Digital Immersion 2009 Reports
Teacher: Alexandre Araujo de Siqueira Branch: Jardim Botânico Age Group: Older teenagers (Master 2) Language level: Upper-Intermediate – Advanced Tool: Blog
I decided to join the Digital Immersion Project 2009 because I felt the need to engage my students even more in their learning processes. I believe that technology can be an important ally to that end. Having that in mind, my next step was to choose one of the various tools available, and since I am more at home with blogs, they were my natural option. Initially, I had to decide about which group to invite to the project, and also to draw up a plan beforehand so that when I introduced the idea, the outline of the project would be ready. That way I felt I could involve my students more. I chose to work with a Master 2 group of eight older teenagers (7 boys and 1 girl only). They were generally motivated to carry out tasks that involved technology, and considering the scope of the project, I thought good results might come up. In order to introduce the project, I used a speaking activity in which students were invited to discuss the pros and cons of modern technological advances in education and life. Interesting ideas were brought up, with students debating over the extent to which technology is essential in modern life, and how education can benefit from it. The following step was actually inviting students to take part in a class project. Students responded positively, and the project was launched. I felt that a class blog should include varied subjects through which individual interests could be catered for. The students could add to the list, which included: movies, theater, music, TV, sports, free-time activities, traveling, photography, video, hobbies. As it were, other topics were welcome, although the group felt that the list was already comprehensive, and decided to keep it that way. The project itself consisted of blog posts published by students, with comments also made by them or me. Students from other classes at the branch or from other branches could also make comments. Students were invited to post text, photo or video. The photos could be their own production, and so could the videos (although video embedding was an alternative). In terms of involvement, I must say that students had an initial interest in the project, but as the semester went on, things did not go exactly as I had planned. Although some of the students were actually planning to post, others seemed not to care much about the project.
The results of the project showed me that much more could have been done. The group was very aware of that, but it did not turn out quite as it was intended to. We had a feedback session, and the students commented that the main reason why not much had been published was lack of time. As I see it, perhaps they were really busy, but they might have also lacked extra motivational factors which would engage them in such a project. To sum up, I should say that blogging is a resource that demands more time than had been allotted, and I feel that it should be implemented along a wider span of time, a semester or a year for example. However, I do feel that it has great potential, and I am willing to start anew with another group, with other learning styles and interests. As a teacher, I have to agree that it can sometimes go wrong, or be partially successful, but it can indeed be highly beneficial if more time is given.
Teacher: Laura Cunha Canto de Souza Pereira Branch: Brasília – Asa Sul Age Groups: Children (Junior D, Basic 4) and teenagers (Young express 6) Language level: Basic and Intermediate Tools: Zimmer Twins and Twitter
I joined the Digital Immersion Project as I thought it would be a more exciting and efficient way for the students to use the English language outside the classroom. Zimmer Twins and Twitter were chosen as they seemed to be the best way to get into the students’ world, come closer to their reality, making the learning opportunities more meaningful and real, using the dynamism brought by these technological tools. The groups I worked with were Basic 4 Junior D and Young Express 6: Basic 4 consisted of 11 students between the ages of 11 to 13, motivated, talkative and technological. Junior D consisted of 15 students between the ages 10 to 12, motivated, loud, talkative and technological. Young Express 6 consisted of 9 students between the ages of 15 to 18, talkative, interested, lazy and technological also. I presented the idea as an interesting project for us to work on, to have fun and learn more English. The students were open to the idea and chose which tools they would prefer to use. Twitter had been used by some of the teens, however Zimmer Twins had never been used by the children. The topics were mainly related to the course syllabus. Almost every lesson I would ask them to either write a phrase on twitter using what we had learnt on the day or make a video related to what we had been studying that week or lesson. With that, they paid attention to structures, vocabulary and meaning with more enthusiasm to try to make the best videos they could. My Junior D students were the most motivated and there were no problems with the implementation. To solve the parents’ authorization issue I asked the students to create aliases to maintained their privacy. The students had fun, got to know each other a bit more and spoke English in a freer environment without worrying about mistakes.
