A heartfelt message!

Well, although this blog is about ICT and all that, I didn't want to end up this year without making the traditional wish for this season to whomever may have happened to read/stumble across it during the year 2006...or to anybody who still believe there could be peace and tolerance in this ever so troubled world...So...: Merry christmas and a happy new year 2007! ...And do please enjoy "Locus Iste" (something like "This place") composed by Anthon Bruckner and sung by Libera (an English boys choir or as they see themselves: an alternative kind of boy band).

Blogging in Venezuelan municipal schools

Since last March 2006, a group of Venezuelan teachers from municipal schools in Chacao started using blogs to publish their web-based lessons. This was part of a venture project between the British Council Venezuela and the Chacao Municipality to train EFL teachers to integrate ICT into the language classroom. Two (2) teachers from Unidad Educativa Andrés Bello and one (1) from Juan de Dios Guanche participated in this pilot project. It was divided into two phases. 

Phase I, teachers participated in a workshop given in the British Council premises. They became familiar with some ICT tools and learned how to design web-based lessons using Internet. After this, teachers gave a session with some of their students (about 6) showing what they had learned in the British Council lab. Next, teachers had a meeting with the teacher trainer, received feedback and planned the second phase of the project: using ICT with their students in each of their school labs. During this phase, blogs became the ICT tool of choice because of its effectiveness and efficiency to provide students extra-practice in the school lab. Lab sessions were held for an hour (45 minutes) on a weekly basis in the school labs and about 17 students from each school participated in this part of the project. Teachers received technical/pedagogical support from British Council teacher trainer on-line and FtF all along this phase.
I will briefly describe the steps followed to design a web-based lesson using blogs in this pilot project. First, let's start with a definition of blogs.

What’s a blog?

According to Will Richardson (2006): “…a Weblog is an easily created, easily updateable Website that allows an author (or authors) to publish instantly to the Internet from any Internet connection.”

To understand what a blog is and its power as an ICT tool, I will compare it with an EFL printed book. In a blog, the web-based lesson is a single entry where you have the activities you want your students to do whereas a lesson, in a printed book, is comprised of several pages. Activities, in the blog, have hyperlinks that take your students to other websites or exercises you have designed yourself. That is, activities are no presented in a linear fashion as in a printed book. Both the printed book and the blog class can have pictures, illustrations and graphics. The only difference is that in the blog you can choose images from the web (e.g. Google images) or design/edit them yourself (e.g. Photoshop). Furthermore, while in a printed book, lessons are organized in an orderly fashion (lesson 1 to 12), in the class blog lessons can be archived monthly , generally, in a chronological reversed order. Also, students cannot write comments about a lesson in their printed books . In the class blog, students can (interactivity). Only a limited audience have access to the printed book: the student himself/herself, teacher and parents from a certain school. The blog can be accessed by anybody or restricted to other students/teachers/parents from other schools around the world. Books can get lost or deteriorated easily. Blogs do not.

Blogs can be used as reflective journals, class or shared blogs (Richardson, 2006). For this project, we used the class blog.

Where did teachers start their class blogs?

There are several sites that can host a class blog for free: Blogger, Edublog, Motime, Wordpress among others. For the project we are about to describe, we chose Blogger. These were the steps teachers followed to set up a Blogger account:

1. They got a Blogger account
2. Once they had their account, they clicked on “New post” in the dashboard and explored how they could add content to blogs. The only IT skills they needed to use Blogger were those required for e-mailing.
3. After exploring and learning how to post entries, they got ready to design their web-based lesson! To design the first web-based lessons, they needed the teacher trainer technical support. To do this the teacher trainer devoted about 3 hours per teacher on a weekly basis. Two hours FtF and one on-line.

Which IT skills teachers needed to design their web-based lessons in a blog?

For this project, the class blog was chosen to post the teachers' web-based lessons. To do that, they needed the following Basic IT skills: searching, uploading, using authoring software

What did teachers have to take into account to design their web-based lesson?

They should keep in mind that the web-based lesson...
1. reinforces a lesson already taught in the classroom (e.g. Animals, colours, numbers, etc.)
2. is based on tasks (Check material from teacher training session).
3. has three basic stages: pre-task (warming up); task; post-task (follow-up)

Besides, before the class, they should test the lesson themselves or asked a colleague/ teacher trainer to make sure instructions were clear and links worked.

If they designed activities for their online lessons using Hot potatoes, they should upload them to a hosting free online service like Geocities. It worked as a repository for all the materials they designed.

What was the web-based lesson session like?

1. The teacher asked students to go to Google and type Blogger. Next, they should click on the link for Blogger. Once they had done that, they should write in the Blogger search engine the name of the blog (e.g. ABsexto, Ictleonela).
2. Students clicked on the link provided by search engine.
3. Students started to work the lesson on their own or in pairs. The teacher only helped when they students called him/her out or raised their hands.
4. At the end of the session, students wrote comments about the lesson.

P.S. A training session for students should be planned before leaving students to their own devices.

Which were the results of this pilot project using class blogs?

Students 1) got engaged; 2) became aware of things they were learning (metacognition); 3) developed IT skills (life-long skills); 4) worked at their own pace; 5) became in charge of their own learning. On the other hand, teachers 1) were nicely surprised with their students' attitude towards learning English; 2) realized students' behavior was less disruptive; 3) developed IT skills; 4) were in tune with the way their students are learning outside the classroom.

