Digital Divides and Developmental Ditches

I unabashedly embrace what technology can do for education, commerce, community and personal development. I have seen it and I have faith. Yes. I believe.

Some say that faith is a belief in that which cannot be seen. As I write this, my faith is in something that does not yet exist. Astounding but true: I am blogging offline on a farm somewhere in Africa.

Urban South Africa has gradually awoken to the digital wake-up call, and internet service providers finally seem to be attracting a growing following. While access to computers is still limited, recent statistics show that two thirds of South African internet users access the web from their mobile phones. This is testament to the resourcefulness of Africa under trying circumstances, as much to a hungry ambition to be part of the world, whatever it takes.

My own quest for independent internet access led me to find several options for wireless modems with pre- or post-paid services. I eventually opted for the MTN wireless modem (made by HuaWei) with 2GB prepaid data, which costs me R2 090, or roughly USD 250. For me this was a matter of life or death and an essential expense, but in Africa that is still a lot of money. By comparison, fixed line service providers offer broadband entry-level services at R199 per month, which includes 1GB of data. At a tenth of the price, it is obviously a better deal, but obviously limited to home lines. For the average family, this is an acceptable investment, and is gaining in popularity as internet use mushrooms after a slow and torturous start in this country.

So why am I blogging offline? After years of alleged irregularities with the national telephone monopoly, my father refuses to have a fixed telephone line. (In their defense, Telkom have come a long way in recent years and are currently offering impressive services.) As to my shiny new wireless modem, internet facilities remain limited. There are 3G services in the cities, and even in the town near our farm, from where I hope to eventually post this entry. In the rural areas, however, access remains limited, where it exists at all. Our farm is out of reach, and I am forced to face the world unmediated, unarmed with my technological artillery. Most South Africans, after all, do so every day.

But changes are coming. Rapidly expanding wealth, education and infrastructure have put South Africa on the brink of an internet explosion. This is a time of tremendous opportunities. The challenge that goes along with this technological acceleration is to equip South Africans and other emerging nations with the skills to make the Web a force for good within our societies.

The phtotgraph, Winter Morning Tree, was taken from my window on our family farm, Esperance. http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=113715040438136944150.00046e61147b20af025eb&t=h&z=16

JAM: Justification, Attitude, Motivation Part 3

This third instalment in the JAM trilogy addresses Motivation, which is the last word in language learning success, if you will pardon the pun. Motivation refers to the learner’s drive to learn the language. In my experience learning a dozen languages (with widely varied degrees of success J ) and teaching and supervising a few thousand students, I have found motivation to be the single most important determinant of success.

Experts tell us that Motivation can be either extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation hinges on external rewards – be it approval, gold stars, high marks or a sports car from Daddy if you pass. (Yes, that is a true example from a student I met. Interestingly, he did not pass and got the car anyway, which explains a great deal!) Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is an inner drive to learn for its own sake. We all have intrinsic motivation, whether it is to master Kung Fu or flop down on the couch: the question is how to foster intrinsic motivation for a worthwhile cause in ourselves and others. Ultimately, intrinsic motivation is the result of disciplined enthusiasm, and needs to be nurtured with care. I would like to contend that intrinsic motivation can be cultivated, and is a function of metacognition.

An important motivation for learning English often transcends the extrinsic/instrinsic distinction: instrumental motivation refers to a drive for practical rewards. In the case of English, many learners see the language as a means to an end of their choosing, whether it is more income, higher learning, immigration or travel. It is perhaps not to the credit of the language learning field that some of the most successful language learners are not in this field at all, but rather in business, academic life, the diplomatic service or evangelism. (The latter two examples demonstrated the greatest mastery of another language I have seen among native speakers of English, who have an abysmal reputation for learning other languages – when they even try in the first place!). Instrumental motivation may offer a gateway from extrinsic motivation to longer-term, intrinsic motivation.

The proverb says that you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. The language educator’s challenge is to make that horse thirsty. JAM is an acronym for three vital steps in this process: Justification of what is to be learnt, cultivating the right Attitude and fostering a discipline of intrinsic Motivation. We do not have to make the horse drink. We must simply get it to want to drink.

