Talking to Native Speaker

Endang and students asking questions of native speaker

Endang Palupi is an amazing Indonesian educator in Western Java and despite poor infrastructure and working in a developing country. As Endang is well connected, she then connects students she works with to classes and educators across the world. She is studying for a doctorate and her thesis is based Talking with a Native Speaker. Using skype and facebook groups, Endang looks for people who may be available to work with Indonesian students who are learning English and speak it as their second or third language.

One question they consistently ask is “what  is your age?”. I respond truthfully and can see that they understand that as there is some element of surprise, as I could be their grandmother!!! “What is your hobby?” is the second most common question. My response is gardening and arranging flowers but I am never sure whether they fully understand that response. Usually I key that response into the txt chat area to help understanding.  On the weekend,  I took a photograph of some of my flower arrangements so that I can quickly share my screen in skype or ghangouts and show them my hobby as well as tell them.

Images will become increasingly important as we become more globally connected. How do you ensure understanding when working with people from other countries? What tips would you give?

Sharing my hobby in an image

Share ‘n Tell on a Global Scale

K is for Koala

Our school’s student leadership team suggested an ‘out of uniform’ day to raise funds for student projects within the school. The theme was “Come dressed in a character that starts with the first letter of your name”. eg My name is Anne so I came dressed as an artist.

During period 4 of that day I had my ICT class with year 3 and 4. As I walked into the room, ready to teach them about the finer and more exciting features of MS Powerpoint, I could help but stop in delight at the gorgeous outfits that they had worn.

This surely provided  a teachable moment. The students wanted to show off their costumes, so I quickly messaged the HLW Skypers Group on skype to seek a ready educator or class to link up with us. Fortunately, Karen Lirenman was online in Canada and was willing to speak to the students, via skype videoconferencing,  as they came up to the web camera to introduce themselves and their character.

This led to working out where Ms Lirenman lived etc and then to the planned task of the day – using MS Powerpoint!  Does it matter that I did not follow my lesson plan? I would always answer no, make the most of every teachable moment and opportunity as these can be the most rewarding for learning. Some skills developed included:- confidence, clear speaking, using the web camera to project image correctly, geography, time zone differences (Karen was still in their yesterday) etc.

Some of the many characters

Localization of Blog Posts

Armenian translation of a post on skype

Several years ago, I wrote a post Using Skype in the Classroom.  This is still one of my favourite tools for connecting and collaborating.

Several months ago, I received a request from Leyli who described herself as

a student at the Department of Foreign Languages and at the same time a volunteer at an organization named “Translation for Education”. I love surfing on the Internet and being informed about the latest happenings around me. Unfortunately, most of my fellow citizens don’t know English, so that makes them feel somehow excluded from all this variety of useful info from the Internet.That was the reason that made me decide to start being a volunteer at such an NGO. So I created a blog, where I post translations of some of the texts that really caught my attention. Sometimes it’s a simple description of some organization, and sometimes it might be a narrowly specialized scientific article.

You can read the Armenian translation here. I was intrigued to read that this is called localizing online content.  I had to google where Armenia was, so thank you, Leyli for adding to my world geography.

Comparing School Lunches globally!

A senior student lunchbox in summer

On many occasions I can empathise with those who are part of the digital divide. Internet access can often be poor from my home and mobile phone service is non-existent, unless I go outside to the end of the veranda, face south and the weather conditions are good. This gives me great empathy for those citizens of other countries and schools who experience similar conditions.

An online teaching colleague, Reinhard Marx from Germany asked for a photo of a typical school lunch box as his year 7 student were studying foods in science. He asked the name school that I teach in. As our official website is very bland, I always send the link to the school blog. He read the post on the school vegetable garden and asked whether I had time to share with his students about our foods. There were three classes in all and the presentations spanned a week Europe (excepting Russia) is not time zone friendly for synchronous linkups with our classes, but it is reasonably friendly for teaching on my part, as their school day starts in my early evening and often finishes late at night for me. Two of the classes were at 6:30pm my time and the third was at 10pm, 8:30am and noon respectively in Germany.

Skype for videoconferencing was the tool agreed upon as google hangouts do not work well for me from home, despite being on a cabled computer.  I like skype for the following reasons:-

• User friendly
• Globally acceptable
• Can share my screen for the powerpoint presentation that I prepared on food, the school canteen and the vegetable garden.
• Send files through
• Maintain a backchannel for interpretation, ensuring understanding and adding questions in the text chat.

