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I started my NLE blog with my expectations about this interesting course assuming that New Learning Environments referred mainly to the big challenge that modern education and educators face now that learners are getting more and more used to technology in their lives. To my surprise, my assumption was not that far from reality. If we want to keep up with 21st century learners and the way they prefer to learn, we must make important changes in the way we teach and approach our learners so that we succeed in our teaching and we don’t get behind giving way to those teachers who are doing their best to implement new technologies that students enjoy while learning.

Please check "Archivo del blog" on the right to access the different sections of this NLE blog.

Debate on new learning environments

JOSE: The pace of change in the 21st century is increasing and increasing, I think the world is becoming more interconnected and complex than ever. In this environment, I do think it is critical that we as teachers shift our focus from education to life-long learning.

GUEST: But not everybody has a computer. There are millions of people out there who are not interconnected and don’t need to learn all their lives about something which maybe they’re never going to use. Besides, it is a waste of time if you don’t have immediate access to new technologies.

JOSE: At my age, if I chose not to learn anything new after I was through with school, I would not know how to operate a VCR, DVD player, my cell phone, my computer, the CD player, or my home printer, and I am sure the list could be longer. Life is a continuous learning process or the human brain stagnates and everything stops. Fortunately, the increasing availability of learning resources on the internet is coinciding with the growing importance of continuous learning.

GUEST: We are resource constrained, because that availability of learning resources on the internet is only for those who have access to it, the rest has to keep on learning with traditional methods which have proven to educate as well. On the other hand, no opportunities to enhance learning by exploring the edge are presenting themselves.

JOSE: Of course that opportunities to enhance learning by exploring the edge are presenting themselves as well. It is at the edge that most innovation occurs and where we can discern patterns that indicate new kinds of opportunities and challenges. In this context, the edge can mean many things: kids who grow up digital, developments in rapidly changing nations such as China and India, new kinds of institutional frameworks such as open source and Wikipedia, and new media forms.

GUEST: But look at the context we all find ourselves at the moment. First, today’s kids, our students, are not very different from most of us here and they don’t learn in ways that are different from how we learn. Second, education is not more important than ever, because people are less willing to pay for it than ever before. Third, how are we going to educate students for the 21st century, if most students today aren’t going to have a fixed, single career in the future? It’s better that students pick up new skills inside of today’s traditional educational institution since nearly all of the significant problems of tomorrow are likely to be the same we have at the moment.

JOSE: Sorry to contradict you, but first of all, today’s students are different from most of us here. They have a new vernacular, a digital vernacular; and today’s students also learn in ways that are different from how we learn. It’s true that there are many challenges, but the question here is how can we begin to take advantage of those differences? We have to find a way to re-conceptualize parts of our educational system and at the same time find ways to reinforce learning outside of formal schooling so that these challenges can be met. In fact, there are successful models of learning already in place that offer ideas that can be more broadly applied. For example, studio-based learning environments all work-in-progress is always made public. As a result, every student can see what every other student is doing. Moreover, every student witnesses the thinking processes that other students are using to develop what they do. Students start to appreciate and learn from the struggles and the successes of their peers.

GUEST: But what about large classes? They invent and invent new gadgets, and computer programs; wikis, blogs, twitters, and so on, but who says they really work? What’s up? What should I believe?

JOSE: Well, new teaching practices must be invented and experimented with. Clickers, for example. They can be used in large classes as you say. A clicker is a simple inexpensive device that can be distributed to every student in a class, enabling them to respond to questions posed by a teacher and immediately tally results. Full-size screens surrounding most of the classroom is another example; each screen is independently controllable. Any student can grab any screen and can put anything up on that screen. During a seminar, for example, they can Google and instantly project what they find of interest to the overall discussion. All this culminates in a collaborative learning experience where multiple images are being displayed of what students found interesting.

GUEST: But who knows what is going on with kids who are growing up digital? How do they learn? How do they like to learn? How do they problem solve? And most importantly, what creates meaning for them and helps them to construct their own sense of self. Now very little time is spent reading good books. Carrying a laptop does not make you “digital”.

JOSE: The answer is that there are new kinds of social, work and learning practices, as well as forms of entertainment or infotainment that emerge when a generation like this is immersed in a digital world. It’s the modern, intelligent, multimedia mobile internet device that defines being digital. These devices used to be cell phones, but phone calls are a small part of what they are used for today. There is also game-based learning.


GUEST: Learning is not a game and most of the video games are incredibly difficult to master.

JOSE: If you’re not extremely good at pattern recognition, sense-making in confusing environments, and multitasking, then you won’t do well in the game world. Believe it or not, the gaming generation wants to learn, and without measurements they can’t tell if and how much they are learning. So this means that game designers as well as teachers of the 21st century students must know how to design good learning environments; environments that are constantly throwing new challenges at the students, challenges that are neither too difficult nor too simple. Further, as the student improves, the challenges need to be more demanding.

GUEST: In my opinion, this all goes against something very important in education which is the social life of the students. The social environment the traditional classroom offers can’t be replaced.

JOSE: Now we talk about the social life of information. The importance of the social construction of understanding where experience and information are internalized into actionable knowledge through conversations and social negotiations. In the networked age, this approach provides a way to both improve education and to set the stage for a culture of learning. For example, blogging. When handled appropriately, classroom blogs can open multiple ways of knowing and contributing to a class. For those who are too shy to speak out, find speaking in English challenging, or who are more passive, the classroom blog can serve as a way to participate in a class discussion. The classroom itself can create a kind of container for a blog focused on activities in the class and one tied together by the sociality of all members being in the class. It complements, but doesn’t replace, the class and as a container it also allows students to contribute not just their own ideas but also other material they find relevant to the topic of the class.

GUEST: I still think there is a problem with the new learning environments and it is that the passion for learning is not the same as it was in traditional learning.

JOSE: Twenty-first century new learning environments offer the possibility of a hybrid model of learning, where we teachers can combine the power of passion-based participation in communities of practice and co-creation with a limited core curriculum for teaching the rigorous thinking and argumentation specific to that field. It is implicit in this new learning environments that, given the nearly infinite number of communities that exist on the net, nearly every student of any age will find something that he or she is passionate about. In conclusion my dear guest, new learning environments are here to stay.