JAM: Justification, Attitude, Motivation Part 2

In the last post we discussed the importance of a language learner’s ability to justify learning material. In this section, we consider the role of Attitude.

One motivational slogan claims that “your attitude determines your altitude”, and the play on words is apt. For a learner, attitude is a gatekeeper that determines what is taken in (“intake”), processed and put to use (“uptake”). The controversial Language Acquisition guru Steven Krashen referred to an “affective filter”, an emotional barrier, which is raised or lowered to allow learners to take in information. In short, when the learner is positive, the affective filter is lowered and learning can take place. If Krashen has a point (and my student memories suggest that he does), we want to do all we can to lower that affective filter.

Attitude involves the learner’s attitude to the language to be learnt, the learning situation and the self as learner. Living in Taiwan and Oman respectively, I found that I easily learnt the local language when positive about the local culture, but stagnated when conflicts with the local culture arose. The linguistic term for this stagnation, if it persists, is “fossilization”. An unforgettably apt term to describe my Arabic abilities, frozen in prehistory!

As to the learning situation, every teacher has seen students learn more effectively when they enjoy a lesson. Even as a supposedly mature student, I find my learning slumps when there are problems with a class or an instructor. Finally, a learner needs a positive attitude towards him- or herself as an individual and a learning entity. In this respect, success breeds success, and the best way to develop confidence is with small victories. Disillusioned learners need to learn that the problem often doesn’t lie with them, but with their learning strategies. An excellent publication in this regard is Rebecca Oxford’s “Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know”. Though published in 1990, this rich resource (brimming with activity ideas) has not been eclipsed.

While these things are important for language learners to know, they are absolutely vital for teachers. As a language teacher, some of the most valuable professional development I have done has been as a student, and particularly a language student. This is why learning a language oneself is such an enriching experience for a teacher.

Many an English teacher abroad is already surrounded by the language, and has every reason to learn it. Motivation may wax and wane with local friendships, interest in the culture and, of course, the inevitable cultural clashes – which add the spice to the living abroad experience! Teachers’ attitudes to their own learning ability may also vary. Native speakers of English seldom experience the same pressure to learn a new language that their students do, and many language teachers have never put their language learning wings to the test. Learning the local language is an outstanding opportunity to enrich the experience of living abroad, while deepening your abilities as a language teacher. For those preparing for a new country, it promises a much softer landing in a brave new world. The Teachers as Online Language Learners tells more about how to learn a new language online as a personal and professional development process, and is a great place to start an adventure into learning, language and the possibilities of Web 2.0 for education.

Whether for teachers or learners, attitude plays a central part in language learning success. Attitude to the language, the learning process and oneself as learner are fundamental to the process.

JAM: Justification, Attitude, Motivation Part One

“But why do I have to learn this?” has been the refrain of many a learner in formal education. What terrifies me as an educator is often that this question is justified: a great deal of what is taught in schools is no necessarily relevant to today’s learners. (More glaring yet is the omission of essential information from the curriculum: health, environmental and financial literacy may mean more than the subjects we actually do teach.) For a language learner, it is vital to Justify why material is being learnt, to have a positive, confident Attitude about the learning and be Motivated to learn it. My next three posts will deal with each of these in turn, starting with Justification.

While the language curriculum tends to prescribe certain elements of language learning, learners often justify their learning with those aspects that are important to them. For example, the curriculum asks for grammar, while students ask for slang. The bare fact is that students will learn better if they have the chance to learn what they feel is important, or justified. This does not mean we should disregard the curriculum, but rather sweeten the curriculum with what learners are interested in. While this may seem to digress from the learning objectives at times, it is likely to leave learners more empowered, and more motivated to learn what is required.

What excites me about learning through online vehicles is that the abundance of resources allows learners to access materials they are motivated about. Successful language learning materials allow learners to tailor their learning to their own interests and needs. This element of free choice is highly motivating, and allows learners to mould their learning according to their perceived justifications and needs. Yes, this may seem to interfere with the structure of the curriculum. Yet the learner’s inner drive to learn what he or she chooses will demand certain language mastery, which the learner is then motivated to attain on self-determined terms.

