are doing. You might get some good ideas, see some potential pitfalls you want to avoid, or even decide someone already has your area covered and just decide to join them instead of recreating the wheel. Here a four networks for teachers that are well worth checking out.
    Evaluation criteria
    Deciding whether you want to join or recommend a network can be a tricky process, but as I've been looking around for ones I want to be part of I've built up a list of criteria that I find quite useful to have in the back of my mind.

    • What features / functionality does the network offer? (Groups forums etc.)
      If there's no interaction, is it worth being a part of this network?
    • Are the groups / forums active with a number of members exchanging information?
      Just because it has them doesn't mean they are being used. Have a look and make sure there is something there to learn and somebody there to learn with.
    • Are these features being used? (If the network offers the use of photo or video sharing is this being used?)
      This is a good place to look to see what members are really sharing. Is there original content or is it all grabbed from YouTube / Flickr?
    • Can you find out when the network was last active?
      Some networks are still online, but have died. Either the members or creator has lost interest. No point joining an inactive network.
    • How many members does it have?
      Open networks that only have a small number of members, may be less worthwhile. Most networks need a critical mass to keep them moving, unless the members are very committed.
    • Are any of the members’ photographs inappropriate?
      Many people join networks to pull traffic to their / unsuitable sites. A quick look at their avatar image could well give you a clue to which these are.
    • Check out some of the member profiles. Does the profile disclose the member’s email address or other personal info that you wouldn't want to share?
      Make sure that the network isn't forcing you to disclose more information than you would feel happy with.
    • Are there any ‘Google Ads’ on the site? Are these suitable or potentially offensive?
      Especially when recommending networks to others, it's good to check this first.
    • Is there any interesting content on the site?
      Again, I still believe that content is king. Content + collaboration = learning! No content, don't join.
    • Who is behind the network?
      Always wise to know who you are dealing with and sharing your information / knowledge with. Is it a group of like minded individuals, or a faceless company with dubious motivations?
    Why create your own network for teachers?
    Some suggestions:
    • To support particular dispersed groups doing specific projects / training courses
    • To record and share examples of practice and expertise specific to their context
    • To help train and develop teachers in the use of ICT / Learning Technology
    Why create your own network for students?
    Some suggestions:
    • Class research projects – create a network for your students based around a particular theme that they need to research.
    • Inter-class project – create a network for sharing information with students in another school / country.
    • Create a fan site with your students dedicated to a particular celebrity they like.
    • Create a site to inform visitors about Morocco / your town or city, your culture etc.
    • Create an online classroom and add links to materials, activities and tasks the students should do.
    • Create a network to showcase students work and keep in contact with and involve parents.
    Important
    • You should not use Ning with students below the age of 13.
    • Always protect your members’ privacy and make sure their email isn’t displayed and they don’t share addresses or telephone numbers with people.
    Well if after all this you are still interested in creating your own network, here are the 7 steps again:
    I've created one myself for a training course for teachers that I'm involved with. Personally I've found it really valuable so far.
    For more opinions and to find out about alternative platforms, visit Larry Ferlazzo's blog post on Social Networks for the Classroom

    Good luck with your networking and please do use the comments below to share your experience of using social networks.

    Best

    Nik Peachey

    Using wikis for teacher development

    In my two previous features, I've looked at how to create a wiki and how to use them with EFL students. In this posting I'd like to look at a couple of technical aspects, how to embed video in the wiki and how to add hyperlinks, and how we can use them for teacher development.

    Let's start with the technical bit. Here are two video tutorials. The first shows how we can embed videos into a WetPaint wiki.



    To view this movie in a separate window click here
    Right click and the use 'Save as' to download a Quick Time version of this movie

    This second one shows how to use hyperlinks to link together text and pages across the wiki.



    To view this movie in a separate window click here
    Right click and the use 'Save as' to download a Quick Time version of this movie

    Wikis, through sites like Wikipedia.org have shown us what incredible power we have to create and share knowledge through the internet. We can also use the power of wikis for teacher development.

