Shaping your own innovations: Issues, challenges and ... · Apps Similarities video shooting...
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Shaping your own innovations: Issues, challenges and examples Steve Mann University of Warwick, UK
Transcript of Shaping your own innovations: Issues, challenges and ... · Apps Similarities video shooting...
Shaping your own innovations: Issues, challenges and examples
Steve Mann
University of Warwick, UK
Some aims for the talk
What do we mean by ‘innovation’ in PRESETT?
What do we do with our trainees and why these processes are important?
Importance of RP at different levels
Innovation in materials (e.g. video)
Practicing what we preach
Edge, J. and S. Mann, S. (Eds) 2013. Innovations in Pre-Service Education and Training for English Language Teachers. London: British Council.
A quick task
Think of one important innovation in ELT in the last 20 years.
Think of an innovation you’ve made in your teacher-training.
British Council
ELTON Awards
Ideas that are new and that help students to learn that are practical
BC Innovations Series
How successful have innovations been in ELT?
Although innovation in ELT has grown apace in recent years, much of it has been unsuccessful (see, for example Karavas-Doukas 1998; Carless 1999; Nunan 2003), arguably because of a failure to take into account lessons from innovation theory (Wedell 2009)
Early birds and laggards
Innovators: Venturesome
Early adopters: Respected (ie sound judges of the value of potential innovations)
Early Majority: Deliberateness, (ie those who have a a ‘wait and see’ approach)
Late Majority: Scepticism, (ie those who adopt a critical attitude to the value of innovation)
Laggards: Tradition, (those who have a preference for the status (ante) quo).
(Rogers 2003)
Innovation in PreSETT
Edge and Mann (2013)
Over 150 proposals (showing huge level of interest)
14 PreSETT situations (each focusing one on form of innovation)
Detail of innovation and evaluation
On-line grammar use (pre-course)
Ethnographic notes informing observation (Mexico)
Porfolio assessment (Bulgaria)
Pebblepad on-line reflection (UK)
Critical awareness of materials (China)
Workplace shadowing (Northern Cyprus)
Corpus-driven approach (Northern Cyprus)
The importance of context
In-depth appraisal of the innovation context is vital. The ‘hybrid model’ (Henrichsen 1989) provides a thorough system for identifying contextual factors likely to facilitate or hinder the change process.
Holliday (1994) demonstrates the importance of a detailed, ethnomethodological understanding of the innovation situation
Situated Learning
If we embrace the ideas of appropriate methodology in both what we are aiming to get our teacher-trainers to achieve and in what we aim for it moves us away from ideas of generalised ‘best practice’towards ‘praxis’ (see van Batenburg 2013 contribution).
in a period of ‘post-method condition’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2001) there needs a renewed and corresponding recognition of the importance of situated learning and appropriate methodology (Holliday, 1994)
Situated Learning
In order for situated learning to happen tools need to be sufficiently flexible that they can be tailored to specific contexts and facilitate the kind of detailed, up-close, ‘ecological’ (c.f. van Lier, 2000) professional understanding that RP was originally designed to foster.
RP can and should be taught on pre- and in-sessional teacher education programmes but in a more systematic way (see Kurtoğlu-Hooton 2013).
‘New in context’ (Mann and Edge 2013)
A new idea is not an innovation. Innovation demands concentration on process; it demands that we pay as much attention to how we teach or train as to which topics get covered along the way, or the tools that we employ.
We asked contributors to make clear the steps and detail of introduction, implementation and evaluation of their efforts, because it is the realisation of an idea in action that constitutes genuine innovation.
New in context: two examples
Mawa Samb (Senegal) Formative assessment
Lesley Dick (Sri Lanka) Top Tips for Trainers
New in context
Mawa Samb (Senegal)
Samb’s chapter (Chapter 3) in this collection gives us insight into a move to formative assessment in Senegal.
The British government seems to be moving in the opposite direction in England (BBC 2012).
New in context
Lesley Dick (Sri Lanka)
“I have used TOP TIPS in input sessions and in teaching practice feedback sessions for years but have never really taken a step back and queried why it worked and what it did”.
Kaizen [the translation of kai (“change”) zen (“good”) is “improvement”]
The practice of continuous quality improvement within one’s teaching.
Innovation is based on many small changes rather than radical changes.
Ideas for change and improvement come from teachers and students themselves.
Teachers take ownership for their work and related improvements.
Icarus and Narcissus
Icarus had wings and flew higher than he should. Narcissus stayed too long observing himself and put down roots.
‘the mutually-shaping interactions between our roots and our wings, our self-knowledge and our environmental knowledge’ provide awareness so that we can ‘commit ourselves to future action based on that combined awareness’ (Edge 2011:17)
‘[…] giving instructions was a pain in the bum and still is! (Sorry for the expression). I thought I was giving instructions correctly, nevertheless, I notice that after giving the instructions, the students always asked me what they were supposed to do and that was frustrating.’
