International-virtual class conferences

In my dream project I’d like to establish a class room in which students could hold virtual conferences via internet with students from all around the globe.

The required equipment would consist of an internet conncetion, appropriate hard- and software, sufficient pc’s, keyboards and headphones, as well as virtual glasses by which students can chat with and see any student of their choice.

In such a virtual class, students might be able to discuss current topics (politics, private issues, school concerned problems,sports, etc.) with students from another virtual class somewhere abroad.

Some advantages of this international-virtual class conference are:
- information at first hand
- real face-to-face talk with
native speakers
- extention of knowledge
about other countries and
people
- quicker than other chat
opportunities(e-mail)
- you see exactly who you are
talking to
- etc.

That’s roughly how a project of my imagination would look like.
cheers pierre

Session on D.Beckham

Let`s suppose we are going to teach a advanced class of sports students in English. Our session would look as the following:

1.) We are going show a one minute video section on David Beckham (as the introduction)
-> what will our session mainly be about for today?
mind map – relating ideas to David Beckham
-> picture from Beckham – describe his outward appearance

2.)
hand out acticity one (numbers and dates related to Beckham)
-> podcard first listening

activity 2 – questionaire
-> podcard. second listening

3.) controversial discussion

Is not it that case that football players are overpaid (Beckham = $ 33 mio)
-> partner work
-> mixed groups

thanks

Questions for the field-trip

A) Is New Media sufficiently used in your school?

B) How could New Media projects be improved?

A: In the opinion of the two persons who were answering our questions concerning New Media projects in their school, both replied that all the available computer stuff is used as often as the oppotunity is given. All students work on the pc’s as much as they can whenever they have the chance to do so.

B: When asking them about improvements of the usage of New Media, they did not come up with many suggestions, except the esatablishment of a weblog, such as the one we are using in this seminar.

New Media in my old school

In my old school, New Media can be used by pupils in three different ways. 1st. They have the opportunity to work on computers(only 8-10) in the library during breaks, or in their spare time. 2nd. There are two computer-rooms that might be used, either by whole classes during lessons(if they receive computer concerned tasks by their teachers), or on their own during the 7th lesson(always under the control of a responsible person). 3rd. In the “Oberstufe” pupils have the choice of the subject “Informatik” in which they will be initiated in general computer knowledge, such as HTML, Word, or Excel.
The following link shows the whole “Informatik” programm of the “Oberstufe”(if someone might be interested): http://gym-neu.dyndns.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71&Itemid=59

I think, that the given opprtunities in my old school are not adequate, especially in the library. Only 8-10 computers for over 400 pupils is not acceptable because it is quite hard to get a spot during the breaks and even in spare time. Unfortunately, the two computer-rooms could also be used more often. An hour of 45minutes per day is far too few time, and apart from that, do pupils have lessons when the rooms are open.
Pupils must be given more time and opportunities to work with New Media. In my opinion, the computer-rooms should be available the whole school-day and as long as the school is open. Assumed, that the rooms will be controlled by a teacher or another responsible person.
About the use of the rooms during the lessons did I not find out very much, but I know that we uesd these rooms very few during my school days. If someone was not much familiar with any programs, either by own experience, or by “Informatik” courses, it was very hard to learn something about New Media in school, or to extend one’s knowledge about it. Therefore, “Informatik” should be included in the timetable because it is nowadays much more important than it ever was, especially for pupils who will definitely have to have the general computer knowledge in order to get a job, because it is required in almost every application.

so far for taday,
cheers pierre

New Media in my old school

In my old school, New Media can be used by pupils in three different ways. 1st. They have the opportunity to work on computers(only 8-10) in the library during breaks, or in their spare time. 2nd. There are two computer-rooms that might be used, either by whole classes during lessons(if they receive computer concerned tasks by their teachers), or on their own during the 7th lesson(always under the control of a responsible person). 3rd. In the “Oberstufe” pupils have the choice of the subject “Informatik” in which they will be initiated in general computer knowledge, such as HTML, Word, or Excel.
The following link shows the whole “Informatik” programm of the “Oberstufe”(if someone might be interested): http://gym-neu.dyndns.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71&Itemid=59

I think, that the given opprtunities in my old school are not adequate, especially in the library. Only 8-10 computers for over 400 pupils is not acceptable because it is quite hard to get a spot during the breaks and even in spare time. Unfortunately, the two computer-rooms could also be used more often. An hour of 45minutes per day is far too few time, and apart from that, do pupils have lessons when the rooms are open.
Pupils must be given more time and opportunities to work with New Media. In my opinion, the computer-rooms should be available the whole school-day and as long as the school is open. Assumed, that the rooms will be controlled by a teacher or another responsible person.
About the use of the rooms during the lessons did I not find out very much, but I know that we uesd these rooms very few during my school days. If someone was not much familiar with any programs, either by own experience, or by “Informatik” courses, it was very hard to learn something about New Media in school, or to extend one’s knowledge about it. Therefore, “Informatik” should be included in the timetable because it is nowadays much more important than it ever was, especially for pupils who will definitely have to have the general computer knowledge in order to get a job, because it is required in almost every application.

so far for taday,
cheers pierre

E-mail project between schools in Japan and Finland

The project between pupils from Finland and Japan was planned as a two to three months project and took place in 2001. During this period 8 pupils from Finland, aged from 14 to 15, stayed in contact via e-mail with 6 Japanese pupils, aged 17 to 18. Both groups were writing in German. The Finnish group had already 7 years of German experience in school, whereas the Japanese group only had 3. The topics that should be dealt with were concerned with tourist attractions of the respective home country, special recipies, holidays, public holidays, etc. Apart from the time on the computer at school, the pupils had the oppotunity to talk about personal interests in an established discussion forum. Every participant was also supposed to write a diary about the happenings and contents of their conversations.