Are Communities of practice here to stay?

Theoretical background

The theoretical backgound of coPs can be found in social learning. The term communities of practice was first coined by Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave in 1991. These communities are groups of people in organizations that form to share what they know, to learn from one another regarding some aspects of their work and to provide a social context for that work. Such groups have been around ever since people in organizations realized they could benefit from sharing their knowledge, insights, and experiences with others who have similar interests or goals. Richard McDermott defines a community of practice as “a group of people who share knowledge, learn together and create common practices. Communities of practice share information, insight, experience and tools about an area of common interest.” Communities of practice solve their problems through networking and sharing their experiences by means of a voluntary, informal gathering and sharing of expertise. Communities of Practice should not be confused with teams or task forces. A task force ties to a specific assignment. Once that assignment is completed, the task force disbands. A team ties to some specific process or function. A team is structured so as to deal with the interdependencies of different roles in that function or process. In team, roles and tasks often vary; in a CoP they are generally the same. “In their teams, they take care of projects. In their networks, they form relationships. In their CoPs, they develop the knowledge that lets them do these other tasks.” Etienne Wenger, (1998).


Characteristics

Communities of practice have some characteristics that make them different from teams or task forces: The nature of a Community of Practice is dynamic, in that the interests, goals, and members are subject to change; CoP forums are designed to support shifts in focus. CoPs create opportunities for open dialog within and with outside perspectives; they welcome and allow different levels of participation; for example, the core group who participates intensely in the community through discussions and projects, typically taking on leadership roles in guiding the group; the active group who attends and participates regularly, but not to the level of the leaders and the peripheral group who, while they are passive participants in the community, still learn from their level of involvement. Other characteristics of coPs is that they develop both public and private community spaces; while CoPs typically operate in public spaces where all members share, discuss and explore ideas, they also offer private exchanges. Different members of the CoP coordinate relationships among members and resources in an individualized approach based on specific needs. CoPs focus on the value of the community and they create opportunities for participants to explicitly discuss the value and productivity of their participation in the group. They combine familiarity and excitement since they offer the expected learning opportunities as part of their structure, and opportunities for members to shape their learning experience together by brainstorming and examining the conventional and radical wisdom related to their topic. Cops also find and nurture a regular rhythm for the community as they coordinate a thriving cycle of activities and events that allow for the members to regularly meet, reflect, and evolve. In coPs, the rhythm, or pace maintains an anticipated level of engagement to sustain the vibrancy of the community, yet it is not so face-paced that it becomes unwieldy and overwhelming in its intensity. (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder 2002).

Benefits

Regarding the benefits of communities of practice, they encourage people to work more effectively or to understand work more deeply among them focusing on a particular specialty or work group. Education professionals find coPs very useful because in these small groups of teachers who work together over a period of time and share extensive communication, they develop a common sense of purpose and a desire to share teaching, learning, related knowledge and experience which in the end benefits students. The coPs offer professionals a learning environment that provides authentic learning contexts and support both collaboration and interaction which is highly required nowadays. In other words, professonals learn more effectively since they have to deal with real problems and complete authentic tasks (Wenger, 1991). CoPs are also useful because they also include a social interaction with the real practitioners who work with them and assist their learning. Such collaboration leads to an elaboration of strategies that can be discussed and further enhance the interaction through which the members learn something through experiences of interactions (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002).

How they Communicate

Communities of Practice communicate mainly through face to face meetings and computer mediated technology. The new communications media, provides new possibilities for collaboration and distributed working supporting the existence of coPs in different environments. With the rapid internationalization of business that can spread the distribution over national boundaries posing problems of cultural and temporal as well as physical distance, Computer Mediated Communications technologies (CMCs) support distributed international Communities of Practice. As a result of the internationalisation of business and the development of enabling technologies, there has emerged the notion of Virtual (online) Communities of Practice (VCoP), where members make use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to share stories, knowledge and practices. Tools for creating user-generated content (UGC) also provide the basis for communities of practice. Wikis, for example, support active content creation. CoPs update wikis frequently and edit their content to achieve greater accuracy and depth. If coP intranet users read a wiki page and see something that is incorrect or out of date, they can update the information, so the next member to visit the page gets better information. A coP member who uses an intranet, and who is a subject-matter expert who others frequently ask for information, can create a wiki page, making their information public. Forums and blogs are another way in which coPs communicate. Forums let members share information with communities that are interested in specific topics. Participants can either ask questions or contribute answers to questions. Blogs enable coPs to communicate with a wide audience about topics that interest them. Frequent readers of blogs are often highly interested in the bloggers’ topics and, via blog comments, can engage in discussions with the communities viewing the blogs.

My own views

In my context, which is the language learning context, coPs provide a good language learning environment in the sense that CoPs connect so many people. This allows the members to interact with other people who are usually out of their reach, which gives language learners opportunities to find the real audience with whom they can use the target language in a real, natural communication. Using chats, for example, learners learn some language aspects crucial for communication, which sometimes it is difficult to learn in the traditional language class room

(Toyoda & Harrison, 2002). In addition, interaction in the target language provides opportunities for learners to comprehend message meaning, produce modified output, and attend the target language form which helps them develop their linguistic systems. There are now many virtual language communities of practice in which teachers and learners gather in an online space where they communicate and interact with each other. Such virtual space includes real-time forums where they contribute ideas based on their backgrounds and experiences that in turn stimulate responses from other members. The least proficient members learn from the interactions of the more fluent ones. Another extra point gained from learning through coPs is that the language learners also learn other skills such as computer and information skills, communication skills, and organizational skills. By being active in the virtual language activities, they become accustomed to working with computers and Internet. They learn how to start, interrupt, or end a conversation, and the engagement in the virtual discussions gives them exposure to lessons on how to interact with others and manage an organization.

Conclusion

It is important to remember that communities of practice are not a recent invention. Such groups have been around ever since people in organizations realized they could benefit from sharing their knowledge, insights, and experiences with others who have similar interests or goals. CoPs have been playing a key role in sustaining the knowledge of different types of organizations long before we started to focus on them. And as knowledge increases in importance, they will continue to play this critical role whether we pay attention to them or not. Communities of practice are here to stay.