Ever learner needs a reason. If we are to engage in lifelong learning, the curriculum is one that we set according to our own justifications. The more of a voice the learner has in what is to be learnt, the stronger this reason. Intelligent materials, and wisely selected online learning, make this possible.

A Birthday Present for Nelson Mandela

18 July marks the birthday of the great South African leader Nelson Mandela, and has been declared Mandela Day to celebrate his legacy. In addition to the festivities planned around the world, the man affectionately known to the nation as “Madiba” (an honorary title within his clan) has asked each South African for a special birthday gift: 67 minutes of service, to commemorate each of the 67 years he served the nation.

It has been inspiring to see how South Africans have taken up this challenge, contagiously spurring each other on to collective community service. Asking myself what would most benefit the people I have come into contact with, I discovered that many of the craftspeople I meet are under-employed and could greatly benefit from some help marketing their services. My service is to help them compile and publish portfolios of their handiwork, together with a brief, personal résumé and a letter of reference. This sounds simple to anyone who owns a digital camera, computer and printer – but keep in mind that these craftspeople do not. In fact, one of the people I worked with today cannot read or write.

With a bevy of young women in tow, of course it did not take long for the photo session to turn into a fashion shoot, as the slide show proves. They had a great time, and so did I… and they will come away from this with a promotional tool that can secure solid work contracts. Work for them means better income, improved health, higher quality education and vision for the future.

So why write about this in a language education blog? I believe a community service project can be a great way to bind a class at a deeper level, and can encourage authentic language learning within a context of learning true life skills. Moreover, it can provide material for deeply meaningful blogs, online photo albums, wikis, podcasts or videos that truly matter. True education is about the curriculum of real life. As one enthusiastic supporter of Madiba Day said on South African news, our service to others should not stop at 67 minutes, but continue to 365 days a year.

Happy Birthday, Madiba.

Delicious Learning: Social Bookmarking for Educators

In my Teachers as Online Language Learners (TOLL) project, I found most learning resources (for Korean learning) through Google searches and the ensuing rabbithole of links they lead to. On occasion, I even bookmarked them in my browser, and annotated them on my website like a good researcher should. There is nothing wrong with this, in the same way that there is nothing wrong with reinventing the wheel. It's just that it has been done before, and why would one want to do it all over again?

The spirit of Web 2.0 is all about collaboration, and information searches are one area where we all can benefit from the work that has already been done by the army of fervent internet users across the globe. Search engines, particularly Google, capitalize on previous searches and the popularity of websites to organize their searches. To draw on the searches done by those before us, though, we can capitalize on social bookmarking - the collections of favourite sites constructed by users and shared on the web. My social bookmarking weapon of choice: Delicious.

Delicious offers users the option to import their existing favourite sites or bookmarks from their computer, upload, annotate and tag new bookmarks, share with others and add new bookmarks from their browser's toolbar. The magic of this process lies in the tags. Tags categorize each website, which means that you can access your own or other users' entries under that tag. For example, a tag search for Korean led me to the wealth of sites bookmarked by other Delicious users. After adding my own bookmarks, I could easily call up my own collection of bookmarks for Korean. Of course, the same principle would apply to any topic.

What makes Delicious better than the Favourites or Bookmarks built into web browsers is that the tagging and annotation functions make it easier to browse and keep your own evaluation of sites. Then, of course, you can contribute to building and organizing the vast shared knowedge base online, and benefit from others' contributions.

Because now that the wheel has been invented, we can get on with refining the design, and discovering new purposes for it. There's no need to do it all over again.

A special word of thanks, as always, to my colleague, friend and guru Henrick Borger, whose own smorgasboard of e-learning gems are, of course, meticulously bookmarked at Delicious.

“Blended Learning”: Book Review

Blended Learning: Using technology in and beyond the language classroom aims to address the needs of language and other teachers who are interested in using technology in the classroom, but don’t know where to start. For newcomers to edtech this is a boon, since applications are approached from the point of view of complete (if computer literate) beginners.