We tried sharing videos from both sides of the world, but the audio was not good. I dropped my video but audio was still poor when I tried to screenshare. The powerpoint presentation was quickly sent through skype and Reinhard displayed my powerpoint on his data projector and I talked through the slides when prompted without video connections.

Our school vegetable garden

The second lesson started in a similar manner but I had booked a Blackboard Collaborate room as a backup. The sound was perfect in here and the presentation could be shown. However, I had forgotten that many of the images were high in pixellation and the final slides did not load for Reinhard and his class. Again, he had to revert to showing my powerpoint at his end. The third time lucky, it all worked as I ensured that I had resized my images on the presentation.

The challenges:-

• Bandwidth – found a tool that worked – blackboard collaborate – I can book a room through my Education Department license.
• Working with a class where English is the second or third language. On occasions I had to pause for Reinhard to interpret
• To ensure comprehension  – by the third class, I realised I should label the food using the text tool on the whiteboard, use lines etc  whilst I was being interpreted.
• To ascertain interest of class when there was one class logon. Would be preferable to have students individually logged on in Germany.
• How to bring my students online next time – share the link and they can logon from home.

The highlights

• Multimedia tools – audio, text chat, whiteboard, video, labels, lines, shapes, app sharing (through Blackboard Collaborate)
• Recording – the classes were recorded for future reference or use with other classes and the links to the recordings shared with Mr Marx.
• The questions from the students, responses to my questions and the sharing of languages and names of foods.

Lunch in the School Canteen

Using the shapes and lines tools in BbC to annotate and ensure understanding.

Here is the

• link to the recording of the second lesson
• link to the recording of the third lesson

Look local Go global!

People often ask where they can find global connections. Too often we forget to look within our own local and school community. Unfortunately, our school is isolated geographically and culturally, but many other teachers could look for:-

1.  parents of students from other cultures or find relatives that may live overseas. They can be keen to share their culture, backgrounds, experiences, food etc with the students. 
2. Major towns and cities will have Chinese, Indian, Thai, Portuese, African, Italian, Greek etc restaurants and shops. These also make a starting point.
3. Students within the school may be overseas on holidays or on an exchange program and that is one that we were able to use,  as one of our year 10 students is over in Canada for 6 months. Emma was keen to connect with her friends back at school via skype and videoconferencing, so this week we set up a connection with four of her friends.

Despite Canada seemingly being similar to our culture, Emma is experiencing so many different things to what she would be back here on the farm. It is snowing there and she has been skiiing, dog sledding, skating on the larges skate rink in the world etc. Her school is bigger, she now lives in a town etc. The sports are different. Tuesday morning this week was Monday evening, Emma’s time.  We used skype. Some of the questions our students asked were thoughtful and reflected their curiousity and a real interest in her life over there. Although they keep in constant touch via facebook, the videoconference brings an intimacy on a higher level. Emma took us on a virtual tour of her Canadian home and into  the snow laden backyard. The girls were also able to ask questions of the family members in Canada.

Here is some of the conversation:

1.  Why aren’t you at school? (Reflected lack of knowledge of time zones)
2. Do you do much homework?
3. What are you doing in maths? – voting procedures
4. What subjects do you do that are different to here?
5. How many students in your class (20-25)
6. Are you still doing drama?
7. What is the weather
8. What is the time?
9. Do you stay with the same family for 6 mths (yes)
10. Does it feel like home? (yes)
11. Describe your house- (3 storeys – basement ground floor and first story)
12. Do you do anything with your friends after school ?
13. What different foods have you had?–(poutin – French fries with gravy and cheese curd.  Bagels for brekkie, beaver tails = cinnamon toast.)
14. Does any one speak French? (French is their second language)
15. Show us your school uniform (Emma’s school has no uniform)
16. Do they have cheer leaders
17. What are the popular winter sports – ice hockey, volleyball and basketball
18. Do you go on camps or work experience (no)
19. Do you have holidays? (Just had one week holiday break – this is first week back. Easter another break. In summer will be 2 months)
20. Do any of your friends have jobs? (Leah has a job and works at a pizza place.)
21. How do you get the snow off the road –( add salt to the roads to make it melt.)
22. Do they have a big back yard? – this question resulted in a virtual tour of the yard
23. Can you show us some money?
24. How hot does it get it Canada?
25. Do you go to the beach? (On the Great Lakes – not the ocean)

A Canadian coin

• Have you videoconferenced back to exchange students or use relatives and connections from the local community to bring textbooks to life?
• Have you brought in any of your local community to give students a global perspective? If so, how?
• Have you taken your students out into a cultural neighbourhood?