    How can we use wikis for teacher development?
    • You could use a wiki as a kind of scrapbook to collect together ideas you have on teaching, such as links to or quotes from articles you have read, as well as teaching tips and lesson plans. You could keep your own lesson plans online this way and edit and update them each time you use them. Much of this you could also do on a blog, but using a wiki gives you the opportunity to structure different pages for different topics, like having a classroom management section and a section on teaching pronunciation etc. In this way you could start to collect your own personal teaching manual and, who knows, at some point you might decide to put it live for other people to contribute to or share it with a mentor or peer to help you edit it.
    • You could work with a group of trainee teachers and ask them to create a wiki training manual by adding information to each section as they study on their course. You could then see how well they were assimilating the information they were learning on the course and this would give you the opportunity to revise anything they were getting wrong or misunderstanding
    • You could create a teaching jargon wiki. At the moment I'm working with a group of teachers and I've created an IT jargon wiki so that anyone who comes across a term they don't understand can add it to the wiki and either I or one of their peers can add a definition. They can also continue to refine these definition and add examples as their knowledge grows.
    • You could video yourself teaching, embed the videos, and ask for feedback on your teaching from other peers through your wiki.
    • You could use it to collect and share tips on aspects of teaching practice.
    • You could work with a group of trainers to create a teacher development course book using the wiki.
    I think the possibilities for collaborative projects for teacher development are almost limitless.
    I've actually started up a Technology in ELT wiki here which you are welcome to get involved in. http://technogogyelt.wetpaint.com

    At the moment this focuses on developing a glossary of IT related terms and definitions, giving access to teachers to ask an answer FAQs, and attempting to define key skills in IT for ELT teacher development. So if you have time feel free to get involved with this. Just register and start to contribute.

    I'll be very interested to see how and if this develops over the coming months. If you have any further suggestions or experience of teacher development projects using wikis, please do post a link in the comments.

    Best

    Nik Peachey

    Related postings
    To have a closer look at WetPaint and create your own wiki go to: http://www.wetpaint.com/

    Using wikis with EFL students

    In this feature I want to share another tutorial that you can use with your students showing how to edit your wiki and have a look at a live demo wiki that you and your students can play around with.

    In my previous post I looked at how to create a wiki using WetPaint and a few of the reasons for using one.

    This tutorial shows you how simple it is to edit the wiki. As a demonstration I've set up a wiki using the Cinderella story so once you have had a look, by all means register and have a play around with this.




    So how can we use wikis with our students?
    • You can upload student work for collaborative editing, though you should make sure they are comfortable with this first. If they aren't you could try uploading some other documents which need correcting or redrafting and get them to work on those instead.
    • Get students to create a story collaboratively. Give them the start or even the start of the first few chapters and get students to add parts to it. The nice part of creating a story in this way is that through hypertext links to other pages you can create 'back stories' filling in information about other characters and telling their stories too. You could start this off by creating or copying a short story of fairy tale and creating hyper links to pages about each of the other characters possibly telling the story from their perspective. For example with the story of Cinderella that I have created, you can tell it from the perspective of an ugly sister or from the rat that got turned into a horse! This is a good way to develop some creative thinking skills and help students to see things from different perspectives.
      • I've set up an example of this here: http://cinderella-their-story.wetpaint.com/
        Feel free to register and participate or get your students participating in this.
      • Some possible tasks you could set students using this wiki are:
      • Add some adjectives and adverbs to the text
      • Add an extra sentence to one of the back ground stories
      • Try to insert a new character into the text
      • Find words that you don't understand and add them to the glossary
      • Try to add some definitions to some of the glossary words
      • Write some questions that you would like to ask some of the characters and put them into the to do list
      • Look for questions that someone else has asked about the text and try to include that information in the text.
    • You could use a wiki as a sort of learning record which all the students could contribute to. This could be based around themes, having separate pages within each theme for vocabulary, useful expressions, grammatical structures, or it could be based around grammar and students could research and share what they know about various tenses and verb forms.
    • You could use it to create your own online course book, either working with other teachers or your class. You could get students to select texts and subjects that they are interested in and type / paste them in to pages on the wiki, you or they could then create learning materials to go with the text, as well as adding extra information and background on the them or topic or the grammar or lexis that goes with the text. You would then be able to build on this with other classes.
    • You set up collaborative assignments such as Webquests and get students to use the wiki and work together to produce their outcomes
    • You could upload or link to videos or images and set group or pair work tasks for students to do. You could use the 'To do' feature of the wiki to set up tasks for different groups or students.
    • The wiki also has a lot of communication features so you could set up online discussion / forum tasks with students so that they could discuss the story and make decisions about how they want to change or develop it.
    • If you have the means to set up a project with a school in another town or better still another country, you could use the wiki as a cultural research tool. Your students could research the country and the culture of their partner students and create a wiki about it. The partner students could then correct or comment on any errors or misunderstandings of their culture.
    Wikis are a wonderful tool for students to work together and produce high quality texts. They are also great if you want to be able to share students' work with parents or the rest of the world, or just limit access to your class.

    I hope you enjoy using this tool and if you have examples of work that your students have produced using wikis, by all means post a link in the comments section below.

