Sharing Impact Software and Websites

Sharing Impact Software and Websites Greg Giesbrecht and Ron Rogge Instructors at Winnipeg Technical College English Language Centre

Greg Giesbrecht • Computer lab instructor • Badly retired • Back from retirement for the fourth time to come alongside classroom EAL instructors to give computer instruction to classes from CLB 1 to 8 • Forty-one years of experience teaching all over Manitoba

Ron Rogge • EAL instructor • Two years experience teaching CLB 3-4 at WTC Pembina Campus • Three years prior to that teaching CLB 3-4 and 5-7 at RRC Steinbach Campus • CTESOL from Providence • Ten years of experience in Germany teaching various kinds of English to students, retirees, businessmen, professionals and academics

Working as a Team • Greg, as the computer instructor, gets his cue from the classroom instructor as to what he should help convey to a class that meets a morning or afternoon every two weeks. • Greg has put together a binder of ideas as to what different classes have done in the computer lab. • The teacher usually has the assignment prepared. Greg teaches the technical details that are necessary for students to do the assignment.

Immigrants and Computers • Some very unscientific estimates: • Over 95% of my EAL students have computers • Of those, another 95% have internet • Men use the computer much more than women • When we teach women to use the computer, we empower them. • Immigrants may use a computer in their first job, and if not there, in their second one. If they want to keep getting better jobs, they have to learn how to use a computer.

Immigrants and Computers • Many students are between 40 and 50. Their children know how to use a computer better than they do. • So? That makes them just like some of us! • Yes, except that we are not feeling alienated from the society around us like they are. • Helping students gain computer knowledge narrows the gap between what they and their children know and helps them stay in touch.

Instructors and Computers • Computers help us to creatively communicate English, if we use them right. • EAL instructors are very intelligent beings. • EAL instructors are computer illiterate. • Okay, one of the last two points is vastly exaggerated and yet we are probably not as versed in the ins and outs of blogging, tweeting and posting to a social networking site as we would like to be. • The regular discipline of preparing for our next day of lessons makes expanding our computer knowledge difficult.

Instructors and Computers • We have too little of that non-renewable resource - time. • We have to work smart and hard.

Premise:Together we can do more. • Greg and I will tell you what we have done with some “programs” that have impacted our teaching. • We will tell you how these programs work in our estimation and what some limitations are from our experience. • Greg has prepared technical step-by–step instructions to using these programs so that you can play with them over the weekend and use them on Monday if you wish.

We want to hear from you. • We hope that we have five people in this class that want to talk about an “impact” program that they have used in their setting. Whet our appetite and give us a link or a couple of Google key words. • We hope that ten or five or two people will be open to posting their experiences with a program that has worked for them on a common forum. • We believe that in order to do our creative best with the computer as a tool, given the constraints of a busy life, we don’t have time to reinvent the wheel. We have to build on each other’s experiences.

Our Impact Programs • Spelling City • Audacity • Xtranormal • A blog

www.SpellingCity.com • Biggest payoff for time spent setting it up. • What is it? • A website that allows you to input a spelling/vocabulary list. • The website does the rest. • There is a teaching, game and test section for each word list. • Spelling City automatically creates a sentence that puts the word on your list in context. When called upon, a human voice reads the word and sentence. • In order to provide practice for the student to learn the spelling, meaning and pronunciation of the word, the program puts the words from the word list and the sentences it created into games for the student.

www.SpellingCity.com • How I use it: • I have created a couple of different kinds of lists organized by topic or sound. • Lately, I have used this list for students to practice the different ways of constructing a given vowel sound in English. • Example: I give the students the words on Monday of one week and give them a test on Monday of the next. I tell them that I expect them to get them all right. Last semester, with two sounds, half of them had only one wrong when I tested 35 words. I have a Smartboard with speakers in my classroom and I give them exactly the same test that they practice from.

www.SpellingCity.com • Why I use it: • This is meaningful homework with great learning potential for the student. The student can practice listening, reading, pronunciation, word meaning, spelling, and sentence order (not an exhaustive list). • The homework has a measurable result. • Students learn how to access a website and use it to practice English independently. • Students will spend some time outside of regular class hours using English. • It is fun and creative for the student. • It requires very little prep time. • Did I mention that it’s free?

