To selfie or not to selfie? 

                          That’s the crucial question.

"Self-confidence", by Shirley

We’ve been looking for some ways to build the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants, so… What about bringing this new phenomenon into the classroom? Have you ever considered it? To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought about it, since I used to see this kind of photographs as a very superficial way of presenting ourselves. But it wasn’t until I attended a workshop hosted by the English Language Fellow Mathilde Verillaud that I realized how much we can profit by introducing this type of photography in our lessons.

By working with selfies with our students, we can help them realize that it is a very powerful form of communication. A picture speaks by itself, and whenever they portray themselves, they are sending a message to all those who see the photo. If we relate this simple fact, with the communicative function of the language we are teaching, we can see that both can contribute to the same process: sending messages across.

 In this sense, Mathilde showed us an interesting project she carried out in China, some years ago.  She worked with a group of university students and she used selfies as a way of presenting themselves and showing the rest some salient characteristics of their identities. Having learnt some basic notions of photography such as angles and diagonals, this group of students did a very interesting job. You can see some of their works following this link.

"Walking by", by Monica

But how did she relate selfies with the acquisition of the language?  She proposed a number of activities that ranged from writing poems based on the photos to making a gallery walk showing the works. She designed activities covered the four learning skills since, for example, they had to answer higher order ranking questions about the pictures, make oral descriptions, write sentences among others. They used the “selfies” excuse to develop the four skills while using the language to speak about them and getting to know each other. What a wonderful way to learn!

It’s high time we start being permeable to this new kind of phenomenon and let our learners’ creativities and identities becoming the mentors of their learnings!

Sources:

- Verillaud, Mathilde, "Selfies in the Classroom, Really?", presentation at Alicana, Santa Fe, August 2014.

- http://gongdaepc.livejournal.com/tag/self%20portrait

                                                                                  

A model for Immigrant teachers: TPACK

Every teacher’s concern may arouse from the difficulty to create task and activities that are appealing, and also include any of the available technological resources that our digital learners are used to work with. How can I teach them? What’s the most successful way? These are questions that I, as a Digital Immigrant, always ask to myself.

In order to increase our learners’ motivation and to make the content more accessible to them, we can start thinking of a new way of approaching teaching:  TPACK. What is it? You may be wondering…  It is a framework that combines 3 different areas that are the core of every lesson nowadays: Technological, Content and Pedagogical Knowledge.

 When planning our lessons, we need to have a clear objective in mind. The WHAT of our daily practices is related to the subjects we have to deal with and this represent the Content knowledge. In our case, it is English. This type of knowledge combines with the Pedagogical one. The latter refers to the tools that teachers used in their classes so as to present the contents and make them more accessible. So when teaching, we should consider that our teaching proposals (group work, debates, modelling, direct instruction, etc.) enable learners to properly acquire the contents.

As far as this, it seems to be the traditional way of teaching, in which the contents are carefully planned and activities and task are designed in accordance. Nevertheless, a new type of knowledge is called to be developed and it is the Technological Knowledge. If teachers want to keep up-to- date and make their lessons interesting, they need to integrate technology in their classrooms, and it is a great responsibility for them to start learning about these new educational resources and apply them to support their pedagogical strategies.  There are a considerable number of tools that can contribute to the learning process: laptops, projectors, smart boards, cameras, iPads, etc.

The interrelation of these three types of knowledge is what we call TPACK, a framework that help us realize the importance of selecting the appropriate contents, applying the correct pedagogical strategies with the support of the right technological tools, but always bearing in mind that we should adapt this model to the different contexts we may be working in.

Source:

- http://www.tpack.org/

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FagVSQlZELY

Digital Natives… 

Are teachers up to the challenge?

Nobody can deny that today’s children and adolescents are not the same they used to be some years (maybe decades) ago. There has been a radical change in their lifestyles, ways of approaching learning, thinking and processing information. It is now frequent to see 2-years old kids “mastering the art” of using iPhones, and we should not be surprised if a boy or a girl ends up teaching us how to use a computer programme. The truth is that they were born in the digital age, where everything surrounding them is connected in one way or another, to digital devices such as computers, videos, digital music layers, videocams, cell phones, etc.

The term to refer to this new generation of kids and teenagers is Digital Natives; whereas all those of us who where born before the 90’s are commonly known as Digital Immigrants. The following chart clearly shows the differences between these two generations and provides a simple reference that we, teachers and future teachers, should bear in mind.

 In this sense, it is important to highlight that Native’s teachers are mostly Immigrants and therefore… are their teaching practices appropriate, appealing and significant for these new kids? The answer is simple. Unless teachers learn to communicate in the language and style of their students, acknowledging the fact that they receive information really fast and like to parallel-process and multitask, they will not be able to cope with this unprecedented challenge. It is not an easy task, but we can profit from our learners since, as Mark Prensky states “Smart adult immigrants accept that they don’t know about their new world and take advantage of their kids to help them learn and integrate”.  I believe that the most important thing for Immigrants teachers is to recognize this “lack of knowledge” and start working and looking for the best tools, resources and ideas as well as developing their creativity to offer students more memorable and fruitful learning experiences. 

I would like to share with you a very short video that summarizes what Digital Natives, our today's learners, expect from schools and teachers, and stress this important idea:

 "My school has to keep up with me,  not the other way around"

Sources: 

-Marc Prensky, 2001, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants"

- http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupId=1111374
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ5Vy9BgSeY