    To have a closer look at WetPaint and create your own wiki go to: http://www.wetpaint.com/

    Best

    Nik Peachey

    Related posts

    Creating a Wiki

    In this feature I'd like to show you how to create your own free wiki using 'Wetpaint' and look at some of the reasons for using wikis to achieve educational goals.

    First, for those of you who don't know what a wiki is, here's a quick definition which comes from one of the most famous wikis, wikipedia.org.

    "A
    wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content [ ...]. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites."

    So, what really differentiates a wiki from a normal website is the fact that anyone who has access to the site can modify its contents (this is often, though not always, restricted to people who create a login or register to use this feature), unlike a normal website, on which the content is usually edited only by the company or person who owns the website.

    To show you how easy it is to create your own free wiki, I've recorded these tutorial movies. They are each around 2 mins long and show you how to set up your wiki by using a free service called wetpaint (this takes about 2 -3 mins to do), how to change the style and look of your wiki (this takes about 2 mins) and how to start adding extra pages to your wiki (this takes about 2mins). Hope fully this will convince you that creating your own wiki is not only easy, but it's also very quick.

    For anyone having problems with these embedded videos, or who wants higher quality. I've added links to Quick time versions that you can download at the end of this article.

    So here is how you set up the wiki using http://www.wetpaint.com/



    This movie shows you how to change the style and look of you wiki




    This movie shows you how to add new pages.




    Hopefully you can see just how easy it is to setup your own wiki.

    What I like about wikis
    • Wikis are really quick and easy to setup, which means that you can forget about the technical aspects and get busy with the serious business of creating and sharing content.
    • The collaborative aspect is great, enabling other users, whether it is a select group or whether you open up the wiki to anyone who wants to contribute, takes the emphasis off you as the creator / author and helps you to share out the work and draw on a much greater pool of knowledge and creativity.
    • Many wikis like wetpaint also incorporate other planing and communications features like discussion forums, to do lists, photo galleries etc. which can help you share out the work on the wiki and co-ordinate dispersed teams or group of distance learning students.
    What I'm not so sure about
    • There isn't much not to like on a wiki, perhaps with the exception of advertising if you decide to opt for a free service. Most service providers also offer a premium ( paid for) service which you can choose if you want to get rid of the ads. This option often gives you access to extra features too. It's definitely worth thinking about a premium service if you work with younger learners, as this will ensure that you don't get any 'unsuitable' advertising springing up along the side of your wiki.
    • Wikis can be a bit limiting in terms of design and what you can add to your design, such as amazing Flash games, videos etc, but there are often work arounds to give you access to these.

    Well this posting seems to be long enough for now. I hope I convinced you of how easy it is to set up your wiki and in my next postings I'll be looking at how to use wikis with your EFL students and How to use them for teacher development.

    Here you can download higher quality versions of the tutorials in Quick Time format
    Best

    Nik Peachey

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    ‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات collaborative learning. إظهار كافة الرسائل
    ‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات collaborative learning. إظهار كافة الرسائل

    الأربعاء، 14 أغسطس 2013

    Peer editing in digital and mobile environments

    For years now I have been happily using EtherPad based services like http://primarypad.com/ and http://sync.in/ to get participants on the training courses I deliver to work collaboratively to create and peer edit texts. Increasingly though I've been having problems with the reliability of the free services these companies provide and the lack of reliable compatibility with mobile devices.


    At last it seems that now I have a very elegant solution in the form of https://quip.com/.
    Quip looks a lot like Evernote and has a similar interface with documents contained in notebooks, but one of the big differences is that Quip was designed specifically to enable peer editing and collaboration on documents and has a very clear way of showing and tracking the changes.

    Here's a short tutorial showing you how it works:


    Why should we get our students peer editing?
    • It improves their awareness of accuracy
    • It can improve the quality of their writing
    • Pushes students to accept that writing is a process that needs revisions and redrafting
    • The ability to collaborate in digital environments is likely to be an important real world digital literacy

    What kinds of peer editing activities can we do with students?
    • We can give them texts with planted errors (10 - 20) in to work on a find and correct together. These could be the lyrics of songs they like or stories or articles they have read.
    • We can get students to correct each others' compositions before we look at them.
    • We can give them texts with specific features missed out and get them to work together to add them. These could be linking or referencing devices, punctuation, vocabulary words, grammatical features such as prepositions or articles etc.
    • We can get them working together to rearrange parts of a text into a better order or structure.
    • We can give them the bare structure of a story and ask them to embellish it and make it more descriptive and interesting.

