Re/merge

I cannot tell you all how wonderful it is to attend an e-learning conference online, as gas prices hurdle to $4.19 at my local gas station and the comfort of my living room surrounded by my dogs replaces airport gates and runway waits. (Ha ha! sorry for the pathetic rhyme.)

At any rate, a number of us on the MAN (MERLOT Africa Network) are attending e/merge and I thought it’d be very interesting to leave comments on this blog about what we all learn there. Today, I listened to the narrated presentation by Irene Ficheman of Sao Paulo, Brazil who compares today’s learning environments to digital ecosystems. We are reading many of the same people- Prensky on Digital Natives, Paulo Freire on learning theory and some new names for me which I will look at soon.

At any rate Ficheman talks about how learners, teachers, content and software act and interact (or not)

so that students can gain knowledge in a dynamic learning environment. We have a good opportunity for reflection on the roles of teachers and learners as actors in this environment. For deeper learning, it seems that the more interaction the better. (So, let’s speak up.)

Anyway, I look forward to checking into this Digital Ecosystem discussion tomorrow and to hear the voices of MAN colleagues so that we can all later interact with the digital ecosystem that is e/merge. I am honored by the privilege to learn from colleagues, Bronwyn and Maggie, who taught us netvibes yesterday.  Earlier in the week, they showed de.licio.us and Facebook. During the de.licio.us  portion, I came across George Siemen’s  Connectivism presentation  from 2005 and, coincidentally, also his blog post about the recent e-learning Africa .

e/merge 2008

What a week!!!

I began it at Carnegie Mellon University for a workshop sponsored by the Open Learning Initiative. I got to know their French Online course up close and in person. It was a fabulous f2f experience and  I am thrilled about the prospect of continuing to connect with my new colleagues there. It shows the longevity and proves the utter logic of OER that after all these years of OCW and OLI, we are building a network that aims at providing more access. Even more important to me as an individual practitioner, this work provides us a forum in which we can discuss what really constitutes quality in online teaching and learning. I really need to have these conversations. To have them with  language educators was real ‘icing on the cake”.

One interesting point that came up here regarding instructional design of online courses was the study on the expert blind spot. (Nathan and Petrosino 2003 . Preconceived notions on how concepts should be presented can cause a disconnect between teaching goals and learning outcomes.  five days later, I keep hearing the message “You do  not think like your students and they do not think like you”. When we build and teach our online courses, we need to keep this difference in thinking in mind.

The rest of this week, I have been participating in a superb online conference sponsored by the Centre for Educational Technology in Cape Town, South Africa: e/merge. From the website:

“e/merge 2008 – Professionalising Practices is the third virtual conference on educational technology in Africa and builds on the e/merge conferences in 2004 and 2006. e/merge 2008 will take place online from 7 – 18 July 2008.”

So far, I really enjoyed a presentation by Howard Rheingold, whose work I have followed since his book  The Virtual Community years back. He now has a very interesting course going on at UC Berkeley called Visual Communications/Social Media. His class as explained on his online syllabus is super participatory with subheadings like “Participation mandatory”, “Leadership required”. He has students interacting in ways that immerse them in collaborative tasks while using all the new tools,blogs, wikis, etc.. .  Anyway, he was a keynoter at e/merge and his talk was followed by a robust discussion by educators around the world.

This virtual conference is employing every kind of new technology to connect participants. As much as I love to visit  places physically, it is wonderful to be able to experience so much collective  expertise without leaving home. This is particularly true since air travel has recently become so difficult, grueling and painfully inconvenient. (Hear my anguish??) I see no reason why we can and should not greatly augment the online component of all major conferences, partly as an access/inclusion issue for people who cannot attend f2f , as well as  for many other very good reasons.

e-learning Africa -First Pan African Forum on Open Educational Resources

Gerry, Moustapha, Laura of the MERLOT Africa Network

At the AICC conference center in Accra, talking about MERLOT in an African context. Catriona Savage from UNESCO Education Sector, Paris, France presented first on Open Educational Resources. Open educational resources are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute. Open educational resources include:

• Learning content: full courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals.
• Tools: Software to support the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities.
• Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content.