Collaborative English Language Learning

The worldwide need to develop collaborative habits.

Collaborative habits are needed all around the world and there is a variety of educational approaches that involves joint intellectual efforts by students, or students and teachers together. In this era of great developments in communication technologies that facilitates access to resources and people, what students need worldwide is working in groups in order to mutually search for understanding, solutions, or meanings, or creating something together (Beichner & Saul, 2003). Collaborative English language learning activities vary widely, but most center on students’ exploration or application of the language, not simply the teacher’s presentation or explication of it. It represents a significant shift away from the typical teacher-centered or lecture-centered lesson in school or university classrooms. What teachers need in the English language classroom is not only the lecturing, listening and note-taking process, but students’ discussion and active work with the English course material they have. Language teachers worldwide need to use collaborative learning approaches that help them tend to think of themselves less as expert transmitters of knowledge to students, and more as expert designers of intellectual experiences for students coaches of a more emergent learning process (Smith. & MacGregor, 1992).

The benefits collaboration can bring into the language learning class.

Since learning is an active and constructive process, collaboration is a way in which language learning students can benefit learning new information, ideas or language skills workinhg actively with other classmates in purposeful ways. In collaborative learning situations, students are not simply taking in new information or ideas, they are creating something new with the information and ideas. These acts of intellectual processing of constructing meaning or creating something new are crucial to language learning. The language classroom also benefits because collaborative learning activities immerse students in challenging tasks or questions (Dillenbourg, 1999). Rather than beginning with facts and ideas and then moving to applications, collaborative learning activities frequently begin with problems, for which students must marshal pertinent facts and ideas. Instead of being distant observers of questions and answers, or problems and solutions, students become immediate ractitioners. Rich contexts challenge students to practice and develop higher order reasoning and problem solving skills in the second language. Language students bring multiple perspectives to the classroom; diverse backgrounds, learning styles, experiences, and aspirations. As teachers, we can no longer assume a one-size-fits- all approach. When students work together on their learning in the language class, we get a direct and immediate sense of how they are learning, and what experiences and ideas they bring to their classwork (Funaro, 1999). The diverse perspectives that emerge in collaborative activities are clarifying but not just for us. They are illuminating for our students as well. Another benefit that collaboration brings to the language learning class is that it allows for student talk: students who are learning English are supposed to talk with each other, and it is in this talking that much of the learning occurs (Golub, 1988).

The strategies needed from the teacher to promote collaboration.

Collaborative learning covers a broad territory of strategies with wide variability in the amount of in-class or out-of-class time built around group work. Collaborative language activities can range from classroom discussions interspersed with short lectures, through class periods to study the language in teams or carry out projects that can last a whole school term or year. The goals and processes of collaborative startegies also vary widely. Some language teachers design small group work around specific sequential steps, or tightly structured tasks. Others prefer a more spontaneous agenda developing out of student interests or questions. In some collaborative language learning settings, the students’ task is to create a clearly delineated project; in others, the task is not to produce a project, but rather to participate in a process, an exercise of responding to each other’s work or engaging in analysis and meaning-making. The use of cooperative learning is a strategy that encourages language students to work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning” (Johnson, 1990).

Problem-centered instruction is another strategy built around collaborative learning which fosters discussion-based teaching and gives students direct experiential encounters with real-world problems to use the language. Students are immersed in complex problems that they must analyze and work through together. These startegies develop problem-solving abilities, understanding of complex relationships, and decisionmaking in the face of uncertainty. Case studies can also be used by the teacher to pomote collaboration in the classroom (Harding, 1993). A story or narrative of a real life situation sets up a problem or unresolved tension for the students to analyze and resolve using the second language. The use of cases promotes collaborative learning as it frequently asks small groups of students to tackle cases in language class or in study group sessions.

Simulations are among other collaborative strategies that can be used in the language classroom since these structured role-playing situations simúlate real experiences and most of tehm ask students, working individually or in teams, to play different roles in a situation or an unfolding drama that requires collaboration among students. The key aspect of simulations, though, is that of perspective-taking, both during the simulation exercise and afterwards. Following the simulation, there is usually a lengthy discussion where students reflect on the simulation and explore their own actions and those of others. This is where important concepts and lessons emerge.

Writing groups also promote collaborative learning. Peer writing involves students working in small groups at every stage of the writing process. Many writing groups begin as composing groups: they formulate ideas, clarify their positions, test an argument or focus a thesis statement before committing it to paper. This shared composing challenges students to think through their ideas out loud, to hear what they “sound like,” so they will know “what to say” in writing (Mitnik, 2009). Writing groups also serve as peer response groups. Students exchange their written drafts of papers and get feedback on them either orally or in writing. This is a challenging process, one that requires students to read and listen to fellow students’ writing with insight, and to make useful suggestions for improvement. Finally, discussion groups and seminars are collaborative strategies that encourage student dialogue with teachers and with each other. Open-ended discussion or seminars give the opportunity to students to pose questions and build a conversation in the context of the topic at hand using the second language.

The tools that can be used to teach collaborative skills.

When students work together they learn from one another and extend their interaction and language learning outside of the classroom. When properly applied, technology can eliminate barriers to collaboration and provide a comfortable setting for student collaboration and cooperation. ICTs enable convenient collaboration from any place and at any time allowing archive meeting notes and student exchanges. They provide students with experience and support in teamwork and help them learn from each other.

Email and a suite of other tools in this category can help language teachers disseminate information widely and set up alternative forums for language class discussions, extending the opportunity for students to exchange ideas outside the classroom. Students may continue small group discussions through a threaded newsgroup. Language study groups and project teams can also coordinate their efforts online through email and online discussion groups (Lee & Smagorinsky, 2000).

Collaboration often requires a convenient place for documents and other files to be saved that all group members can access. ShareSpaces is a tool that language teachers can use to create a shared space in which to store group files, and give group members access to it. Teachers can allow other teachers and students to view and download the files, or also give the group members permission to update the language file. GoPost is another tool that allows teachers to create a Web-based discussion board where their language students can compare notes, discuss assignments, post attachments, and work together online. Language teachers have control over who has access to the GoPost forum, and they can even allow students to use pseudonyms to make them feel more comfortable.

