The Anti-Education Era (Part 1) response

I have been told I am pretty intelligent, I have had a fair bit of formal education, and I know I have gathered some wisdom from experiences over the years. However, I am also stupid. I have made, and continue to make, stupid decisions in my life. Decisions related to every-day mundane things, to relationships, in the workplace, even that decision to finally use the right lane to zoom past that car that had been slowing me and irritating me. I instantly knew that last one was stupid because I had been warned state troopers often waited in that area for speeders and as I went by one popped out and pulled me over. Maybe you are shaking your head in agreement, or saying, “So what, we’re all stupid.” Well, in a sense, that is what this James Paul Gee book I am reading, The Anti-Education Era, is all about. He discusses how and why humans are often stupid when it comes to dealing with complex issues. In this short reaction paper for my CEP 812 class I discuss some of what he has to say in the first part of his book. Next time around we’ll look at how he thinks we can be smarter, so don’t let it get you too down!

Complex ER Problem (for CEP 812)

I have a problem in my EFL Reading courses at a university in Japan in getting my students to self-select level-appropriate reading material for extensive reading (ER). What I have done to date is give them a general introduction to the concepts in ER, general guidance as to where I think they should start to find the right level of reading materials (including both bringing materials into the classroom and taking them to the library to explore materials), and then monitoring their choices and doing individual consultations until they get zeroed in. However, since the time for checking with them is really limited, this can take several weeks to get all students on track. Also, they may sort out that Level 1 for a specific publisher's graded reader series suits them, but then another publisher's level 1 may be quite a bit more difficult. What I have found, the Extensive Reading Foundation's Online Placement Test, looks to improve and shorten the process of getting my students aware of their own levels and how their individual level corresponds to several graded reader series. Have a look at this screencast for some more information about it. (If video does not display properly, follow this link.)

Solving Complex Problems (for CEP 812)

I had identified a problem in one of my courses and found a solution, Haiku Deck, that seemed to work for it. I started writing it up and preparing my screencast and then I noticed a major problem. I had thought that the iPad app would be fully functionally with iPhone, which would have helped solve the problem. However, I noticed the iPhone functionality is limited, so I needed to change gears and examine another problem.

I do have a complex problem with quite a number of factors. While it isn’t directly teaching, it is intricately involved with my professional practice. In this screencast I describe the problem and the tool, Zoho, which I hope will help solve it.

CEP 811 Final Reflection

This course has helped me to consider more carefully how and why to integrate technology into my educational practice.  What stands out most for me is the work we did with respect to Universal Design for Learning (UDL).  Thinking about educational technology as something which can help open up more learning opportunities for all students was an interesting element and some of what I encountered there seems directly applicable to second language learning.  Making sure that using technology actually adds something useful that wouldn’t be possible without it also is an important concept I took away from this course.  The practice evaluating technological resources, including my own and those developed by my classmates, using the UDL and TPACK principles helped give me skills to continue to do this when finding or creating resources for my own classes.

Coming into this course I was pretty open to anything that might help me to improve my courses.  The fact that I have now got a webpage built that I can use for my courses in the new school year alone would be satisfying.  However, I have also managed to create a WebQuest which I expect will greatly enhance a major unit and help students achieve a couple of significant goals in one of my courses.  In addition, I have developed a STAIR which will aid in my reading courses.  Through developing this resource I have also been given a couple of opportunities to present about it to other teachers.  So I would say that I have not only met but significantly exceeded my goals for this course.

Creating things that expand on and support what is possible in direct, classroom-based instruction is what I would like to be able to do more of and more skillfully in the future.  My immediate plans to this end are to continue to improve and expand on the resources I have described above and to take CEP 812.  I hope that these steps will then lead to further development I have not yet considered.

Thanks to my instructor and classmates who made it all work!

F2F Instructional Strategies

I had an interesting experience today while exploring F2F resources for my course.  One of the technologies I was looking at was VoiceThread.  This is an interesting resource that allows one to make slide shows and collaborate on a conversation around these shows.  People can comment on / participate in these in a number of ways including text, voice, and video and then share them around the world.  It seems like a great resource for allowing EFL learners to connect and practice with learners around the world.  When I linked to the the ESL / EFL section here, I immediately found one example produced by someone I know from being officers in the same professional organization in Japan.  Then, as I explored further, I found one that the creator credited the idea for to someone by the same name as someone I used to work in the same school, live in the same building, and sometimes go to the same pub with.  I followed the link to her original material and then her blog and found it was in fact her, which provided me with an opportunity to reconnect with her.  Interesting how small the world can be!

Reflections on Online Teaching

I would like to address this topic in two parts.  First with some reflection on the general topic based on the readings and my experience in my own teaching context in Japan.  Then I’ll turn to one of the resources noted in the Michigan Merit Curriculum Online Experience Guideline Companion Document and reply to the questions.