She spoke about the UNESCO perspective on the international OER movement. The OER movement began in 1998 with the term ‘open content’ coined by David Wylie. In 2001, MIT Open Courseware became the first large OER project. She talked about Rice University Connexions intiatives that provide a response to the limitations of traditional textbooks and the University of the Western Cape Free Courseware Project. Health OER is a project between South Africa, Ghana and the University of Michigan dealing with Health education resources.

UNESCO themes include Education for All-Building knowlege societies. With Hewlett Foundation support, the OER movement has been growing as has the availability of free educational content worldwide. Ms. Savage addressed the priorities of the UNESCO OER community. In Africa, some of the priority issues are:

• Awareness raising
• Communities
• Capacity Development
• Sustainabilty
• Quality Assurance
• Copyright
• Learning support services

Raising awareness through community building and network development are highest priorities.

The OER Wiki

Dr. Bakary Diallo, rector, talked next about the African Virtual University, (AVU) begun in Washington, DC at the World Bank and now based in Nairobi, Kenya. The topic was to increase access to high quality higher education in Africa. Barriers:

• Limited classrooms
• Outdated curricula
• Teaching and Learning Methods
• Research capacity
• Access to OER
• Bandwidth

The AVU seeks collaborative partnerships for the creation, design and dissemination and utilization of OERs. Dr. Diallo stressed the importance of addressing the issues surrounding working in an African historical, philosophical, psychological and cultural context. AVU is establishing collaborative partnerships with MERLOT and the MERLOT African Network. There is a plan to release 73 AVU Math and Science modules as OER.

Dr. Moustapha Diack continued with a talk about “Open Solutions” to increase the availability of OER, to promote free access to scientific literature through Open Access and to adapt open source solutions for learning design and community building. Global and regional policies need to be aligned in this movement to promote truly open access. Diack promoted MERLOT as a premier e-learning community and the MERLOT Africa Network as a means of facilitating networked partnership between US and African institutions affiliated with MERLOT. Open Access resources he mentioned included:

1. Directory of Open Access Journals
2. The Hinari Program
3. The Agora Initiative

I came all the way to Ghana to hear Vikram Savkar, the Publishing Director of Nature Publishing Group, who also happens to be the son of my dear colleague at NOVA, Reva Savkar, Professor of Chemistry at the Annandale Campus.  He spoke about the importance of tertiary science education in Africa. Without access to current quality science research, it is a challenge to provide good education and build capacity. Among solutions to the challenges alluded to by all speakers were: Open (Me-learning) & print materials, centers of excellence and private and public partnerships. Vikram Savkar hasworks on the Nature Science Education library of searchable, reusable digital content, a community of teachers and learners who can collaborate online and tools to permit the community to interact with each other and the content. The key theme in all of these presentations today, including Vikram’s is partnerships- academic, industrial and government partnerships.

Questions and Answers followed: What is the best opportunity to promote OER? Catriona Savage mentioned “talking about OER , telling the story of what works and what does not.” Gerry Hanley of MERLOT talked about “planning for action”. He encouraged the forum participants to have dialogues in their countries after experiencing MERLOT firsthand at the afternoon workshop. Dr. Diallo stressed the importance of addressing different needs and different perspectives.

A question from the audience was about interpretation and translation needs of the OER movement as well as training material about how to effectively use ICTs for teaching and learning. How will we adapt materials for different cultures? Panelists all recognized the needs for multilingual solutions.

Another question raised was about how we will keep track of quality in ICTs? Community built around the content, peer review and user comments, as in MERLOT, were all promoted as means of making decisions about quality.

All speakers talked about the critical need for faculty development in the area of teaching well online. The participants were encouraged to join MERLOT and start making use of the free and open library.

