Needed Changes
Personal improvementsI want to set up a good rubric to assess students' work. I may work on this with ESL colleagues that have contacted me through my blog.
I want to encourage students to use the blogs to write more freely, in a less guided way. Some colleagues criticise the use of blogs as a homework space, but I think ESL students demand more guidelines than native English speakers, especially those still at a less fluent stage.
I'd like to explore video making & wikis. Leigh Blackall has just sent me a link to a very interesting project by a German teacher in New Zealand using youtube and wikis.
Time provisions
Managers need to be aware of the amount of time needed to design, prepare, correct, edit, record, publish, give feedback, mentor colleagues and assess online delivered materials. There is a thread discussing this in edna Networks-Come and see what I'm doing! (Recent online discussion regarding workload issues).
On the one hand, being an early adapter/adopter is seen as terrific. (I was introducing a colleague into blogging, podcasting and digital stories because she has missed out on a job, and one of the reasons given was that the person chosen for the job had introduced podcasting in her lesson plan... my colleague only used text messaging!) On the other hand, you are not given any extra time to do any of this at work. The bulk of my blogging, podcasting, uploading, etc is done at home. It makes me feel as if online teaching/learning was invisible.
Filtering of software
On several occasions we've suffered from drastic blocking of blogger, flickr, blogger photos, blogger editing & publishing tools, photobucket, podomatic recording tool (always disabled), etc. We've been told it's only going to get worse! I hope our institution allows us to continue using Social Software, I can't see TAFE spending loads of money in lots of programs that would do for so many students and teachers the same job as blogger, flickr, youtube, etc.
Section/college support
IT support is great. College support for computer rooms is getting better. The section supports us in getting individual training or even if we want to organise specific workshops (eg Digital Story Telling by Robin Jay, or the workshop given by Paulis on Janison toolboxes). Nevertheless, I feel this is seen as an individual choice: you like doing it, you do it in your own time. It should be seen as what it is: an integral part of our teaching. Everything is embedded, the topics, the genres, the media and the 4 skills.
Labels: digital stories, ESL podcasts, ESOL, p2p, social software, web 2.0
posted by rosa ochoa @ 11:36 PM
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