1st visit to 2nd Life

My colleagues at Dubai Women’s College have developed an island for the students which I’ll tell you about in more detail in my next blog post. I decided to go and investigate the Dubai Second Life Campus. The first issue I faced was that it was impossible to run SL at work, the band width needed isn’t available - an immediate critical success factor for using SL in college. At home I tried again and got into SL successfully with my SL alias and nasty SL starter clothes. My initial feelings were that the whole place was eerie, full of scantily-clad weirdos and with horrible graphics. The flatness of images and the way things appeared out of nowhere in 2D actually made me feel quite nauseous. Some punky elf girls told me how to get new clothes and how to teleport and I gradually gained confidence. The gateway area to the DWC campus was interesting, with a sitting area, small mosque and information boards:

Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet been granted permission to enter the area itself which is strictly secure to ensure the students’ safety. So I hung around in the gateway area for a while then, attracted by a mosque picture, decided to go and investigate virtual Morocco. A very nice touch in Morocco was the ‘info fez’ which you wear and as you pass things of interest the info fez pops up writing on the screen to give background details.


There were no other people in Morocco and I started to feel lonely so decided to teleport to Hong Kong. Where I was sent was a place called Windchime Gardens which is dedicated to meditation. I loved it and struck up a conversation with the designer who was there at the same time; she showed me how to click onto a floating sphere that made my character start doing Tai Chi and it was very relaxing – I felt relaxed because my online character was doing Tai Chi! Here we are doing Tai Chi:

With prudence, I can see a lot of potential for SL as a learning tool. However, at the moment we can't teleport students directly into safe areas without the risk of them being accosted by strangers. With that in mind, there's no way that I'd use it with my students who have very clear social interaction rules in their culture. In its current form I wouldn't be able to justify its use as a teaching tool for my students. Also band width is a big issue. However, I really like SL, will be hanging out there a lot and would love to use it in future with a different set of students. Also, going to use it to teach myself some new meditation techniques. See you in Windchime Gardens!

Sharjah Googlemap story

Here's my first attempt at a googlemap story. Interesting, relatively simple to set up and I can see a lot of potential for its use in English Language classes.

View Sharjah story by Rachel in a larger map

Twitter Handbook for Teachers

A twittering librarian friend posted this link and I thought it'd be worth reposting here. A twitter handbook for teachers that introduces twitter and suggests learning uses:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14062777/Twitter-Handbook-for-Teachers

Digital Storytelling

All kinds of elearning events and training sessions have been going on in my workplace lately. The one I've signed up for this week is 'Digital Storytelling Using Google Maps', which is great because it ties in with our emerging technology course so well. I'm excited. To prepare for the session we've been asked to do a bit of homework. Firstly to look at a couple of examples of stories that use googlemaps:
Agnes' story
Isoble's story

Then we have to write our own story, with these basic instructions:
1. Write a story that connects to places on a map of our region.
2. Create a Google Account
3. Create your story as a map in Google

Write your story
This story will move from place to place. You will connect each place with a paragraph. Each paragraph can have a maximum of 50 words.
To help with planning, write your locations and paragraphs in a table. If you want, you may include an image related to the paragraph too.

Hope mine works out - I'll post the link once it's done.

Our class' googlemap

View Emerging Technologies Map in a larger map

Lighthearted warning about Twittering

Click on the picture to watch the cartoon.

Another social networking reflection

Before we move on the next topic, I wanted to share some more of my reflections about using social networking as a tool for teaching and teacher training in the UAE.

As a reflective task, I searched for a group that was used by UAE learners of English to observe how they used the group and maybe also to participate in the discussions. It was surprisingly difficult to find a group based in the UAE. I used a range of search terms: English, learn, college, UAE and so on with few viable results. Those groups that did come up were often inaccessible because the group participants had reverted to using Arabic in order to keep the discussions active; had fallen into inactivity soon after their formation or the discussion boards had been taken over by adverts for companies and services.

Finally I came across http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=42452619586#/group.php?gid=42452619586It appears to be run by students from Dubai Men's College and they have done a good job of making the group active. It's a young group, with most of the postings dated 2009. The students have conversations about goals and success and post videos and photos related to their college and career goals. One piece of social networking that has gone on involving a contact outside the UAE is a teacher from Italy enquiring about the possibility of his students meeting HCT students when they visit the UAE this year.

However, I just didn't feel comfortable adding a post to the group. Why was that? On reflection I think there were three main reasons:
1.I don’t want to get involved as a teacher and raise the students’ expectation that I will be replying to posts and then not be able to regularly post later. That would let the group members down in some way.
2. The group seemed to be out of Dubai Men’s College and I teach at Sharjah Womens’ college. I felt that it would be easy for me to say something inappropriate that could reflect badly on myself as an employee of the college system.
3. My profile picture shows my daughter and I feel uncomfortable showing that picture to people who don’t know me.
This experiment has made me reflect deeply about my Facebook use and especially my privacy and accountability. I’ve decided to review my privacy settings and set up a separate account that can be used for professional purposes which has less person information and which will be more culturally appropriate to this part of the world. This will be my professional Facebook account.

