Writing Matrix for Learning With Computers

 

At the beginning of 2007 , Vance Stevens wanted to organize a team of teachers and their students to use blogs in order to create a social network and explore web 2.0 tools.

 

The team of teachers - who are all Webheads- is formed by Doris Molero from Venezuela, Saša Sirk from Slovenia, and Rita Zeinstejer and Nelba Quintana from Argentina. We have been blogging with our groups since April 2007. The fact of being from different countries makes the experience very enriching. Carla Arena, Bee, Joao and some other participants also  joined in with their posts, a wonderful surprise, thank you. :-) 

 

 

Participants have opened blogs to write about their topics of interest. They tag their posts with the agreed anchor tag 'writing material', which allows them to find each other's posts using Technorati (http://technorati). Technorati has an advanced search option to search for blog posts which are tagged using a certain tag, in our case 'writingmatrix', see http://www.technorati.com/tag/writingmatrix.


Maybe a slightly improved URL for this would be

http://www.technorati.com/search/writingmatrix?authority=n&language=en

This lets you search blogs with 'any' authority.

Some people who conduct blog searches wish to be directed to reliable ones.  This would leave out student bloggers who have not established 'authority', which we don't want.  We want to see all blog posts tagged writing matrix.


Also, Google Blog Search gives results that find some of our blogs where Technorati doesn't.  Sasa says it doesn't find as many though.


This search option basically generates a chronological list of all blog posts tagged with the tag we are interested in. It is a very simple and efficient way to pull together posts by different participants from different countries. This is a project open to any interested bloggers - all you need to join is  to tag your posts 'writing matrix' and check the above Technorati page  to find other participants. Or even simpler - you can subscribe to the RSS feed for this Technorati page at http://feeds.technorati.com/tag/writingmatrix using a feed reader of your choice and are automatically alerted when new posts are published. Vance wrote about this in his blog.

http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/2007/10/new-age-communication.html

 

Other web 2.0 tools which have been explored are:

 

In the case of Nelba's group, participants are not her students. They are members of an e-group called English Virtual Community, so they usually have chat sessions to replace f2f meetings.

 

The project is never ending since Doris and Sasha have started a new school year, so new students have joined, and two more people joined Nelba's group. You are warmly welcome to join us - the more the merrier.

 

If you want to read more about the Writingmatrix, check our wiki at http://writingmatrix.wikispaces.com/

 

Our blogs:

Vance: http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/

Nelba: http://englishvirtualcommunity.blogspot.com/

Rita: http://caeb2007.podomatic.com/  

Doris: http://www.doris3meflcenter.blogspot.com/  

Saša: http://rostilj.blogspot.com


 

Saša's experience with her students in Slovenia, Europe

I teach English at Vocational college of Tehnični šolski center Nova Gorica, Slovenia. My students are full-time and part-time students of different professional orientations (Informatics, Mechatronics, Countryside Management). Full-time students are aged 19+ and generally continue education straight after secondary school (have little or no working experience), part time students are employed adults of different ages. Both full- and part-time groups are usually quite big (60+) and their level of English varies a lot (from group to group and within the group, ranging from lower intermediate to advanced).  

  

So far, 2 of my groups have been involved in the Writingmatrix project, 9 students from the Spring 07 group (part-time adult class) and most of the students from the Autumn 07 group (full-time students).  

  

I started blogging in class for the first time just a few weeks before the onset of the writingmatrix project, simply to continue class discussions beyond classroom walls and class hours. Our class blog was meant as an extension of our Moodle forum, which is not public.  

  

At first I just wanted to show my students how simple it is to use a blog and how far it can reach. Also I wanted to show them what a wonderful tool blogs are, how efficient they are for keeping in touch with latest news and developments in various professional fields. I hoped this would encourage students to get used to reading in English more regularly. Students today should know how to use this technology efficiently.  

  

I then heard about the Writingmatrix and joined it at the onset with some students from my adult class. Unfortunately our course was already winding up at that point. Some students opened their blogs and joined in spite of this and blogged in their free time. We didn't cover all the tools from the Writingmatrix syllabus; we explored Blogger and learned how to use Bloglines and del.icio.us. We reached out into the cyberspace, exchanged comments with participants from other countries and got to know each other better in a fun way. 

  

My second group (full-time students) was younger (19+) and much bigger. Unlike the previous group, these students mostly had a general idea of what blogs are but did not read them much and were not familiar with aggregators and RSS. Seeing how much time and effort some students from my previous group invested in their blogs, I decided to additionally encourage students' participation this time by giving them a possibility to earn part of their written grade this way.  

  

Students liked the idea behind the Writing matrix and most of them joined. They were asked to do some tasks every week. To be able follow their work more easily, I asked them to record all their weekly activities in a Google doc and share this document with me. These personal reports were in English and clearly showed how much effort they invested in their work. Students explored Blogger, Google Reader, Technorati, del.icio.us and Flickr.  

