Conferences

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IATEFL 2016 Opening Plenary

After a brilliant PCE day with MaW SIG, it is time for the opening plenary of the 50th anniversary of the IATEFL annual conference in Birmingham. Marjorie Rosenberg welcomes us to this ‘momentous event’ and tells us that Birmingham has more and longer canals than Venice! Who knew… (answer: Sandy knew!) She also told us about the many things going on and reminded us to take home an IATEFL teddy bear keyring, visit the IATEFL tree in the exhibition hall and take photos at the aforementioned tree or at the IATEFL frame, for a souvenir. After a long list of thank you’s and being wished a wonderful conference, it was time for the one and only…

(Professor) David Crystal!

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His talk will cover the changes in the English language since the year 1966 (when IATEFL was established and when the world’s first successful human heart transplant was done, Sweden changed to driving on the right, the first Boeing 747 made its maiden flight, the first issue of the Rolling Stone magazine was published and the most fashionable item of clothing in a woman’s wardrobe was a miniskirt!). He will compare the changes that have taken place in the last 50 years with those that will take place in the next 50.

Who would have thought it? 1966 – 2066.

One of the questions David is most often asked is why he finds language so interesting, why did he become a linguist? A simple answer – two words – language change. Whatever a language was like yesterday, it’s different today and will be different tomorrow. With a global reach of over 2 billion speakers, English is even more so. The language we spend a lifetime learning to teach will not stand still. The only languages that never change are dead ones. If the ‘enemy’ is language change, it will pay us to get to know it better.

Vocabulary

The loss of old words and senses, the arrival of new ones. How much lexical change takes place in English? Oxford’s choice of word of the year this year was emoji, Collins was binge-watch, for watching a box set of a series in one day. Dictionary.com went for identity, reflecting the increased attention being paid to gender and sexuality in the last year. The Australian dictionary went for mansplain – the act of a woman trying to explain something to a woman which she already knows!  What about the words that will be left out in order to make room for the new ones? When Collins got rid of fubsy (fat in a nice kind of way) there was a national save ‘fubsy’ campaign, supported by Stephen Fry no less!

Vocabulary change is always difficult to quantify as we never know what words/phrases will be permanent features and what will be transient. To give a sense of how words go out of use, let’s look at words that were coming into use when IATEFL was born. These have not been heard or used recently!

  • D-Day
  • Beautiful people
  • Flower children
  • peaceniks
  • yippies (politically active hippies)
  • dolly bird (probably wearing winkle pickers!)
  • hully gully (a dance)
  • frug (another dance)

You might be wearing a Mao (hat) and discussing Ostpolitik, Reganism, Powellism, UDI. You might read of the Black Panthers or Rachmanism. Or more mundanely you could see the latest report of the confrontation between the mods and the rockers and pick up your trimphone to tell your friends all about it!

The speed of change suggestions caution when using the internet as a source of up-to-date vocabulary. It is idiosyncratic to the point of eccentricity. Anyone can make up a word and have it included in the Urban Dictionary. The usage might be “liked” by a large number of people, but if you are going to use a source with teenagers, check it regularly or you will find yourself using last year’s word. When IATEFL was born, people were calling each other Daddy-O, calling things groovy and bidding each other farewell with ‘see you later alligator’…

For this year, in terms of neologisms, if you are wearing your kicks you are wearing your trainers. A slashkini is a one piece swimsuit with lots of cut-outs. A manel is an exclusively male panel. A wasband is a former husband. If something is very stylish, you would call it wavy, whereas if something is unattractive, unpleasant and unfashionable it is basic. Calm means good/cool, while digital amnesia is the inability to remember basic things because of over-reliance on devices. Dude food is food that is said to be favoured by men, often including meat. A Skype family relies on Skype to keep contact as a member lives overseas. The grey gapper is a person of retirement age who takes a year out to go travelling. To pocket dial is to call someone by accident when your phone is in your pocket.

Two points should be noted: over half those expressions contain more than one word so when we talk about new words entering usage we are talking about compound words and often they require understanding of the underlying words e.g. wasband. Since the arrival of the internet, it is now possible for anyone who has electronic means to encounter English in its world wide varieties. A decade ago it would have been difficult to do that without going to a place.

