Blog 6 (Unit 9)

#LanguageIsLimitless

This week’s Google Alert introduced me to a new Facebook group that was created to support and encourage world language teachers called #LanguageIsLimitless. This group was created by Carnegie Learning as a place for teachers to share ideas with one another and share their challenges so that experts from Carnegie Learning can offer resources and support. It is modeled after the successful LONG + LIVE + MATH Community which was started in October 2017 and now has over 7,000 members. The mission and vision of #LanguageIsLimitless includes powerful statements such as “We believe that learning a language is critical to a student’s success in an increasingly interconnected global society” and “We believe in expanding our students’ worldviews and shedding a light on the products, practices, and perspectives of other cultures and our own.” Joining the #LanguageIsLimitless community not only gives one access to the Facebook group, but members also receive a monthly newsletter by email with a blog of strategies to use in the classroom. 

I requested to join the Facebook group and was accepted in less than a day. This group was just started in February, but there are already a few valuable articles and videos that have been shared. I belong to several Facebook groups for world language teachers and German teachers. Given the recent school closures and the uncertainty of how long we might be closed, these groups are a great resource for teachers to share ideas and online resources with each other for remote teaching and learning. One of the more interesting items that stuck out to me on the #LanguageIsLimitless Facebook page was an infographic titled “Ranked: The 100 Most Spoken Languages Around the World”. Not only did the infographic give the information in the title, but it also compared the total speakers of each language to the number of native speakers of each language. It was no surprise to me that the English language had the biggest difference between those two amounts, meaning that many people are considered proficient in the English language but it is not their native language. In fact, only 33% of English speakers are native speakers, compared to the 2nd most spoken language of Mandarin Chinese where 82% are native speakers, the 3rd most spoken language of Hindi with 55% native speakers, and the 4th most spoken language of Spanish with 86% native speakers. This data supports the topic of last week’s unit of “English as lingua franca”, where the English language is used as the common means of communication for speakers of different first languages.

Resources:

Carnegie Learning Launches Community to Connect World Language Educators. (2020, March 12). Retrieved from https://finance.yahoo.com/news/carnegie-learning-launches-community-connect-130000304.html 

Ghosh, I. (2020, February 15). Ranked: The 100 Most Spoken Languages Around the World. Retrieved 2020, March 17, from https://www.visualcapitalist.com/100-most-spoken-languages/?fbclid=IwAR0NGvLTzy0y3jF5T-rRdlH4bHuaX0qHSyRGnPg3sxxARsiZsYzh6RY9GF4 

Blog 5 (Unit 8)

Empowering Women Through Technology

     This week I got several Google alerts under the heading of Digital Storytelling that all originated from a website called “shethepeople”, found at https://www.shethepeople.tv/. With this past Sunday being International Women’s Day, I felt particularly empowered to check out this website and see how it connected to digital storytelling. This website is described as “India's biggest digital storytelling for women, dedicated to passionately championing and promoting their journeys. We Empower, Engage and Elevate, connecting them to an amazing network that inspires and grows each others' efforts” (Shethepeople, n.d.). This site is an independent journalism project which reaches more than 85 million women via digital narratives, engaging videos, and special events and summits. What surprised me is that this site hails from India and is known as India’s first platform for stories of women, however, the site is all in English. Although the Constitution of India recognizes 23 languages spoken in different parts of the country and Hindi is the official language of the central government, English is used extensively in business and administration and is important in education. This relates to this week’s unit of English as a lingua franca.

     The article that specifically caught my eye was titled “Women Entrepreneurs Are Unlocking Digital to Stand Up Against Inequality”. One woman interviewed for the article, Dr. Shikha Nehru Sharma, discusses how women were able to rise to the role of entrepreneurs thanks to the digital era. First, going digital has allowed women to work from home. Second, technology allows anyone to have access to real information directly and immediately. Third, social media allows women to connect with other women, be inspired by their stories, and learn from their examples. The article ended with this quote as a proclamation to all women, “Please make sure that you’re standing for yourself because when one woman stands for herself, she stands for the entire women community. Be confident, be more vibrant” (Saavriti, 2020). Thanks to technology, women (and men, of course) have the resources, the support system, and the network to help them be successful.

