This is the link with the podcard on which the lesson is based.

Melbourne

My Dream Project

When I think about a dream project making use of the New Media I have lots of ideas, as I think the use of New Media is the future of German school.

So first of all I had to choose a topic. Thinking back to my own time in school I remembered the topic “South Africa- Apartheid” being really interesting and important.  Not only was it an important step in history to overcome this system, but also the general topic of racism is still current nowadays.  Therefore I think this topic is very important for intercultural learning, change of perspective and understanding of the Other. In the Curriculum of Hesse the topic is said to be suitable for class 12.2 under the main topic of (Post-) Colonial Experience.  According to the lack of resources our teacher could not include any New Media . This is shame as I think that especially topics dealing with intercultural learning can definitely profit from the New Media.

I think I will choose this topic in order to create my term paper so I have just some brief ideas of how to include the New Media in the lessons dealing with South Africa. A chronological plan therefore is still to be developed.

In order to step into the topic “South Africa” pupils could work in groups with a WebQuest which I create in order to find out information on the history of South Africa, the population, geographical facts, typical food, traditions and so on.  Of course I will have to find reliable internet sources for this. After each group presented their results in form of a PowerPoint presentation to the rest of the class, one could step deeper into the historical events concerning the system of Apartheid.

One could e.g. listen to the song ‘Biko’ by Peter Gabriel and let pupils analyze the lyrics and visit the homepage of ‘Panos London’ and listen to some voices concerning the topic.

South African voices

I think in some way one could include E-mail exchange with pupils from South Africa in order to get to know their lives.  Pupils would get in personal contact with teenagers at their age and ideally find similarities between them. This should help them understand the African culture.

Sometimes writing E-mails is too time consuming as some pupils might not reply directly so I think another possible way to get in contact is to do an international chat conference.  Of course there is a computer for each pupil in the classroom so that one can link them together and start the conference with pupils from South Africa. Pupils can ask questions based on their previous knowledge achieved in class. One should formulate certain points which should be discussed beforehand so that the discussion goes into the right direction.

After the conference one could sum up the course of the presentation using www.prezi.com . In creating a path one could nicely visualize the course and the outcome of the chat.

In the end one could talk about the Soccer World Cup taking place in South Africa in 2010. What are the difficulties and chances concerning the historical background and the current development?

Although I could not take part in the field trip to Alfred-Wegener-Schule Kirchhain, I thought of questions which really interested me. As we all know, the Alfred-Wegener-Schule is the “Medienschule des Monats Januar”. This award definitely leads to the question how they accomplished that and how the school integrates the New Media into the daily school-life. I would like to know if there was a special group of teachers who initiated the ‘movement’ in the first place and how they convinced parents (donators?) that the New Media is very important today. In how far does the use of New Media enrich the school life today, in comparison to the time when it was not used that much. I will try to find answers to these questions and then I will blog about it.

I found an interesting teaching project on the homepage of the “Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung”. The project is called “GrafStat” and teachers can use it in their classroom in order to arouse pupil’s interest for the European Union and in specific the upcoming elections.

The program provides knowledge about specific content e.g. the history of Europe, motives and goals of the EU and also problems and planned solutions. The aim of the project is to find out about the opinion of teenagers concerning the idea of Europe, European politics and the elections. The “bpb” provides a lot of material for teachers which they can download from the homepage and use in their classrooms.

After pupils have dealt with the topic “Europe” and found out a lot of facts about positive and negative aspects of the EU, they are able to do an online-survey concerning the opinion of teenagers towards the European Union. This software program is called “GrafStat”.

The overall aim of this teaching project is to motivate pupils to develop interest for the EU and also to commit themselves  for the EU. I think this program is really good as it offers a lot of basic material and hints for the teacher how to use these in class. Doing a survey afterwards is also a really good thing as it shows pupils that their knowledge is somehow important.

GrafStat

After having tested the two learning software programs in class I think that there are huge differences concerning the quality of these programs. Me and Isabelle tested “Teen Talk” and “Tell me more Kids” and were once positively surprised and with the other one quite disappointed.

“Tell me more Kids” is a rather old program from 1997 which you can tell by the old fashioned graphic. The installation was very easy and one could choose between American English and British English. Nevertheless, the voice which leads through the program talks German all the time, only vocabularies were pronounced in English. After the installation, a short video sequence of the program’s characters was shown and music was played. Before one could actually start it took a while, which should become typical for this program. The content of this program is merely learning vocabulary by clicking on certain pictures. An animation of the “world” is shown with different areas, e.g. a town, the desert or the sea. By clicking on an item, the English vocabulary is shown and pronounced. Some extra tools like singing a song along with the voice of the program or searching things in a picture were the only differences from the regular pattern. All in all every step took very long and the music playing in the background all the time was very annoying. The program did not offer any extra tools or any tasks to practice the new learned knowledge. It was said that the program is for children aged from 10-12 but we think that it is too boring for them and not challenging or anything. We had the impression that the program had not many vocabularies to offer so it should become boring after working with it a couple of times.