‘Make the instructions simpler for them [the students] because they [the instructions] were very long and students got lost […] Also, I should ask them questions about what they are supposed to do. […] I tried to do everything and it seemed to work.’
As Johnson (2009:23) states, ‘Practitioner knowledge can enrich knowledge […] precisely because it is generated in and emerges out of teachers’ lived experiences […]’.
Classroom interactional competence (CIC)
‘Teachers’ and learners’ ability to use interaction as a tool for mediating and assisting learning’.
(Walsh, 2013: 132)
Features of CIC - Pedagogic goals and language use are convergent
- CIC uses interactive strategies which are appropriate to the moment and which facilitate co-constructed meaning.
- CIC creates ‘space for learning’ through (e.g.) extended wait-time, reduced teacher echo, planning time for ‘rehearsal’, student initiations & clarifications.
- CIC involves shaping learner output: paraphrasing, scaffolding, re-iterating, appropriating.
Overlapping tensions
Balance between Narcissus and Icarus (Edge 2011)
Direction and Reflection (Farr 2011)
Monologic and Dialogic (Mann and Copland 2010)
Innovation in materials
We can see the innovation over time
What are the innovations?
Gräf, G. & S. Hoffmann (1968) English for You/2. Volkseigener Verlag: Berlin
O’Neill, R. (1970). English in Situations. Oxford: OUP.
Soars, J.& L. Soars (2002) New Headway Pre-Intermediate. Oxford: OUP
Wrong time, wrong place
Willis and Willis (1988)
What was wrong with these innovative materials?
Thornbury on COBUILD
It was perhaps the absence of convert grammatical labels along with the innovative task-based approach which scared off potential converters and which accounts for the fact that the Collins COBUILD English course was less than a runaway success…one can't help regretting that this was the case in a market where publishers are conspicuously reluctant to back innovation. The failure of a project so brave and so principled was the publishing equivalent of the Titanic going down (Thornbury 1998: 8).
Innovation and appropriate materials
Developing a critical approach
Cheng X. (2011) (2013)
Moving beyond the coursebook (Copland and Mann 2012)
Screen capture and video
Screen capture software (Jing/Camtasia)
Shows innovative tools for teachers
An example would be ‘Jing’or ‘Snaggit’ or ‘Camtasia’
Some suggestions
Vocaroo – Click one button and the students record themselves. Click another and they can send their recording as an e-mail
Jing and ScreenR – Screencapture software
Brainshark-You can load up your pictures, documents, powerpoints and even video and then add commentary.
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/top20.html
Present-me – another way of getting teachers or language learners to digitally present.
Not practicing what you preach
Bengtsson (2003: 295) sees ‘paradoxical situation’ that reflection is ‘used in an unreflected manner’.
‘while teacher educators promote reflection among teachers’ they ‘seem to have less tendency to consider reflection as a method for their own practice’ (Moon 1999: 57).
Edge (2011: 20) talks of ‘consistency’
practicing what I preach
http://screencast.com/t/RBAu7pt1p0MK
General aim: “bringing together current methodologies, ideas and innovative practices
to teach and learn languages using digital video”
Basic goal: Collection of 50+ useful video practises with
pedagogic material and how to videos
13.11.14
Use existing videos for language learning
Make your own videos with students
Video as a communication tool for language learning
13.11.14
Drama production
13.11.14
Students record their own music
video...
… in the target
language
13.11.14
Screenshot 2015-05-21 17.34.39
Explore different apps Can explore the pros and cons of different video
capture softwares/applications, and their usability for
language teaching:
Vine
Keek
Tout
Apps Similarities video shooting options within the app;
allow a user to create a profile with a bio and profile
picture.
follow other users and ‘like’ their videos.
videos can be embedded to other blogging sites
All free (at the moment)
What is Vine?
Video Capture software owned by Twitter.
App available in 25 different languages.
Comprises of 6 second clips, which automatically loop.
Clips can be recorded in sections to created stop motion effects.
Used mostly for comedic posts. Top 10 most followed users are comedians.
What is Keek?
Keek is social media/video capture software.
Captures video through the application.
Plays videos via the default video player on your device (ie Quicktime)
Videos 36 seconds long maximum
Able to embed into Facebook/Twitter/Other Blogging sites
Stores videos automatically to your device memory.
Used more for interaction and conversation than Vine.
What is
Instagram?
Largest mobile picture/video sharing application
available.
Very popular with young people.
200 million active users
Released in 2010, users able to upload videos as of June
2013.
Videos max length of 15 seconds
What is Tout?
Relatively small video sharing application
20 million active users
Videos 15 seconds maximum ( same as Instagram)
Can use prerecorded footage and will save footage
created through the app automatically to your
device.
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/anna-whitcher-kieran-donaghy-image-makers-future-elt
