Central Voice Increases Understanding

For this week’s blog entry, I found an interesting article from thisweeksnews.com that presents ELLs at a high school who made a very powerful and effective video.  The students from Kenya, Palestine, Peru, Somalia, Syria, Thailand, and Yemen are a part of an ESL club at their school and wanted to promote an understanding of what it is like to be an ELL including their unique cultural backgrounds. 

These students always felt that by being an ELL, they have had a hard time fitting in with others or felt isolated due to their language/cultural differences with native English speakers.  So, they took action and created a 15 minute video depicting their lives, where they came from, their emotions, and aspirations to help show everyone that they are no different from their peers.  The link to their video is at the bottom here, but it is such an effective way to reach an audience of students and teachers to deliver a message.  The ELLs said they saw a noticeable difference for good in the way students and teachers interacted and spoke to them after the video’s release.  The school board president describes being brought to tears having seen the piece as it contains several personal struggles these students faced from civil war to friends being killed by militants. 

As a film fanatic myself, I have always believed in the power of videos created to tell a story and create a dialogue.  This was a highly effective example of just that.  I could certainly see other students taking advantage of this method of storytelling to help connect with others to show a little of what it is like to be in their shoes.  With training students in Digital Stories, working with editing techniques, and interviews, I feel that all ELLs could work together in different settings to accomplish a video like this of their own.  

ESL Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HatsilPEKNE

References

Kuhlman, M. K. (2017, June 14). Central Voice members use video to increase understanding. Retrieved from http://www.thisweeknews.com/news/20170613/central-voice--members-use-video-to-increase-understanding

"Students Tap Into Technology"

           I managed to find a decent amount of ESL articles this week, but only a few that related to technology in the field.  The one for this week, written by Emma Gosalvez (2017), was about how Penn State Harrisburg students were working on researching and presenting their findings about how best to use technology in the classroom.  I was especially interested in this because I actually live just ten minutes away from the campus and any information on how to best use technology the better. 

            These college students focused on how pre-service teachers face diversity in the classroom and how to reach their students through technology.  Though the article was mostly summarizing the presentation the students gave on this topic, there were some good tips and findings shared as well.  Touching back on the concept of Digital Stories from this past week’s readings, some college students focused on making short informational videos that were presented to teachers, students or their family members, which they found resulted in higher engagement in their classes (Gosalvez, 2017).  They also discovered that when students in a classroom were assigned roles to create these informational videos for others, students were able to express their creativity and learn different skills as they took those roles on (Gosalvez, 2017).  They hope to take these videos further in the future and include interviews of people in their communities and make them more documentary in style. 

            The most interesting point in this article for me was a link (provided below) of a video created to engage ELLs with hip-hop.  It’s a very clever and effective video meant to educate educators in how ELLs learn, statistics on ELLs, and how to effectively reach them through relevant topics such as hip-hop stars.  As students are more likely to know major hip-hop artists over historical figures from hundreds of years ago, they felt incorporating it into lessons would be effective and culturally relevant. 

            I really enjoyed this article as I felt it connected well with the Digital Stories we read about this week.  Though these were college students creating short informational videos aimed at addressing diversity issues educators may deal with, I felt the collaboration and assigned roles could be utilized in any classroom focusing on Digital Stories.  The ELL Hip-Hop video was a good example too of what can be achieved through images, video, and collaboration.  The main thing I took out of this can be best summarized with a quote that, “it’s a matter of how do you take what you have and then maximize it” (Gosalvez, 2017). 

Teaching ELLs through Hip-Hip Link: https://psu.app.box.com/s/snx07ddpal2qcm0ww4tzy2xelwnxdbmr

References

Gosalvez, E. (2017, June 12). Students tap into technology to share research work. Retrieved from http://harrisburg.psu.edu/story/8613/2017/06/12/students-tap-technology-share-research-work

"Language in a Lab"

I finally got my Google Alerts working properly and an interesting article from The Fiji Times Online was brought to my attention. In this article, Ravnil Narayan from Fiji National University, basically pitches the concept of a Language Lab to help his country improve in learning the English language.  Narayan (2017) states that though English has become essential to young Fijian students to advance their careers, quality programs and language teaching in general is deteriorating in Fiji.  He believes that with the help of technology and online learning, students can become more proficient L2 learners.