     How does this article relate to this ESL course and why did I choose it as the topic of this blog? Just as the women in the article feel they have more opportunities to succeed thanks to the digital era, ESL students have more opportunities to practice their language skills and connect with others globally thanks to technology. There is a wealth of ESL resources available on the Internet and available to students. We have only skimmed the surface discovering these from the units of study in this course.

References:

Languages of India. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Languages_of_India

Saavriti. (2020, March 7). Women entrepreneurs are unlocking digital to stand up against inequality. Retrieved from https://www.shethepeople.tv/news/women-entrepreneurs-india-womens-day

shethepeople The Women's Channel. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.shethepeople.tv/

Blog 4 (Unit 7)

       This week’s Google alerts gave me several articles that are applicable to teaching a second language or ESL and the use of technology. The first article was titled “The Art of Teaching” and offers strategies to support creativity in the language classroom to engage teachers and students and provide opportunities to develop language and thinking skills. The authors suggest focusing on four aspects to develop and support creative thinking in language classrooms: fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality. According to Elhess, Elturki, and Egbert (2020) “the ability to think creatively can facilitate students’ abilities to solve problems, to see alternatives, and to use language in new ways.” Creativity tasks also provide opportunities for social interaction, which exposes learners to a variety of input and opportunities to negotiate meaning in the target language. Technology can be used in a variety of ways for students to demonstrate their knowledge of the language in creative ways. I like giving students options with technology when assigning a project. This allows them to showcase their talents and use their strengths in different ways. Teachers need to be open to providing these creative options with assignments. I’ve met some language teachers through the years who are “stuck in their ways” of only using textbook driven exercises and grammar worksheets. This is one of the reasons why I am pursuing this Instructional Technology degree so that I can learn about new and creative ways to use technology in instruction and share it with my colleagues.  

       The second article was a report of a research study to compare the perceptions of students on learning the English language through conventional vs. digital storytelling. This study was conducted in Kuala Lumpur with teachers who are familiar with both storytelling methods. The conclusion of the overall study was that students preferred the approach of digital storytelling because it was engaging and helped them to better understand the story’s content. Students called this method more interactive since it uses technology and said if it were implemented again, it would encourage them to actively participate in future lessons. Digital storytelling increases student engagement in the lesson, which contributes to increased language use in the learning process. I have seen the positive engagement of students in my second language classroom when I use digital storytelling. It allows students to be creative while demonstrating their knowledge of the content we are learning.  

References:

Ahmad, W. I. W., & Yamat, H. (2020). Students’ Perception on Learning English Language through Conventional and Digital Storytelling. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 10(2), 484–504.

Elhess, M., Elturki, E., & Egbert, J. (2020, February 27). The Art of Teaching. Retrieved from https://www.languagemagazine.com/2020/02/27/the-art-of-teaching-2/

Blog 3 (Unit 6)

Digital Storytelling: Not Just Found in the Classroom

I received several Google alerts this week on the topic of digital storytelling being used not only in the field of education, but also in the community to unite people and celebrate people’s diverse stories and experiences. One of the articles was called “Using Storytelling to Reduce Ageism in the Community”, which explains a project run by Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia. Students at the university collaborated with community groups to interview older people about their life stories and how they keep active, healthy, and social in their older age. The goal of this project is to educate others on the value of older people to prevent ageism and reduce the chances of elder abuse. Learning happened on both sides of this project as it was made to teach younger people, but the older participants acknowledged they learned about themselves through the project as well. The participants realized even they had their own negative beliefs on aging which had “a significant impact on their confidence, abilities, and the extent to which they engage with their community” (“Using Storytelling”, 2020). The completed video stories were presented to the community as part of the OPERA Project (Older People, Equity Respect and Ageing) to challenge the negative assumptions about getting older and can be seen here at this website: https://opera.eclc.org.au/stories.  