Networked socialising

I like Facebook. A lot. Maybe too much. My best friend suggested that I consider giving Facebook up for Lent.
Luckily we don’t celebrate lent in Sharjah so I didn’t follow the example.

For me Facebook is less of a social networking site and more of a networked socialising site. I make this distinction because I have never used it for anything apart from a great way to communicate flippantly with friends around the world and/or in the next room. That’s the role it has in my life. It’s not work; it doesn’t come near work (apart as a way to chat with colleagues in a non-work sense); it’s a welcome distraction from work and the idea of using it for work, as a tool of my work is, as an initial thought honestly – pretty repulsive.

So with that off my chest and in my mind, I’m off to explore how I could use it for professional interests. Will report back in a couple of days.

Response to the Guardian article on social networking

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/24/social-networking-site-changing-childrens-brains

These 'modern life is unhealthy' kinds of attitude bring out my stroppy inner-teenager!

But (rolling my eyes back down from the ceiling and uncrossing my arms) when we see a rash of newspaper articles discussing concern over any emerging technology, I see it as an indicator of that technology's maturation. It has moved on from the realm of geeks and early adopters and is now crossing the screen of the reluctant tech-user, even luddite types are having to read about it in their newspapers.

To me social networking sites are nearing a Beatles status. Let me explain what I mean: in the sixties people either liked or disliked the Beatles but they acknowledges their existence, if only to state their dislike of them or to express disinterest.


Having said all of that, I do think that the editor's chosen to take a stance which is typical of the "We're all going to hell in a handbasket." approach that we've come to expect from British newspapers over the past decade or so.

Well, that's all the attention I can handle on this topic, I was a Generation Xer who watched music videos in the 80s and who checks facebook several times a day. I'm surprised I managed to....oh look....a shiny pebble.

F2F and VLE the advantages and disadvantages

I'm in an interesting position these days - I'm a distance learner on an MA course that utilises VLEs and I teach English courses which are face to face and also make use of Blackboard Vista as a learning content management system. So I'm getting to look at VLEs from the viewpoint of both educator and student.

As a student and as a teacher the clear advantage of the VLE is knowing that it's a one stop-shop for everything you need to know about the course. It's very reassuring for the geographically distant student (once you've got the hang of the tools and navigation). It's especially handy when you're not in sync with the other course participants who attend face to face classes so you can catch up, read ahead and so on without having to check in with the course leader all the time. The students that I teach also enjoy being able to repeat learning tasks on the VLE until they get 100%; it has helped their language accuracy enormously and they have been able repeat tasks at their own pace.

However, this independence does have its drawbacks. For example, as a distance learner it's very easy to get behind with work if you're not being chivvied along; BBV can tend to be writing based which means a lot of extra reading is needed as well as background academic articles. I tend to print out course materials to read when I have the chance. Also reading from a page reduces the eye strain that I'm experiencing these days due largely to the amount of back-lit screen reading we teachers do, as well as having data-projectors facing us at the front of the classroom. I worry as well that educators could over-rely on the VLE as a method of gathering evidence about the student's engagement in the course judging participation and understanding too much by tracking of how much access students have made of the VLE and their volume of postings.

So, I think that a big drawback of a VLE in comparison to F2F teaching is that the VLE cannot tell us the non-verbal and/or unwritten interactions that take place in a classroom setting. As teachers we get so much information about our students' individual needs by observing their responses to class tasks and their peers - this is certainly the case in the field of language teaching. There's also the pastoral element of being a teacher to consider as well. In a F2F setting we can easily see if students are losing motivation, having difficulties or needing additional support.

As well as this, it's so much more time-consuming to write one's opinions down in an accessible way than it is to verbalise them to a group in class. However that in itself could be seen as a benefit: the need to present opinions in a publishable form hones your academic writing skills.

Greetings!

Hi fellow Manchester Uni MADTCE students and anyone else who finds themselves reading this.

I'm Rachel Scott, a Distance Learner on the MADTCE course. I'm based in Sharjah in the UAE where I live with my husband Leandro (Brazilian), daughter Gabi (Brazinglish) and her nanny Marie Ann (Philipina). I teach English language to foundations students in Sharjah Women's College which is one of the UAE Higher Colleges of Technology. The students are all Emirati ladies of between 19 and 24.

Recently I've realised that when it come to medium and long term plans I'm almost entirely motivated by a perceived need for safety and security; I'm putting this down to motherhood. On an individual task basis though, I'd say that near-instant gratification and novelty is what grabs and keeps my attention and motivation.