Wiki is another useful tool to teach collaborative skills. The advantage is that this Web site can be viewed and easily edited by anyone with Internet access and a Web browser (Oblinger, 2004). Wikis can be a very useful tool for student collaboration and cooperation. Not only can students easily collaborate on a project using a wiki, they can also easily make it public and invite experts, teachers or other students in the field to react to their contribution.

Coping with Emerging Technologies

It is important for many reasons that the education sector must remain continually alert to emergent technology developments and possibilities, not least because those developments, and related implications, can be very rapid. This is particularly true in the context of young students’ everyday uses of technology and approaches to using technology in professional and other environments to enhance knowledge development and transfer. It is also important to note the importance of developments in social networking and Web 2.0 to educational uses of technology.

At present, we can observe an increasing range of educational activities which incorporate the use of those technologies. It is essential that we educators can learn from those examples to understand what’s effective and sustainable in supporting our students’ learning. Technology developments touch on some fundamental issues and questions in learning practice. A central issue is the role of both the learner and their community in the development of knowledge and understanding. Many emergent technology tools promote active, participatory and collaborative knowledge building. We need to understand how effective those approaches are in practice and discuss the implications for education and education professionals. We have to stimulate that discussion and debate in our educational institutions, especially in our area departments.

Now we are starting to see more innovation on the consumer internet translated into a new approach to the use of online technology in supporting education, which has huge potential for positive change. This emerging technology affects us and our students as humans in the sense that it is about connecting and socialising our use of computing, and making it more personal. The tools are important, though changing all the time, but the connected networks of people, data and services that are emerging around them are what this is really all about. The culture of internet, access resulting from broadband adoption, combined with the fact that more and more people are now students sharing ideas through blogs, wikis, messaging and other online tools, is creating a critical mass of connectivity that is driving innovation. But we need to encourage students and other teachers to become active participants in their own relationship with technology.

There is a way in which we as teachers can cope with emerging technologies and keep up-to-date and it is by familiarizing ourselves with blogs, wikis, messaging and other emerging online tools. Inappropriately used in the classroom, emergent technology can be used to perpetuate old models of teaching and learning. Students can be only plugged into computers to do drill and practice that is not so different from workbooks. But we teachers can use emergent technologies to give more colorful, stimulating lectures. We must explore how these technologies can be used to stimulate and develop writing skills, collaborate with peers in foreign countries, and do authentic kinds of research that is valuable and meaningful.

For example, Apple ipods can be used for educational purposes. It can be used for podcasting which is a technology that can allow educational institutions and students to deliver multimedia content to an audience on a regular basis with little or no effort on the part of a user. The user can simply subscribe to a Podcast feed and the content is downloaded to the user’s computer when a new Podcast program is available. This Podcast can then be played in a computer media player of the user’s choice, such as iTunes, or synchronised with the users portable music player, such as an iPod. This means that the user does not have to go and look for information and is not tied into accessing media at specified times.

Coping with Emerging Technologies

It is important for many reasons that the education sector must remain continually alert to emergent technology developments and possibilities, not least because those developments, and related implications, can be very rapid. This is particularly true in the context of young students’ everyday uses of technology and approaches to using technology in professional and other environments to enhance knowledge development and transfer. It is also important to note the importance of developments in social networking and Web 2.0 to educational uses of technology.

At present, we can observe an increasing range of educational activities which incorporate the use of those technologies. It is essential that we educators can learn from those examples to understand what’s effective and sustainable in supporting our students’ learning. Technology developments touch on some fundamental issues and questions in learning practice. A central issue is the role of both the learner and their community in the development of knowledge and understanding. Many emergent technology tools promote active, participatory and collaborative knowledge building. We need to understand how effective those approaches are in practice and discuss the implications for education and education professionals. We have to stimulate that discussion and debate in our educational institutions, especially in our area departments.

Now we are starting to see more innovation on the consumer internet translated into a new approach to the use of online technology in supporting education, which has huge potential for positive change. This emerging technology affects us and our students as humans in the sense that it is about connecting and socialising our use of computing, and making it more personal. The tools are important, though changing all the time, but the connected networks of people, data and services that are emerging around them are what this is really all about. The culture of internet, access resulting from broadband adoption, combined with the fact that more and more people are now students sharing ideas through blogs, wikis, messaging and other online tools, is creating a critical mass of connectivity that is driving innovation. But we need to encourage students and other teachers to become active participants in their own relationship with technology.

There is a way in which we as teachers can cope with emerging technologies and keep up-to-date and it is by familiarizing ourselves with blogs, wikis, messaging and other emerging online tools. Inappropriately used in the classroom, emergent technology can be used to perpetuate old models of teaching and learning. Students can be only plugged into computers to do drill and practice that is not so different from workbooks. But we teachers can use emergent technologies to give more colorful, stimulating lectures. We must explore how these technologies can be used to stimulate and develop writing skills, collaborate with peers in foreign countries, and do authentic kinds of research that is valuable and meaningful.

For example, Apple ipods can be used for educational purposes. It can be used for podcasting which is a technology that can allow educational institutions and students to deliver multimedia content to an audience on a regular basis with little or no effort on the part of a user. The user can simply subscribe to a Podcast feed and the content is downloaded to the user’s computer when a new Podcast program is available. This Podcast can then be played in a computer media player of the user’s choice, such as iTunes, or synchronised with the users portable music player, such as an iPod. This means that the user does not have to go and look for information and is not tied into accessing media at specified times.

DGBL for language learning

Digital games are fun, engaging and seductive. They are highly interactive and provide both a challenge and instant, visual feedback within a safe virtual learning environment. In short, digital games engage young people in a way that traditional classroom language activities simply cannot. However, there are language teachers who fear that employing digital games within the classroom may have a negative impact upon learning; they can distract from learning as students concentrate on the objective of completing the game rather than using them as a language learning tool (Buckingham, 2006). Others suggest that the time learners spend in front of a screen could instead be spent, for example engaged in a role-play or mingling social activity.