The other program was, contrary to the first one, very good. It is called “Teen Talk” and is said to be for children from 4th grade on. Before we started the program we read the operation instructions which were very clear and easy to understand. Installing the program was easy as well so we could start immediately. The first thing we noticed was the “teacher’s room” which one could enter with a password listed in the instructions. In there one could find much extra material like transcripts of dialogues, keys and teaching instructions for the material and the program itself. One could print everything out and the material seemed to be really helpful when working with your pupils on the program. The material for the pupils was very good as well. There were different topics from which one could choose, e.g. school day, homework, favorite subjects, hobbies, music and so on. One could do tasks concerning these topics e.g. listening to native speakers, filling out gaps in a text, answering questions, learning vocabulary and grammar, forming questions and understanding dialogues. This is a huge variety and it was presented in a clear way. The graphic was not distracting and the voice leading through the program spoke in clear English. All in all I would recommend this program, it is especially helpful if one wants to hear native speakers talk and get students to understand them. As a teacher one can really need the extra material for teachers and profit from this advice.

In my opinion the evaluation sheet was too detailed, it was sometimes hard to answer the questions and this was distracting. I think it would be better to give an evaluation sheet where the questions are stated more openly and where one can write more instead of just marking a box.

I would like to comment on the poster concerning task No. 6.

I think this one is very well done because it displays the controversy of education in the classic way and the new ‘information-generation’ using the internet.

Nowadays some people claim, that through the internet it is not necessary anymore to be educated and really ‘learn’ things. In their opinion it is enough to know how to find out on the internet. The poster depicts these opposing opinions in a very satirical way, that is why I like it so much. The guy sitting in front of the computer obviously does not know the simplest fact without checking it on the internet. This makes him appear totally dumb which was the intention of the group drawing the poster, I guess. On the other hand the ‘Prof. Dr. Dr.’ does not seem to be able to help his child with the computer because he does not seem to move with the times and learn how to profit from the use of a computer and the internet. Both characters are displayed exaggeratedly. The notes in the middle of the poster say that there is more to life than just a digital world but also that you have to use it in order to move with the times. This is exactley what I think about the new media and so I really like the poster and its satirical realisation.

I think it is very important to use the new media in foreign language education because it opens up new opportunities for pupils and encourages them to learn.

Especially in a foreign language classroom the new media can provide authentic material which one can use for ones pupils in order to teach them cultural or historical aspects of another country. When I was in school, my English teacher showed us the video of Martin Luther King’s speech “I have a dream” in the classroom. This was way more impressive than just reading it and one could analyze totally different aspects. Through including authentic sources where pupils hear native speakers talk, they can improve their language skills. Furthermore it is more interesting to visit e.g. the homepage of Obama when talking about the elections than just reading texts about him.

Pupils could also e.g. join chat rooms to discuss about a certain topic. As we all know, the no. 1 language used in the net is English, so they might find the need to improve their English in order to be able to communicate with people from all over the world and talk about topics they are interested in. This motivation will have a positive effect on pupil’s participation in class and their willingness to learn.

The internet opens up new ways of helping pupils improving their language skills. In class the skill which is trained the most is reading. When using the internet, hearing and watching becomes more important and pupils get practice in this field.

Another advantage of the new media use in classroom is that the Internet or media in general plays a big part in pupil’s life outside the classroom. Most pupils are very experienced users and they have fun dealing with the internet and its tools. Why should one not make use of this and include their “hobby” in class? I think the motivation to work with e-learning platforms or other devices is higher than just filling out a task in a workbook. I also think that pupils use new media at home anyways e.g. search engines like Google to find information for a presentation. So I think it is even essential to teach them how to use these search engines and how to find the right sources, discuss about Wikipedia and so on.

I think every language teacher should consider all opportunities the new media offers for them and their pupils and therefore familiarize with the most important tools and practice how to use them and include them in class.

Yours,

Charlotte

Hello readers,

this is my first blog! I am 22 years old and I am studying English, Sports and German as a foreign language at the University of Marburg.  My hobbies are mainly concerning sports, like volleyball, swimming and running. I also like to meet friends and spend time with my dog.

Charlotte