Audacity • What is it? • Audacity is an open-source sound-editing program.

Audacity • How I use it: • Although it can do much more, I use it like a digital voice recorder. • I often send my student sound clips that I want them to mimic. • In addition, I have students give me voice samples (in mp3 format) in the computer lab. • If everyone has a headset and microphone, I can have a reading sample or recorded dialogue from a whole class in about an hour. • This includes the time it takes for the student to send me the clip as an email attachment. • I am now experimenting with students recording at home.

Audacity • Why I use it: • This is a next-generation cassette recorder that students can access at home, together in the computer lab or one at a time at a single computer. • I need sound samples that I can analyse to determine individual pronunciation difficulties. • Students can keep these sound samples (e.g. in an email account) as a record of their speaking or reading ability at a given point in time. • Students learn to create and use audio files. • They learn one more skill on the computer.

Xtranormal • What is it? • Xtranormal is a program that allows a person to create their own “movie” with animated cartoon characters speaking with a computer-generated voice. • The intonation and sentence stress is mediocre at best, but the impact of the program is powerful. • In order to generate a movie, a person needs only to type in his or her own dialogue, choose two characters and the setting, and let the online program do the rest. • That’s the minimum, but much more is possible.

Xtranormal • How I use it: • I first used the program by introducing a small, self-made movie to students in the computer lab. • Greg and I then spent most of the class signing students up for a free account. • They also had a chance to produce some dialogues and the related movies in class. • They learned how to copy a link into an email and send it to me (something I had to learn from Greg in class a few minutes before my students). • For homework, students were asked to produce another movie at home with the help of their children and/or husbands/wives.

Xtranormal • I received several movies back with considerably more sophistication in them than I had had in mine. The family had helped and become a little more involved in each other’s lives.

Xtranormal • Why I use it: • With Xtranormal, it is possible to go back to the original dialogue that was used to create the movie and edit it or print it. Sometimes the same students that can’t see their mistake on paper can hear it in the movie. • Students were encouraged to spend home time to do meaningful homework, possibly enlisting their children to help them with the technology and perhaps even with their English. • In the lab we only have one computer for every one and a half students. The dialogue activity was a natural way for them to use English to do the task, as well as for the task itself, as they struggled together through the challenges of producing their first movie.

Xtranormal • The other day I couldn’t make it in to work because my son was sick. I sent the class this video to explain my absence. By the way, my wife is also a colleague at the school. • http://www.xtranormal.com/profile/1529231/

A blog • What is it? • A blog is an online place where an individual generally communicates his or her thoughts and invites others to interact. • Greg was at the Vancouver Olympics working at the curling venue. He documented his experience in word and photograph with a blog at MyOpera.

A blog • How I use it: • I wanted my class to have a safe place to interact in a culturally real way with me and with each other in writing. • I set up a friend-access-only blog for my whole class. They had to become members of MyOpera in order to use it. • We went in stages from a blog entry, in which I asked them to write a short comment, to another entry to which students wrote commentary which I answered. • We put up pictures from a Spirit Week wrap-up.

A blog • Why I use it: • My hope for the blog was to develop a place for my students to interact online and get a small idea of what their children do regularly. I wanted to give them the opportunity to understand a little of their children’s world. • I also wanted them to experience “real” computer communication student to student and not just student to teacher. • I had the opportunity to teach them about safety on the internet in that context as well.

A blog • Will I continue to use a blog at CLB 3-4? • The jury is still out on this one although there is too much potential there to give up yet. Students initially answered a question about work. I asked them to do this at home and 14 out of 22 responded with arm-twisting. Thereupon, I asked them to respond to another question and statement on the blog. Everyone responded, but they weren’t totally excited. I would say that we have a very trusting atmosphere in my classroom, but it was a challenge for them to open up in writing online (friend-only access). They did it though, and I believe that another “first time” obstacle has been removed.

Summary of “Impact” Programs • These are a few ideas of how you can concretely use these programs in your classes. • There are many more awesome classroom applications of this same software and these websites. If you discover something phenomenal, either with these programs or others, please let us know.

Sharing Impact Software and Websites