But aside from providing entertainment, language teachers have to take into account that digital games have been found to serve a range of educational functions. They encourage different ways of learning and thinking and provide the opportunity to teach and practice language skills and encourage imagination, creativity and exploration (Gee, 2003). Digital games help pupils to develop key language and learning skills such as: cognitive processing, logical thinking and independent decision making apart from encouraging interpersonal relationships, thus encouraging cooperative and competitive behaviour since some of them enable players to embody different characters thus helping to breed attitudes of tolerance and understanding.
21st language learners need to be motivated in ways different from what traditional education has offered so far; they enjoy spending time exploring the internet and playing games alone or connected with friends or classmates, so they are used to technology that sometimes their teachers don’t have any idea about. Present language teaching must include digital games to motivate them in a more meaningful and contextualized manner (Prensky, 2009). In my opinion, incorporating digital games within education provides a valuable link between language activities within the classroom and life outside school and such a connection helps to reinforce learning and encourages pupils to continue to develop their language and ICT skills outside the classroom environment.

Communities of Practice (coPs)

The usefulness of coPs for professional development is that this special type of informal network encourages professionals to work more effectively or to understand work more deeply among them focusing on a particular specialty or work group. Education professionals find coPs very useful because in these small groups of teachers who work together over a period of time and share extensive communication, they develop a common sense of purpose and a desire to share teaching, learning, related knowledge and experience which in the end benefits students. The coPs offer professionals a learning environment that provides authentic learning contexts and support both collaboration and interaction which is highly required nowadays. In other words, professonals learn more effectively since they have to deal with real problems and complete authentic tasks (Wenger, 1991). CoPs are also useful because they also include a social interaction with the real practitioners who work with them and assist their learning. Such collaboration leads to an elaboration of strategies that can be discussed and further enhance the interaction through which the members learn something through experiences of interactions (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002).

Communities of Practice provide an excellent forum for knowledge sharing and a vital question is whether the new communications media, which provide new possibilities for collaboration and distributed working, could support the existence of such groups in a distributed environment. This question takes on an added relevance with the rapid internationalization of business that can spread the distribution over national boundaries posing problems of cultural and temporal as well as physical distance. This paper reports on a case study which was the first stage in exploring whether Computer Mediated Communications technologies (CMCs) can support distributed international Communities of Practice. The aim of the case study was to explore the possible existence of Communities of Practice in an international organization, to identify such groups and to ascertain the media used.

In the language learning context, coPs provide a good language learning environment in the sense that CoPs connect so many people. This allows the members to interact with other people who are usually out of their reach, which gives language learners opportunities to find the real audience with whom they can use the target language in a real, natural communication. Using chats, for example, learners learn some language aspects crucial for communication, which sometimes it is difficult to learn in the traditional language class room (Toyoda & Harrison, 2002). In addition, interaction in the target language provides opportunities for learners to comprehend message meaning, produce modified output, and attend the target language form which helps them develop their linguistic systems. There are now many virtual language communities of practice in which teachers and learners gather in an online space where they communicate and interact with each other. Such virtual space includes real-time forums where they contribute ideas based on their backgrounds and experiences that in turn stimulate responses from other members. The least proficient members learn from the interactions of the more fluent ones. Another extra point gained from learning through coPs is that the language learners also learn other skills such as computer and information skills, communication skills, and organizational skills. By being active in the virtual language activities, they become accustomed to working with computers and Internet. They learn how to start, interrupt, or end a conversation, and the engagement in the virtual discussions gives them exposure to lessons on how to interact with others and manage an organization (Chapelle, 2001).

I am interested in joining a coP called “My Language Exchange coP” at http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/. It is a language exchange online community that allows both teachers and students to find language partners all over the world to practice English or any other language and provides authentic language learning contexts and supports both collaboration and interaction among participants. I expect to share experiences with other language teachers and contribute to people who are interested in learning English.

Microblogging and Social Networking

Micro blogging is sharing frequent and brief information in web through specified platform. Generally micro blogging services allow its users to send and read other users’ updates through text-based posts. But now this has been changed and it can be any sort of input like text, video, audio etc… Text messages are uploaded to a microblogging service such as Twitter, Jaiku and others, then distributed to group members. All parties subscribed in the targeted group are instantly notified of the microblog, enabling groups to keep tabs on one another’s activities in real time.

Some advantages of microblogging are that the updates you make in micro blogging sites can be visible to community members to all users depending upon the platform that is used. Unlike messengers where people type messages to a person (or rarely a group), with micro blogging many more people can interact at the same time as they can all see their messages. Instead of spending hours together to narrate a blog post, micro blogging platform can be used effectively to share things people wish to. With twitter, for example, people can exchange information quickly about personal topics or any other topic they are interested in. By means of it, language learners can be encouraged to take part in discussions aboy language topics and carry out language tasks in which they have to write brief messages in a meaningful way. Language teachers can use them to share ideas and discuss topics with their students providing quick feedback to them.

One of the disadvantages of microblogging would be the limitation in characters and the fact that it is prone to getting off topic quite easily. In I my particular teaching context, I think I could use it especially with high school students. On a microblogging platform, the students could send and receive messages related to language topics and I could use it as an effective strategy for dealing with the isolation that can come from working in the classroom. For example, if I encounter technical difficulties during a lesson I can have a means of receiving assistance within minutes since with microblogging I have the opportunity to receive assistance from others during a teachable moment in which, for example, I don’t know the answer to a student’s inquiry.

Blogs and wikis

Benefits of blogs

Blogs are easy to create. You don't need any advance and expensive softwares to create a blog. You just have to sign up to blog providers (Blogger, wordpress, typepad , etc). Then you have to follow a few steps and and start posting. Blogs are easy to maintain. You don't need any software to maintain your blog. You can maintain your blog online. After you sign in to your blog account you can create a post, edit post, change blog template, customize your blog and change blog settings easily. Blogs automatically move your newer posts at the top, while archiving older posts by date or topic you don't have to bother to move your pages around. Blogs are search engine friendly. Since each post of the blog is assigned with different URL address, each of them will have its own and separate web page. If you care of making good posts focused on a specific topic and carefully choose good keywords describing your posts then it will have more chance of ranking well with search engines. Blogs allows you to interact with your students. Blogs allow you to interact with your students and give them feedback. Since blog offers you the option of enabling a comment field to your posts where readers can give you their feedback. It not only makes the students come back but also it gives you a great chance to know your students better. Blog are for free. Anybody can start blogging in just few minutes and you can display any information to other teachers or your students. Blogs give you lots of space. You can make as much number of posts as you like in your blog. You can upload many documents, videos and images.

