Activity: Exploring Communication Tools in Moodle

My LMS, in Moodle, is designed for grade one French Immersion students who will be using the LMS to support their classroom learning.  It should be noted that I intend to use my LMS with the SMART Board in my classroom.  Students also have access to one classroom computer which they use on a rotational basis during literacy centers.  I have chosen two main communication tools for my LMS, one synchronous and one asynchronous.

Activity #1:  Wiki (asynchronous)

Description and Rationale

This activity would be completed towards the latter part of the school year.  Generally, as grade one culminates, the students are starting to consolidate their thinking around story writing.  My instructional goal is for students to have a sense of story, specifically the parts of a story; beginning, middle, end.  The purpose of the wiki would be to write a collaborative story.

I see myself and my students using the wiki together and individually.  We would start the project together, using the SMART Board to instruct the students on how to edit the wiki.  We would write the first couple of sentences together.  At this point, I foresee my students adding to the story as part of one of my literacy centers, which is using the classroom computer.  This will allow students time to reflect on their contribution to the collective story.  The expectation would be that they add one sentence to the story and that the story would unfold in order (beginning, middle, end).  Prior to starting the actual story writing, we would have, as a class, developed a story map using Kidspiration.  An image of our map would be posted on the wiki so that the students would be able to refer to it.  The final story product will remain as an enduring record of a project completed by my grade one class which will develop reciprocity and cooperation among students.  According to Chickering and Gamson (1987), “Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort that a solo race.  Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated.  Working with others often increases involvement in learning.  Sharing one’s own ideas and responding to others’ reactions sharpens thinking and deepens understanding.”

A limitation of asynchronous communication tools is that students may not feel as connected to a community of learners, particularly if efforts are not taken to keep people interacting with one another. I do not foresee this to be a problem, because as stated above, students will be expected to contribute to the wiki during literacy centers and are accountable for their work during this time.

I have tested the wiki, and it works!  I am confident that after being showed how to use the wiki, my students would be able to edit it at the classroom computer independently.

Activity #2:  Wimba Live Classroom (synchronous)

Description and Rationale

Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) third principle is “Good Practice Uses Active Learning Techniques”.  Many technologies available today encourage active learning.  Real-time conversation is one such technology.  Real-time conversation has the ability to create a sense of real-time connection and a sense of community.

The second communication tool that I have chosen for my LMS is the WIMBA Live Classroom.  My instructional goal with using this technology would be to improve the oral fluency in French of my students.  At first, I thought that this tool would be far too complicated for grade one students and  that it would be difficult to support with a class of 17-20 students.  This bothered me for a while as I saw this problem as a major limitation.  However, I believe that I have come up with a solution.  My idea would be to use WIMBA as a whole class to connect with another grade one French Immersion classroom in Calgary.  Often students do not understand why they are learning French because it is very disconnected from daily life in Calgary.  By connecting with another peer group living the same academic path, students may start to connect their language learning with life outside of school.

Research on second language acquisition supports the student-centered, task-based learning nature of real-time conversation.  The use of WIMBA supports second language acquisition by providing a relevant, meaningful context, learning tasks appropriate to students’ age level, and learner-centered instruction, which Curtain and Dalhberg recommend as crucial for language learning (2002).  Hadley (2001) reiterates this notion by stating, “opportunities must be provided for active communicative interaction among students” (p. 95).  Furthermore, Hadley recommends “students should be encouraged to express their own meaning as early as possible after productive skills have been introduced in the course of instruction” (2001, p. 95).  Real-time conversation provides opportunities for authentic “communicative interaction among students” by allowing students to communicate with other peers their own age.

The constructivist model of education further supports the use of real-time conversation  in the classroom.  According to Jonassen (1999), knowledge is “individually constructed and socially constructed by learners based on their interpretations of experiences in the world” (p. 217).  Feedback provided by the teacher encourages the learners to “reflect on what they have done” and the “strategies they used” (Jonassen 1998) to communicate in a second language.

Hatch (1978) argues that “[…] language grows out of experience, and it is out of participating in conversations that one learns how to interact verbally; out of this interaction, syntactic forms develop” (as cited in Ramírez, 241).  Therefore, the use of WIMBA will facilitate interactional competence and will provide a medium where students can interact in the second language and conduct a conversation without the worries of grammar mistakes.  Ramírez (1995) writes, “Students need to be made aware that it is not necessary to converse perfectly in the [second language] in order to communicate and that conversational strategies can be used to overcome communication difficulties in the real world” (Ramírez, 253).

I see my students using WIMBA to share projects they have been working on with the partner class.  My students could, for example, share the collaborative story that they wrote with the other grade one classroom.  Their presentation could also be archived allowing for parents or other members of the classroom community the opportunity to watch the students present.

I intend to try to connect with another grade one classroom next school year.  Although we do not have access to WIMBA within the Calgary Board of Education, we do have access to Elluminate which could be used for this purpose as well.  Last week, I was able to test Elluminate with my Assistant Principal and four other teachers.  It was very successful and after having participated with the WIMBA demonstration in ETEC 565, I am confident that real-time conversation will be an asset to my LMS and my instructional goals.

Assessment of students

Because my LMS will be used in the classroom, I will be able to monitor my students very closely.  I will be able to know who has contributed to the wiki (collaborative story) as the students are on a rotating schedule to use the computer during literacy centers.  Furthermore, Moodle itself keeps track of who has edited what.  In terms of using WIMBA, the interaction would be facilitated by myself and another teacher in another school.  Besides formally evaluating the work the students will present, I will be able to make observations of their conversations in French and the improvement of their oral fluency.

References:

Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an Online Learning Context.  I In: T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Edmonton AB:     Athabasca University. Accessed online 21 June 2009
http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008_Anderson-DeliveryQualitySupport.pdf

Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7. Accessed online 21 June 2009 http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm

Chickering, A.W. & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. Accessed online 21 June 2009
 http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples.htm

Curtain, H. & Dahlberg, C. (2004). Languages and children, making the match: New languages for young learners, grades K-8 (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson

Hadley, A. O.  (2001). Teaching language in context (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Jonassen, D. (1998). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. Reigeleth (Ed.), Instructional Design Theories and Models: Volume II. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Ramírez, A. G. (1995). Creating Contexts for Second Language Acquisition: Theory and Methods.  Baton Rouge: Longman Publishers USA.