The drudgery of teaching

I love teaching. I love it so much that I often do it for free. I'm happy to spend hours planning lessons, and I feel energized at the end of a class. But I'm definitely in the minority, especially among teachers of English here in China.

I don't really understand the dissatisfaction. Is it the low salary that teachers get? Is it the shock of living in an unfamiliar culture? Is it the loneliness of being away from friends and family? Or could it be that many English teachers abroad are not really teachers at heart?

Teaching English overseas is seen by many as a time filler, a layover on the way to some other more prestigious career. As a result, morale is low, turnover is high, and institutions are reluctant to invest in professional development since the teachers will be gone in a year anyway.

I recently came across this post addressing the issue of disgrunt among EFL teachers, in which the author suggests improving an otherwise horrible day at work by going to ESL/EFL conferences and reading up on the industry - essentially by engaging in professional development.

Perhaps teachers feel unprepared to do a job they thought would be easy-peasy. Perhaps if these overseas institutions stepped in at the beginning and invested more time and energy in professional development for teachers, they would understand their jobs better and thus be more likely to enjoy it, and maybe even stay a bit longer.

Are there any other ESL/EFL teachers out there? Is the attitude the same among English teachers the world over?

NYT: Inflating the software report card

In this article from the New York Times, the author writes:

And Intel, in a Web document urging schools to buy computers for every student, acknowledges that “there are no longitudinal, randomized trials linking eLearning to positive learning outcomes.” Yet it nonetheless argues that research shows that technology can lead to more engaged and economically successful students, happier teachers and more involved parents. 

Of course there are no longitudinal studies on e-learning. Longitudinal studies are done over time, and since e-learning is a relatively new field, the data over time is not in yet. But that doesn't disprove technology's effect on learning.

However, it is important to evaluate e-learning platforms for their potential effectiveness, rather than adopting e-learning tools willy nilly. I jury is still out on the most effective way to present learning online, but I'm excited to be a part of the discovery.

Sharing learning

Todd posted about a cyber salon he attended in Phoenix last month (my home town!), and how he appreciated the chance to share ideas with other teaching professionals. He questioned whether it should be considered professional development, since no one was getting paid to be there.

I work for an English language training company in Shanghai, China. Every Friday the content editors (or curriculum developers, if you will) meet for an informal talk on something related to language learning. There is a different presenter each week, and they can choose whatever topic they want. The talks are not mandatory, but they have become quite popular.

One of the appeals of the talks is being able to break away from the week's routine for an hour to talk about subjects we're passionate about, regardless of whether they're related to our current projects. And I do see passion in the participants. We want to be there discussing language acquisition, and often stay over to delve even further into a topic. Isn't that what it's all about?

I'd say that, if you're passionate about what you do, then even the fun stuff - especially the fun stuff - can be called professional development.

Matt Damon supports teachers
And again behind the scenes

The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. -Steve Jobs

On writing

In a post from Week 2, Mark Thornhill writes:

I authored a blog a few years ago and I feverishly kept it up thinking that I was doing the universe a service by keeping everyone informed of my whimsy and then it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, nobody was paying attention . . So that blog experience kind of died.

In response, Lisa said:

I decided that I was blogging for me.

I totally agree. If we write so that others will read it, we are writing for the wrong audience. But if you have something to say, why not say it, regardless if anyone's listening. Who knows, you might be writing to your future self.

A great website to help get the words flowing: http://750words.com/

(Apologies, Mark, for not posting directly on your blog. Edublogs is blocked in China.)

Silent students: The fear of being monitored

I apologize for not including links to previous blog posts on this topic. I forgot who sent me on this tangent. Feel free to add links in the comments.

Perhaps some students are quiet in class not because they don't have anything to say, but because they think what they have to say won't be seen by the teacher as the "right" answer. Even outside of the classroom, we often quell our comments for fear of being "wrong".

Maybe we could change that. Maybe we could make it perfectly clear that discussion sessions are not about right and wrong answers, but about exploring topics, fleshing out ideas, making mistakes. Mistakes are so important to the learning process, and if students were given the opportunity to make mistakes without it reflecting in their grade, perhaps they'd say more.