  

Those new to the Internet needed some help and guidance, and had some problems getting used to switching between the many different applications. We tried to help each other by setting aside some time during the classes in our computer lab (one to two classes a week). Some students developed their blogs considerably; others just posted a few experimental posts. Some chose not to participate because they didn’t like the idea of having their writing publicly displayed online. 

  

Like previous group, this group too exchanged some comments with other Writingmatrix students and teachers, but mostly interacted within itself. We learned how simply and efficiently we can connect and aggregate content using tags and how invaluable tags are for organizing our posts, bookmarks, photos. The tools we explored were new to students. The Writingmatrix has given them opportunity to practice their English more meaningfully while learning to use tools useful for life.  

   

I liked the way some topics spread across the Writingmatrix, e.g. the Internet meme started by Maria Lujan, Nelba's student (she had received it from a friend and passed it on to some participants, who passed it on to others). I got it from Doris Molero and passed it on to my students. The meme is about describing your first Internet experience. I liked it and set it as one of my students’ weekly tasks; my students were asked to write about their experience in their blogs (or Google docs, if they chose not to work on their blogs). Some of them dropped a comment letting Lujan know they did their homework (http://theticworld.blogspot.com/2007/09/this-is-my-first-meme.html ). It was fun to hear about Lujan’s suprise when she later checked her blog statistics and found there a great number of visitors from Slovenia (http://theticworld.blogspot.com/2007/10/writing-matrix-project-is-global.html ). :-) 

I liked the way Nelba invited us to explore the trackback option with her, the way we helped each other figure out the settings (http://englishvirtualcommunity.blogspot.com/2007/10/my-first-meme.html). 

I liked the way my students picked Doris' fun posts and used them on their blogs (e.g. the superhero quiz http://doris3meflcenter.blogspot.com/search/label/superhero ). And I liked the way Doris and some others highlighted interesting picks from other blogs (e.g. http://doris3meflcenter.blogspot.com/search/label/persnality%20test , http://kikegovea.blogspot.com/2007/10/free-rice.html) 

·      maybe it would be nice if every now and then teachers involved in the WM set out some joint tasks in the sense as shown above, simply to connect the WM participants across borders; we could for example explore some topic together (like the Internet meme above, or talk about cultural peculiarities, or topics like Rita's serendipity project...) or explore a tool of interest together (like the trackback option we did with Nelba). Maybe we could get more international interaction this way. (Some of my students preferred being given a topic to write about to writing freely about topics of their choice.) 

·       it would also be great to have a bigger critical mass of WM participants, so more people contributed to the project, greeted new participants on their arrival, etc. The first contact is a very powerful experience; it would be great to be able to use it.  

·       it would be nice if the time frames of our courses overlapped more, so we could do more things together (mission impossible, but would be nice).  

·       it would be nice to find a way to encourage more students to reply to comments on their blogs and visit back those, who posted comments to their blogs (there are always some students doing a great job here, it would be great to see them more). I set it as a weekly task for my students every now and then to post some comments to our students’ blogs and some to international students’ blogs and document the URLs in their Google doc reports. 


 

Rita´s experience with her students in Rosario, Argentina


We all have different realities, work at different kinds of schools/institutions and students themselves pose different challenges to teachers even at the same place, in the same classroom.


I work at a private institute, local centre for Cambridge exams, which students of English choose to attend to get certification of achievement, i.e., sit for a final examination. Teachers themselves –the most critical angle of my predicament— aim at accuracy both in writing and in speaking, and students fail to see the importance of communicating with the language they’ve been studying for around ten years, as on very few occasions do they have the chance to meet native / non-native speakers of English to practise it in authentic situations.


This being the situation, it is very hard to convince students of their need to poke their heads and minds out of their classroom windows to see beyond, to appreciate the invaluable chance the Internet offers, to use tools which will enable them to meet like minded people all over the world and communicate safely from their homes, in English, exchanging their cultures.


 Tagging promotes this effect. And this is what Vance had in mind when he started his Writing matrix project involving teachers from different countries, ready to pass their enthusiasm on to their f2f students.


In my personal case, I have to start from scratch every single school year, as I get new groups of students who want to sit for the CAE exam. And who are reluctant to deviate from their limited aim. Yet, little by little they are coaxed into participating in a class blog, they start their own blog, they post and see their writing out for the world, they get amazed at reading comments from other teachers and students from places they have never imagined they would reach.

And they see the advantages of tagging, how through tagging they can connect with people sharing their interests, regardless of geographical and cultural distances.

My students went exultant. They wrote, they read, they recorded, they listened, they followed the trend, they tagged. They added “wrtingmatrix” to their list of tags and they went to Technorati, where they met not only other teachers and students from our Writing matrix project, but also other readers who got interested in the project. We even ran our own, which we called “The Serendipity Project”, as they had to record a serendipitous experience they had had or had heard about. And they all enjoyed the experience, chronicled in our blog at podomatic, at http://caeb2007.podomatic.com


There you will also find the podcast they produced speaking about “tagging”, and how it opened up their eyes and minds into a broader world; how they became aware of the fact that a final examination and a certification of achievement should not be the target when taking up a new language, but the possibility of meeting likeminded people, of learning about different cultures, of making friends beyond and across geographical distances. My students became aware of a different way of learning, of the importance of using English to communicate, to exchange experiences, opinions, possible solutions to common problems related not only to learning a language, but also to any and all facets of their everyday life and to the whole world. They have become aware of the need to learn through sharing, both through text and voice, which will eventually render the same valuable services all language teachers seek: that of making their students proficient in the four skills. In fact, through tagging, learners will successfully develop their reading, writing, listening and speaking abilities as they will be led into connecting, communicating and interacting in authentic environments and with authentic aims in mind.


