the lives of teachers

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about some of the possibilities opening up with new digital video recorders, and I’d like to explain in a little more depth a particular project I worked on with a class recently. This represents a full cycle of work over a number of lessons.

Step One

Everyone is familiar with youtube, but it is not the only video streaming site in town. Videojug is devoted specifically to instructional videos, submitted by both amateurs and professionals. The site is searchable and browsable, so the first task was for students to go and find a video and prepare to report back to their peers in the next class.

Making a how to video

I recommend you choose a suitable video yourself and go through the process as a class first. With this particular class, we had just finished a unit in the textbook ‘Face the Issues’ (a high-level book using authentic US radio recordings from NPR) in which two experts discussed how to buy fresh fish. This video followed on neatly.

Step Two

Students got together in groups to talk about the videos they had watched. Then they decided what they would like to teach someone else to do.

How To Prep List

Storyboard

The story board was important not only for the students to visualise what they wanted to do, and to increase their efficiency when actually making the videos, but was also important for me at the editing stage.

Step Three

We watched this video in class and discussed good technique – basically, I wanted to make sure that the students thought about camera angles, camera movement, lighting and sound.

How-to video checklist

Students then went away in groups and made their videos!

Step Four

Each group returned and gave me their video camera and thier story board. I put each set of raw files into a separate folder, then edited each one together in iMovie using the storyboard as a reference, and uploaded it to vimeo (password protected). It really doesn’t take long, and was no bother for me. I’d love to show you one, but in fairness to the students (in various regulations) I’m afraid I can’t. Take my word for it, they were fantastic ; P

Step Five

Students went away and watched their videos, and completed a reflection on the task.

How-to (Self Evaluation)

Conclusions

Students responded really positively to this task, and came up with some really creative and interesting work. They sourced props, scouted locations, came up with scripts and detailed storyboards…. mostly in their own time. I still think that recorded and transcribed conversations can be very valuable, but handing over as much control as possible to the learners is a wonderful feeling.

(Written as a NEST, working in a foreign country, but hopefully of interest to all)

How did you learn cultural awareness? Assuming you did, of course….

For an industry which pitches different cultures together with such force and frequency as ELT, there is very little teacher training devoted to cross-cultural communication. On the CELTA? Sorry, to busy cutting up cards to practice the past perfect. DELTA? Well, can we do it after I’ve transcribed this into phonemic script.  Masters? Perhaps, but who knows what people get up to on those things. No, most of us have to figure it out for ourselves…. new job, new country, new people, new language… well, here goes nothing!

Of course, for many of us that is part of what makes teaching exciting. For others, it may be what forces them out of the profession early on. Is there more that we could do for new teachers in training to prepare them for life abroad? Especially if we have no idea where they are going, or might go in the future? Can we give any better advice than “Look, listen and learn?”

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

Geert Hofstede’s research has been taken up as a business tool, but it has applications to the ELT classroom. He assesses five aspects of culture; Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance and Long-Term Orientation.

Here is a comparison of my home culture, and my host culture. I should expect to come up against a greater reliance on rules than I am used to (Japan is an uncertainty avoiding culture), and I am also likely to notice a greater gap between gender roles (based on the masculinity index).

It is an interesting starting point, but rather simplistic. There is little mention of how the different dimensions play against each other, and the categorisation into national cultures attributes homogeneity where there may be none. Even a country like Japan, not generally considered diverse, has enough difference to be significant. Perhaps the iPhone app (Cultural GPS) advertised on the site gives us a hint – this is a handy tool for the business person flying in and out, but maybe not much more.

Culture Bumps

Carol Archer first coined this term for the unexpected outcomes, foiled expectations or unpleasant surprises which are not uncommon in cross-cultural encounters. The idea is not dissimilar to that of Critical Incident Technique theories. Unlike Hofstede’s model, these techniques suggest that we extrapolate backwards from what has actually happened to reveal something about a particular culture, group or individual, rather than make an assumption based on research about what might happen in real life.

Contrast Culture Method

As opposed to the previous two methods, CCM is very precise in how its sessions are conducted. Two players perform a role play based on an incident – one acts as a reference player, supposed to be closer to the audience’s own culture. The other is the contrast player, who reacts against them. After the role play, each player is interviewed by a facilitator, still in character, while the other player waits outside. Both players then return, and come out of character to discuss what has transpired. There are similarities to Critical Incident Analysis, but in this case players are at great pains not to identify as any particular nationality or culture, rather as a pair in reaction to one another.

I have been loosely affiliated to the CCM Special Interest Group of SEITAR Japan (Society for Intercultural Training, Teaching and Research) for a while, and have taken part in a few sessions. Here you can see an edit of our workshop at the JALT PanSIG in Osaka in May…

CCM Long from darren elliott on Vimeo.

