Effective strategies for

Effective strategies for
applying multiliteracies in
collaborative learning


environments

Vance Stevens

Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE

The Language Centre 6th Annual ELT
Conference, 19
–

20 April 2006

Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman

http://tinyurl.com/m4ow6

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

The UAE context

Hooked to the Net

by Manal Alafrangi,

Gulf News, March 2, 2006

-

http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/03/02/10022377.html


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

The survey


In the UAE, 1,384,800 people use the Net


It was a YouGov survey


779 UAE residents answered questions on
their online experiences.


33% Arab expatriates = 260
(rounded, estimated)


33% Asian expatriates = 260


16% Western expatriates =125


18% remaining ??? UAE Nationals?? = 140


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Findings: VOIP and blog proclivities


“As many as six out of 10 respondents
said they are familiar with the term VoIP.”


“When it was explained
, an overwhelming nine
out of 10 said they found it appealing”


“With the inevitable increase in awareness and
improvement in technology, some say
restrictions on VoIP usage will be difficult to
maintain.”


“more than half the respondents were
supportive of blogs
once it was explained
to them

(with only one in 10 respondents
being unsupportive).”


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Findings: Chat proclivities


Net primarily used as a medium for
communication (chat, e
-
mail, VoIP and
blogging)


“Almost half the respondents engage in
online messaging”


“some (especially respondents aged below 21)
considering it a good way to make new
friends”


“only 19 per cent of Western expatriates agree
with this opinion (24 of the 125)”

(I think it’s good for making friends of professional contacts …


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Web 2.0 as a social phenomenon


Making friends of professional contacts
http://www.homestead.com/prosites
-
vstevens/files/efi/chat2005/chat2005.htm#elderparty_marquee



Vance and Eric Baber have collaborated for 5
years online
-

met first time at this conference


May, 2001

conference in Nicosia webcast over
WMP/Encoder server (Webheads had been
experimenting with HearMe and Excite voice chat
rooms)


Eric presented via Netmeeting at the The Teacher to
Teacher 2001 conference


Stood ready to webcast CALL
-
IS Academic Session at
the 2002 Salt Lake City TESOL Conference

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

The Oman context @ SQU ELT conf


Samia Kara

–

IT and women empowerment (established
that female subjects felt empowered with CMC vs. F2F)


Al Dhahab and Al Ghassani

–

Join the podcasting
revolution: Walkaway content (showed how easy it is to use
podcatchers to catch podcast feeds, and have students create
them for global audiences)


Unissa Siyadath

-

Reading Skills: Traditional vs. Online
(crucial multiliteracy skills required for reading on the
Internet, strategies for teaching these)


Jacob Cheruvathoor

-

Multimedia annotations in TEFL: Role
of ICT in everyday classroom (Most number of positive
responses were in being able to integrate IT skills with LL and
communicating with others using emails and making friends
from other countries


Eric

Baber
’s plenary: Web 2.0
–

True Interactivity at Last?
(
same as this presentation?

–

question from audience: How
do teachers ‘train up’?)


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

What is (
are?
) multiliteracies?

From:

http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/multiliteracies/index.php



“The term multiliteracies was coined by
the New London Group (1996) to highlight
two related aspects of the increasing
complexity of texts (reference):


the proliferation of
multimodal

ways of
making meaning where the written word is
increasingly part and parcel of visual, audio,
and spatial patterns;


the increasing salience of cultural and linguistic
diversity characterized by local diversity and
global
connectedness
.”


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Aspects of Multiliteracies

Stuart Selber
. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. Southern Illinois University Press



develop file
-
naming schemes that can be searched meaningfully


write effective email messages


participate appropriately in asynchronous discussion


analyze currency, authority, and reliability of website content

(Reading Skills: Traditional vs. Online
–

Unissa Siyadath)


generate visual images that represent data relationships
accurately and convincingly


situate technology in social, political, and economic contexts


Multiliterate individuals can, for example …

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Connectiveness


Connectivism


George Siemens
: Connectivism:

A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm

“The pipe is more important than its content”


"At first people used to say it's not the e that's important,
it's the learning. I don't think that's true. I think
it's the e
that's important. It's networking, it's management,
and it's learning how to deal with computers
."

-

Jay
Cross
, in Abu Dhabi for an eMerging eLearning Conference,
quoted in the Gulf News, Sept. 13, 2004, p.6



George

Siemens
:
Connectivism: Learning as Network
-
Creation

http://www.learningcircuits.org/2005/nov2005/seimens.ht
m



This last has implications for curricula …

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Implications for curricula?

From:
http://www.learningcircuits.org/2005/nov2005/seimens.htm



“
Instruction is currently largely housed in courses
and other artificial constructs of information
organization and presentation
. Leaving this theory
behind and moving towards a networked model requires
that we place less emphasis on our tasks of presenting
information, and more emphasis on building the learner’s
ability to navigate the information
—
or connectivism.


