Taking Learning Into a Visual Experience Through Infographics

Evolving, progressing, developing. Not always an easy task, mainly for very busy English teachers who have heavy schedules, different groups with varied age range and levels of proficiency. But still, they are up to the challenge of after a long day of work to come to a Teacher Development Course to keep improving to become for full-fledged professionals.

That's the context I have with my also challenging job of working with these teachers to raise their level of understanding of Ed Tech issues and help them learn about practical Ed Tech ideas for their classrooms. Challenging not because of the educators I have in class. They are a fantastic, enthusiastic bunch. Daring because of the responsibility of having a full month for Educational Technology in the Methodology part of the TDC program. Until last semester we'd have only a 2-hour encounter with TDC students. So, two hours turned into a fascinating monthly opportunity to inspire, go above and beyond with those teachers.

Of course, it is no easy task for them. Besides the heavy duty of going through many different concepts, ideas and practicalities of integrating Ed Tech in the classroom, they still have to deal with the hybrid format of this part of the course (1 face-to-face class + 1 online class per week) and my pushing them to do more than just average. A bit of pressure, I know, but I'm totally in awe of what I've seen so far, particularly what I had the chance to contemplate, discuss and learn about last class.

I had assigned Mark Warschauer's text "Technological Change and the Future of CALL", part of an ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series, "New Perspectives on CALL for Second Language Classrooms", edited by Sandra Fotos and Charles Browne. Besides classroom discussion, I wanted to profit from the elearning environment and the new trends in Ed Tech to explore the possibilities of the use of infographics in the classroom. There was a bit of whining and moaning because of the complexity of the infographics platforms and technical issues that students faced, but the outcomes were simply way more than one could ever expect...
The student-teachers found their own ways to overcome the technical challenges, and the result was a class full of sharing, discussions and considerations about CALL history, its present state and what the future holds. The infographics were the springboard that inspired us all to learn and share. One of the students, a designer by heart and profession, was even applauded by the class when he entered the room with his infographics created in Illustrator that not only visually represented the text but also enticed the readers to consider our pedagogy in the 21st century in his humorous bottom part of the infographic:

by Gustavo Dias

And here's the collective effort of the group that makes me certain that, yes, even with some pain, there was an amazing learning gain that I am super proud of. I hope that these teachers understand the power of such an activity to take their own students to another learning level. Not that they will ask students to create an infographic, but what are some of the creative practices we can adopt to enhance learning in an EFL/ESL classroom and really give choice, purpose and audience to our students' production?

If you are just curious about the infographics platforms that I suggested, here they go:

 

   

    

Just remember that if you want to try them out, do like my students: persist!

For some cool infographics >>> http://pinterest.com/ctjonline/infographics/

Abundance x Scarcity - Digital Literacy in the Equation

In my presentation about how educators have been collaborating in our school, sharing resources, ideas, connecting, interacting, my first slide is about abundant and scarce resources in our workplace.

First answer from the audience about scarcity in an educational setting? TIME.
For me? INITIATIVE!

Some people are willing to follow, but not to start a movement, for action means having to deal with failure/success.

Also, most resist. Resist bravely. Reasons for not changing?

I guess the main point has to do with our own limitations, weaknesses. When there's change, we'll be dealing with the unpredictable, the moving sands until we get to solid ground. It's about touching the unknown.

For some, it means excitement, the feeling of a fresh start, some rain after dry season to start a blooming season.

For others, a shake in the building blocks of our fixed ideas and values. Change in the status quo, in the rules of the game. Much more so when we are talking about change that brings abundance through social media.

Not long ago, there was much more institutional control over the handouts, exercises, materials teachers were producing. Even because of physical constraints, there was a limit to what teachers could produce and share. Now, with our online shared space, a wiki, thousands of files have been produced. The scarcity X abundance balance is disrupted. We now capitalize in our scarce resource TIME, for many educators are producing and sharing resources that would be done individually in the past. However, it is argued that quality is sacrificed in the name of abundance. True up to a certain point. Surely the resources have different levels of quality in terms of content and design. But, haven't we always produced content for the classroom? In the past, nobody would see it, now there's a social control of these shared educational resources in an online collaborative space.

Our challenge now is to keep moving forward in this new digital paradigm shift and understand that the resources that are shared is the group's shared effort. Thus, these resources should be improved, remixed, re-purposed to be made even more useful and appropriate to our learners.