The millions of people who actively use the internet encounter an unprecedent range of varieties of English. Different varieties of English become neighbours on the screen, as do different levels. So accommodation becomes common.

Grammatical Change

By its nature far less noticeable at any one point in time. Only by stepping back and looking at large quantities of data over a length of time like a decade can changes become apparent. On the 5th November 1819 John Keats sends an apologetic letter – “Had I known of your illness I should not of written in such fiery phrase in my first Letter” but elsewhere in the letter, he uses “You should not have delayed”. It’s difficult to discover early usage preferences as works have been edited. Other examples can be found in Keats and Austen. I was much disappointed. I have been several ties thinking. He seemed watching her intently. You look very nicely indeed.

The frequency of some modal verbs is declining e.g. shall and must and may. In one big study using the diachronic corpus of spoken English, must reduces by 50%, shall by 40% and may by 37% in all categories studied. They have been replaced by semi-modals like have to.

  • You must be more careful
  • You have to be more careful

The former is more authoritarian.

  • The calculation must be right. (Certain)
  • The calculation has to be right (Less sure)

In each case what we see is a lessening/softening of the strength and certainty.

In the 1960s “I’m loving it” would have been “I love it”. The dynamic use of stative views is grown.

  • I’m wanting a new fridge
  • I’m intending to apply a new job
  • I’m need a new coat
  • It’s concerning me a lot
  • It’s mattering to me greatly
  • I’m knowing the answer

Know seems to have largely resisted the change so far but not worldwide, in India it is common. It seems likely that all stative verbs will develop dynamic uses over the next 50 years.

  • The book that I bought
  • The book which I bought
  • The book I bought

The last one has remained stable (typical in informal spoken English) but the use of which is dramatically decreasing. The change is the direct result of the antagonism towards the use of which in the 20th century grammar (Fowler etc.) David likes which but his copyeditor changes all his which’s to that. The association of which with more formal styles of expression has also contributed to its demise.

Any new word or grammatical construction is going to be encountered sporadically. But all words new and old have to be pronounced. So any change in pronunciation will be frequently perceived. We are sensitive to changes in accent. So how have pronunciation and accent changed?

Pronunciation/Accent

Attitudes towards pronunciation and accent have changed. Some accents have changed their phonetic character significantly. Susan Ray Scots presenter in Dundee was withdrawn when BBC had their RP drive, but today there is institutional recognition to a change in attitudes to regional pronunciation, so within the BBC all are recognised and celebrated/used. Regional radio gained an audience and National radio lost it. The new audiences liked their presenters to speak as they did. But National figures remained strong in series like the Archers and Coronation street where local accents were valued. Non-indigenous accents also began to be heard. RP continues to have a strong presence in broadcasting but its phonetic character has changed. In the 30s it was very plummy, in the 60s and 70s even it sounds dated now. Changes continue to affect RP. Even the queen’s accent has changed, today she uses more open mouthed vowels and centralised vowels.

Estuary English attracted media attention in the 90s. The Estuary is the Thames, the people with accent live on either side of it, chiefly to the North. They use question words at the end like “right?” and “innit?” Phonetically it is a set of accents intermediate between RP and Cockney. Features of Estuary have radiated out through the country. They haven’t replaced the local accents of the areas they have reached but just modified the phonetic character, pulling the vowels and consonants  in different directions. The Estuary heard in Hampshire is very different to that heard in Leicester. In Birmingham there used to be Brum. Now there is Jamaican Brum, Indian Brum, Italian Brum etc. In London this is most noticeable, with over 300 languages spoken there. It’s not that one accent replaces another but more that features combine to create a third. So in the case of RP, we now have modified RP. We have modified everything these days. Accents are a mixture of accents. There are hundreds of variant forms and inconsistencies in speech. In the latest edition of Gimson, the term RP is dropped completely. General English is used instead.

Sociolinguistic research since the 1980s has noticed two noticeable trends: increase in positive attitude to regional accents and an increase in negative views towards RP. This turnaround has happened within 20 years. Regional accents are considered warm and friendly, RP is considered cold and distant. Call centres and TV commercials provide convenient indications of change. During the 90s there was a marked increase in use of local accents. So its probably in Pronunciation that we will see the most significant change as we look forward to the next 50 years. 3/4 of the worlds languages are syllable timed. Stress timing will become less of a priority in the next 50 years, David believes. The future seems to be syllable timed. And it’s a future in which the pace of change is increasing.