Despite problems like lack of proper sentence structure and word choice, grammer, or expressing thoughts, both teachers, the Japanese and the Finnish one, considered the project as a success because of the following reasons:

- pupils get to know a new area in which they can communicate with people from different countries

- pupils can test their linguistic abilities

- pupils learn about other cultures( for example by doing quizzes)

- pupils learn to compose text on their own( diary)

- pupils sense success, if the writing partner understands the content of their mail

- creating the opportunity of establishing a personal contact to someone abroad

- pupils might lose constraints, which they have in front of the whole class

- feeling of great motivation( developing a website about the project, on which the pupils can look back to it, or show family and friends what they have done)

I personally agree with these arguments and think that it is at least worth to try such a project in class. Even though, there might be complications, such as different ranges of learning, or technical problems, the advantages and improvements pupils will get from such a project should motivate every techer to find a suitable partner abroad in order to make an e-mail project a success as this one.

cheers pierre

Internet Communication

I personally like the idea of ‘Internet Communication’. In my opinion it constitutes a good oportunity for students, or other groups, to get to know something about other people at first hand. It is also a quick method of exchanging information, if you are communicating with reliable persons. Especially e-mail friendships can be very fruitful for all involved participants, if everyone is willing to keep them alive. If you are writing to people from abroad, you’ll probably learn more about culture and region than in school. Apart from that, you will definitly extend and improve your knowledge about writing in a different language, assumed, you have agreed with your  writing partner on writitng in English for example.

Addiontionally, you will also improve your typing skills because the more and often your write the better it’ll get. Extending and developing knowledge of different communication possibilities, such as discussion forums, joint projects, and synchronic and asynchronic communication methods, are also involved in  ‘Internet  Communication’ and are good methods/ ideas in order to make students familiar with Internet technologies.

Even though, disadvantages like connection problems, no face-to-face situations, or less background information about the participants( which in my opinion is supposed to be established), I think ‘Internet Communication’ should be used, especially in school, because it is way more interesting to get information from native people than from teachers or other experts.

cheers pierre

Comment on ‘internet research’

When looking at the listed advantages and disadvantages of ‘Internet research’, one can see that these are almost even and comprehensible. Therefore, I am not quite sure, whether I would completely recommend it. Even though, it seems essential to be familiar with ‘Internet research’ nowadays, I do not think that it is really necessary. Old research methods like going to librarys and searching for books are still used and seem more reliable. Furthermore, when searching for information in books, it is less likely to commit plagiarism because one would rather copy a whole text or parts of a text and insert them into his work than writing down passages from a book.

Despite my mentioned doubts, I am also of the opinion that young students should definitly be familiarized with ‘Internet research’ in order to show them that there are more possibilities and ways of research than just doing research in librarays. However, teachers should be aware of dangers and talk with their students about possible problems that can occur when doing ‘Internet research’, beforehand. Thus, I think that ‘Internet research’ might be a good opprtunity to extend students knowledge of research methods, which could be very important for their future life.

Comment on the practical task no. 8: possibilities of multicultural and cooperative learning on the internet

In my opinion, the topic/ task of this poster could have been narrowed down to a certain area, for example possibilities in schools or universities. Therefore, it was difficult for me to know in which areas the listed opportunities should be applied. Apart from that, I think, it is good and necessary to talk about and develop ideas for multicultural and cooperative learning because in most areas, whether it is in school, university, or business, one will probably deal with multicultural and cooperative situations. In every of these areas it is most likely that people will be confronted with other people, sometimes from other countries, so that it is essential to be familiar with such learning opportunities.

When considering the poster, the group did a good job and listed quite a lot of internet sources that deal with the topic. Most of them were easily comprehensible, such as blogs, online communication, cultural websites, discussion boards, or the VCT/ VLC. However, I do not really know in which way wikipedia might be helpful for mulitcultural and cooperative learning. Here, I would have liked an explanation or another hint that could have lead me to the point. Nevertheless, I liked the topic and the ideas on the poster.

cheers pierre

Comment on Learning Theories and Principles

Before commenting on the virtual session of learning theories and principles, I have to admit that I do not particularly like the kind of online learning method. I get always quite annoyed while doing them because each unit follows the same structure and it is not possible to ask questions immediately.

Nevertheless, I worked thorugh this unit and became quite familiar with the three different learning theories of bahaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism and their related ideas. Apart from that, the section about “History of Education” was very informative because I have neither read nor heard much about this development before. The principles of distance education, lifelong learning, media competence as well as the methodological, scientific and social skills were not as interesting as the theories because most of these topics have already been discussed in other classes.

After these general comments on the unit, I would like to take a closer look on the three theories and describe my opinion of them.

All theories might be considered as a latter of progress on which the idea of “behaviourism” constitutes the first step and a good method for beginning learners to establish and develop a basic knowledge about new information. However, in order to memorize and extend this new knowledge, both other theories have to be applied. Hence, after establishing a basic knowledge, applying “cognitivism” would be the next step because by explorative learning the learner will be able to understand and memorize all relevant information during a learning process. Furthermore, his developing skills as well as his capability of solving problems will be improved, which leads to an establisment of self-organized learning. The theory of “constructivism” displays the last step. Here, the ability of self-organized learning will even be taken further by the ideas of reflecting experiences and constructing understanding of one’s own environment.

In my opinion, all theories display advantages and disadvantages and well chosen mixture between them would be a solution for an interesting and informative learning process.

cheers pierre