Now we're talking about another issue in the mix - digital literacy. Digital is totally abundant, literacy is still the scarce part of the equation, for it involves not only the development of the functional/technical expertise in relation to the digital world, but also the critical view on the use of digital educational resources, which certainly takes time. It is a process that will add the equilibrium to the equation of abundance of digital resources x their quality once educators enhance their digital literacy skills.Also, it will give another mindset to the new users/producers of content in the sense of understanding that there's no problem to get somebody's work and remix it for a different group of students with specific needs and unique interests. What's there is not MINE, it's OURS. Let's make this social construct even more exciting.

...And we're back again to the scarcity of INITIATIVE...
No problem! I don't give up and keep trying to inspire my colleagues to move on. Nowadays in a much more one-to-one, minimalist, subtle way than in the past of one-size-fits-all type of teacher training. The way we share has changed into a much more abundant, non-linear way, so has the approach we should take to teacher training and the development of everyone's digital literacy skills.

Professional Development - Do-It-Yourself Approach

Ann Foreman has shared her wonderful presentation about professional development. What she says is exactly what I've been advocating for some years now. Educators need to be in charge of their own learning. They need to understand that PD is not institutionally-bound. We need to get hold of our own professional development perspective and analyze where we want to get and why.

REAL TICE | Making sense of chaos | Madrid 2011 on Prezi

Here are some of my presentations related to the topic that might be of interest:

Share, Connect, Learn

From Incubation to Change

Digital Magic of Professional Development

IATEFL Recording - Collaboration: Going Beyond the Teacher's Room

Knowledge management. This is an essential topic when we consider an educational system. I work for a language school with around 200 educators.

Here's the recording of my presentation in IATEFL 2011, in Brighton, which is my account of failures and successes in helping our teachers make the move to a collaborative endeavor beyond the teacher's room through a wiki. The road has been bumpy, but full of nice surprises and mind-blowing results.

I'd like to publicly thank International House for making this presentation possible through the IH Training and Development Scholarship





You can check some of our teachers' testimonials at http://brazilbridges.pbworks.com/w/page/38894742/iatefl2011

Random Thoughts on Ed Tech Mass Debate

In reply to what Gavin Dudeney posted and the feedback he got, I'll register here what I've written as a reminder of my own thoughts on the topic:

Gavin, you mentioned in one of your replies "You’d like to think – wouldn’t you – that teachers ask themselves these questions on a daily basis – not just about technology, but also about anything else they bring to the classroom, or do in the classroom?" I think that's exactly the point we should make. It is not about ed tech, but simply about the kind of our pedagogical approaches to what we do nowadays. Good teaching hasn't changed at all, the tools we have at our disposal now just make it easier to let students' output be more personal, reflective, engaging. And this will certainly depend directly on how the lesson was conducted. It is not about ed tech, the debate is really about teaching/learning. For me unplugged doesn't mean being disconnected from the tech we have to promote critical thinking, engagement, willingness to go beyond the few classroom hours we have. I'm a teacher in Brazil, a developing country. However, my students are totally wired, though they don't know how to use what they have at the tip of their fingers for learning. Our main challenge as educators, then, is to help them find their way to optimize the learning opportunities they have.

Just yesterday, a friend of mine was reporting how interactive, reflective class she had with the lesson plan I posted on my blog about "beauty". The tech there was just a springboard for students' own production. I've been trying out the different uses of technology not for the bells and whistles it provides, but for the meaningfulness it can bring with it depending on what and how we do with our students. I've been intensely grateful for what technology is doing to my students and they've reported how they've been learning for the past months because of it. The results? Productions like this: http://primelearner.pbworks.com/w/page/37678475/Ivan And I have to point out that these adult students are not graded for the written production. But the interactions, the input I've been able to provide have been explored in such a way that the students feel the urge to express themselves, to share, to keep learning...

In my view, there shouldn't be such a debate on ed tech or not, but how teachers could make the best use of what's out there. Pencil, notebooks, the black board were once technology, and we simply take them for granted now and we don't question if we should use them or not. I agree with Sue Lyon-Jones that one of the main issues is how teacher training is being done by institutions and if, at least, some of the teachers are looking for their own professional development beyond the institutionalized versions of it, for it makes a difference in the final result in terms of tech use (going beyond the obvious, using it for critical thinking, student production, etc, or not).

Another thing that has got me thinking after IATEFL and while I get prepared to attend other conferences is that fact that there's a tendency for us to stick to the same old views of presenters as there's a whole deal with publishers. I see the same old list of presenters in all the mainstream TEFL conferences. Hardly ever do we see new names with fresh perspective. I wonder if this model shouldn't be rethought. Well, for me it is not a big problem, in fact, for because of technology I can make my own informed decisions on who I want to listen to in online conferences, debates, network, right?

Great debate, Gavin. Thanks!