Class blogs from municipal schools in Chacao

Prof. Maral

6th graders

Unidad Educativa Andrés Bello

ABsexto

Prof. Leonela González
6th graders
Unidad Educativa Juan de Dios Guanche
ICTleonela

Prof. Oenis Hernández
7th graders
Unidad Educativa Juan de Dios Guanche
ICToenis

What's ahead?

This project will be carried on by the British Council and the Municipality of Chacao training more teachers to integrate ICT into the language classroom during the school year 2006-2007.

Reference:
Richardson, Will (2006). Blogs, wikis and podcasts. Corwin Press. California.

Should we frown on lurking?

I understand people’s concern on lurking, “listening” or “browsing”, but I do not think there’s a magic formula to fight this off in a group like VENELT unless we are talking about an online community devoted to education and/or training where participants have to pay a fee, for example. In the former, participation is spontaneous, voluntary. In the latter, it’s kind of compulsory (a closer follow-up of participants can be done by the e-moderator without subjecting them to “police harassment”, to put it some way). But what is this lurking thing that worries people in some virtual communities? Is it really a sort of devil we should get rid of at all coasts or learn to deal with it? Why do some people tend to lurk? Why some people are afraid of it? 

What is it? We can understand lurking as the reluctance to initially participate in an online community or the rare participation in a group, chat, forum, message board, etc. Some refer to lurking as “browsing” and/or “listening” (Salmon, 2005) and even “peripheral participants” (Wenger, 2002). Some people see it as a threat. Some people, on the contrary, see it as a natural part of online communities and should be encouraged while the member gets used to it, feels like participating or overcomes any technical training he may need to actively participate (Salmon, 2005). But why do people lurk? What causes their “silence” in most virtual spaces: chats, message boards, blogs, wikis, Yahoo groups, etc.?  

Why do people lurk? There might be several reasons for lurking:  

1) Let’s start with the sinner. I’m a lurker myself. Well, a type of lurker: a constructive-benign one to call it some way. The reason: I have no time to post messages every day or I think I should know more about issues discussed in the group. I also participate in some other virtual communities. Depending on issues raised I might be an avid participant or a lurker at heart. One of the things that I like from free, virtual communities is that I’m not harassed to participate. Enough with the pressure we have out there: office, home, school, university, etc. 

2) Being a lurker in an e-course is different to being a lurker in a community of practice set up for free, professional discussion. In the former, you paid and expect a score. So you must participate (otherwise you lose your money). The moderator can check the history and contact the lurker when he/she has been somewhat silence. In the latter, the reward is sharing / building up knowledge. The moderator, co-moderators and participants themselves should keep a lively, non-threatening, imposed environment to encourage the active participation of most members. Some will be more active than others. We can not expect total participation from each posting made by members (Some people are quite busy working; others may have no access to Internet easily or are busy writing research papers, you name it).

3) Some other reasons: Lurkers… 
□ may have no time to participate frequently (constructive lurker) 
□ may not find discussion interesting yet and may step in once he/she has something to say. 
□ may have not enough information on the topic (benign lurker) 
□ were recently invited and is exploring the group 
□ have never participated in a group and is getting around 
□ kindly accepted the invitation but have no interest in participating (He or she should unsubscribe, but for some reason they don’t generally do and keep on getting e-mails from the group) 
□ are not used to writing and does not know how to “say” something without hurting someone else’s thoughts (flaming) so he/she rather remains quite. 
□ sometimes have technical problems (That is do not know how to reply, etc) 
□ some browse for some time before participating. 
□ reply only to satirize others’ comments (smart-ass lurker) 
□ reply when he or she feels politically or morally offended to someone’s comment ( malevolent lurker)


For more reasons, check *McDonalds (Let’s get more positive about the term lurker)

Why are people afraid of lurking? I have no idea! If I come across a research on why people feel threatened by this peripheral participation, I’ll let you know. However, I can venture to say that people think lurkers may benefit from getting ideas, info, lesson plans, etc. from posts without contributing at all and even use them without acknowledging the source. This would be quite unethical. Now if they do (acknowledge) I see no problem. If you check **stats on people participation in virtual communities, you’ll see something like: -90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).-9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.-1% of users participates a lot and accounts for most contributions. 

Suggestions: 
1. Find strategies to encourage people to participate (suggesting activities to do: writing summaries, announcing events, posting interesting quality questions, etc.)  
2. Provide a wide range of topics to discuss that may encourage shy or reluctant members to participate in the group.  
3. The bigger the community, the more lurkers there will be. So tolerance must be the key word. Unless we want to start banishing or harassing people in the community. This, I think, is counterproductive!  
4. Your suggestion.
 
Reference Salmon, Gilly (2004). E-moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online. London: 

Taylor & Francis. Wenger,E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practiceA guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business School Press

* “Let's get more positive about the term 'lurker' http://www.groups-that-work.com/GTWedit/GTW/lurkerprojectcopworkshopspring03rev.pdf  

**Are you a lurker or a contributor? http://blog.bookyourselfsolid.com/2006/10/are_you_a_lurke.html  

“In face-to-face or team settings, “lurking” or sidebar conversations are discouraged but successful online communities build benches for them. There is an ebb and flow with core members drifting to the sidelines as topics change. Peripheral members drift into the center as their interests are stirred. Successful communities create “fires” in the center to invite involvement.”

McDermott, R. Building Spontaneity Into Strategic Communities