The use of ICTs in the English class: an enriching experience
ICTs used in the English class
As stated, one of the goals set for this course was the creation of an educational blog in which learners could present their works. Therefore, the first step to introduce the new technologies in the classroom was to show students examples of blogs so that they became familiar with their use and characteristics. In this way, the students could see posts similar to the ones they would have to produce, analyse content, form and discuss what themes and topics could be imitated for their own presentations. In this activity, the students were capable to see in advance that when a person posts something, the message gains a highly meaningful communicative effect. Other students respond to the posts and links to other posts may also be created, the so-called threads.
As the course progressed, the students gradually became acquainted with other online resources that they were likely to use to prepare their posts for the blog: googles docs (now called Google Drive), e-portfolio, Glogster, Fodey, Letterpop. All these tools form part of what is now called WEB 3.0 which is the third stage of the web evolution. Its aim is to improve the e-learning experience using new technologies and interfaces. Collaborative learning, more personalized interactivity, more live manipulation of content are favoured within synchronous and asynchronous modes (Lapatas & Stefanidakis, 2010).
We will now provide a brief theoretical background that supports the implementation of these WEB 3.0 tools and describe how we used them in the course.
Google Docs
This service works as a document editor that allows learners to work individually or collaboratively. One of its valuable characteristics is that both the teacher and the students keep track of the changes introduced in a text. (Torres, 2012), a feature that was well in keeping with our interest in assessment for learning. As most of the students in our course already had a gmail account and the editor is quite simple to use, we thought this could be an appropriate instrument to introduce collaborative work.
The learners worked with this tool both individually, sharing the document only with the teacher, and in pairs to write texts containing personal information (introductions, hobbies, the family, job, etc.), letters and short narratives.
We agree on the fact that feedback to the learner is an essential aspect of formative assessment (Black et al. 2005). Therefore, the works written by the students were not marked immediately; instead, mistakes were highlighted and comments were made to help students identify the kind of error; for example, tense, punctuation, verb, etc. If the solution to the mistake made was beyond the proficiency level of the learners, a complete version of how to express the intended idea was provided by the teacher and, if necessary, explained orally in class. Comments also aimed at guiding students on how to improve their weaknesses (for example, ‘revise form of simple present’) and they also included positive feedback such as ‘good organization of ideas’ or ‘well done, you have correctly identified and solved punctuation mistakes!’. A final mark was awarded only once the written work was passed, which meant that students sometimes had to write two, three or more drafts of the different activities.
E-portfolio
A formative portfolio (Torres, 2012) was used with all the written texts produced by the students, even those that were not going to be included in the blog.
The idea of creating printed-mode portfolios dates back to the mid-1980s especially in areas like art and communication. Then, they gained importance in higher education during the 1990s. It was then when the electronic and digital portfolios appeared. According to Barrett (2001), an electronic portfolio is defined as the compilation of portfolio items stored in electronic formats such as audio-visual, graphical, or text (Barrett, 2001). Pearl and Leon Paulson (1991) created a metaphor for portfolios as a tool to construct meaning and they stated that the portfolio is a laboratory where students can construct meaning from their accumulated experience. They also pointed out that: “A portfolio tells a story. It is the story of knowing. Knowing about things... Knowing oneself... Knowing an audience... Portfolios are students' own stories of what they know, why they believe they know it, and why others should be of the same opinion. A portfolio is opinion backed by fact. Students prove what they know with samples of their work.” (Paulson & Paulson, 1991, p.5).
The material comprising the e-portfolios included the texts that the students had been writing in google docs.
Glogster, Fodey, Letterpop
Before the end of the course, the learners were requested to revise their portfolios, select the items they liked best from all the activities that they had uploaded and chose one to post in the blog.
In google docs, the students had only used plain text. Hence, in order to make their postings more attractive, the following tools were shown so that they could ornament their texts: Glogster (http://www.glogster.com/), which allows to create posters; Fodey (http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp), which is used to generate newspaper clips; Letterpop (http://letterpop.com/), which provides templates to publish newsletters.
Finally, the students generated a final version of their written texts using these tools and chose a catchy title for their productions. These final pieces of work were not marked, as we were not evaluating how proficient students were in the use of these new instruments: instead, they received feedback through comments made face-to face, which contributed to increase the learners’ motivation.
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