A second Google alert I found is a newspaper article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announcing an event which was held on Monday, February 24^th by the Whitehall Public Library. It was a potluck dinner to welcome community members, specifically refugees and immigrants who have resettled in the area. While this article did not provide many specific details, one part of the event was the sharing of a digital storytelling project, which the library created about immigration journeys to represent the different cultures the attendees came from. Another nice part to this event is that they had local ELL high school students stand in the buffet line to engage people of diverse language backgrounds in conversation and escort them to their seats. This helped integrate the different language groups together, instead of having them sit only with people they might know or share a language with. This made me think of an event I attended three years ago at Moravian College with the same goal of welcoming immigrants and refugees to the Lehigh Valley. It was a meaningful event where we shared a common meal, listened to representatives from the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities in our area, and engaged in meaningful dialogues around the table about what home means to us and how we can show hospitality to others. This quote from John Amos Comenius, known as the Father of Modern Education, in 1649 summarizes the goals of these events and, in my opinion, what we needs to be a global focus in 2020.  

“We are all citizens of one world, we are all of one blood. To hate a man because he was born in another country, because he speaks a different language, or because he takes a different view on this subject or that, is a great folly. Desist, I implore you, for we are all equally human…. Let us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity.” (John Amos Comenius, 1649)

            While our course readings in this unit focused on using digital storytelling in the second language classroom, these two articles show that it can also be used to unite people of different ages, races, and backgrounds for community outreach and events. I enjoyed seeing these examples of how digital stories can help celebrate the diversity and lead to the acceptance of others.    

References:

Sodergren, R. (2020, February 19). Potluck dinner offers a neighborly welcome to longtime and new residents. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved from https://www.post-gazette.com/life/food/2020/02/19/Whitehall-Public-Library-Baldwin-school-district-potluck-dinner/stories/202002190004

Using storytelling to reduce ageism in the community. (2020, February 24). Retrieved from http://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/latest-news/2020/02/using-storytelling-to-reduce-ageism-in-the-community.php

Blog 2 (Unit 5)

It is perfect timing that the content of next week’s unit is Digital Storytelling, and my Google alert came up with an informative article from Education Technology called “Boosting Literacy Through Edtech Storytelling”. The author, Charlotte Krzanicki, is a senior education advisor at Greenwood Academies Trust (GAT), a not for profit organization consisting of 35 academies in England. In an effort to boost creativity and encourage students to “fall in love with reading and writing”, the team of educators at GAT came up with an idea for a storytelling competition across all the schools (academies) in their organization which incorporated technology with literacy skills. The motivation for students to do their best was that it was presented as a competition. This activity was accomplished using Flipgrid as the digital storytelling tool, which I have used on numerous occasions in my German classroom. Flipgrid is a video-sharing platform which allows students to not only practice their writing skills, but also share knowledge and use communication skills. According to Krzanicki (2020), one of the greatest impacts of this competition was being able to engage primary age boys in particular, since this activity allowed them to share ideas, talk, and be physically active using educational technology. Krzanicki adds that the competition has been an outstanding success for the organization, reminding them that students will become active participants in their learning if it is presented in a fun manner. They are eager to use more digital storytelling approaches in the future to keep students engaged in innovative ways.
I have used several digital storytelling platforms already in my classroom. Flipgrid is one of the easiest video tools to use with students. I have used Flipgrid for presentational speaking and interpersonal speaking assessments. I can share the Flipgrid link to our LMS of Schoology, and students go directly to our class account to record their videos and record responses to each other. The pause button is especially comforting to students who may need a couple seconds to gather their thoughts before they move on and record more. This is one reason why I like using Flipgrid over the recording function in Schoology. The pause button helps to lower the affective filter for second language learners who feel stressed and anxious over speaking assessments. After all, as Krzanicki summarized, students will feel engaged in the assignment if it is entertaining and they can take control of their learning experiences.

Krzanicki, C. (2020, February 14). Retrieved from https://edtechnology.co.uk/Blog/boosting-literacy-rates-schools-digital-storytelling/