Leaves are falling, there’s just enough of a breeze to shake them from branches, spinning, circling, as they fall. It is a wonderful sight, and it feels good. I’m even looking forward to some raking and clearing this weekend. Now I’ve heard different things about whether to leave the leaves, or rake them up. I’m going to keep a few areas wild, and let them compost, but I will do the lawn, mostly because it looks nice.
It has been a busy week back from Fall break, I was missing a few people on Monday, maybe traveling back from someplace, or struggling to adjust to early mornings. We had a mid-term showcase, more about that below, and worked on our projects.
I’m managing to find a rhythm to my weeks, honestly it feels that it has taken much longer this semester, with so many meetings, projects, and duties early on. I have to thank the weekly developmental meetings that I’m joining, I’m really enjoying these, and although I’ll admit to multi-tasking early on, which I feel a bit ashamed about, now it’s wonderful listening and sharing with my colleagues across the country.
So, this week, a few things I’ve spotted, reflections on work, and thinking ahead to a few exciting destinations further up the track.
Stephan
Teaching & Learning
We took a few moments to talk about the course, I sent out a survey before the break asking for comments, and suggestions. About half the class returned some answers and there were some really interesting insights and questions raised about a few aspects.
Mostly, I think now that the pandemic is over, asynchronous discussion is largely dead. Students are not interested in joining discord or slack channels, they are out and about, walking around much more, between activities, and they are not stuck at desks for long periods of time, when chats are open and channels are live. One commenter let me know that online chat just felt weird and impersonal, especially as students don’t really know each other online or in class, only coming together a couple of days a week for the session, and rarely meeting up outside of this. No problem, there’ll be less emphasis on online discussion, it’s just a noticeboard now.
Having said that, I’m not seeing a great deal of engagement in Canvas either, some students haven’t logged on for weeks, which is a tad frustrating, because I think there’s a ton of information for them there, and often I find myself responding to questions when I’ve just posted exactly what’s required.
Meeting students where they are is a game of cat and mouse, figuring out how the learning you’re providing fits into their schedule, and routine, and priorities generally. I’m appealing for a bit a give and take here, obviously it is frustrating for students when they are encountering different approaches to learning, and ways to communicate, even all the different apps and platforms that teachers use. On the other hand, teachers struggle to adapt quickly, courses are often months in development, great care is taken in creating resources, and designing activities; and when you realise some of it isn’t working, then it’s not easy to pivot or change quickly.
We’ll get there, I’ll maybe say a bit more about this next week. In the meantime, here’s a showreel of some of their work.
Lost and Found
I had a few conversations this week with brilliant people who always steer me to more interesting and useful things that are helpful for teaching and learning, and I thought I’d share these with you.
I’m sure like me, a lot of you use the comments function in google docs and slides to provide feedback to your students, I find this really useful, and so do the students who make changes and click the resolved button with some satisfaction. There’s an article in FLTMag that explains more.
In fact there is a great list of google doc add-ons for teachers here, and if you want to add audio notes, then Mote is getting good traction, it’s free to use for a maximum of 20 voice notes per month.
I caught up with Joe Dale, who regular readers will know is a consultant in the use of technologies for language learning. Joe’s talent is in making technology that often seems confusing and complex, accessible and easy to understand, giving you so many ideas for adoption that audiences at his talks just sit with pad and write long lists of websites, apps and tools that they’ll be able to use tomorrow in their language classroom. It’s no surprise then that Joe is coordinating efforts for teachers to better use AI in their teaching. He’s running the Languages AI Facebook group, with 2400 members; and giving talks at various conferences and events.
We had a good chat, and as usual swapped a few tools we’ve been using, such as Lingopie, a brilliant way to leverage streamed services such as Netflix to learn languages.
Audiopen is a really smart AI that lets you ramble, talk into your machine, or listen to a shared conversation, and it will sort, restructer and convert your words into text. There’s a free demo, and can report that it works brilliantly, in fact I used it for some of this section. The best thing is that it works as a translator, so I can chose an input language, and you can set a different output language. It really works well.
So, this conversation was ahead of a workshop that I was going to run on Ai in the new year. I think it's unfortunate that the narrative around AI, especially in language learning, has been hijacked a little, and while there are huge concerns about plagiarism, along with the ethical use of AI, and tackling its inherent bias; there is an important conversation to be had, as a whole about the use of these various AI tools and platforms. We don’t want to slip behind, our students, and the discipline generally, demands that we stay current.
One last thing to mention is a newsletter; Tom Barratt’s Promptcraft provides thoughtful analysis of developments in AI. He’ll tell you why this news is important in teaching and learning. He’ll also show you how this affects the prompts you’re writing, and lists the ethical issues associated with the story. It is just what we need. I’m only a few issues in, but its already a fascinating and crucial read. If you want a deeper dive, you can watch some of AI for Education Webinars hosted by Tom earlier this year, although the setting is Australia, there’s so much for everyone working in EdTech.
Adobe launched a symbol that can be used to watermark works that are generated with AI, this could be crucial in image searching, establishing the probity of images, and tracing their origins.
Also, I’ve been using Crafty’s Extensions, including CraftyZoom and CraftyText, which highlights and displays text within the browser, this is great for talking about single words, sentences with the language classroom.
Finally, I came across a whole list of games that use linguistics as the mechanic for navigating and solving various puzzles, including Chants at Sennaar which you can watch below, and is similar to Heaven’s Vault, and Obradinn. These are interesting little indie games, that are beautifully crafted and well written, you use language learning skills to get you through, and speaks to lost languages, and learning more universally, let me know if you give them a go.
Life Lessons
All around is heartache and hurt. The pictures on the news tell stories of atrocities in Palestine and Israel, populations living in terror. Governments and political groups doubling down on revenge, promising total annihilation of the other side. Its shocking, and in the meantime, the culture wars rage on in the US, the GOP have elected a speaker who is shilling for the gun industry, is anti-LGBTQi+, doesn’t believe the science about climate change, doesn’t believe that women should be able to make their own choices about reproductive health. Maga Mike is a Christian Nationalist, and he doesn’t even believe in the institution that he’s the speaker for, doing more to protect his interests, and Trumps, than defend the constitution he was sworn in to serve.
In Maine, a shelter-in-place order remains for the residents of towns close to Lewiston, where a man has shot and killed 18 people in a bar and bowling alley. It sounds like neighbors raised concerns about the mental health of the suspect, who was an army reservist, a farmer, local to the area. Of course, it was all “thoughts and prayers” from right wing politicians, who know as well as anyone that restrictions on the purchase of assault weapons, just as there was ten years ago, reduces incidents of mass murder, and the number of fatalities and victims of spree shootings.
I can’t see anything changing, there’s no point at which America will come to reason, gun sales continue to rise, and while there is money to be made, greasy pockets to be lined, bad faith ideologies, lies, and ignorance, then this will keep happening. Home and abroad there’s a shared thread; a complete lack of leadership, we’re locked into a harmful cycle, and it doesn’t look like there’s a way out.
Thank You
Okay, time to wrap things up, it has been a longer issue than intended, but it felt like it's been a while since I gave you a good list of things to read and watch.
I wasn’t going to write so nakedly about events happening here and there, but honestly, it is so raw, and I can’t go about my work unaffected. I have to talk about it.
I’m looking forward to the weekend, we have the Pumpkin Parade, on Saturday, ahead of Halloween, where I’ll be walking with the Rugby team, and afterwards watching the World Cup Final. I’m hoping for a bike ride, and at least I’ll be sweeping leaves and listening to the radio over the weekend.
So, take care of yourselves, enjoy the big outdoors.