Playing Games in Skype

Memory in a bag of objects

Yesterday, I noticed a facebook update from my innovative colleague, Endang Palupi from Indonesia. She was working with a school 6 hours from her home, demonstrating the ‘magic’ of skype in the classroom with them.

This time Endang asked us to use games, singing etc over skype with these students. I wracked my brains (as I am certainly no good with singing) as to what game I could play. Then decided on a memory game. Here is what it looked like:-

1. Collect 10 objects and place them in a bag (eg scissors, newspaper, mug, ruler, dice, flag etc)
2. Display each one, one at a time  to the distant class over skype
3. Say the name of the object
4. Hide the objects back in the bag
5. Students  come up to the webcamera, name each of the 10 objects in the language of the initiating class.
6. Students could then name them in their first language and the other class repeat the name.

Taking the learning further – share the current news from the newspaper  of each school over the webcam, discuss the flags, compare what is in their pencil cases etc. I could have put my mobile phone in and then we discuss favourite technology, favourite use of phones etc

I wondered what other teachers do apart from Mystery Skype, straight question and answer etc. So a public collaborative google document was created for you or others to add ideas to. To ensure you can always retrieve it, bookmark the website or goto share, add your email address in there and it will be approved.

It is hoped that this will become an ongoing rich resource of sharing by teachers wishing to collaborate beyond classroom walls. What ideas do you have for both younger and older students. Please share them with us all.

A Virtual Presentation for our VCE Study Camp

At the beginning of each school year, VCE (year 12) students from across a number of small rural schools, including ours, attend a three day study camp at the University of Ballarat. A last minute plea was made for suggestions of a speaker or workshop for the Business Management class. This is the first year that I am teaching this subject so am inexperienced!

Again the power of a professional network came into play, as I contacted a wonderful colleague, Amanda Ritter who teaches at Toorak College (a private girls’ school) in Melbourne. Each year Amanda’s student gain extremely high results and Amanda is herself well networked, resourced and experienced.  Amanda offered to videoconference in to the students and speak to them virtually from her school. Blackboard Collaborate was the software tool of my choice for the virtual workshop, as students have access to a chat, can see Amanda on video and watch the powerpoint presentation on the virtual whiteboard. Polls can be setup and high interactivity employed. However, this software does not work at their school. So, we agreed to use skype.

Testing skype connection whilst still at school

The Business Management student cohort:-

• 15 students at the camp were studying Business Management 
• students came from 8 different small rural schools
• Students studied the subject under different conditions – some with a face to face teacher, some study virtually with a remote teacher using polycom videoconferencing equipment, several study the subject by distance education (I still call it study by correspondence)

Webcam Introductions

The challenges included how to-

•  ensure that skype would work in a tertiary institution where I had no control or direct contact with lecturers or technicians (it can be blocked in many eductional settings)
•  provide a backchannel or area of chat for the students to interact, ask questions, provide feedback etc
• encourage an ongoing social network for students beyond the camp and through this final school year
• engage students for a 2 hours – the length of the workshop
• project Amanda’s video image up (feedback suggests seeing the presenter is more engaging for students) whilst simultaneously sharing the powerpoint presentation. (I did not have time to print it out in pdf form and photocopy for students). Amanda was unable to share her screen with us in skype.
• contact students after the date when they publicly state they dont use email!
• the lack of time to fully test skype and its potential features for the presentation.
• Give Amanda a clear view of her virtual class (this was difficult as they were in a computer lab and mostly hidden behind monitors whilst taking notes)
• the practicalities of accessing skype at the university and their network
• Camp organising staff organised a University rep to help me setup and ensure we had a username and password.
• created a Todays Meet backchannel for introductions, discussion, questions, reflections etc 
• shared a collaborative google document to add contact details for networking and sending out the pdf version of the presentation
• opened up the powerpoint presentation on my laptop
• when in the videoconference, skype was maximized to show Amanda on video, then when referring to specific slides, the ppt was maximized. This enabled Amanda’s video image to be projected (in small size) over the actual slide. I could grab her video and move her into a position where she could be seen but did not block out any of the images or text. A fabulous feature that I only discovered that day!
• Took photos of the class and the way in which Amanda appeared to the students. Share webcam view of her projected image in the computer room.
• Amanda’s voice has lots of character to hold student attention
• Had one quick test two days before to ensure our linkup would work.
• used my laptop with skype downloaded, cabled into University’s network, used a temporary username and password to login to their system, projected laptop screen onto their large white screen at front of room via a data projector. Brought my own speakers (thank goodness, as students would not have heard audio otherwise)