    What I like about Quip
    • It's free
    • Nicely designed interface
    • Works and looks well in both tablet  app form and in the browser
    • Clearly tracks and highlights changes to documents by different users
    • It looks secure and enables you to limit who sees and works on the document while editing
    • Has a kind of chat messaging feature which works along side the notes for changes
    • We can use it to get students collaborating and working together outside the classroom

    What I'm not so sure about
    • It requires registration, which can slow things down in class, but it does also add a degree of security
    • I haven't tried it with larger groups yet so I'm not sure how reliably it will function when scaled up to say having a whole class work synchronously on a single document
    • Not sure how long it will stay free (There is a Quip Business already available)
    I'm now looking forward to my next course so that I can try Quip out and get a bit more experience with it. I hope you also find it useful with your students. Do drop me a line and let me know how it goes.

    Related links:


    Best

    Nik Peachey



      الاثنين، 10 مايو 2010

      3 Tools for Exploiting the Wifi During Presentations

      Coming as I do from a background in language teaching that emphasises that the teacher should shut up and get the students to do the talking, I often feel uncomfortable doing conference presentations, many of which still follow the format of; speaker gets up in front of audience with presentation - does presentation - audience listen (try to stay awake) and desperately try to think of a few questions at the end to prove they were awake and listening.

      One of the gifted- Jamie Keddie.

      There are of course a few gifted speakers who can hold the audience’s attention for a full hour and keep most of them listening and awake. If like me you’re not one of those, then here are a few tools that, thanks to the increasing availability of wireless connectivity at conference centres these days, might help to turn your passive listeners into a bunch of multitasking audience collaborators.

      Set up a backchannel
      One of my favourite tools to use during presentations is Today’sMeet http://todaysmeet.com/ . It’s a great tool for setting up backchannels. A backchannel is basically what your students create when they talk among themselves or text each other during your lesson.
      • The advantage of setting one of these up to allow your audience to do this is that you can capture and share what your audience is saying while they are listening to you and enable them to collaborate and share with each other what they know about the topic and links to any relevant resources.
      • It can also help them to type in questions as they think of them rather than waiting for you to ask at the end, and for me it’s a great way to pass out URLs to interesting websites to give the audience some hands on participation during the presentation.
      • It’s also a good way of getting the audience to brainstorm and do tasks together, just ask a few questions and get them to type in answers, and they’ll appear in the backchannel window for everyone to see.

      Setting up a back channel with Today’s Meet takes about 60 seconds. You just type in a name for your channel and launch it. You can select how long you want the channel to be available (from two hours to a year) and if you have people in your audience posting updates to Twitter, you can select a hashtag (#) specific to your talk so that their ‘tweets’ appear alongside the backchannel chat window.

      Live polling
      Getting audience response during presentations can be done quite easily by getting a show of hands, but I tend to find that pretty unsatisfying in terms of capturing and sharing data, so I’ve started using a polling / survey tool called Urtak http://urtak.com/ during presentations.
      • With Urtak you can prepare a number of short online polls to to get your audience to do during the presentation.


      • Just send the URL to them using your backchannel and then you can show and capture your audience response live during your session, as Urtak collects and shares results as soon as people vote.
      • If you are logged in during your presentation it’s even quick and easy enough to create short polls on the fly and pass out the URL through your backchannel.
      Here’s an example one I created for a presentation on digital teaching skills that you can look at: http://urtak.com/u/1826 . Urtak even enables the audience to add questions if they register and log in.
      Make note taking collaborative
      Many listeners at presentations do their best to keep notes during presentations, so if your audience has wireless connectivity why not get them to do this collaboratively? A great tool for doing this is Sync.in http://sync.in/ .

      • It has a desktop launcher that your simply click to create an online collaborative note taking pad. You then share the URL for each pad with your audience and they can then work in groups to assemble notes and comments on your presentation as you go or work on collaborative tasks that you can set them.
      • The texts can then be saved by each person at the end of the presentation or they can even continue to refine the notes after the presentation is over. Sync.in also has a handy text chat room which runs alongside each document that’s created, so collaborators can discuss things and ask questions as they work. See Collaborative Text Editing Tool for more information on Sync.in.
      Of course these tools aren’t just useful for conference presentations, but can be used for online training webinars as well as classroom teaching if you work in a wireless enabled classroom environment. Be sure to practice with them one at a time first for short tasks as you gradually build them in to your presentation skills repertoire.

      Good luck and I hope you find these tools useful and soon have your audience multitasking as well as listening.