Facebook groups are one way to help overcome the reluctance to speak in class. Any other ideas?

Student as teacher

All this talk about the flipped classroom has gotten me thinking - not only can we relegate lectures as homework and use the classroom for practice work, we might also be able to flip roles with our students. Make the students into teachers. I touched on this in an earlier post, but thought I'd flesh it out a little more here.

I know from personal experience that the best way (for me) to learn something is to teach it. That's how I learned to speak Spanish, and that's how I'm improving my Chinese. Having to explain concepts to others in a way that they can understand them helps to make those concepts more concreate in one's own mind. Therefore, if students were made to take more of a teaching role, they might be more successful. Learn by doing.

That's not to say that students should be left to their own devices. Teachers definitely still have a place in the doing = knowing model. (Perhaps that's my own self preservation screaming forth!) But instead of being recepticles of information from which students scoop out what will be on the test, teachers can step away from the forefront and become guides in the autonomous learning process.

I keep envisioning a baby taking their first steps - a parent hovering but not helping.

Dave Ragett's HTML: A shortcut

For those of us who are not proficient in HTML, it really looks like a big mess. How in the world can we learn all this code? But on further inspection, it's really not that hard. In fact, you don't need to know any HTML code at all to be able to write HTML.

If you see something on a web page that you like and want to include it on your own page, just look at the source code. To do this, all you really need to know is Dave's trick: click on the “View” menu, then on “Source”. There are enough words in plain English on the source page to guide you to the code you're looking for.

Let's take Dave's site for an example.

Suppose you like the way Dave made his photo a link to his home page. Open up the source file and take a look at the code. HTML code starts at the top left corner of the page and continues left to right, top to bottom, so you can safely assume that the code for Dave's photo will be close to the top of the HTML document.

As you scroll through the HTML, you will notice phrases that you can see on the actual web page (highlighted here in red).

<body bgcolor="white" text="black" background="book.jpg">
<p class="navbar"><a href="http://www.w3.org/"><img alt="W3C" width="72"
height="48" border="0" src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/w3c_home.gif"></a><br>
<a href="Advanced.html">Advanced HTML</a> | <a href="Style.html">Adding a
touch of style</a></p>
<h1><a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett"><img src="dsr.jpg"
alt="Dave Raggett" align="middle" border="0"></a>
&nbsp;&nbsp;Getting started with HTML</h1>

<p><em><a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett">Dave Raggett</a>,
revised 24 May 2005.</em></p>

Now you know you're in the right section of the code. We can narrow it down even further, since we know that the image is between "Adding a touch of style" and "Getting started with HTML".

We need to know that the start of a command is written like this: <a>, and the end of the command is written like this: </a>. The actual text might differ, but the brackets will look the same. Look for that part of the code that surrounds the command involving a photo - probably a .jpg file.

<a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett"><img src="dsr.jpg"
alt="Dave Raggett" align="middle" border="0"></a>

Now, just copy this part of the code. Replace Dave's web address, image file name, and image title with your own. Drop it into your HTML document or blog, and save. Then you can forget about HTML until the next time.

Playing with game-based learning

There's lots of talk these days about game-based learning. Schools and training companies are excitedly looking for ways to encorporate educational games into their curriculum.

Here are a couple of interesting examples:
Peace Corps Challenge
Ding Ding City

However, I think the current educational offerings miss the point. They erroneously focus on learning as the goal. You get an answer right, you get a point. Yay, you. But - and this might sound blasphemous coming from an educator - learning is not the goal for most students.

Okay, so if learning is not the goal, what is? A decent job, status, self confidence. Students intend to use what they learn as a tool to get other, more desirable things. It's the same with gaming.

What keeps people involved in games like World of Warcraft or even Plants vs. Zombies? It's not the opportunity to learn something. They may be required to learn something in order to complete a task, but learning is not the end point. Instead, the motivation is status, accomplishing a task, a sense of community.

We need to move away from the idea that students are interested in learning for learning's sake. In his TED Talk, Tom Chatfield outlines seven ways games reward the brain. These are the things we need to focus on when building - or selecting - educational games.

Prezi: PowerPoint with pizzazz?