This afternoon, participants in the forum will attend our MERLOT hands-on workshop and get a chance to start to build their own personalcollections of learning objects.

Banku is news to me

Goes great with Ghanaian stews.

We got to Accra very late. Our hotel is charming. I feel very at home here. Folks are so nice and the landscape is like Belem.

 I have tried a new food called banku. It is a starch. You’d love it, Vegan.  Check it out.|It goes very well with okra and fish stew which I also had. Funny and a little, just a tad awkward was when the waiter brought me a pot of water to go along and I asked him what it was for!! Apparently banku, and the stew that accompanies it, is eaten with the fingers. I didn’t know, but proceeded to apply my first lesson learned, day one in Accra.

On my way to Accra

Sitting in the Amsterdam airport, a remarkable place in that it contains a Van Gogh museum and a casino in addition to all the shops and things you’d come to expect. But best for me is that I have this wi-fi connection . I’m sitting outside this area called “the communication zone” and it’s a joy to be able to communicate. So  y’all keep that in mind when you need to connect somewhere. I wish we could get out and actually SEE Amsterdam, but that’ll be another day.

Rick and I are on our way to Ghana for the first Pan-African forum on Open Educational Resources. With my colleagues from the MERLOT African Network, Dr. Moustapha Diack, Dr. Gerry Hanley, who is also the Executive Director of MERLOT, and Dr. Solomon Negash, we are all going to give a MERLOT workshop for educators from all over Africa and the world. Hard to put into words what a great thing this is.

OERS are really taking off and it’s about time to acknowledge the hard work folks have been doing to increase access to technology-enhanced learning materials.Look at all these portals on Wiki Educator .  The bottom line is they are all making  very good materials available for free. Why? Cause it is the right thing to do.

Over the next several days, I hope to  be blogging the conference from Ghana. Please check back here for updates. I expect this trip will be a wonderful adventure.

NECTFL 2008: languagelabunleashed

Big props to Felix Kronenburg to come to the Marriott Marquis in NYC  all the way from Pomona California to introduce East Coast language educators at NECTFL to languagelabunleashed, a professional development gem on the web that is so much more than a blog. One of the topics that came up during a very insightful and comfortable conversation about technology-enhanced language learning was how to engage the many FL faculty who never make it to a professional conference for whatever reason.   LLU regularly hosts informative sessions and live webcasts where listeners can join in easily  both to listen and  chat . Tech o’ Tuesdays feature tech tips on topics like recording skype, file conversions and new 2.0 applications. Other webcasts cover topics like using skype for language exchanges, Wikipedia in the classroom and a very interesting show that I heard myself on foreign language learner anxiety. The beauty of these programs is that they are archived and serve the PD needs of all the FL teachers who have the LLU URL.

In addition to the live broadcasts, the LLU team are seasoned backchannelers. They go to conferences and blog about sessions while they are sitting in them. This is a very inclusive approach to sharing ideas at conferences linking those who were there to those who were not. In effect, it extends the conversation and the networking well beyond the original talk so that a multitude of participants can potentially benefit. However, live  backchanneling, that makes conference proceedings available in real time, presupposes an Internet connection in the session room which is not routinely available in many conference venues. When broadband connections become truly ubiquitous, more teachers will be able to join in the discussions -some in the session room and some in blogs. It is up to all of us to imagine the kinds of discussions that technology will enable to make professional development available to all.

NECTFL 2008: I don’t have ADD, I’m just not listening

Marc Prensky,  was the keynote speaker for the opening session of the 55th conference for the 2008 Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and what can I say but that ”he rocked it”. My kids are playing a lot of Rock Band lately so that’s the first thing that comes to my mind. To get the flavor of Prensky’s ideas, check out a few minutes of his comments when his latest book was recently published in Italy. (Focus on the ideas, because the format in the video is VERY different from the event we experienced in the conference venue. At NECTFL, Prensky was  much freer to move about interacting with his audience and the digital presentation he brings with him.) 