      Related links:
      Best

      Nik Peachey

      الأربعاء، 20 مايو 2009

      Brainstorm and Debate Collaboratively

      This morning I spotted Solvr on MakeUseOf and decided to give it a try. Solvr is a free easy and interesting way to collaboratively brainstorm and attempt to solve problems online.

      It's very simple set up. You just got to http://www.a.freshbrain.com/solvr/ type your problem into the field and then click 'Start'.
      You will then see your problem with a number of options underneath.


      You can add different elements of the problem, make suggestions by adding ideas and leave comments.

      The collaborative part comes in when you share the URL with someone, then other people can come and join in the problem solving and brainstorming. Here's the URL for the 'Making a living 'problem I set up.

      I also set up a problem earlier on today, which was about integrating technology into the ELT classroom. I added a couple of elements of the problem and then posted it to Twitter. With a few minutes, the problem started to develop as people added in comments solutions, and even started to vote on the solutions.


      If you would like to see how this problem is developing go to http://www.a.freshbrain.com/solvr/d/eltrilxlwu and feel free to contribute.

      So how do we use this with students?
      We can set up a whole range of debates and online collaborative tasks.
      • You could set up debates on the environment or other issues that your students find relevant. Here's an example on how to end world hunger. Each students could have their own topic to brainstorm the elements and causes of the problem, then students could exchange links and try to offer solutions to each other's problems.
      • You could use Solver to get anonymous feedback from your action research tasks. This would also enable you to enter into debate with the students and get a deeper level of understanding of their responses.
      • You could use it to address classroom issues or learning issues and explain some of the rationale behind activities. This would enable students to safely and anonymously discuss the issues with you. Here's an example We don't like reading in class
      • You could use it to brainstorm vocabulary around a topic or theme and then get your students to add definitions, and other elements of information about the words, like their parts of speech, collocations, example sentences etc. Here's an example on politics. Feel free to add to it.
      • We can get students to share their strategies for learning English. Example: How can we improve our English?
      • You could use Solvr to plan an events like a class outing, party or doing a play. This way you can get students to think about the different jobs involved and decisions to be made, decide who will do them and explore the potential obstacles.
      What's so good about it?
      • It's free. very quick and really simple to use.
      • It encourages critical thinking skills and the breaking down of problems into manageable elements.
      • It encourages debate and interactive discussion.
      • It's very versatile.
      • Great for interactive homework tasks
      • It can be used synchronously or asynchronously.
      • It can give students time to think about and review what they write.
      • Students can see the ebb and flow of ideas and opinions and the way they interact.
      • Solvr also seems to work in Second Life. Check out Peter Miller's posting: Problem Solvr
      • It's anonymous so students can be honest without being identified.
      What I'm not so sure about
      • It's anonymous, so can be open to abuse.
      • It shouldn't be used to replace face to face debate in class, where that is possible, but could be useful to prime students before class so they have more ideas when they come to class for discussion.
      • Carries some advertising, but students can be asked to ignore the ads.
      • It's still being tested, so you debates could disappear or there could be bugs.
      I think Solvr is a really useful addition to any teacher's technological tool set, especially if you are involved in any kind of distance learning courses. I hope your students enjoy it and that you think of other useful ways to use it.

      Related links:
      Best

      Nik Peachey

      الأحد، 15 يونيو 2008

      Create your own social network 7 steps

      Social networking is one of the key concepts that is driving Web 2.0 these days. With the opportunities social networks offer for collaboration and communication, this is certainly something we as educators should be thinking about being involved in.


      In this tutorial I'd like to show you how to create your own social network on Ning, just by following 7 steps. I've published these as a downloadable PDF with screen shots, so that you can print them up and follow them / share them.
      Perhaps though, more importantly it's worth thinking about some of the issues, and pros and cons surrounding the use of social networks.