Today, a new usage can be around the world in seconds in written and spoken form. The internet is the largest corpus of language there has ever been and presents more variants than have ever been seen before. Not only vocabulary has been affected but spelling too. The internet suggests that a top-down simplification of spelling is not the only way. Spelling might simplify as a result of use and being seen online. On the internet, there are no copy-editors or proofreaders and people can spell however they want. If people spell too idiosyncratically then they won’t be understood but rhubarb – rubarb for example won’t be a problem. The internet may be the force that changes the perception of what is correct.

B.B.C became BBC, Mr. to Mr, 1960’s to 1960s. But most of the orthographic nature of English has remained the same. But online radically different practices are common e.g. in chatrooms, the dropping of all capitalisation, like using i instead of I as the personal pronoun. Once upon a time in Old English there was no punctuation and now the internet is reconnecting us with those old manuscripts!

It is not only the Internet but also broadcasting media and literature that have had an influence over the language. Writers from all over the world write in English and experiment with non-standard styles of expression. Contemporary right has a multi-dialectal nature. The notion of indigenous is no longer clear cut. The lines are becoming blurred within the language and how it is used today. Literature is just the tip of the iceberg of ethic expression.

It’s crucially important to avoid confrontation in all of this. It’s all too easy for pedants to condemn non-standard English on the internet or in new literary sources and call it language deterioration. Conversely it is all to easy for people to revel in the freedom of the internet and disregard the canon that is there heritage. We need to devise an appropriate philosophy that brings about a mutually enlightening relationship between these poles. It’s no easy task given the speed and multidimensional complexity of contemporary language change. The most difficult teaching jobs in the world are language-related jobs. The need to translate and interpret, hugely difficult, the need to teach, hugely difficult.  If David were in charge of the world, all teacher’s salaries would be quadrupled!

 

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IATEFL 2016 Materials Writing SIG PCE – Print VS. Digital; is it really a competition? (4)

The final event for the 2016 PCE day is the Panel Discussion. The panel are: Katherine Bilsborough to give the writer’s perspective; Jo Sayers who is with ELTJam and most recently in e-learning and product management roles, currently tech coordinator for MaW SIG; Macmillan’s Debra Marsh; Damian Williams. The discussion was chaired by Rachael Roberts.

(Edit: I did my best but it was all moving rather quickly! If you were there and you think I got something wrong, please correct me!! I did a mixture of direct quoting and paraphrasing/summarising…)

Question 1: Do you think writers will have more or less freedom to be creative in the future?

Kath: I think writers will have more opportunities to be creative in the future but probably by doing it ourselves i.e. self-publishing in small groups of people with different strengths and expertise.

Damian: Writing for publishers the briefs are becoming tighter and tighter which means that they are asking you as a writer to write something using this many words from this wordlist covering this grammar using these topics. It opens up new opportunities to be creative in a different way. The profession is going to demand being creative as a writer.

Debra: (Publishers view) We want the writers to be creative and get excited when something creative comes through but we have to think about what we are publishing and selling. The teachers have to facilitate learning through that creativity. Many teachers can find it difficult to work with very creative materials, they wouldn’t know what to do with that creativity and are looking to teach off the page. This could be why the most creative ideas might be rejected. If we can get teachers to understand the creativity and what it brings to the classroom, then we can use that creativity.

Jo: People seemed to get really excited about the brief of be creative for digital. It would be a shame if the potential for digital wasn’t used. It should hopefully be an essential part of writing.

Question 2: Why have we not moved on from drag and drop?

Debra: When it came in it was very exciting! It was new and yet very familiar. It came in because it was what we were doing in print. We are still stuck to a certain extent in trying to replicate what we’ve always done with print in the classroom within digital. We need now to think out of that box. Not throw everything away but think outside of that box.

Jo: Went to a talk about adaptive learning recently, the speaker drew attention to the fact that a lot of the stuff we do with learners is within the constraint of a learning interface. In the rest of their life they use technology in very different ways. So maybe we need to think about other ways of user interaction e.g. messaging rather than only drag and drop learning interface type activities; swiping to accept or reject. Edmodo is a user-friendly platform as the interface is similar to Facebook.