Blogs, wikis, and other open, collaborative platforms
are reshaping learning as a two
-
way process
. Instead
of presenting content/information/knowledge in a linear
sequential manner, learners can be provided with a
rich
array of tools and information sources

to use in
creating their own learning pathways. The instructor or
institution can still ensure that critical learning elements are
achieved by focusing instead on the creation of the
knowledge ecology.
The links and connections are
formed by the learners themselves
.”

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Manifestations in curriculum

Examples …


The Multiliteracy Project in Canada
http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/multiliteracies/



Cheryl Oakes’s blog
(an example of putting it all
together)

http://coakes50.suprglu.com/


Maria Claudia Bellusci uses a Frapper slide
show at:
http://e
-
toys
-
ar.blogspot.com/


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Impact on TEACHERS

4 questions to ask ourselves:


Do we teach what we know (already)?


Or what we should know
(and others appear to
be discovering)?


But how do we figure out what is
important enough to teach?
(given the
plethora of information available)



How do we learn new concepts ourselves,
new techniques, well enough to teach
them?

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

How can TEACHERS stay current?

Costly,
time
-
bound


Attending conferences / presentations


Enrolling in face to face courses


Enrolling in online courses

Free,
any
-
time


Becoming involved in
Communities of
Practice


Harnessing
Pull

information technologies
as opposed to
Push

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Communities of Practice


A community of practice forms when participants
in an online community evolve a working
relationship that leads them to focus
spontaneous
ly on shared tasks and problems


Constructivist


zone of proximal development

established


scaffolding

enhanced through developing interpersonal
relationship of the participants


Model

constructivist techniques to use in
teaching


Friendships develop,
affective filter diminished


Training
is by
-
product of queries, discussion

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Communities of Practice for IT


Webheads in Action, hundreds of members since
2002
http://webheads.info



TESOL sanctioned EVO (Electronic Village Online)
each January to March
http://www.tesol.org

and
http://webpages.csus.edu/~hansonsm/What_is_
EVO.html


Eric Baber’s
ExtremeTechnoELT.com

(not for the fainthearted)


RealEnglishOnline at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Real_English_Online/


a

YahooGroup with a focus on

video & hotpotatos

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Pull info technologies vs Push

What IS a blog and why is it PULL?


It runs on ‘blog’ software installed on a
server somewhere


It allows postings


It archives postings


It allows comments to postings


Crucially, it generates an
RSS

feed

This is WHY is is ‘pull’

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Pull vs Push
–

RSS


Jay Cross
: Push and Pull, Informal
Learning February 8, 2006

http://internettime.com/wordpress2/?p=14


Will Richardson

Gave up daytime job to become full
-
time
blogger

RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators
http://www.weblogg
-
ed.com/rss_for_ed


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Info Management
-

Aggregators

Allow you to PULL information as preferred


Several available; e.g. Bloglines


Stephen Downes's

Bloglines links:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/downes



Suggestion:


Have students address some assignments in
blogs,


have their postings appear in your / each
other’s aggregators as they are made

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Why blog?


Anyone can publish (
students, teachers
)


Students

have a voice, an audience


For both
students and teachers
:

conducive to Communities of Practice


For serious bloggers (
tend to be teachers
)
Instant communication. Echoes
reverberate around the world,
literally


An up
-
to
-
date and
critical

literature
emerges

Spontaneous, creative commons (shared)

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Are blogs the new literature?


Stephen’s

Web

http://downes.ca

(in hiatus)


Will Richardson
,
Weblogg
-
ed


Jodie Fraser

Edublogs


Harold Jarche’s

Conversations at the intersection of
learning, work & technology

http://www.jarche.com



James Farmer


George Siemens


Jay Cross
,
Internet Time Blog


Dave Cormier

and
Jeff Lebow

http://www.worldbridges.com


See International Edublog Awards Winners for 2005 at
http://www.incsub.org/awards/


Etc. etc.
(easily found in Google searches and references to
one another)

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

What kinds of BLOGS are there?


‘Standard’ blogs like Blogger


Photo blogs like Buzznet


HTML Blogs like Live Journal


Audio blogs


Video blogs


Podcasts



Gigadial
http://www.gigadial.net/public/


Juice Receiver:
http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php



Doppleradio:
http://www.doppleradio.com/


(thanks to Al Dhahab and Al Ghassani)

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Podcasting characteristics


Work through blogs


Essentially, audio postings to blogs


Thus, can be harvested through RSS


Can be downloaded for listening later


Pod
ogogical resources


Randy Meredith’s

Podogogy
http://www.podagogy.com/pedagogy.html


Learncasting & Podogogy in Language Teaching [03
-
04
-
2006]

by
Graham Stanley, Allan Carrington and
Randy Meredith


http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=1151315



Graham Stanley, Podcasting: Audio on the Internet
Comes of Age, Volume 9, Number 4:

http://tesl
-
ej.org/ej36/int.html

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

The Voice


Michael Coghlan
: Is Voice Online for You?

http://users.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/mater/eas
y_voice.htm