(There is a short version here)

Choices

Which of these models, if any, do you think would be most useful for the novice teacher preparing for their first overseas posting? Have you ever received any training? Was it any good? Do you have any epiphanies to share, of culture bumps that taught you something you needed to learn?

Further Reading

Carol Archer’s website offers free downloadable materials for English language classes, as well as further information. This article on handling culture bumps from the ELT Journal by Wenying Jiang is freely available with a bit of googling…. and this one from the APA explains CIT from in earliest incarnation.

Cultural differences are a mainstay of ELT coursebooks, but this one does it with a bit more style and depth. Joseph Shaules, one of the authors, is also a member of the CCM SIG, but I haven’t met him yet.

Geert Hofstede’s ideas can be explored on the cultural dimensions website here.

You can learn more about CCM in this great reader.

Presented at the Chubu Junior and Senior High School Seminar 2010

First of all, a guide to the five kinds of digital camera I discussed. The ‘traditional’ camcorder, the pocket camcorder, the mobile phone, the digital camera, and the webcam.

A Field Guide to Digital Video from darren elliott on Vimeo.

Then a digital video checklist of things to consider when choosing a camera for a job.

Activities

Transcriptions can be a simple way of noticing errors, reflecting on strategies, checking gaps in knowledge and reviewing language. Here is an example video transcription worksheet to give you an idea. Students can transcribe conversations, role plays or even monologues, although I think they should be unscripted initially. Research suggests (see Lynch, below) that transcription can be beneficial as part of a task process.

You may prefer to put the students behind the camera too, in which case you will need to train them in the use of equipment. If all your students have video facilities on their mobile phones, you could have them record short videos over the weekend to discuss in class on Monday – playback through the phones themselves makes this a fairly simple job for the teacher. These could be project or topic related, or you could give the students free reign to express themselves.

If you would like to be even more ambitious, you could release the students to make and edit documentaries, interviews, skits or commercials. You could exchange video messages with students in other countries, remake scenes from movies shot for shot, make news reports or create weekly soap operas. With the tools and the time, let your imagination run wild!

Recording and watching your own classes, or those of colleagues, can also be useful. Check Ruth Wajnryb’s excellent ‘Classroom Observation Tasks’ for ideas.

Links

Vimeo is the video hosting service I use. The pro service is cheap, has a massive 5GB weekly upload limit, can be password protected, and looks great. It is also free of the awful commentary one comes across on youtube, with a great community of artists, animators and film makers. Students can visit the site directly and watch the video just by typing in a pre-agreed password. No registration or log-in required.

Dropbox provides free online storage, back-up, and synching between computers. Premium services are available, but if you can get your friends to sign up to the free package you get free bonus storage. Your students don’t have to sign up to anything, you can upload video files and send students a download link by email. Very simple.

WordPress is a great blogging platform (this blog is a wordpress blog) to which you can directly upload video, as long as it not too large. Some services allow you to post by email. Each of the four student blogs I am administrating this semester has a unique email address. I give this email out to the students and they can post text, photos or videos to the communal blog to share. A great way to collaborate on projects, and to stay in touch over the long summer holiday.

There are absolutely hundreds of digital video formats available, some rare, some very common. This list helps you figure them out, and free software like Any Video Converter will help you convert them if necessary.

I have bookmarked a lot of stuff which turned up during online research here at diigo … have a look around!

Further Reading

Allan, M. (1985). Teaching English with Video. Harlow, UK: Longman

Geddes, M. & Sturtridge, G. (Eds.) (1982). Video in the Language Classroom. London: Heinemann.

McGovern, J. (Ed.)(1983). Video Applications in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Pergamon.

(Three fantastic books. Not only are many of the ideas and activities still relevant today, but issues such as format incompatibility and teacher techno-fear seem to have quite a history….)

Brewster, M. (2009). Lights, Camera, Action. English Teaching Professional, 64 (September), 59 – 62.

(Some really great practical activities, highly recommended)

Shrosbree, M. (2008). Digital Video in the Language Classroom. The JALT CALL Journal, 4/1, 75 – 84.

(Slightly more technical, also practical)

Grayson, K. (2010). Flippin’ Out. Technological Horizons in Education Journal, March, 35 – 38.

(Useful overview of a number of handheld ‘pocket’ camcorders, although already dating fast!)