In general, they liked and enjoyed the project, although some students said they would rather use something more dynamic, like Messenger, than Twitter. The videos were viewed by Basic 4 as a good idea, the Young Express 6 students thought it was childish. If it is for them to make videos, they said other websites would be more interesting and appealing to them – Sites which could give them more freedom of choice. It was learnt that it is possible to use what we learn in the classroom outside it and have fun, meet new people and live new experiences. I would love to do this again. However, I would take more into consideration their suggestion from this semester to use something even more dynamic such as Messenger, more age appropriate websites with older adolescents and maybe even considering different projects for boys and girls within the same group. It has helped me a lot in understanding my students better, getting to know them more, getting closer to them, finding out their interests and traits and making my lessons more surprising and fascinating. When students are enjoying themselves they become more involved and more open to you, to your ideas and learning.
Teacher: Gisele Grangé Levy Teles Barbosa Branch: Ipanema Age Group: Teenagers (Plus 2) Language level: Intermediate Tool: SMS For the Digital Immersion Project of 2009.2 the students and I chose the mobile phone SMS as a tool. Students were given a list of tools to choose from (Blogs, E-Twinning, WIKI, Twitter, Flickr, MSN, e-mail, video maker, mobile and facebook). From this list they chose three: blogs, msn and mobile. Then I chose the mobile as it is a tool I am familiar with and use it quite a lot as well. Having chosen the tool, we decided to do a kind of “Scavenger Hunt”. Students were divided into three groups. The teacher sent SMSs after the lesson with tasks to one member of each group. This member sent the message to the others. For this purpose, students took notes of the mobile numbers of the teacher, Cultura Ipanema branch and of their classmates, so that they could identify who the SMS was from. A letter was sent to parents explaining the use of this tool in the Digital Immersion project. The tasks were presented the following class and counted points for the groups. At the end of the last task we counted the points each group had obtained. There were a total of 8 tasks as follows: task 1 - Pls brn songs w so+adj. Bfn Gisele; task 2 - Pls brn songs w any food word. Bfn Gisele; task 3 - Pls brn songs w a celebrity name. Tkx Gisele; task 4 - find ex of pres perf in the txt and justify its use; task 5 - Pls brn songs about films; task 6 - Pls brn ex of SMS language; task 7 – Pls write a film review 4 nxt class; task 8 – Pls brn titles spooky films; At the end of the last task, the teacher gave out prizes to the groups. The group that had the most points won the first prize, and the other groups got prizes as well for their effort and participation. Along the development of the project I had to reconsider my first plan of only the teacher choosing the task. For the first two tasks I wrote the messages myself, but for some of the following tasks, I asked the students to write suggestions using SMS language. It was a way of making them co-responsible for the project. For the fourth task, in order to have one of the groups participating more actively, I sent an SMS telling them the activity would be done in class. For this task students
were given a copy of a magazine page from National Geographic Traveler Jan/Feb 2009 about a hotel in Hawaii and surfing classes for girls. All in all, I think the project was very successful and has generated learning opportunities. Learners were very receptive to the tool and the project as a whole. The tool was user friendly and easily integrated into our classroom routine. Students were very participative. For example, for the first task students were asked to bring songs with SO + ADJ and one of them said that he wasn’t aware of what an adjective really was until he saw all the examples listed by his colleagues. Students also noticed aspects of the language beyond the tasks. The second task was to find songs with "food words”. They noticed that “French fries” was much more common than any other food word. The tasks concerning films were very interesting and motivating. Students asked to watch some trailers on youtube and listen to the soundtracks in the classroom. Besides, I think it has helped bring the group together by socializing with messages as well. For instance, we were having a Halloween party and they asked me to remind them by sending an SMS the day before. Not only has the project fulfilled, but also exceeded my expectations.