Michael’s Podomatic voice synthesis test:

http://michaelc.podomatic.com/entry/2006
-
01
-
19T05_36_13
-
08_00



Finding your Voice Online
–

An Inquiry into the
Use of Online Voice Applications in Higher
Education by

Michael Coghlan

http://www.elearn.wa.edu.au/kt/edition05/downl
oad/Coghlan.pdf


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Podcast and other voice examples


Aiden Yeh’s
http://www.aidenyeh.podomatic.com


Students post speeches


others respond with recorded comments


Odeo, Springdoo, Handybits


A ‘threaded’ voice chat:
http://odeo.com/a/UE66smL4kL3flKZHCP6f8ib
GLmlwQ8PO5iK4xjff/#cmnt6800



John Taylor
-
Johnston’s Odeo assignment
http://jtjohnston.ca/recording_odeo.php



Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Other content managers


Moodle

e.g.
Multiliteracies for Collaborative
Learning Environments

http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/vie
w.php?id=23



Elgg? (Drupal?)
http://www.eflbridges.com



Facebook

(see Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_(website)



Bedo

(see Emma Duke
-
Williams, Show and tell online:

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke
-
wie/blog/?p=390


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Content management and CoPs


What do Learning Mgm’t Systems do?


host some kind of content


Provide teachers means of manipulating content


provide means of access of that content


Track student progress


Foster communities when they:


allow users to maintain their own
profiles


associate
faces

with events


allow
tagging

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del.icio.us



It might host user’s
blogs


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Characteristics of

community
-
friendly content mgmt 2.0


Free


Open Source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open
-
source_software



Creative Commons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons



You can set them up on your own server …

Venny Su
. (2005) An Open Source Portal for
Educators. TESL
-
EJ Vol. 9. No. 1, On the Internet
http://tesl
-
ej.org/ej33/int.html



Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Raising multiliteracy awareness


Student threatens on Facebook to kill
president

http://www.oudaily.com/vnews/display.v/
ART/2005/03/08/422db16170829?in_archi
ve=1



One issue (meaning of terms of use)
picked up in Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%27
s_use_in_investigations



Implication: Educators may need to take
on more responsibility for raising such
awareness

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Web 2.0


eLearning 2.0


Links to lists of tools:


Graeme Daniel
, Web 2.0 and Education (Feb 14, 2006)
in WWWTools for Education
http://m.fasfind.com/wwwtools/m/2756.cfm?x=0&rid=2
756



Stephen Downes

From EduBlogs to the Collective
Consciousness: Director's Cut
http://downes.jot.com/WikiHome


Some I use


YahooGroups

e.g.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/efiwebheads/



Frappr

e.g. slide show at
http://wiaoc.org



PBWiki
; e.g.
http://baw
-
06.pbwiki.com/



Ajax
(I got this one from Eric
-

Used in Google home
page creator and in microsoft's live.com)

Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Other technologies


Buthaina AlOthman’s
Easy Technologies to Teach and Learn
EFL/ESL Across Different Cultures:Using new methods of webcasts
(cell phones)

http://alothman
-
b.tripod.com/tesol06_callis_acsession0316.htm



Tony Vincent’s

site on handhelds:

http://www.learninginhand.com/


iPod
-
learning


Greg Kessler’s TESOL 2006 presentation , and


Duke University, in the US, has distributed iPods to 1650 new
students, pre
-
loaded with useful orientation information. Students can
download from the Duke Web site, similar to iTunes, where they will
find orientation schedules, audio books, language lessons, lectures,
even the University song!
http://www.epic.co.uk/content/resources/white_papers/iPod.htm



Georgia College Pushes for IPod Ingenuity


By GREG BLUESTEIN
http://tinyurl.com/h8hvr



Curtis Bonk’s

OOPS, Did I mean to share that: Opensource,
Opencourseware, and the learning objects of tomorrow
https://www.elluminate.com/site/pmtg.jnlp?psid=d2036466210.3482
89



(recorded presentation with numerous examples)


Kerry’ Hargreaves’s

http://web.mac.com/kerryhargreaves/iWeb/Site/Photos%202.html


Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

Conclusion


Those concerned about the
decreasing half
-
life
of information

see little point (apart from the
pleasure of paging through glossy photos) in
subscribing to magazines or any other media that
has a production run that delays news getting to
you
when

you can get instantly updated
constantly through the blogosphere.




The blogosphere

has emerged as the library of
quality and of record, and it's not all text, but
decidedly multimedia (aud
-
blogs, video
-
blogs).




Being
multiliterate

means knowing where the
library IS in the first place, and then organizing
access to it, then utilizing and interacting with it.



Vance Stevens
-

Petroleum Institute
-

SQU ELT Conference Apr 2006

PP 107: Multiliteracies for Collaborative
Learning Environments

This presentation has been developed over
the course of two years teaching online in
the TESOL Certificate Program: Principles
and Practices of Online Teaching


http://www.homestead.com/prosites
-
vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/portal
2005.htm



Presenter information:
http://vance.webheads.info