Yet, there is still a long way ahead, since students themselves will not see these benefits until and unless they are guided into the process by those who are in charge of showing them the way. The next steps will therefore entail raising teachers´ consciousness, helping them gain the necessary knowledge to see for themselves and to integrate the use of tagging into their teaching practice.

 

 

 

Carla Arena's Informal Learning in the Writing matrix Project



Although I didn't formally join the writing matrix group because I was not teaching at that time, I decided to apply its concepts to my own little projects. I learned from the group how powerful tagging and RSS could be to aggregate content. The project has given me invaluable insights on how to tie bits of content together in one place just by tagging appropriately. 

I decided to chime in with my contributions to the writing matrix group to give it a try and see what happened just by tagging "writingmatrix" some posts that might interest the teachers and students involved in the project. What a surprise when Sasha just "stopped by" on one of my blogs and joined the discussion at http://brazilandbrazilians.blogspot.com/2007/05/city-of-god.html. It certainly added one more perspective to a very rich cultural exchange. Also, I replied to some students and could learn more about them and their lives in different parts of the world.

I learned that tagging is connecting, RSS is the glue. It's about making stronger bonds that really make our world flat and full of venues happening at once. It's just a matter of exploring them.


Some lessons learned:


Thanks for the writing matrix group who opened my eyes for the tools to broaden our online connectivity and to understand the dynamics of social networking through tagging and RSS.

Doris and her classes in Venezuela

Hello, everybody! Let me start by telling you how thankful and honored I feel by working with so many talented and dear people.
Well, In Venezuela we started blogging last year here we have three "trimesters" so we have been blogging for tree trimesters now. On our fist trimester, teacher and student were new to this blogging idea. Thanks to my dear friends the webheads I had already opened a blog to participate in a Multiliteracies adventure Vance invited us: Multiliterate Doris, so blogging wasn't so strange to me. 

Back to our first group in March 2006, I proposed my students to start their blogs as a journal to record their homework. We worked in class with our program and homework was supposed to be posted at the blog. Not all of them could make it same as what happens now. Only the ones who were or are really motivated or disciplined did it. some of my students were and are just interested in passing the level not on learning. But, I can't blame them. They are university students and they want to be lawyers or engineers for example. It's up to teachers to help them fall in love with education.... but that's another story! Finding support from your fellow teachers at school is really difficult since as our students teachers look at technology like something too difficult and time consuming and they are very busy now to start working with something they are not familiar with.

We have produced a big number of blogs. Since I teach all levels and at all schools, my classes are a mixture of a lot of things. The methodology used is task based and combines different learning approaches. Social networking is strongly supported in class or online. Our English program is based on Communicative English so it requires a lot of interaction, like conversation making, and real life representations. Most teachers in the traditional class just use traditional tools. But our classes are different. Technology is present in the classroom and in the lab. We use cellphones, cameras, video bin and PowerPoint as everyday tools.  Homework is assigned at the end of each class, most of the time they have to produce something based on a model given in class. That way working on their products become into an easier task. It's important to notice that my students come from different backgrounds, from different schools and have very different interests and ways of learning so my approach to teaching has to be very flexible and give enough space for them to be creative and responsible.

Something really important about this project is that It has given my guys a way to dare to do things, to be more courageous, and practice that if you can dream it it can be accomplished. Also, there's the Multiliteracy training that they are getting by combining their EFL training and the use of Web 2.0 tools like blogging, tagging, aggregating and having fun or getting frustrate by it and trying harder. We are growing as humans and better students or teachers. They understand the value of getting together and working together.

So far the results are satisfying... there's nothing like looking at  students face when they do something they thought they will never be able to accomplish. There has been some complains from students who just don-t have the time or just don't like working with computers or in groups.

Well, got to go... my class starts in half an hour and I'm still at home....
Hugs to everybody

Back to report what happened during September/ December 2007 Trimester. Well, lots of things... To start with,  this trimester I taught 13 classes and two or three intensive courses. All of them tried to get on with blogging only level one students didn't do it since they were just beginning. Also we experimented with movie maker, audio recording in powerpoint presentations, photo shows with slide.com,  google images, tagging, aggregating, google reader, audio forums at chinswing, we got virtual pets, chat boxes, commenting, memes... most of this thing were new... but we had lots of fun... also we did a free hugs activity and  video. we participated in blog action day... students wrote about the environment .. we watched some environment videos I downloaded from you tube.This was the best.