Herramientas Web 2.0

On this blog I will report on the "Herramientas Web 2.0 Workshop"

Teaching-Approaches_Team_Teaching

Another assignment for the Muvenation course was: Uncovering active and other learning approaches in Virtual Worlds. Tere Short and myself (Daf Smirnov) worked together about Team Teaching.

Introduction:

Even though Team Teaching was not in the list of teaching approaches provided, we think this is a very important approach when teaching languages in virtual worlds, and that´s why we decided to include it. Team Teaching is normal practice in synchronous online environments, including SL:

•  To offer variety in voice delivery of content
•  Provide individual help to participants to assure successful completion of tasks
•  Back-up support should technology fail for either instructor
• Collaborative work in the planning and delivery stages
• Possibility to model language and activities for students

What is it?

• A method of coordinated classroom teaching involving a team of teachers working together with a single group of students
• A method of classroom instruction in which several teachers combine their individual subjects into one course which they teach as a team to a single group of students

(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/team+teaching)

• In team teaching a group of teachers, working together, plan, conduct, and evaluate the learning activities for the same group of students.
• Team teaching is an approach which involves true team work between two qualified instructors who, together, make presentations to an audience

Why it is used?

• to share tasks and responsibilities from planning to implementing and evaluating
• to combine different individual features of the facilitators
• to complement expertise
• to enrich the teaching-learning process
• to be able to give more individual attention to students
• to allow for development of new teaching approaches
   

• Set clear goals for the team, and then ensure its activities lead to those goals.
• Communicate clearly and honestly to survive and grow stronger from conflict.
• Determine and assume responsibility for assigned roles.
• Be prepared for team discussions and work.
• Don’t just assume the team will work well
• Make the development of the team a top priority:
  • Effective teams are systematic in their division of labour, not forgetting that roles may be rotated on a regular basis. In allocating roles, strengths and weaknesses of individual team members need to be taken into account
  • Team teaching is group work and as such teams need to develop as functioning groups. In dealing with other team members teamwork is seldom without conflict — professional or personal points of view may clash. Blending differences constructively is a challenge to all team members. To do this it is important to acknowledge team members’ strengths, interests, personal and professional goals both in assigning responsibilities and in the conduct of meetings.
  • For a team to function effectively the team meetings need to run well. They need to clarify expectations for how the team will operate, i.e. clarify management issues and set ground rules for meetings
  • In order to ensure the continuity of the module/course when it is presented a second and subsequent times the team needs to maintain clear documentation of the course including:
    • the course outline or syllabus;
    • weekly timetables;
    • teachers’ notes for each unit;
    • students’ notes;
    • teaching materials/written bulletins;
    • copies of tests and examinations;
    • final course evaluations;
    • student evaluations.

What are the main challenges to bring this practice to virtual worlds?

Facilitators need to:

• have similar ideas and attitudes about teaching and learning
• have common characteristics and work well together
• be flexible and open to other ideas 
• be in synch as much as possible 
• plan very well together and rehearse, if necessary
• have similar availability schedules to work together 
• be open to try new approaches

Case studies and examples of (good and bad) practices

• Good Practice In-World:
  • Spanish course for beginners in Ciudad Bonita in SL - Languagelab.com
     
  • Workshop given by Dafne Gonzalez & Moira Hunter on Creating a Book for Muvenation
• Good Practice Web-based:
  • Becoming a Webhead09 (BaW09): this latest round f Baw included a team of two coordinators and 10 moderators, and we used a separate channel of communication (from the particpants' group) to deal with situations as they evolved

Reference person

• In-world:  Daf Smirnov - Moira Hunter
• Web-based: Teresa Almeida d'Eca & Dafne Gonzalez

Online resources

• Perspectives on Team teaching: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~egallery/goetz.html
• Team Teaching: http://teaching.polyu.edu.hk/datafiles/R27.html

Inworld resources and tools

• All the resources and tools available in a virtual world can be used while team teaching. I would emphasize the importance of using a communication back channel to keep in touch while teaching.

Ideas for a successful practice in virtual worlds

• Pre-teaching:
  • Plan together
  • Create and/or look for resources - share with teaching mate
  • Rez all the resources in the corresponding place
  • Do a walkthrough of the class / presentation before actually teaching
  • Decide who is going to do what during the class
  • Have a plan B in case something fails
• While teaching
  • Keep a channel of communication open ( IM)
  • If one of the members of the team has a technnological problem, let the other know before it is too late
  • Be ready to make on-the-spot changes
  • Model language and activities for students
• Post teaching
  • Evaluate the class and make notes for future repetitions of the class

posted by: dafneusb at 19:31 | link | comments |
virtual-worlds, mvn08, muvenation, sl, teacher-training

My pres for TESOL

This is my presentation at the TESOL CALL-IS Academic Session:

posted by: dafneusb at 10:33 | link | comments |
tesol, web20, collaboration

My presentation at IATEFL

posted by: dafneusb at 10:30 | link | comments |
virtual-worlds, sl, languagelife, languagelab, teacher-training