Suggestions for implementation of blogs

• Blog sites should be developed with the help of students following simple procedures.
• Teachers and students blogs should go public at the educational institutions, in other words, they could be accessed and read by everyone in the community to foster interaction.
• The usage of blogs is very convenient and it should be used by students more frequently..
• Students can improve their writing skills and blog articles should be reasonably good enough and free grammatical mistakes.
• Blogs get students into the habit of writing, which helps them in all their future endeavors.
• Blog sites should be used as online class forums that enable students with various personalities to participate in discussions far more effectively.
• Using blogs students can learn to express their opinions and exchange their views on topics of common interest, which not only keeps them updated but also allows them to contribute new ideas.
• Language students get a chance to read other blogs, which indirectly helps them to improve upon their language skills.
• Language teachers of online classes get an opportunity to know what students feel about the class and help to find ways to improve students’ progress.
• Blogs can also be used for language students to share their articles and opinions with people outside their educational community.

My preferred blog platform

I prefer using the Blogger platform within only five minutes you can be set up and bloggin. A feature called ‘Blog This!’ on the Google Toolbar lets you use the toolbar and have Blogger accounts to put links directly to your blogs. It allows establishment of group blogs as it supports multiple author entries. It has individual pages to archive comments, posts and email postings. It supports Google AdSense service while running a blog. And last but not least, Blogger is free.

Benefits of wikis

It is an online space where any number of users can post, edit and sort ideas and tangents for a project. You can make your projects much more straightforward because instead of jotting down ideas in notebooks, sending files via e-mail and constantly having to ask where your colleagues are, you can keep it all organised online, and access all this information from anywhere with an internet connection. Wikis are good for projects that require collaboration, where information needs to be archived, and where several individuals need access to the same information and need to be kept up to date on changes. Wikis can be used by educational institutions to connect students in different departments and create knowledge bases for various projects, Wikis have the ability to compress space allowing users from all parts of their organizations in essentially the same space. Wikis are a great way of keeping track of ideas and removing clumsy methods of communication and administration.

Suggestions for implementation of wikis

I suggest teachers to use wikis for getting their students more involved in curriculum. They’re often appealing and fun for students to use, while at the same time ideal for encouraging participation, collaboration, and interaction. The following are some examples of how wikis could be implemented in the classroom:

• Asking groups to use central documents in a wiki to ensure that everyone’s documentation is uniform.
• Allowing class members to post their ideas in a wiki, and you can cut down on duplicate ideas, while at the same time allowing them to build upon the ideas.
• Starting fan clubs for your students’ favorite figures from history and ask them to contribute their favorite quotes, photos, and other information together.
• You can use wikis to make it easy for students to see which tasks have been completed and which ones still need to be fulfilled.
• Assigning a wiki page to a group project, and then individual pages for each student to show their participation.
• Selecting two class candidates against each other and perform a debate on your wiki.
• Starting a creative writing unit, and getting students to write a short story together, each writing a small amount of the story.
• Posting articles for different movies, books, and TV shows, encouraging students to share what they thought about them.
• Hosting a book club on your wiki where students are required to read the same book, then discuss it on the wiki.

My preferred wiki platform

I prefer Wetpaint wiki platform because it is built on the power of collaborative thinking. Here, you can create websites that mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a rich community; it is a social website that is easy to use and anyone can participate. Wetpaint features are very basic and things such as tables, links, and photos can be added by just a few clicks of your mouse. When you hit easy edit a toolbar appears with many options for you to choose from. You can easily browse pages in the navigation on the left. by clicking the arrows you are able to view the sub pages of a certain page. In my opinion Wetpaint is quick and easy to learn.

Collaborative and Transformative Learning

Collaborative learning

From my point of view, collaborative learning is an instruction method that every teacher should implement in his/her classroom since it allows learners at various performance levels to work together in small groups toward a common goal and the learners are responsible for one another's learning as well as their own. Thus, the success of one learner helps other students to be successful.

Some of its advantages, which are many, include that it develops higher level thinking skills, promotes student-faculty interaction and familiarity, increases student retention, builds self esteem in students, enhances student satisfaction with the learning experience, promotes a positive attitude toward the subject matter, develops oral communication skills, develops social interaction skills, promotes positive race relations, creates an environment of active, involved, exploratory learning, uses a team approach to problem solving while maintaining individual accountability, encourages diversity understanding, encourages student responsibility for learning, involves students in developing curriculum and class procedures, students explore alternate problem solutions in a safe environment, stimulates critical thinking and helps students clarify ideas through discussion and debate, enhances self management skills, fits in well with the constructivist approach , establishes an atmosphere of cooperation and helping schoolwide, students develop responsibility for each other, builds more positive heterogeneous relationships, and encourages alternate student assessment techniques.

In the ELT context collaborative learning can be achieved by having students work together in groups to reach common goals; students benefit from sharing ideas rather than working alone. Students help one another so that all can reach some measure of success learning the foreign language. Students can have short meetings, often between pairs, to simply discuss and share information from a lecture, movie, etc. or they can be encouraged to work together on language projects or creative language activities or an specific language content. All members may be working on a different portion to bring together as a whole or they may all be working on the some language task. Collaborative learning in the ELT classroom can also be possible implementing activities such as jigsaw, group investigations, student language teams and learning together projects in which they have to use the second language.

Transformative learning

Taking into accoubt that transformative learning is a form of education involving experiences that result in a deep, structural shift in thoughts and feelings, which then inform one's actions, I find particularly interesting that it it fosters and develops capacities that invite people to live more meaningfully fostering ways to invite people to support social transformation that embodies joy, peace and equity for all people.