The room setup, cabled laptop, white screen for projection

Reasons for the session’s high success and being rated  as one of the top camp sessions:-

• Students introduced themselves in school groups via the webcamera  and in the backchannel to Amanda
• Amanda had created an engaging presentation using  text2pic to replace the usual dot points on slides, featuring  images as much as possible to show what she was talking about and gave examples of things that her students had said had worked for them.
• Amanda appeared at all times in video format so that students could always see their presenter.
• Amanda used interactivity where possible – with questions requiring feedback, written response etc
• She had also worked out a hands on session at the conclusion of her presentation. Students used magazines to cut out appropriate images to build posters on “The Operating Environment” or the “Macro Environment”

What I learnt

• how to have a ppt presentation up with the virtual presenter image shown in an overlay of the slide and discovering the ability to drop or drag this video image around the screen. Will test to see if it works when presenter shares their screen
• using text2pic app to replace the often boring dot points in Powerpoint. This creates very effective imagery.
• how to improve student external exam results based on the experience of another teacher
• the need to remind students of appropriate behaviour in a professional online chat
• being reminded of the need for each party to see each other or understand how they look to each other.

My laptop screen with ppt and Amanda on video

Have you used skype for virtual formal presentations? What elements of skype do you use?

Frogs in the Pond – helping one another eat frogs!

Our first videoconference with China

The intriguing topic of “Eat that Frog” for #globalclassroom chats this month created a lot of interest, discussion and banter. One of the questions was:-

What can frog-eating teachers with global classrooms do to help their peers eat their respective frogs?

This post will explain one way in which we are trying to be frogs in the pond! Our school teaches mandarin Chinese as a second language. Over the last 6 years we have established a sister school relationship with no. 27 School in Beijing. We would like to maintain online connection with them, especially via videoconferencing to allow valuable learning across our school. However the frogs or things that get in the way of  this are:-

1. Finding a contact person, with a similar passion or desire.
2. Risk taking: finding someone who is willing to take a risk
3. Language barrier (in my experience, the Chinese people like to do things well and if they feel their English is not perfect, they will be very shy of trying to communicate using audio and video with English speaking countries, despite me not being able to speak Chinese at all!!!)
4. Losing face  if things do not go well communication or connection wise
5. finding synchronous and asynchronous tools that are able to be used by both countries. China blocks so many of our favourite tools for much of the time – google apps, blogs etc
6. Meaningful relationships and trust – establishing time to enable trust first between the teachers involved
7. Technological issues: Technology access and bandwidth
8. How to ensure understanding
9. Cultural sensitivity: Appropriate introductions, netiquette etc

Eating the respective frogs!

1. Frog no. 1 and 2 – Finding a contact person. This year our school is fortunate to have Wang-Yi a young Chinese support teacher spend 12 months in our school. She accompanied the school group on its bi-ennial trip to China. (Students in years 8-11 are offered this opportunity every two years.) The 10 students who went to China in September this year spent a few days in the sister school and had a home stay with Chinese families. Whilst there, Wang-Yi was able to find a senior teacher, Mary, willing to videoconference with us and maintain when back at our school.
2. Frog no. 3 Language barrier – Mary’s English is good and she is extremely fluent (although does not feel confident).
3. Frog no. 4 Losing face – It was important for one or two teachers from our school make an initial connection to introduce ourselves as soon as possible as Wang is about to return to Shanghai.  I emailed Mary explaining how we had communicated with and undertaken global projects with many countries including Asia where the teacher and classes spoke English as a second or third language. This reassured Mary that we were able to interact and collaborate despite possible language barriers.
4. Frog no. 5 – Tools to connect and communicate - We are really comfortable with skype for videoconferencing and messaging,  the Chinese people tend to use QQ and this is the tool that Mary is familiar with. Therefore, we will learn how to use QQ and they will have a go at skype. Our first connection  today was with QQ. On Thursday we will use skype while Wang-Yi is still in our school.
5. Frog no 6 – At lunchtime, we videoconferenced with Mary via Wang-Yi who stayed in the shadows but helped out with language when required.
6. Frog no. 7 Meaningful relationships and trust - it will be important to maintain ongoing contact via emails, text msgs on skype and qq (when I learn how to use that etc), so that a friendship forms and mutual trust is engendered.
7. Frog no 10 Technological issues – test the connections, use the tools between teachers first, then introduce the students/classes. A videoconference uses simple technology – a laptop with webcamera, will suffice, preferably connected to a data projector. Have back up plans.
8. Frog no. 9 Ensure understanding – when no interpretor is present – use the chat, google translate, use objects, use simple gestures.