Lynch, T. (2007). Learning from the transcripts of an oral communication task. English Language Teaching Journal, 61/4, 311 – 319

Stillwell. C., Curabba, B., Alexander, K., Kidd, A., Kim, E., Stone, P. & Wyle, C. (2010). Students transcribing tasks: noticing fluency, accuracy, and complexity. English Language Teaching Journal, 64/4, 445 – 455.

(Two of many articles exploring the value of transcription)

In the first, a tousled woman peers out of a darkened room into the bright sunlight, martini glass in hand, sunglasses shielding her eyes from the glare, stocking hitched, a bored socialite drenched in ennui. Her children will populate the early Bret Easton Ellis novels of the 1980′s, deadened by money, neglect and sex.

In the next picture, we see a beautiful woman on a city street. She looks concerned. Maybe she has $30,000 in her briefcase, ‘borrowed’ from the office safe. She might be worried about her lover (James Stewart, perhaps?) who has been acting strangely recently. It’s possible that she is being followed by a portly gentleman with a distinctive profile. Whatever, she’s a smart woman in trouble.

These are 8 x 10 stills from B-movies you have seen before. At least, you’ve seen films like them. You won’t have seen these particular films because they were never made. They are a part of a sixty-nine frame series created by the artist Cindy Sherman in the late 1970′s, each of which she starred in herself as heroine, starlet, woman in danger, sex kitten, sophisticate, ingenue…

Sherman has continued to use herself as a subject, transforming herself into ridiculously-breasted virgin mothers, sinister clowns and fairy tale goblins. This not-quite-first series, however, is her simplest and most direct – both visually and thematically. The artist is an actress, and she plays ‘types’…. vaguely familiar, known but unknown.

Korean artist Nikki S. Lee has gone a step further in her immersion, as a guerrilla method actor, like Sherman not a photographer but an artist who uses photography to capture her conceptual or performance art. She places herself entirely into her context and collects snapshots as an archetype archaeologist.

That’s archetype rather than stereotype. Whilst the stereotype is cliched, oversimplified, tired, the archetype is the quintessential embodiment of an ideal. The archetype represents a universal, instantly recognisable to anyone. One might say it’s just a question of positioning. Nevertheless, archetypes are common features in literature, in psychology, in cinema, as shorthand to help us understand and connect to narratives. The Child, The Shadow, The Devil, The Sage, The Mentor.

Lately, I’ve noticed archetypes emerge in my classroom. I have been teaching some of the same classes for three years now, and although the students change every year…. in many ways they don’t. Classes from the same department have a familiar charater and chemistry year on year. I am wary of allowing this to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but as far as curriculum development goes (the narrative of teaching) I can work my story around certain archetypal characters before they actually arrive in my care.

Is this dangerous? Are there archetypes in your classroom? What are they, and do you use them to your advantage?

an interview with joy egbert from darren elliott on Vimeo.

the lives of teachers

Download Here

Joy Egbert was in Kyoto, Japan for the 2010 JALTCALL conference and gave the keynote speech on student engagement. In this interview we talked about that, teacher training, creating ‘flow’ and ‘micro-flow’ situations, and working in limited technology contexts. Joy has a book coming out this year on the last topic, which I am very much looking forward to reading.

I had read a little about flow and the name Csikszentmihhalyi (which Joy can not only pronounce, but spell without reference to notes) but it was good to hear about the relationship between flow and teaching from someone who has been working in that area. Check google scholar to find Joy’s articles. But in the meantime, watch Tina Weymouth playing bass in this clip… that’s flow, I think ; D

About a week ago I wrote about an experiment in silence with a class, and promised to come back with a report on the students’ reactions. It really was quite enlightening. This is what we all learnt.

1. A particular result may not mean what you think it means
Looking back through the many comments on my previous post (which was one of the most commented upon I have posted) it is interesting to see that we, as teachers, slightly misread the whole situation. As professionals, committed to our students, caring about them deeply, we all assumed that the end result (constant discussion in L1) springs from the joy of freedom, the taking up of responsibility and other positive emotions. Actually, according to the students, they were terrified.

“We actually thought that you were angry at us and abandoned us because we use too much Japanese in class.”

“I took it for granted that you were angry and you didn’t want to give our class.”

I don’t know where this leaves Krashen. Despite the cause being the negative emotion of fear, the result was very positive.

“To do task without your help was difficult for me. However, I were able to hear much English. And I could speak more in English than usual!”

“…if we have no teachers, we must think how we should study. However,this situation is very important to us too I think. Actually we try to look for the answer more harder than usual. I spoke in English more ,moreover I heared more opinions of them than usual. Though we had much difficulties, it was very interesting to me.”

Of course, anyone who has met me in real life will find this fear highly amusing. Teaching teenagers we do sometimes need to wield a big stick. However, I don’t want this to be the dominant motivating force in my classroom, which leads us onto our next point.