Damian: A student trying to write a C.V. for a job might not want to use English in a social media way.

Debra: The disconnect between technology used to learn a language and that used in everyday life is huge. But if we do a Whatsapp activity, do we use Whatsapp language? Do we use those errors and grammatical inconsistencies?

(Audience): We are using Whatsapp etc. successfully in classrooms but it doesn’t go with the publishers.

(Audience): Institutions want glorified homework self-marking teacher-time saving devices.

Question 3: Which tech skills or knowledge would you view as a priority for MaWSIG members to learn to help them with producing digital content?

Kath: A good way to learn about the digital skills is to do a course yourself on a digital platform and see what the experience is like. Every publisher will have its virtual learning environment/authoring tools and they will let you play in a “sand pit” to practice, play around creating things. To anybody who has not worked on one of these, go on something like Moodle, which is free, and see what it’s like, what you have to do to create a drag and drop etc. Don’t wait til you are in the middle of a project to learn! You learn what you need to know to progress to the next level. We need to help each other, form alliances to develop professionally.

Jo: Google docs is incredibly useful but more important than a specific tool is an attitude or approach – that of “Yeah I’ll learn how to do that/use that”.

Damian: Also kind of being able to have some kind of vision of what the end product will look like so you know what kind of things you can put in.

Question 4: How can we cater for the learner whose digital experience is so far removed from the digital language learning experience?

Debra: the learning experience is changing, so there is a growing disconnect. E.g. digital student books. Not like anything they see on their iPads! The reality is very different from what we assume reading the market research reports. The biggest concern for teachers is that coming into the classroom doesn’t attract students because it is so different from what’s going on outside.

Question 5: Kath said ‘It’s not worth arguing with your editor, you won’t win’ What does this imply about Kath’s relationship with her editor? What do other authors feel about this approach?

Kath: If you are working for royalties or a fee, at the end of the day publishers spend a fortune on market research and know why they want things a certain way or not a certain way. It does happen that there are editors that say I will not work with that writer again, and vice versa and that is very sad. We don’t want it to come to that!

Audience: can be a real collaborative job between author and editor to get it right. Sometimes if both writer and editor are freelance are working on an external brief, that gel can be easier.

Audience: did a survey asking a few questions and got some interesting responses from authors about relationship with editors.

Debra: It comes down to that level of communication. I work increasingly with teams at a distance over email, sometimes much better to pick up the phone/skype than the end-of-the-day email, have a virtual cuppa.

Audience: if there is a sound pedagogical argument to disagree, I’ll insert a comment to explain why I’ve done it, to stand up for what I believe to work. Equally, my classroom is not the same as all over the world, so will mostly just get on with it.

Question 6: With so many digital tools at our disposal, how can we hand over control to the students and when?

Damian: I’ve seen some classrooms as a teacher trainer where you’ve got these really young kids with iPads doing amazing things. The teacher saying “Ok, you show me..” and that kind of thing.

Audience: Rather than thinking about all the other stuff as things the publisher should be providing and worrying about it, maybe it should be thought about from the perspective of what teachers are doing in the classroom, at grassroots level, what they are bringing into the classroom. E.g. I’m going to use Whatsapp with my students this term. So maybe that comes more into teacher training and development to encourage that.

Debra: Teachers want ideas for using tools and information about how they fit into language teaching. Teachers need structure and hang onto that structure, to understand how to exploit it so that the students (and parents) also understand why its being used.

Jo: Is there a reluctance to commit to e.g. a double page spread on Whatsapp when everything changes so fast?

Debra: If it is digital it can be easily updated.

Damian: Also keeping it open with the writing. Bring mobiles into it. Rather specifically a lesson on Whatsapp, make it so the students can choose which app.

Audience: materials could be flexible enough so that it’s the teachers notes that need updating.

Audience: the idea of control to the student makes me think of flipped classroom learning, so perhaps good quality flipped materials…

Audience: writing extra ideas into teachers notes so that students don’t know if it has to be skipped for whatever reason

Audience: a lot of schools block some of these apps so can’t necessarily be used.

Question 7: Having worked with publishers was there anything you missed when you self-published? (Damian)

Damian: wanted to self-publish with the book but my biggest fear was thinking this all makes sense, this is great but is it going to turn out like it is in my head at the moment? Penny and Lindsay helped out a lot. E.g. assumed knowledge. The book needed people looking at it who hadn’t worked on the Delta to give it fresh eyes. Also missed deadlines and working with people.