Prezi is awesome, isn't it? You can create twists and turns, zoom in or zoom out, create interesting paths for your audience to follow as you wow them with quotes in parentheses and tiny little asides in the dot of an I.

Perhaps it's my visual learning style that's getting in the way, but when I watch a Prezi, I find that I'm distracted by all the bells and whistles. I start trying to predict where the Prezi will spin to next, and lose focus on what the presentation is actually trying to say.

Perhaps I need to play around with it a little more and get to know some more features. Or maybe you can help. Other than the fancy animation, what can Prezi do that PowerPoint can't?

Seven?!

I teach English as a foreign language for a private company in Shanghai, China. I'm in a unique situation in my classes. I don't have the luxury of a semester with my students. In fact, I may have one class with them and never see them again.

Considering our system against the Seven Principles, it seems we fall way short on the majority of them.

1. Frequent student-teacher contact
In each class session, we practice speaking English in a different real-life situation. The lessons are self-contained so that students can come and go as it suits them. We have hundreds of teachers and hundreds of thousands of students, so building a lasting rapport between teacher and student is not likely.

2. Cooperation among students
We offer online conversation classes in which students  interact with each other on a given topic for 45 minutes at a time. It works well for people who have an erratic schedule, busy executives who can attend only infrequently, and college students who have a lot of time on their hands. However, there is no lasting collaboration among the students.

3. Active learning
Though we do try to encourage active participation in the lessons, students spend a lot of passive time in the classrooms, waiting for their turn to speak. In the online classroom, we are limited by the software, so only one student can talk at a time, making group work and discovery learning impossible.

4. Prompt feedback
Student receive feedback on grammar mistakes or vocabulary words during the 45-minute classes, but after the class is finished, they have no opportunity to delve deeper into the issues with a teacher. That makes for a more autonomous learner!

5. Time on task
Since each class is self-contained and the students are free to come and go at will, teachers have no control over how much time a students spends practicing. Our website monitors how much time students spend there, but teachers are unaware of the details.

6. High expectations
There is no "performance" element to our classes. We discuss a topic, but there is no encouragement to publish thoughts or reactions to a blog or other public medium. Students have nothing to show for their 45-minute effort.

7. Respect diverse talents
Although our students come into a classroom from all over the world, the lessons are presented in a fixed style, each similar to the last. If the student doesn't learn that way, they just don't come to class.

Looks like we need to do some major rethinking about our online and face to face classes!

Alec Couros: Teaching and learning in a networked world

Alec Couros's talk was quite interesting. He's a big advocate of getting online. Not only do students already network among themselves online, but teachers can also benefit greatly from online networking.

I agree that networks are important, both social and professional. But I'm not convinced that online networking should take up as much of my time as Mr. Couros would like. Twitter is especially suspect in my mind. To be fair, I haven't used Twitter much, but it seems like it would add more to my to-do list if I were to dedicate my time reading all those tweets. If I spend so much time on my digital identity, when do I have time to work on the real me, the one who actually teaches?

Mr. Couros's main point seems to be that, since so much information is available anytime the student wants it, learning is becoming more and more autonomous, and therefore, our role as teachers is fast changing into something other than a lecturer or, as I like to say, the classroom know-it-all.

Not only is the face of education changing due to the online community - other aspects of society are changing as well. Through social media platforms and crowd sourcing, we have formed our own personal learning networks, which we access often for information on everything from good restaurants in our neighborhood (Yelp) to the history of the Ottoman Empire (Wikipedia). We can find out anything in a very short span of time, so we no longer need the experts like we used to.

With the ever-growing phenomenon of participatory media, we can learn about world news events as they happen, instead of waiting for Brian Williams to tell us. Perhaps the news as we know it will also go by the wayside in favor of a more accurate crowd sourcing model.

It's quite exciting to be part of this emerging culture of sharing information and resources. It looks like we're moving ever closer to a real global community.

Changing education paradigms

This link has been floating around the POT blog roll: Sir Ken Robinson's talk titled Changing Education Paradigms.

I've thought for a long time that education should not be based on age, but rather on ability and interest. When I was in school, I had to wait (impatiently) for the rest of the class to finish their math problems. But in the next hour, I was hopelessly scrambling to catch up in my speed reading class. What if I were allowed to work at my own pace?