2. Although mystery can be effective, we must ultimately provide transparency

When the students realised what I was trying to do, they were very happy. This was a vital step in the experiment – revealing the mystery.

“But I read your comment , you tried to see our class from all kinds of directions.”

“After reading this article, I noticed you care about us more than I expected. So I’m happy that you are our teacher!”

“We were so puzzled! Me, K., M.,and M. were discussing about ﾞwhat’s happening!?ﾞ through out the whole class.
K. and I were even talking about it the rest of the day!”

So had I left the class cold, with no feedback or no discussion of what had happened, the positives of confusion may have caused longer-term damage to the rapport we have been building. I kept the next class very light, and the students kept up their good habits from the previous class.

3. Perceived teacher beliefs do not always reflect actual classroom practice

If you had asked me before this class if I believed in learner autonomy and a hands-off teaching approach, I would have given you an emphatic yes. But what I was actually doing in the class belied this. It was only by removing myself completely from the lesson that I could see how students had been relying on me to prompt them, feed them and cajole them into using the language. In the last week, I have given many of my classes similar opportunities and they have all surprised me by speaking fluently in English for as longer than I expected.  Had I been unwittingly restricting learner autonomy by doing too much, by jumping in too soon, by shutting down an activity simply because I was ready to go on to the next one?

This is why I think reflective practice has never been done properly in mainstream ELT literature. The questions we are prompted to ask ourselves are always the same, and we end up giving the answers we think we should. What was good and bad about that lesson? Why did that activity succeed or fail? We will never really know unless we break the mirror and try to rearrange the pieces.

An invitation to experiment, then. This weekends homework – choose a class and do something you never usually do. Then report back and tell us how it went and what it revealed.

Two workshop prezis from JALTCALL 2010 at Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan, May 29th – 30th 2010.

Parallel Learning: How online teacher development informs classroom practice

Video blogging and Podcasting: Interviews with English Language Teaching Professionals

As you can imagine, there is a fair bit of overlap between the two sessions, so I chose to use the ‘flavour of the month’ presentation tool to make one big slide with two different pathways. It was really fun mapping it out… I am not sure if it helps me think differently, in a less linear fashion, or if it just panders to the mind’s natural inclination towards multiplicity. But this is my first paper run through….

Anyway, I am not sure whether it is such a bad thing to have ones thoughts marshalled into straight lines by PowerPoint or Keynote. Something about Prezi does scream ‘Big Fat Gimmick!’, but let’s enjoy the whizz bang fireworks while they last.

Because I hate decontextualised slides so much (one of the greatest dangers to academic discourse today, I’ll venture, is the proliferation of mute online slideshows, stripped of the only thing which gives them a life) I have recorded a run through with commentary so you know what all the pictures mean. It’s forty minutes condensed into twenty, so it’s both too long to watch online and not long enough to make any sense. Apologies for the mumble, everyone else is asleep and I really ought to be myself.

Parallel Learning: How online teacher development informs classroom practice from darren elliott on Vimeo.

I made this using iShowU HD, which works very nicely. Screentoaster also seems good, but a bit more obtrusive.

If you were at either of the sessions in Kyoto, thanks! Questions or comments are very welcome.

I recently read and enjoyed Jason Renshaw’s post about teacher silence in class, and thought I’d try it out myself. I have a class of students who are all very smart and engaging young people, but perhaps a little too relaxed. Most of them know enough English to do what they want to do…. which isn’t always what I ask them to do. They enjoy each others company and sometimes fall too easily into passing time in Japanese. We are using a challenging textbook which (I think) is interesting – Face the Issues, a book based around NPR interviews and news stories, authentic and quirky English. This class focused on the second half of unit three. The class meets twice a week for 90 minutes, and also attend Reading and Writing classes with other teachers. It (should be) a lot of English.

The remainder of this blog post follows Jason’s example, and has been posted on the student’s blog as a report of what happened. I hope that some of the students who participated in this class will come along and comment themselves.

______________________________________________________________________________________

I started today’s class at 9:20 by projecting this message on the screen at the front of the class.

Today, you are going to take responsibility for your own learning. I am not in charge of today’s class. We will work on pages 38 -44 of the textbook. The CD and the CD player are at the back of the room if you want to use them. Please make your own groups, and decide which parts of the book you want to study. And how you want to study them.

 Of course, you will use English to do this.

Thank You.

At first, everyone looked a little surprised, but it didn’t take long before the students formed groups of four… and within ten minutes, everybody was talking in English comfortably. At 9:32 the first group moved to the back of the class and used the CD player to check their answers in the pronunciation section. It seemed that each group was working through the book exercises in order, and also following the instructions in the book directly. Why was that? By 9:40 there was a really nice buzz.