In this video, we can see him on one of his favorite learning tools, YouTube.:

Now back to New York and the Northeast Conference—-

 His remarks  centered  as  they usually do on student engagement and allowing the learner to play a BIG role in how they learn. He encouraged teachers to allow students to use YouTube, their cell phones, blogs, wikis and podcasts to construct new learning activities. For example, imagine a classrom where instead of announcing “Shut off your cellphones”, teachers asked students to pick them up to find information that would be used right there in the lesson. It might be that they’d “phone a friend” a la Millionnaire, or look something up on a Sidekick or Blackberry or even take pictures or a video that could later go up on YouTube- in the target language. No doubt the students could imagine all kinds of ways to use phones for learning that we digital immigrants cannot begin to imagine. And that’s cool- the first step to a level playing field in the classroom where student-centered becomes learning-centered and technology is just the tool that enables communication. (Although in the participation phase, one student reported that if she did not have her cell phone, she could not live.)

A highlight was when high school and middle school students came on the stage to interact with Prensky about what they liked about studying a language and what they really did not like. The dream situation for them was to be able to go to a place where the TL was being spoken and to be able to communicate and get what they want. Technology enables real-world communication and so does speaking the language. Students realize that both skills are part of the equation. The less interesting part from the learner perspective was the classroom drilling with one student using the analogy of a nail/lesson  being hammered into his head. The students reported that they enjoyed being asked how they’d like to have their school work designed. They liked the opportunity to be creative and they liked it when language learning led to real-world communication They said that they wanted to learn the language that would help them negotiate practical needs when traveling.

The onstage interview was followed by an exchange between the students and the teachers in the audience.Teachers came up to microphones in the crowded ballroom to bridge the gap between digital immigrants, those of us who predate computers and the digital natives on stage.  It was an  invigorating experience to hear the conversation about re-imagining  how we all work in a digital world.  In Prensky’s world, we are all learners with the power to transform the educational experience for all.  It is a place where everyone is learning, creating , sharing and collaborating.

His slides are posted on the Northeast Conference home page:

http://alpha.dickinson.edu/prorg/nectfl/

Mange ta banane!

I am very excited about the topic of fair trade and sustainable development in our language classes these days, because they give our students a more compelling way to connect with language. At the GWATFL YouTube plenary last week, a bunch of us swapped our favorite digital videos and up came this wonderful Mange ta banane.

What is beautiful is how the tous petits convince each other que ce n’est pas nul, c’est equitable!!

Living Room by Paris Combo

I had a few ironic experiences today. First, my daughter was watching the 6th season of the Sopranos on netflicks, the episode where Carmela is walking around Paris taking in le Louvre, les ponts, les belles statues, etc. and were it not for the occasional F-word I could almost teach a very communicative French lesson based on her wonderment and surprise. And of course, I had to think about the discussions that could emerge from  contrasting the Paris she experienced in her privileged condition with the everyday life of city dwellers of lesser economic means.

Then out of the blue, I went to youtube and found new music from one of my favorite groups, Paris Combo, and the title tune Living Room. It was wild to hear these lyrics, right after my Soprano Paris experience:

Nous sommes tous nés d’amour dans de vieux pays
Où seuls de vieux, de très vieux singes sont assis
Aux commandes de nos libertés
Aux manettes de nos intégritésAlors tapons-nous sur le nez
Ca les fait toujours rigoler
Allez, tapons-nous, entre nous
Ca leur fera toujours de gros sous
Quand ils nous vendront des canifs
Et des idées malsaines
Pour que nos petites vies s’enfouissent
Dans la violence et la haine

Alors quoi, on va coucher dehors
Sous les ponts, sous des ponts d’or
Que d’autres auront construits pour aller de leur cuisine
A leur living…

refrain
Leur living room
C’est pas du flan, c’est pas du vent
C’est le living room des vieux singes savants
Living…living…living…room…