      Some advantages of creating your own network.
      • Control over the content
        You can make sure nobody posts anything inappropriate or irrelevant.
      • Control of who joins and the ability to block or ban people
        You can protect your members, ban anyone who doesn't behave or just limit membership to people you want to invite.
      • Increased reach
        You can increase the reach of your F2F activities and get more people involved in the collaborative / collective development of your project.
      • Good for your personal / career development
        You can learn a lot through being an administrator and develop some useful skills and knowledge.
      Things to consider before you launch your network
      • Closed (just people you invite) or Open (anyone who wants to join)
        I would advise starting off with just people you invite first to see how things take off. Deciding to make the network open could take a lot of consideration and demand much more 'policing' moderation from you.
      • Do you have the time to manage the network?
        This is always a key question for teachers. Keeping the network active and up to date is going to take time. If you don't have the time / resources to put into it, best not to start.
      • Do you have or can you find content to input to the network?
        Content is still the main motivation for teachers / students to get involved, even if it's just as stimulation for communication / collaborative work, you need to have something to offer and your members are going to need to 'get something' from visiting your network, or they won't be coming back.
      • How / Will you be able to nurture collaboration between the members?
        Bit like the point above. Just providing a network isn't going to create collaboration. Ning is just a platform, you have to provide reasons, tasks, activities for members to collaborate on, or it just won't happen.
      • What functionality (groups, forums, video and photo sharing) do you want to make available?
        Providing all of these on Ning is easy, but don't provide anything you can't use. If you provide the ability to share photos / videos, make sure you have something to share and reasons for sharing those things. You'll also need to think about who can share add and create. Are you going to keep complete control or share it with your members?
      • Will you want to include advertising or ask it to be removed?
        If you are using Ning for educational purposes you can contact them and ask for advertising to be removed. You can also pay for a Ning platform and generate some money from the advertising yourself. I wouldn't recommend this as the amount may well not justify what you have to put up with from the advertisers. It's also better to get the advertising removed before you invite people to join, as some of the links can be inappropriate.
      • What information will you want members to add when joining?
        You can decide what information members need to submit when they join and decide who sees the information. You find out a lot about them this way, but people can be put off by having to give away their information, so it could be best just to let them decide.
      • How long will you want to keep the network live? (limited period or indefinitely)
        If you only intend to use the network for a specific time limited project it might be good to make this clear to your members, so they keep records of anything they develop within the network. Then when the project ends you can delete it with a clear conscience and keep the web tidy.
      Looking at other networks
      Before you start your own social network it's a good idea to have a look round at what others are doing. You might get some good ideas, see some potential pitfalls you want to avoid, or even decide someone already has your area covered and just decide to join them instead of recreating the wheel. Here a four networks for teachers that are well worth checking out.
      Evaluation criteria
      Deciding whether you want to join or recommend a network can be a tricky process, but as I've been looking around for ones I want to be part of I've built up a list of criteria that I find quite useful to have in the back of my mind.

      • What features / functionality does the network offer? (Groups forums etc.)
        If there's no interaction, is it worth being a part of this network?
      • Are the groups / forums active with a number of members exchanging information?
        Just because it has them doesn't mean they are being used. Have a look and make sure there is something there to learn and somebody there to learn with.
      • Are these features being used? (If the network offers the use of photo or video sharing is this being used?)
        This is a good place to look to see what members are really sharing. Is there original content or is it all grabbed from YouTube / Flickr?
      • Can you find out when the network was last active?
        Some networks are still online, but have died. Either the members or creator has lost interest. No point joining an inactive network.
      • How many members does it have?
        Open networks that only have a small number of members, may be less worthwhile. Most networks need a critical mass to keep them moving, unless the members are very committed.
      • Are any of the members’ photographs inappropriate?
        Many people join networks to pull traffic to their / unsuitable sites. A quick look at their avatar image could well give you a clue to which these are.
      • Check out some of the member profiles. Does the profile disclose the member’s email address or other personal info that you wouldn't want to share?
        Make sure that the network isn't forcing you to disclose more information than you would feel happy with.
      • Are there any ‘Google Ads’ on the site? Are these suitable or potentially offensive?
        Especially when recommending networks to others, it's good to check this first.
      • Is there any interesting content on the site?
        Again, I still believe that content is king. Content + collaboration = learning! No content, don't join.
      • Who is behind the network?
        Always wise to know who you are dealing with and sharing your information / knowledge with. Is it a group of like minded individuals, or a faceless company with dubious motivations?
      Why create your own network for teachers?
      Some suggestions:
      • To support particular dispersed groups doing specific projects / training courses
      • To record and share examples of practice and expertise specific to their context
      • To help train and develop teachers in the use of ICT / Learning Technology
      Why create your own network for students?
      Some suggestions:
      • Class research projects – create a network for your students based around a particular theme that they need to research.
      • Inter-class project – create a network for sharing information with students in another school / country.
      • Create a fan site with your students dedicated to a particular celebrity they like.
      • Create a site to inform visitors about Morocco / your town or city, your culture etc.
      • Create an online classroom and add links to materials, activities and tasks the students should do.
      • Create a network to showcase students work and keep in contact with and involve parents.
      Important
      • You should not use Ning with students below the age of 13.
      • Always protect your members’ privacy and make sure their email isn’t displayed and they don’t share addresses or telephone numbers with people.
      Well if after all this you are still interested in creating your own network, here are the 7 steps again:
      I've created one myself for a training course for teachers that I'm involved with. Personally I've found it really valuable so far.
      For more opinions and to find out about alternative platforms, visit Larry Ferlazzo's blog post on Social Networks for the Classroom

      Good luck with your networking and please do use the comments below to share your experience of using social networks.