My report on Tere´s workshop-Muvenation

Antoher assignment for the Muvenation course, was to observe one of the workshop given by our classmates and write a report. Even though, I observed 3 or 4 workshops, took notes and screenshots, I had not been able to sit down to write. Tere asked me to be her critical friend during the process of planning and then during thedelivery of her workshop on creating a teleport, and here is my report, a graphic one:

posted by: dafneusb at 07:28 | link | comments |
virtual-worlds, mvn08, muvenation, sl

Spanish at Ciudad Bonita: Another class

Here are more pictures and descriptions of a Spanish class at Ciudad Bonita:

posted by: dafneusb at 15:53 | link | comments |
spanish, virtual-worlds, sl, languagelife, languagelab

Describe an Educational Tool: PiedPiper

Another assignment in Muvenation (a lot a assignments, right? ) is to describe an educational tool. Since I was part of group 3 in the pre-session stage of this course, I had a project about web tools, there is an entry on this blog related to it. So, I looked for a tools which was not in my previous work. As usual we are using a template for our description. So, here it is:

• Right click on the PiedPiper object
• Select attach to hud > Bottom

Different seat arrangements:

1 seat

posted by: dafneusb at 15:39 | link | comments |
virtual-worlds, mvn08, muvenation, sl, teacher-training

Workshop_Creating_a_book:_The_Delivery

Here´s a photoalbum with screenshots taken during our hands-on workshop

My story is coming soon ;-)

posted by: dafneusb at 15:24 | link | comments |
virtual-worlds, mvn08, muvenation, sl

Muvenation Workshop: Creating a book

An assignment in our Muvenation course: Plan and deliver a how-to workshop

TITLE:  Creating a book

SL Instructors:   Daf Gonzalez (Daf Smirnov) & Moira Hunter (Busy Link)

Pre-required skills and knowledge

Participants are required to know how to:

• Take contents from an object
• Find the content received in their inventories
• Add textures to the content tab of objects (editing mode)
• Stretch an object
• Use camera controls  

Objectives:

At the end of the workshop, participants will have..

•     created a book on how to create a book
•     changed the different features of the book 
•     shared ways in which a book can be used in SL

Process: step by step description of the process involved and tasks

1. Participants will see 5 sample books
2. Participants will be asked to take the material for the workshop from an object
3. Participants will be asked to rez the empty book from their inventory (material received)
4. Participants will be given instructions on how to open and close the book
5. Participants will be asked to edit the book
6. Participants will add the textures to the book
7. Participants will be guided to change the different features of the book (color of book cover, pages, locking and unlocking the book, size, hiding and unhiding the text on cover and pages).
8. Participants will show their books
9. Participants will share ways in which they could use their books
10. After each intstructional phase within the workshop, time is allocated for Q/As.

Performance indicators

Each participant will have a complete book at the end of the workshop 

Evaluation

Participants will present their own books for peer evaluation and comments

Resources

• poll tool
• sample books
• materials giver object containing (scrapbook, textures, notecard with summary of book content)
• free book object with full permissions
• textures to put in the book with full permissions
• Book used as slide projector with step-by-step instructions (text and images)

Peer assessement organisation:

The participants are kindly requested to assess the workshop and post their comments in the forum after the event.

Critical friends who will observe, participate and comment on your workshop

1.Abdesalam ZOUITA (sami2k sideshow)

2. Teresa Almeida dÉca (Tere Short) 

Why have you designed this workshop and what have been the main design choices you decided to implement?

• We think a book is a great visual resource for SL that can be used for many different purposes.
• We want to use the book as the way to present the instructions for the workshop as a substitute of a slide projector.
• We also would like to practice team-teaching which is normal practice in synchronous online environments, including SL. Our strategies for team teaching:
  •  To offer variety in voice delivery of content
  •  Provide individual help to participants to assure successful completion of tasks
  •  Back-up support should technology fail for either instructor
  • Collaborative work in the planning and delivering processes

   * Clarity of instructions.

   * Team teaching

   * Could this workshop be done in a better way?

   * The importance of the content selected for the workshop

 Which aspects of this workshop are new to you or present you with particular challenges?

1. Being able to illustrate the instructions given by the creator of the book
2. Using a book as a slide projector
3. Having all participants successfully complete the task

posted by: dafneusb at 23:06 | link | comments |
virtual-worlds, mvn08, muvenation, sl

Animation 2: Spanish Classes at Ciudad Bonita

Here´s another animation!

posted by: dafneusb at 01:05 | link | comments |
spanish, virtual-worlds, sl, languagelife, languagelab

Spanish Classes week 3 at Ciudad Bonita

More pictures. This time from week 3

posted by: dafneusb at 13:01 | link | comments |
spanish, virtual-worlds, sl, languagelife, languagelab

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