Although it's good to have deadlines, the deadline should by no means be the most important part of education. Instead, a freer system that removes the boundaries of grade levels would open up so many more possibilities for students. Those that excel in a subject would be freer to explore it in more depth. Those that need more time would be able to take it without the humiliation of being "held back".

The question is, if we allow for a more open educational system, how do we deal with the mixture of ages working together? How do we reconcile emotional maturity level with academic ability and artistic talent?

(See more from Sir Robinson here.)

The case for non-native language teachers

Thanks to Lana for her Sept 8 blog post, Out with lecturing, in with problem-solving, and the link to a very interesting article, Rethinking the way college students are taught. Of particular interest was the following passage:

"Imagine two students sitting next to one another, Mary and John. Mary has the right answer because she understands it. John does not. Mary's more likely, on average, to convince John than the other way around because she has the right reasoning."

But here's the irony. "Mary is more likely to convince John than professor Mazur in front of the class," Mazur says.

"She's only recently learned it and still has some feeling for the conceptual difficulties that she has whereas professor Mazur learned [the idea] such a long time ago that he can no longer understand why somebody has difficulty grasping it."

That's the irony of becoming an expert in your field, Mazur says. "It becomes not easier to teach, it becomes harder to teach because you're unaware of the conceptual difficulties of a beginning learner."

I live in Shanghai, China, and am studying Mandarin Chinese. I'm still a beginner, but I have a good handle on some of the basic concepts of the language (grammar, tones, word order, etc.). One of my co-workers approached me last week and asked me to teach her Chinese. I admitted to her that I am only a beginning learner myself, and that she might do better studying with one of our Chinese colleagues. She said that she had tried studying with a native-speaker, but had problems understanding the tutor's explanations. The tutor just didn't understand what my co-worker didn't understand. Because I'm a student of Chinese myself, she feels that I will have much more empathy for her struggle to learn Chinese.

It reminds me of the discussion going around a couple of weeks ago: teachers are not necessarily experts in what we teach, but rather we are guides who are just further down the learning path than our students.

Finland: The legal right to broadband access

Even though it happened almost two years ago, I first heard about this from watching Alec Couros's talk "Open and Networked Learning". I had to look it up.

Sure enough, CNN, BBC, The Guardian and Huffinton Post all had articles declaring that Finland had passed a law naming broadband internet access as a basic legal right of every Finn. Incredible. I mean, wonderful - but wow. They've made the statement that everyone should have free access to information. Hurrah!

Week 2 Panic

I'm a little bit behind the rest of the class, but I'm diligently working through the assignments in an effort to catch up.

I found that I'm struggling to process all of the information that is suddenly available to us. Currently, I have 243 entries in my Goolge Reader feed for this class alone, including blog posts from other participants, Diigo posts, YouTube and Vimeo uploads, not to mention the conversation happening on Facebook.

With all these connections, I feel wildly without a sense of direction. Which link do I follow? Which conversation do I jump into? Which rabbit hole do I go down?

Thank goodness for Lisa's video, Week 2 Panic. I feel much better about it all. Instead of trying to read everything put out there, I feel more freedom to pick and choose which bits of information are most useful to me personally.

So to that end, I decided to focus on the assignments this week and not so much on the conversations.

Catching up

I just got back from a two-week vacation to Tibet, which I had planned before enrolling in this online course. Looks like I have a lot of catching up to do! I look forward to jumping back into the conversation.

Information overload

I'm really excited to see so much action on the POT blog roll today. I found myself scrambling to keep up with all the posts. And all the links posted on Diigo. And then there's the Facebook feed. Wow! So much information! And it's only the first day of class.

Any thoughts out there on how we can manage all this information in an efficient yet effective way?

Hello from Shanghai, China!

I'm a writer/editor/teacher of English as a second language. I'm from Arizona, but I currently live in Shanghai, China. I'm very excited to be taking part in this class, and look forward to the conversation.

China has a 'unique' internet situation. I tried to create an account on Diigo this morning with no luck. I'll try again from a different computer to see if it works.