Some advantages of transformative learning are that it helps to build a sense of community that allows people to foster trust with each other. It also makes people more willing to look more deeply within themselves and reveal patterns, concepts, beliefs and behaviors that need to change in order to affect the common good. Transformative learning encourages people to build community and this means that people are willing to practice respecting and looking out for one another. It allows an individual to listen deeply, to engage in the discovery of learning with others, trusting that others will not use personal weaknesses and vulnerabilities to gain advantage. It fosters the spirit of collaboration and teamwork.

In the ELT context, transformative learning can occur when language students encounter alternative points of view and perspectives about the way they can learn the second language. Exposure to alternatives encourages students to critically question their assumptions about the language. Transformative learning can be promoted by language teachers using any strategy, activity, or resource that presents students with an alternative point of view. Listening and readings activities from different perspectives, field experiences, videos, role plays, simulations, and asking challenging questions all have the potential to lead to transformative learning in the ELT classroom. The language teacher needs to create an environment in which critical reflection and questioning norms is supported and encouraged while learning the language.

Transformative learning must not be an “add on” to a language course, it must be a way of making meaning of language knowledge in a way that students don’t passively accept and believe what they are told or what they read or listen to, but rather engage in oral activities such as debates, discussions, and critical questioning of the content they study in the foreign language.

Educational Implications of Wikinomics

Wikinomics is a term that describes the effects of extensive collaboration and user-participation on the marketplace and corporate world. It is characterized by openness, which includes not only open standards and content but also financial transparency and an open attitude towards external ideas and resources; peering, which replaces hierarchical models with a more collaborative forum; sharing, which is a less proprietary approach to products, intellectual property, bandwidth, scientific knowledge, and acting globally, which involves embracing globalization and ignoring physical and geographical boundaries at both the corporate and individual level.

Educational implications

The logic of wikinomics will affect education by making Wikis and collaborative writing spaces more prevalent applications in many writing-intensive courses, with some instructors finding wikis to be useful for peer editing. The popularity of professors’ lectures uploaded to YouTube will increase and there will be a hunger for educational content that will be made freely and widely available to everyone.

The educational materials will be organized into “portals” or “faculties” that will include any number of “schools,” and each school will have “departments.” “Courses” organized in such a way that all of the courses and learning materials wil be created by “Wikiversity” participants. There will be no admissions criteria; there will be no “professors” Just as with an article in Wikipedia, anyone will be able to contribute course materials, anyone will create a faculty or a school, anyone will lead a course.

Students will be invited to work together, to engage in discussion, to solve problems, and to otherwise “construct their knowledge.” The classroom space itself will be transformed into a kind of platform where students will be invited to explore, create, and construct knowledge.
The role of the teacher will transform from containing and controlling all of the knowledge to managing the platform by setting up and enforcing the rules and procedures that will guide student learning. In this setting, the teacher will serve as the “choice architect” of the learning experience or the one who will establish the context in which students will exercise a fair degree of choice. Teachers and students will come together to form voluntary associations around areas of common interests, but they will be even more self-governed and autonomous. Teachers with an interest in a subject and a desire to share their knowledge with others will enter the platform in order to locate and attract students with a desire to learn. When enough teachers and students coalesce around a particular topic of interest, they will form their own school or department.

The curriculum and the course of study will be more fluid and dynamic than any that has existed before. In a “wiki-ized curriculum”, the courses of study will be “open” to both faculty and students: students not only will be able to choose which courses to take but also will be able to design their own courses.

The 21st Century Student

Are today’s students different? }

In order to answer this question we must first ask ourselves: Are people shaped by their environment? The 21st Century environment is all about change. Since technology is moving so quickly, we have to learn to deal with change on a regular bases. We need to learn to deal with the speed and magnitude of change. We used to have a good handle on what was developmentally appropriate for students. As students have access to more technology, they are exposed to more information. Students come to school with a larger knowledge base than they used to, yet they are still emotionally only capable of handling so much. So change means that the nature of education is changing.

What should our students know?

We have to talk about teaching students skills and not tools. Our students will be better prepared for their future if they have skills since the tools become outdated so quickly. The following skills are important:

1. Teach students how to follow their passions
2. Teach students about knowing the right thing to do
3. Teach them about getting it done
4. Teach students about getting things done with others
5. Teach them about doing it creatively
6. And finally, teach students about constantly doing things better

How should we teach them?

There is a new paradigm for learning where kids are teaching themselves with the teacher’s guidance. Children are already doing this outside of the school day. We must never try to teach our students anything, we must only try to create an atmosphere in which they can learn.

Is technology in class a help or a curse?

We must let our students fly with technology. We must let them do the work and our job is to evaluate it. They are the researchers when it comes to the technology, so there is no need for us to create anything, but give them the time to figure it out themselves. This is the model of teaching that we should be striving for from now on.

The 21st Teacher

We have heard alot about the 21st Century Learner, but what about the 21st Century Teacher, what are the characteristics we would expect to see in a 21st Century Educator. We know they are student centric, holistic, they are teaching about how to learn as much as teaching about the subject area. We know too, that they must be 21st Century learners as well. The following are some characteristics of the 21st century teacher.

Adaptor

The 21st Century teacher is an adaptor. Harnessed as we are to an assessment focused education model the 21st Century Educator must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways. They must also be able to adapt software and hardware designed for a business model into tools utilisable by a variety of age groups and abilities. They must also be able to adapt to a dynamic teaching experience. When it all goes wrong in the middle of a class, when the technologies fail, the show must go on. As an educator, we must understand and apply different learning styles. we must be able to adapt our teaching style to be inclusive of different modes of learning.

Visionary

Imagination, a key component of adaptability, is a crucial component of the educator of today and tommorow. They must see the potential in the emerging tools and web technologies, grasp these and manipulate them to serve their needs. If we look at the technologies we currently see emerging, how many are developed for education?
The visionary teacher can look at others ideas and envisage how they would use these in their class. The visionary also looks across the disciplines and through the curricula. They can make links that reinforce and value learning in other areas, and leverage other fields to reinforce their own teaching and the learning of their students.

Collaborator

As an educator we must be able to leverage collaborative tools to enhance and captivate our learners. We too, must be collaborators; sharing, contributing, adapting and inventing.