By 9:55, most students were on to the discussion section, and some started listening to the NPR recording to take notes and prepare for the case study on pages 42 – 44. This was one of the biggest challenges for me – one group had difficulty finding the right track on the CD, but rather than doing it for them, I let them do it themselves. It’s hard to let go as a teacher!

By 10:30, students were talking actively about the topic, although I tried not to walk around as much as usual, to remove myself as a presence from the class. At 10:35, I projected this message on to the screen.

How did you feel at the start of the class?

Did you speak more or less English than usual today? Why?

Did your group have a particular style?

How did you choose what and how to do, and when to move to the next part?

Would you like to study this way more often?

What were the best and worst things about today’s class? Why?

Do you need a teacher?

To finish the class, I showed this message. I didn’t say anything at all – not a single word – all class.

Please leave your homework and your attendance card on my desk.

Please do page 46, exercise II (vocabulary) before Friday’s class. Visit the blog, too. I will write more about today’s lesson and I would like to read your comments.

In Friday’s class, I will probably talk to you again ; P

So, what did you think? Comments welcome!

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To paraphrase David Letterman, the teacher switch has no off position. Everything is fair game… newspapers, in-flight magazines, menus, tv commercials… all squirrelled away with the thought “Hmmmm, I can use that!”

I had just such a moment yesterday, meandering through youtube. But as I tucked it away, I had another thought… why not get other people to make something of this for me?

There are a number of great philanthropists out there giving us ready-formed and excellent lesson plans (props to strictly 4 my teacherz , Turklish Tefl , Breaking News English and Tefl Clips to name but four). But let’s say we are moving away from the knowledge transmission method to a more learner-centred model, web 2.0 of course, in which we all have a hand in what we create.

I have been thinking a lot recently about my Personal Learning Network, about the amount of time I spend on professional development, and about how much of that work has a direct effect on the things I do in the classroom. Maybe, just maybe, I think too much about the bigger picture. Perhaps, just perhaps, I should get back to basics. And it might be a good idea to get my PLN to work for me, more efficiently. So here is my plan. I give you a clip, you tell me what you would do with it, who you would use it with, what you would use it for, and if you have used it, how it went.

If other ELT bloggers would like to join in by posting their own ‘found’ raw materials and inviting collaboration, I think we can make something interesting. It needn’t be a video… snippets of text, pictures, whatever.

So, here is my first offering. I think it will be a familiar to any British readers… the Two Ronnies were an incredibly popular double act in the seventies and eighties, and Ronnie Barker (the big one who did more of the writing) was a huge fan of word play. In this skit, a shopkeeper is having trouble with his customer….

script here

What do you think? Pick anything out of that?

You may not be in such a slump as poor George Costanza, but why wait? The life of a teacher is characterized by peaks and troughs, by breakthroughs, epiphanies, bad days, difficult classes, critical incidents and culture bumps. But these things are GOOD things, because the worst thing that can possibly happen to a teacher is stagnation. Early on in our teaching life, we are too busy figuring out the basics to worry about anything else. But after that? As Frances Fuller (1969, 1974) describes, our concerns change… from self, to task, to impact. We start by asking “Am I adequate?”, move on to “Is this activity working?” and (hopefully) end up with “How are the learners?”. Achievement of a state of stability is a  both a blessing and a curse, however.

Trainers spend so much time with pre-service or novice teachers that those of us later in our careers (and I speak as someone who has actually only been teaching for ten years) are left to our own devices. Which is fine. I am happy to direct my own development… why would I be sitting here writing this, otherwise?

Part of the way we can continue working happily as a teacher is by shaking things up before we get bored. In my research into teacher development during changes in context, I was very interested to see how often ELT professionals moved on – from one institution to another, from one country to another – to fend off the impending stagnation. Any anxiety and difficulty created by the change was compensated for by the invigorating power of ‘the opposite’.

I recognise the fact that TEFLers don’t always get a choice in these matters. But I would tenetively suggest that some of us are grateful for the chance to wipe the slate clean and start anew. Do those of us attracted to the industry have shorter attention spans than teachers in mainstream education?

But if you don’t fancy moving to a new continent, or you have ties and responsibilities that make that difficult, how do you avoid getting into a rut? Well, George’s advice still holds good. Try the opposite. If you usually stand up, sit down for your lesson. If you are a great whiteboard artist, leave it blank next week. Don’t give any homework, or set loads. Teach a class without a textbook, or fire-up a laptop.

But, whatever you do, don’t let yourself get bored!