Relationships like this have the potential to impact greatly on our curriculum both for Chinese but also for geography, history, technology etc. It is far easier to connect with countries that speak English but by eating the frogs it is hoped that we can work together and push learning into  new arenas or ‘ponds’!

Learning can be real!

Students in year 7 are learning how to use some of the lesser known features of MS Powerpoint. After creating animations in Powerpoint, I was going to get them to create games in Powerpoint. This was dependent on them accessing a file in the network drive in a 2011 folder. To my dismay, the folder had been removed. Now what!

I had just finished chatting to Lorraine Leo in skype re the imminent hurricane that was soon to arrive on the North Eastern area of USA, where Lorraine lived. I quickly messaged to see if she was still there and could she please speak to my students about this hurricane and its impact on her, her school and the area that she lived in. Lorraine was kind enough to agree. Once I had overcome the technical issues that seemed to beset my hardware in the computer room, Lorraine appeared in the video option of skype and spoke to my students for 10 mins or so. Her school was closed for 2 or 3 days, they had been warned to stay indoors. Some areas had been evacuated. Her concern was for her elderly mother and other family members who lived in New York etc. Unfortunately, the screen share facility did not work as Lorraine was about to share a presentation featuring information on this.

The students were able to come up to the webcam one at a time and ask her questions. Halfway through my lesson, 50% of the class then went out to an early lunch as they were involved in the school production. I ended the call with Lorraine as the video was not working. This left me with 10 boys who were so intensely engaged in googling the hurricane, where it started, what it looked like, the weather maps, the increasing impact of it, the loss of lives etc. One of the boys found the youtube video of President Obama’s urgent speech to the nation and we all watched that.

As Lorraine was still online, the boys went up to the chat feature and keyed in further questions for her. Here are a couple of the text questions:-

• Qu: Are you getting much wind and rain at the moment? Response:Hi Ross. No we are not getting very much rain or wind at all right now. It feels sort of like we are close to the ocean though.. I think that the humidity is higher than normal. Let me give you a link.  Weather forecast Here you can see the temperature.
• what is the temperature? It is 50.9 degrees Fareinheit (This sparked research as we record temperatures in celsius)

The lunchbell then went, but what a lot of learning went on, from a short skype call which thoroughly engaged the students and sparked their curiousity, from a real person expecting a real natural disaster – the local knowledge, the atmosphere,  the feelings involved, the unknown future, the lead up to a natural disaster etc were all there! Students were going home that night to research further and watch for any TV news. Since then Lorraine has made a little video of the strong winds blowing outside her window for students to watch when they come into class tomorrow.

The twitter hashtag has been added to my tweetdeck column #sandyq for twitter updates from people – there are images, updates, news items etc (and some updates that are  inappropriate) but all part of learning.

Thank you so much Lorraine for making learning real for us! Stay safe, take care and we look forward to hearing from you once that hurricane has passed.

Processes involved in global collaboration

Global education is a personal passion. Tonight’s #globalclassroom twitter chat looked at “Scaffolding learning from class to world” – a fascinating topic that Laurie Renton in a blog post What is Global Taxonomy teased apart for us with a number of questions. One question that sticks out firmly in my mind is “Is there a progression of global collaboration?”

I experienced one step in that progression today – talking to a class of students through an interpreter. My friend, Lorraine Leo was the main presenter from Boston, USA and the class of students were in Japan. This was my first experience of working through an interpreter and an interesting one.

How it looked!

1. Professor Yoshiro Miyata, who I met through Lorraine, and creator of the World Museum Project, invited me to speak to some students along with Lorraine, using skype or google hangout. However, google hangouts are heavy on bandwidth, so I asked for skype. Unfortunately, I could not use my video due to poor sound quality
2. Lorraine shared her screen with Japan and talked about her use of Scratch with her class and beyond by sharing images. This included our collaboration recently on the World Dot Project.
3. Lorraine would speak a few sentences and then pause for Yoshiro to interpret.
4. Then, it was my turn. I spoke a little, paused and could hear Yoshiro interpret. When I felt he had finished I started speaking again. I have no knowledge of Japanese, so it was very much a guessing game, especially as I spoke to a blank screen.

Up until now, I have found classes where teachers have some grasp of the English language – enough to get by in simple connections. However, this was the first time that English was not spoken. Teachers who are interested in genuine global collaboration, will need to learn how to work with an interpreter and how to do so in all situations – virtual and face to face! Another competency for me to work on!

Have you ever worked in a situation that required an interpreter? What advice would you give?