Blended Learning covers the definition and reasoning behind the use of technology in the classroom and beyond. Chapters are dedicated to the Web as a bank of authentic materials, the use of portable devices, electronic dictionaries, office applications, materials creation and more. The authors wisely address potential pitfalls in an “Opportunities and Issues” section at the end of each chapter, and illustrate possible uses with case studies. A wealth of useful links can also be found in most chapters.

As a close observer and obsessive user of learning technologies, I do have a few criticisms of this book from the edtech aficionado’s point of view. The first involves its nature as an introductory text: this format is a welcome addition to the literature, and makes the text accessible to many educators. Those with more online experience, however, will not find much here that is new, although they may benefit from the case studies and links. My second criticism involves the double-edged sword of rapid technological development. Although published in 2007, much of the information has been outpaced by new developments. The publishers have tried to address this in the accompanying website, but one wonders whether a technophobic target audience would venture that far.

Blended Learning is highly recommended for teachers seeking an introduction to teaching with educational technologies, and will be an asset to a staffroom resource collection. The book may also be of help to teacher trainers focusing on e-learning. Those educators who are already well-versed in using Web 2.0 are probably better off perusing the Web for new ideas, since this is, after all, a text for beginners.

Sharma, P. & Barret, B. (2007). Blended Learning: Using technology in and beyond the language classroom. Oxford: Macmillan.

“Blogs, Wikis Podcasts, and Other Powerful Tools for Classroom Learning”: Book Review

I have a confession to make. I took this book out at the library mainly to fluff out my reference list. Scandalous, I know. What surprised me was that I lapped up every word, thoroughly enjoyed it and found some sterling ideas, not to mention fascinating URLs and leads to further readings. In addition to which I will definitely be using it as a rich reference.

Will Richardson is established as an authority on educational technology, and his Weblogg-ed blog is highly respected. But fear not: his writing style is extremely accessible, and the text is highly user-friendly. Web 2.0 newcomers are initiated into the very basics of online tools, from starting a blog to more advanced procedures like setting up selective RSS feeds. Many of these procedures are illustrated with screenshots. Those with more online experience can dive into a multitude of creative educational possibilities using the tools.

Having tried out and studied ICTs in language learning for some time now, I did not expect the book to warrant a thorough reading, but it certainly did. Not only did I discover novel uses for the applications I am familiar with, I also learnt more about a few I hadn’t contemplated, and some I’d never even heard of. (Which is, apparently, not as rare as I’d like to think.)

Blogs, Wikis Podcasts makes a good read, a thought-provoking discussion piece, a classroom revolution starter and a great long-standing reference. A lone educational crusader could possibly survive without it, but a staffroom reference shelf should certainly not.

Richardson, Will. (2008). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful tools for classroom learning. Thousand Oaks (California): Corwin Press.

ISBN 978-1-4129-5972-8

An Education Parable from an African Farm

I am from Africa. I am in the world, and very much of it, but in a very real way I am from Africa, where I was born and raised and where I sometimes have the chance to return.

In Africa, cattle are regarded as wealth: they are considered to be a form of living capital, and even comprise the dowry in traditional wedding procedures. For this reason, cattle theft is as much part of our lives as samp, strikes and sunshine.

While visiting our family farm this week, I woke to the news that the fence had been clipped overnight, which usually means only one thing: losses. This meant an expedition to the farthest outskirts of the lands to count the cattle and herd them to safety. When I joined the party, the mood made it clear that the numbers were down. The herd was already assembled and ready to move to the other side of the farm while fences are repaired. As I approached, though, I crossed a ridge that was somewhat higher than the others. From that higher ground I could see what they could not: the missing cows were in a distant field, concealed by tall, gold savannah grass. Although this meant trawling through a river and a swampy meadow, the herd was intact.

It is not that I am a better farmer. Far from it. Yet I could find what the farmers could not, simply by having a different point of view. This is no less valid in education than it is in farming: different and diverse points of view are important. They may even realize that which seems impossible.

The picture is of our beautiful mare, Venus, who accompanies the cattle in the background as they graze.