      Best

      Nik Peachey

      الخميس، 29 مايو 2008

      Using wikis for teacher development

      In my two previous features, I've looked at how to create a wiki and how to use them with EFL students. In this posting I'd like to look at a couple of technical aspects, how to embed video in the wiki and how to add hyperlinks, and how we can use them for teacher development.

      Let's start with the technical bit. Here are two video tutorials. The first shows how we can embed videos into a WetPaint wiki.



      To view this movie in a separate window click here
      Right click and the use 'Save as' to download a Quick Time version of this movie

      This second one shows how to use hyperlinks to link together text and pages across the wiki.



      To view this movie in a separate window click here
      Right click and the use 'Save as' to download a Quick Time version of this movie

      Wikis, through sites like Wikipedia.org have shown us what incredible power we have to create and share knowledge through the internet. We can also use the power of wikis for teacher development.

      How can we use wikis for teacher development?
      • You could use a wiki as a kind of scrapbook to collect together ideas you have on teaching, such as links to or quotes from articles you have read, as well as teaching tips and lesson plans. You could keep your own lesson plans online this way and edit and update them each time you use them. Much of this you could also do on a blog, but using a wiki gives you the opportunity to structure different pages for different topics, like having a classroom management section and a section on teaching pronunciation etc. In this way you could start to collect your own personal teaching manual and, who knows, at some point you might decide to put it live for other people to contribute to or share it with a mentor or peer to help you edit it.
      • You could work with a group of trainee teachers and ask them to create a wiki training manual by adding information to each section as they study on their course. You could then see how well they were assimilating the information they were learning on the course and this would give you the opportunity to revise anything they were getting wrong or misunderstanding
      • You could create a teaching jargon wiki. At the moment I'm working with a group of teachers and I've created an IT jargon wiki so that anyone who comes across a term they don't understand can add it to the wiki and either I or one of their peers can add a definition. They can also continue to refine these definition and add examples as their knowledge grows.
      • You could video yourself teaching, embed the videos, and ask for feedback on your teaching from other peers through your wiki.
      • You could use it to collect and share tips on aspects of teaching practice.
      • You could work with a group of trainers to create a teacher development course book using the wiki.
      I think the possibilities for collaborative projects for teacher development are almost limitless.
      I've actually started up a Technology in ELT wiki here which you are welcome to get involved in. http://technogogyelt.wetpaint.com

      At the moment this focuses on developing a glossary of IT related terms and definitions, giving access to teachers to ask an answer FAQs, and attempting to define key skills in IT for ELT teacher development. So if you have time feel free to get involved with this. Just register and start to contribute.

      I'll be very interested to see how and if this develops over the coming months. If you have any further suggestions or experience of teacher development projects using wikis, please do post a link in the comments.

      Best

      Nik Peachey

      Related postings
      To have a closer look at WetPaint and create your own wiki go to: http://www.wetpaint.com/

      Using wikis with EFL students

      In this feature I want to share another tutorial that you can use with your students showing how to edit your wiki and have a look at a live demo wiki that you and your students can play around with.

      In my previous post I looked at how to create a wiki using WetPaint and a few of the reasons for using one.

      This tutorial shows you how simple it is to edit the wiki. As a demonstration I've set up a wiki using the Cinderella story so once you have had a look, by all means register and have a play around with this.