Nous sommes tous nés, mon ami
Nous sommes tous vivants, c’est inscrit
Dans notre oeil, tu vois, au fond ça luit
D’une envie de vivre, d’une envie

De parcourir le monde
Cette bonne terre si gironde
Mais non, mais non, voilà qu’on nous gronde !
Car sans laisser-passer
Faut pas se laisser aller

A rêver d’une autre vie, mon ami
Non faut pas rêver
Car pour rêver, faut des “laisser-passer”
Du papier, pour passer sa vie

De l’autre côté du pont, des ponts d’or, dehors
Y’en a des tonnes, c’est pas qu’on les ignore
Car on les voit souvent passer de leur cuisine
A leur living…

refrain

Voilà comment, quand on y pense
Nous sommes tous devenus des éléphants
Des gnous, des girafes, des orang-outangs
Dans nos réserves sous surveillance

Et qu’on n’aille pas s’égarer
En troupeau ou bien tout seul, isolé
Dans les réserves d’à côté
On est sûr de tomber sur un os

Un osthéopathe de première

Qui vous démembrera, c’est son affaire !
De vous faire passer l’envie
Des voyages interdits

Interdits dans nos vieux pays
Où seuls de vieux, de très vieux singes sont assis
Dans leur cuisine, ils gambergent
Pour améliorer leur living… 

(Note: Lyrics found at songmeanings.)

I just marvel at how a totally coincidental TV experience happened moments before I fell upon this incredibly evocative song. It’s like my mind was meant to go here today. I cannot wait to hear the rest of the cd.

Bee rocks the house NOLA style.

It was a special morning in New Orleans on Friday when Bee invited the Webheads in Action to the MERLOT 2007 conference via Alado and Second Life. They checked in from Australia, New Zealand, Portugal and Taiwan etc. etc.. Bee was really effective in showing how small the world can be when educators with a passion for sharing get together. No more working in isolation. The potential for exciting collaborations between teachers and students worldwide is already  there. Hear/see the keynote at Alado and see Bee’s spectacular NOLA pics at flickr tagged merlot2007onlap. It was really a week to remember.

Our community workday at an historic elementary in Mid-City was a phenomenal start. Forty-two MERLOT folks taping and painting trim in an elementary school that saw five feet of water in its ground floor level after Katrina. They lost everything inside either because of the water or the mold after the water receded.  Our work was a small contribution in light of the need, but it did wonders for all of us. The school is going to be better than it was before Katrina given the hard work of the many volunteers who are working there. Troy, the volunteer coordinator told us that this was one of nine schools he was readying for a Fall start. Everybody wanted to do as much as he/she could.

MERLOT had a new feature called Learning Circles this year and they were very well received by the attendees. MERLOT World Languages sponsored one called The Many Languages of MERLOT where attendees from Brazil, Israel, Japan, Senegal, Canada, Italy, Chile, Spain, the US and the UK and other lands  all spoke volumes about how MERLOT could evolve into a more multilingual resource. The discussion moved from the political “Do we translate?”, to”What do we translate?” and then to a  more technical, but extremely stimulating conversation about metadata. Mous Diack, from Southern University and A&M College and director of the MERLOT African Network project, rightly identified  language as a real access issue. Susanna Dammann, project manager of Linguanet Europa (MERLOT’s 2007 Editor’s Choice award winner) and her Linguanet colleagues, Jose Ignacio and Luis, from the Instituto Cervantes and the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid gave MERLOT many good ideas on possible directions in which to proceed. This meeting was one of the more profitable new features at the MIC because it brought home the growing international  contingent in many different disciplines. The community-building was great as participants talked and MERLOT listened.

Back in the French quarter, we took in the wonderful Rue Royale at night. Art, jewlery, antiques, everything glowed in the light of the gaslight lamps.  The jellyfish lamps were among my favorites. Diane showed us some great art, including a few original Rodrigues at K-Pauls. Will we ever forget the Duck and Shrimp Vindaloo? The Creole Mary’s?