1. Generally relating online teaching to my teaching context.

I think there are much more limited opportunities for online experiences in Japanese institutions than in Michigan schools.  Where it is being offered it seems to most often be individual instructors or small groups of instructors who are doing it in their own classes or a small set of courses and this is mostly blended learning. However, some institutions are starting to offer teacher-led online courses.  My impression is this is driven more by a desire to expand the pool of potential students, particularly non-traditional aged students and part-time students, than a desire or plan to build technology skills.  These types of learners are accommodated very poorly in the traditional brick-and-mortar courses but are a growing percentage of potential students especially with the age-demographic realities in graying Japan.

I am actually not sure if my university offers any information or training on online citizenship and security.  I do know that during orientation there is an introduction to using the system and students get accounts so they can use the on-campus computers, which is more than at my previous school.  There is no Wi-Fi on campus and only teachers, not students, can connect their own computers to the Ethernet and then only with the IT office having registered and approved the computer.  There don’t seem to be any campus-wide directives or objectives similar to the MI initiative.  Some departments do require a computer course but usually it is based on learning to use Office software.

Online research and online resource evaluation training seem like they would be very valuable for our students.  Students generally are comfortable finding something (and, sadly, copying it) from Wikipedia or doing a basic Google search, but don’t seem to expand beyond that into checking multiple sources, checking the original sources and validity of what they do find, etc.  The Online Experience Guideline Companion Document has a lot of resources in these areas I plan to share with others in my English Education Center.

I think many of the design standards described in the Guide to Teaching Online Courses (pp.6-7) have not made it yet into the general curricular standards though I would say that many language teachers do strive to meet them.  Courses being learner-centered and collaborative, fostering skills rather than only content memorization, and being flexible in both coursework and assessments to accommodate the varied backgrounds, needs and learning styles of students are areas that I feel there is a lot of attention to in the language teaching community but not necessarily at the institutional or regulatory level.  In fact, some polices implemented to make sure educators and students are held to standards can actually run counter to these goals.  As noted in The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age,

… traditional learning institutions, whether K–12 or institutions of higher learning, continue to privilege individualized performance in assessments and reward structures. Born and matured out of a century and a half of institutional shaping, maturing, and hardening, these assessment and reward structures have become fixed in place. But they now serve also to weigh down and impede new learning possibilities. (p. 24)

An insistence on formal final exams which account for at least 25% of the grade is an example of this in some institutions in Japan now.  On the other hand, there is a long-held assumption that a course in any format is to be teacher-led, and there is a recent push from regulators to be certain that course standards are made clear and that even university teachers should be expected, and provided opportunities, to continually improve their teaching practice.

Guide to Teaching Online Courses also suggests three necessary support structures for online instructors, which I would say should apply to teachers delivering blended-learning courses as well.  These are technology infrastructure, technical and administrative support, and educational support.  My experience with Japanese universities in this respect has not been stellar.  One school had no IT office or dedicated support staff, for example, and when Wi-Fi was introduced on campus it was made almost impossible for anyone to get permission to use it outside of one small department which was including ICT as a significant part of their curriculum and required the access.  Also, other than instructors using some of their research and materials budget to attend conferences I have not seen any real education support as outlined regarding ongoing teacher education.

2. Using one of the technologies.

One of the resources that could be useful in my teaching is one I found at http://calhouncourtkids.wikispaces.com/Third+Grade+Lessons.  The link I followed from the companion document was no longer active, but by searching around in the courts site I eventually found this.  It is a wiki of 15 different lessons on various aspects of how the court system works.  There are PDFs and PowerPoints to download and use.  While it is designed for 3^rd graders in the USA, I think this resource could be applicable to some of my students at university in Japan.  I teach a class of students who are Law majors.  I think this could be an interesting way to give them a project that will be related to their majors more directly than much of the work we do.  How I envision using it is to create groups and then have them look at the titles of the lessons and get each group to choose one of the lessons to explore.  Then they would explore the lesson and do the activities involved in it on their own.  Then I would ask them to research how the Japanese courts would deal with a similar situation.  Finally, each group would use what they learned to create a presentation in English and share it with their classmates.  The presentations could be standard, in front of the class presentations or perhaps video presentations they could upload and share.

Extensive Reading StAIR

This is a stand-alone instructional resource (StAIR) which I developed for use in my reading classes.  It is designed to introduce and encourage Extensive Reading.  I used PowerPoint to develop it and it is a ppsx file which can be downloaded from my website here, from GoogleDrive here or from MERLOT here.  I may have gotten a little carried away with the sounds, so if you find them distracting just mute the audio.  Please feel free to use it and adapt it for our own class as long as you credit me as the developer.  

Introducing Extensive Reading by Thomas E. Bieri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.