      So how can we use wikis with our students?
      • You can upload student work for collaborative editing, though you should make sure they are comfortable with this first. If they aren't you could try uploading some other documents which need correcting or redrafting and get them to work on those instead.
      • Get students to create a story collaboratively. Give them the start or even the start of the first few chapters and get students to add parts to it. The nice part of creating a story in this way is that through hypertext links to other pages you can create 'back stories' filling in information about other characters and telling their stories too. You could start this off by creating or copying a short story of fairy tale and creating hyper links to pages about each of the other characters possibly telling the story from their perspective. For example with the story of Cinderella that I have created, you can tell it from the perspective of an ugly sister or from the rat that got turned into a horse! This is a good way to develop some creative thinking skills and help students to see things from different perspectives.
        • I've set up an example of this here: http://cinderella-their-story.wetpaint.com/
          Feel free to register and participate or get your students participating in this.
        • Some possible tasks you could set students using this wiki are:
        • Add some adjectives and adverbs to the text
        • Add an extra sentence to one of the back ground stories
        • Try to insert a new character into the text
        • Find words that you don't understand and add them to the glossary
        • Try to add some definitions to some of the glossary words
        • Write some questions that you would like to ask some of the characters and put them into the to do list
        • Look for questions that someone else has asked about the text and try to include that information in the text.
      • You could use a wiki as a sort of learning record which all the students could contribute to. This could be based around themes, having separate pages within each theme for vocabulary, useful expressions, grammatical structures, or it could be based around grammar and students could research and share what they know about various tenses and verb forms.
      • You could use it to create your own online course book, either working with other teachers or your class. You could get students to select texts and subjects that they are interested in and type / paste them in to pages on the wiki, you or they could then create learning materials to go with the text, as well as adding extra information and background on the them or topic or the grammar or lexis that goes with the text. You would then be able to build on this with other classes.
      • You set up collaborative assignments such as Webquests and get students to use the wiki and work together to produce their outcomes
      • You could upload or link to videos or images and set group or pair work tasks for students to do. You could use the 'To do' feature of the wiki to set up tasks for different groups or students.
      • The wiki also has a lot of communication features so you could set up online discussion / forum tasks with students so that they could discuss the story and make decisions about how they want to change or develop it.
      • If you have the means to set up a project with a school in another town or better still another country, you could use the wiki as a cultural research tool. Your students could research the country and the culture of their partner students and create a wiki about it. The partner students could then correct or comment on any errors or misunderstandings of their culture.
      Wikis are a wonderful tool for students to work together and produce high quality texts. They are also great if you want to be able to share students' work with parents or the rest of the world, or just limit access to your class.

      I hope you enjoy using this tool and if you have examples of work that your students have produced using wikis, by all means post a link in the comments section below.

      To have a closer look at WetPaint and create your own wiki go to: http://www.wetpaint.com/

      Best

      Nik Peachey

      Related posts

      Creating a Wiki

      In this feature I'd like to show you how to create your own free wiki using 'Wetpaint' and look at some of the reasons for using wikis to achieve educational goals.

      First, for those of you who don't know what a wiki is, here's a quick definition which comes from one of the most famous wikis, wikipedia.org.

      "A
      wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content [ ...]. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites."

      So, what really differentiates a wiki from a normal website is the fact that anyone who has access to the site can modify its contents (this is often, though not always, restricted to people who create a login or register to use this feature), unlike a normal website, on which the content is usually edited only by the company or person who owns the website.

      To show you how easy it is to create your own free wiki, I've recorded these tutorial movies. They are each around 2 mins long and show you how to set up your wiki by using a free service called wetpaint (this takes about 2 -3 mins to do), how to change the style and look of your wiki (this takes about 2 mins) and how to start adding extra pages to your wiki (this takes about 2mins). Hope fully this will convince you that creating your own wiki is not only easy, but it's also very quick.

      For anyone having problems with these embedded videos, or who wants higher quality. I've added links to Quick time versions that you can download at the end of this article.

      So here is how you set up the wiki using http://www.wetpaint.com/



      This movie shows you how to change the style and look of you wiki




      This movie shows you how to add new pages.




      Hopefully you can see just how easy it is to setup your own wiki.

      What I like about wikis
      • Wikis are really quick and easy to setup, which means that you can forget about the technical aspects and get busy with the serious business of creating and sharing content.
      • The collaborative aspect is great, enabling other users, whether it is a select group or whether you open up the wiki to anyone who wants to contribute, takes the emphasis off you as the creator / author and helps you to share out the work and draw on a much greater pool of knowledge and creativity.
      • Many wikis like wetpaint also incorporate other planing and communications features like discussion forums, to do lists, photo galleries etc. which can help you share out the work on the wiki and co-ordinate dispersed teams or group of distance learning students.
      What I'm not so sure about
      • There isn't much not to like on a wiki, perhaps with the exception of advertising if you decide to opt for a free service. Most service providers also offer a premium ( paid for) service which you can choose if you want to get rid of the ads. This option often gives you access to extra features too. It's definitely worth thinking about a premium service if you work with younger learners, as this will ensure that you don't get any 'unsuitable' advertising springing up along the side of your wiki.
      • Wikis can be a bit limiting in terms of design and what you can add to your design, such as amazing Flash games, videos etc, but there are often work arounds to give you access to these.

      Well this posting seems to be long enough for now. I hope I convinced you of how easy it is to set up your wiki and in my next postings I'll be looking at how to use wikis with your EFL students and How to use them for teacher development.

      Here you can download higher quality versions of the tutorials in Quick Time format
      Best

      Nik Peachey

      Related postings