As there have always been science programs conducted in laboratories, the author does not feel it is a stretch to imagine language being learned in one as well as they have seen growth from students in such a setting in Australia and New Zealand (Narayan, 2017).  Students would be utilizing technology ranging from simple headsets to “creating broadcasts, televised interactions, web-assisted materials, and video/audio taped off-air recordings in the target language” (Narayan, 2017, p. 2).

Narayan (2017) goes on to detail what he considers as the four main types of language labs that students could take advantage of.  The first is a conventional lab where a teacher hits play on a tape recorder for students to listen to recordings, which the author points out is probably the least effective of the four.  Second, the lingua phone lab, consists mainly of the previous lab’s technique, but utilizes headphones for each student instead to avoid distraction from others.  This would then allow for students to work individually on their own language learning as well.  Third, computer-assisted language learning (CALL), is where teachers would incorporate computers into their daily lessons to help teach students a target language.  Finally, the fourth is called the multimedia high-tech lab where language learning software is implemented at all learning levels to address the needs of all types of learners. 

Mr. Narayan brings up some great points and presents a general overview of advantages Fijian students would have if they incorporated more technology into the classroom for language learning.  I also think that if the same programs are working well for neighboring countries, then they should also have more data to suggest they modernize and upgrade their teaching methods and tools.  As this would be a jump into the online/computer-based world for many Fijian ELLs, I feel that well rounded and though-out teacher education programs should be devised first to ensure that they are able to get their feet underneath them before moving into this.  But again, partnering up with Australia or New Zealand may be an answer. 

Perhaps Fiji may decide to roll out these labs using the first two detailed in the article where they are less intense than other, but a step in the right direction.  I would hope that with continued efforts by Fijians like Narayan, they would be able to quickly and effectively transition to CALL and multimedia high-tech labs.  Small steps first to build an effective and lasting program?

References

Narayan, R. (2017, June 9). Language in a lab. Retrieved from http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspxid=403847

Utah ELLs and Access to Online Content

I must admit, for my very first blog here, my Google Alerts let me down.  I was alerted to ESL Gaming, but I guess ESL stands for other things as well.  I’ll have to modify my alert notification settings I suppose, but nevertheless, I found a great article in Google News about ELLs and Technology.  I have the reference below, but this was an article about how ELLs in Utah have been recently working with more technology integrated into their school day allowing them to be more proficient learners. 

            As Utah Schools have a high school graduation rate for ELLs at 62% compared to 83.9% for native English speakers, they wanted to do something more to provide for their students to make every as successful as possible (ELLs in Utah).  To counter this issue, the Utah State Board of Education decided to partner with Fuel Education to provide personalized learning and online content to their ELLs to access 24/7 (ELLs in Utah).  They decided against a full online curriculum for ELLs as they wanted for the students to have access to the teachers in the state already and to allow for further integration into the classroom.  They hope this blended approach to education will benefit their students as 1,000 secondary students will be taking apart in this. 

            The curriculum can connect to each student’s cultural backgrounds, allow for them to move at their own pace, and continue to build their language and literary skills.  There are also projects students can collaborate on in this online setting while also attending the brick and mortar school.  What is also great is that the curriculum is aligned to the WIDA standards, Common Core, and ELPA21 standards too. 

            I found this to be very interesting as it seems like something that could be a benefit to my cyber-school colleagues in the ESL department and our own ELLs.  As where I work is not homeschooling, but more of a combination of home, school, and online learning, I feel like this curriculum could help meet the needs of our students while they are still able to join for lessons in the general classroom as well.  I especially like how they align the curriculum to many standards to assure for quality content as much as possible.  As this article was written in May but mentions the roll out of this program in the Spring, I can only assume this is happening right now for some students at the end of the schoolyear in Utah.  I would like to check in on the developments next year as well to see how it is working out.  At my school, we currently use a National Geographic Curriculum for our ELLs, but I am curious if the ESL teachers and administration would see benefits in this instead provided by Fuel Education. 

References

More than 1,000 English Learners in Utah Using Supplemental Online and Blended Learning Solution from Fuel Education. (2017, May 11). Retrieved from http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170511005355/en/1000-English-Learners-Utah-Supplemental-Online-Blended