technoChinese - iPods, mobile phones and Year 8

Here is my digital story and written report of the project I did this and last term with Year 8. Some of you may remember me asking for advice on whether to buy iPod Classics, touches or nanos? Well, they were for this project.

There were may good things about how everything worked out, but the most important lessons are what I can do better next time, and the fact that technology does not fix things. You still have to use it well, and have good content.

Below the video I have added the report I wrote - it makes this into a very long blog post, so don’t feel obliged! Plus there are headings if you just want to read certain bits. Any feedback and comments would be greatly appreciated.

technoChinese
Jess McCulloch, Hawkesdale P12 College

What was the project about? -
The technoChinese project was about using mobile technology (iPods and mobile phones) with Year 8 in order to encourage them to become more motivated about Chinese language learning and to actually take their Chinese outside of the classroom. It was also the idea that the teacher would not be standing in front of the class to deliver lessons, and the students would be able to work at their own pace to a certain extent.

What I produced -
I recorded several lessons (the topic was Likes and Dislikes – Sports) covering the vocab and phrases I wanted the students to learn. There were 14 lessons all together, 11 of which had accompanying recording tasks to be completed by the students. After listening to lessons on the iPods, students recorded themselves speaking Chinese either using the class mobile phones, their own phones or an iPod with a voice recorder attached. They then took these recordings and placed them on their individual pages on the technoChinese 8 wiki (http://technochinese8.wikispaces.com) for me to then listen to and assess. The aim with the wiki page was for students to effectively have an audio portfolio of their progress through the unit.

During the time this project ran, I went to China for 6 weeks with 20 Australian students. While there, I got some of those students to make short videos on their mobile phones of Chinese students participating in different sports. These videos were then put on the technoChinese ning social network (http://technoChinese.ning.com) for my students to watch and comment on. Each video had two questions for students to respond to.

How I did it –
I purchased 10 iPod nanos, 4 Belkin iPod Voice Recorders and two Samsung prepaid mobile phones. I then recorded lessons on my own iPod and transferred them to all of the nanos, as well as making them available online (http://technochinese.podomatic.com). Students then used the nanos and voice recorders to make their recordings to put on the wiki.

Students were also given a task sheet outlining the project and expectations as well as a check list with the lessons they needed to complete numbered and with space for them to come and get feedback about each task they recorded.

Each lesson was fairly unstructured with students working at their own pace – some doing do by leaving the classroom and working outside for periods of time, or by sitting in small groups in class, or working on their own on one of the beanbags up the back of the room. At all times students had

Things that went really well –
Students were really keen to use their phones in class. Most students who had phones would bring them and they would ask if we were going to use them for that lesson. Students took great delight in actually teaching me how to use the Bluetooth functions properly. One student couldn’t get over the fact that I wanted HER to teach ME something. Especially at the beginning of the project, students were very keen to work on their Chinese because it meant they were allowed to have their phone out and be ‘playing’ with it.

Having recorded lessons was great for kids who missed a class or said they didn’t know something. Rather than repeating the same thing to several different students, I could just direct them to the recorded lesson and off they went.

Having the students in China make videos for my students at Hawkesdale worked really well. Their videos provided an authentic resource for my students to work with.

Things to improve on -
Some students struggled with self-motivation – some really enjoyed listening to the iPods for their lessons, but others just found it boring. I think the main reason for this was they were confronted with having to take responsibility for their particular lessons and they just couldn’t be bothered and got very easily distracted by anything else that was happening around them.

Students didn’t do any of the lessons outside of class despite being asked to. They were happy to leave the actual classroom, but not to take the lessons home. I made the lessons available for all students to take them home whether that was on their own iPods, or USB sticks or even CDs, but I think only one or two actually ever bothered.

I found this group a little difficult to work with for this project as they didn’t seem to really care at all. They enjoyed using their phones and the iPods in class, but once the novelty of that wore off, it was hard to actually get work out of the class. This could have been for a few reasons – students really didn’t like listening to the lessons for example, but also it did come down to the fact that this class is difficult to work with across many classes and as a group, tend not to do much work in any class at all. This is one reason I wanted to work with this group, and there may have been some improvement, but not a massive difference from before I don’t think.

More emphasis should have been put on the fact that students are collecting together items for an audio portfolio on the wiki. In retrospect, I actually think using only a ning network (a social networking tool – think Facebook or MySpace) would have been better. Using a wiki and then adding in a ning was spreading it a bit too far I think. More of a focus on the ning would have been a great way of getting kids to put up their work and get comments from other students, not just me as the teacher.

As far as the videos from the students in China, the idea was that my students at home would then ask the students in China to make a particular video or use a particular phrase, but this did not happen as the students at home did not look at the videos until I came back and made it a class activity.

What I learnt –
*iPods are great ways of delivering lessons, but this needs to be done in a more structured and purposeful way. Some students work well with working through lessons on their own, but a significant portion of the kids needed more direction and to be checked on more often.

*Mobile phones are great tools to have in the classroom and kids are keen to use them. Bluetooth is a great way for students to make recordings and then hand them in (which they did by either Bluetoothing them to my phone, the class phone or the SMART Board).

*Some students actually worked harder on their spoken Chinese when they were using their phones to record, especially at the beginning of the project. They were keen to get it right because they had instant feedback by listening to the recording straightaway.

*Students need to be explicitly taught how to use a recorded lesson – beyond what the lesson tells them to do. For example, students need to be told that listening to it once does not mean you know it and you can stop and start different parts of the lesson. Just because it is recorded in a given order doesn’t mean you can’t use just the bits you need.

*Using the technology and having recorded lessons available did not make students want to take any of the learning home at all. Using the tools is not enough. There still has to be engaging content and students would be happy not to use the cool bits of technology if it meant they felt they were getting more out of something else.

Where to from here? -
As an extension to this project, I am now focusing on really developing the ning network. I have asked a teacher from Geelong to join me on this and get her Year 8s to join the site. I’m hoping to expand it to many LOTE Chinese classes and provide a place for students to talk about learning Chinese as well as share what they are doing.

I will always use mobile phones as recording devices in my classes now, and collect work from students via Bluetooth. I also want to start Bluetoothing things to students rather than wait for them to have to transfer something to their own iPod, or collect a disc etc.
I would also like to look into further using phones for things like entering homework on the calendar (the kids never take their planners home or use them properly!).

Other stakeholders involved –
The school itself is of course a major stakeholder, as I did need to get permission for the students to bring their phones to school (or to show they had them anyway without fear of consequence!). Our school policy has now changed slightly and mobile phones at school are allowed now.

Parents were informed of the project and told how their students would be interacting with me via their mobile phones. Very few of the parents actually returned the required form and so I was reluctant to go any further with text messaging kids after school hours etc. That part of my original plan didn’t happen.

How could other teachers apply this project to their practices –
The uses of these technologies can be applied in any class. Making recorded lessons, getting students to record responses on their phones, receiving and sending files via Bluetooth would be very useful in any class and any subject.

One thing to be wary of is having a policy with the students on how to use the phones in class – etiquette really. At Hawkesdale, we don’t actually get mobile phone service so there was nothing I could do with text messaging while at school, nor could the kids message each other. At a school where phone service is available these sorts of issues would need to be discussed with the students.