Risk taker

How can you as an educator know all these things? How can you teach them how to use them… There are so many, so much to learn. You must take risks and some times surrender yourself to the students knowledge. Have a vision of what you want and what the technology can achieve, identify the goals and facilitate the learning. Use the strengths of the digital natives to understand and navigate new products, have the students teach each other. The learning pyramid shows that the highest retention of knowledge comes from teaching others. Trust your students.

Learner

We expect our students to be life long learners. How many schools have the phrase “life long learners” in their mission statements and objectives. We too must continue to absorb experiences and knowledge. We must endeavour to stay current. Knowledge, understanding and technology are fluid and dynamic, they are evolving and changing. To be a teacher here you must change and learn as the horizons and landscape changes. The 21st Century teacher or educator must learn and adapt.

Communicator

To have anywhere anytime learning, the teacher to must be anywhere and anytime. It does not have to be the same teacher, but the 21st Century teacher is a communicator. They are fluent in tools and technologies that enable communication and collaboration. They go beyond learning just how to do it, they also know how to facilitate it, stimulate and control it, moderate and manage it.

Model

We must model the behaviours that we expect from our students. Today and tommorow more so, there is an expectation that teachers will teach values. We, are often the most consistent part of our student life. Teachers will see the students more often, for longer and more reliably than their parents. This is not a criticism of the parents rather a reflection.

The 21st Century educator also models reflective practice, whether its the quiet, personal inspection of their teaching and learning, or through reflective practice via blogs, twitter and other medium, these educators look both inwards and outwards. These teachers also model a number of other characteristics. These are not necessarily associated with ICT or the curriculum, but are of equal importance. They model: tolerance, acceptance, a wider view than just their curricula areas, global awareness and reflection.

Education for the 21st century

Technology is reshaping the world’s education system and we as teachers have to be prepared for education in a near future. In particular, the technology to deliver full-length courses online is rapidly becoming a reality. The creation and delivery of courses over the Web will be the driving force for educational change in the 21st century.

The computer will allow the creation of "learn by doing" courses designed by the best and the brightest experts in any given field. Quality universities will put their names on these courses, and companies will create them, guaranteeing employment to those who pass them. This will create tremendous change for everyone involved in the education system.

Teachers’ new role

The teaching of traditional academic subjects, first in high school and later in elementary school, will be increasingly done via online courses. Eventually school libraries will contain hundreds of these courses. Teachers will be left to provide things that technology cannot: personal one-on-one tutoring; teaching kids how to work in a group to accomplish something; and teaching crucial interpersonal relationship skills.

Initially teachers may feel disenfranchised by this. But an important opportunity will emerge for teaching social skills that students desperately need, and teachers will understand they need to be the ones to fill this role. Today there is a push to measure teachers by their students’ test scores. Tomorrow, teachers will be judged by more meaningful measures as we begin to value them for their human qualities.

Not only will teachers act much more as social workers or guidance counselors in the future, they will also lead courses that explicitly focus on developing social and interpersonal skills. The teacher will be an advisor to the team, or a guide on an expedition. Right now teachers are authority figures. Once teachers move out of that role, they will eliminate a roadblock that prevents them from connecting with the students who need the most guidance.

Primary education

One of the biggest problems we have in elementary school is the amount of time kids are forced to sit still. Sitting still is so hard, and it’s the last thing young children want to do. I’d rather see kids spending more time playing than doing academics. While I think there is a valuable lesson in teaching a seven-year-old to sit down and focus on a task, that task shouldn’t be doing 1,400 multiplication tables.

Elementary school should be simply about reading, writing and arithmetic, about acquiring good work habits, and perhaps most importantly, about instilling a love of learning in each child. A lot of what in today’s school system is considered extracurricular, like putting out a school paper, ought to be the curriculum. Students learn more that way than any other way.

Schools and their new role

We are moving in a direction where everybody is staring at a computer or a television all day and all night and not interacting with other people in a meaningful way. I think the schools will have to be the counterbalance to this trend, to actively provide opportunities for social interaction and to teach the skills required for successful interaction with other individuals. Part of the job of the school must be to help students learn how to work together and to be a functional part of society.

The school itself will evolve into a sort of student or community center, where kids are engaged in a variety of activities and projects. There will be a tremendous range of activities, but they will not be as purely academic as they currently are. When students are not participating in these activities, they will be taking online courses at home, or if the supervision there doesn’t allow it, at school.

Schools will become much more connected to the community around them as activities bring students more and more into contact with their community. They will also become more connected to local businesses, as students have the opportunity to engage in real-world jobs with local employers. The school will become the center of the community in a much deeper way than it currently is.

Curriculum centralization and instructional development

The advent of ubiquitous networking technology will lead to the centralization of key functions in the education system, just as it has in the business world.

First, the delivery of education via online courses will change the entire landscape of course development and control of the curriculum. Each academic field will supply its experts to help create the courses in that field. Consortiums of academic experts, educational technologists, and businesses will work to develop, update, refine and improve these courses. As a society, we will be able to realize tremendous efficiencies by developing these top-quality courses one time only. We will also realize a tremendous improvement in course quality control. All students will be able to select from a wide range of top-quality courses in any subject that interests them.

Second, the fiction of local control of education will become evident and a panel of education experts, rather than local groups of well-meaning, but uninformed parents, will develop the curriculum. There will be no point of local school boards arguing over which courses should or should not be offered, when every imaginable expert-built course is available. A central body will assume control over the curriculum represented by the online courses.

Third, the advance of technology, in particular live videoconferencing, will lead to the creation of a centralized pool of tutors for various subjects. Just as today’s companies have centralized phone centers where customers can call in for service, we will see the creation of one-on-one tutoring services provided via live videoconferencing. Having trouble with some calculus problems? Just connect to the calculus tutoring center for a face-to-face session with an expert tutor. These learning service centers will provide students across the world, no matter what community they live in, with access to the best coaches available.

Conclusion

The primary driver of change in our 21st century education system will be the creation of online courses that will remove the responsibilities for teaching academic subjects from teachers. Instead, teachers and schools will focus on combating the increasing social isolation that our society will face. Schools will become activity centers where students will work in groups on real-world projects, go on trips, and participate in the community. While students may also use schools as locations to engage in online course work, this course work will be just as available at home. The advent of online courses and associated networking technology will also lead to a centralization of course and curriculum development.