E-Learning with the help of the school website
In this blog I move from the general to the specific and focus on one rather innovative way in which a grade 9 English Language Arts teacher tries to integrate e-learning into his English teaching curriculum.
Mr. XX is a teacher at American Prep International. All of his students come from Thai speaking homes. Mr. XX has been thinking for some time how he could make English writing assignments come alive for his students. He wanted to give his students the feeling that they are communicating in ‘real world’ situations and not merely churning out a few sentences or paragraphs on what they did during the summer holidays.
It is then that the idea came to create a School Facebook Group and to let his students post on it. Posts could include their opinions on certain current political debates, or reviews of their favourite games, cars or even skin care products.
These assignments were enthusiastically accepted by his students and even the least studious student did not need much prompting to start posting. Of course, some class time were spent teaching the technicalities of accessing the Facebook Group and how to actually do the posting. This project is now about three weeks old and is still on-going.
When asked to assess the educational value of this project up to this point in time Mr. XX mentions the willingness and relative enthusiasm of the students to participate in these “writing” exercises. One negative observation, however, is that some students quickly latched onto the idea of finding an article or post from another site and to just post it as is. The end result is thus that they still do not actually do any significant writing – they only regurgitate writing that has been produced by someone else. In this sense teacher XX feels that he has not yet made any real progress in getting his students to “write”.
E-Learning with the School Website
Enter the school website, and more specifically the website blog or the “Directors Blog” as it is known in this particular school. When teacher XX first introduced the school website to his class he discovered that most of the students had never heard of a “blog” and most did not even know that the school had a website! It took a few class periods to introduce these concepts and to discuss what blogging is about. The teacher also explained carefully that modern blogging makes it possible for someone who reads the blog to “comment” on what is written.
Then came the assignment: “Scan through the blogs on the school website, choose one and read it carefully and then write a comment in your own words that relate to the content of the blog”. The reasoning behind this assignment was that it would now serve as a comprehension exercise (anchored in the “real world” of the school) and that it would “force” the student to write down his/her own ideas.
What is the educative assessment, or outcome of this assignment? Well the final word has not yet been spoken on this. In a future blog we will focus in greater detail on the outcomes of both of these approaches.
E-Learning as preparation for modern living
The main point of this particular blogpost is that e-learning must not be too narrowly defined. The innovative teacher should survey which digital media he has access to and then find ways to incorporate them in his teaching practice. In this way he not only prepares his students to cope with the electronic media that they will encounter in the modern world, but he (the teacher) will also practise e-learning and e-teaching in its broader, and possibly, its more relevant and applicable scope.