Kath: It’s a joy to write about something you want to write about. The Heart ELT and Parsnips were very refreshing.

Damian: the Heart book is launching at 2.45 on the National Geographic stand.

And that brought us to the end of quite a day! We finished with a reminder of the SIG day on Friday and all the thank you’s. Just as well, much as it has been awesome and I want more, my fingers are knackered! 🙂

Thank you to:

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for a great day! 🙂

 

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IATEFL 2016 Materials Writing SIG PCE – Print VS. Digital; is it really a competition? (3)

Damian Williams took over after lunch with his talk A Road Less Travelled: From Digital to Print (and back again).

He is going to talk about the process he went through with self-publishing. The origins were back when he was working on a Distance Delta course. It involved marking 100s of assignments as a local tutor. He found he was writing the same kind of thing in feedback on drafts and so rather than getting assignments in, writing the same comments 100 times and sending them back, it would be better to put the comments on the forum as tips. This became his comments bank – a word document. He could also copy and paste (and tweak) these for the essays he got in. Then he thought why not put it out as a book and decided to self-publish. His big fear was thinking something was brilliant on paper and then getting it out there and it’s not that good. So he went with The Round, where you submit a sample and people can comment it on it with comments and published authors with The Round also have a look and comment on it. Damian launched it just before IATEFL Harrogate and it has sold pretty well. Most of the sales came through Amazon, a few through Smashwords (good for places where Amazon doesn’t sell!) and a few in other places. 300 copies is a benchmark of selling well, his first year he managed 434, second year 338.

Next Damian decided he wanted to turn it into a print book. He wants to talk about going from Digital to Print because usually it is the other way, so this is a bit different. There are a few things to consider in doing this:

Are you going to with print on demand (POD) or traditional offset? The former it only gets printed when someone buys it, the latter means printing and storing a minimum of 1000 copies that then need to be stored. Traditional offset has a lower cost per unit (bulk) and a higher quality production (but most readers can’t tell the difference), you also have books on hand to give to people when you want to. However, POD has low start-up costs if you put the hours in yourself and is instantly available – once the manuscript is set up, someone can order it and get it delivered. There is less risk – minimal costs plus your time. With traditional offset if you get 1000 copies and only sell 30…!

CreateSpace and Ingram Spark are the main Print on Demand services.

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In a simplified nutshell, CreateSpace is better if you are selling through Amazon/online. Book shops don’t like buying from CreateSpace, they prefer Ingram Spark so that is better if you are selling outside Amazon, something for a wider audience.

With a print edition you need to think about the back of the book and the spine as well as the front. The spine-width depends on how many pages and what type of paper.  Trim size is another element. You also need to decide if you are going for black and white or colour. Colour can be useful for colour coding and illustration. If you use images (photos) they need to be high resolution. Ebooks need a font that plays well on different screens and formats, usually sans serif. Print books tend to be easier if they DO have serif. You could print out a single paragraph in different fonts and read through and see which feels nicest, get others’ opinions on that etc. Finally, do you want to do it all yourself or pay someone to do it for you? You can do it yourself but you need time and willpower! Damian paid someone. D.J. Rogers. djrogersdesign@gmail.com did all the formatting and putting the cover together in a few days for about $100.

Once you have your book – print book or e-book – you need to promote it. The first thing that springs to mind is social media. The thing about social media is that it is a great way to get to lots of people but you need to be a bit clever about it. You need to find the balance between using it to let people know about your book and using it to promote it all the time so that people get fed up with it. Damian set up a CELTA and Delta trainers group because he wanted to promote his book. The key is to find specific groups and market it to specific people. And to respond to people who contact you on social media. With a print book there are photo opportunities! If it is an academic book, get it on a reading list. You can also use promotional material e.g. posters, promise a free paper copy for every ten e-books bought etc, to market to schools. If you have a print book get it up on goodreads. Run competitions too. Get some ideas in and choose a winner.

damian@tmenglish.org

Final speaker for the day (can you tell I’m getting tired – intros are getting brief!) is Sue Kay with Fifty ways to not turn your editor grey! So, another different angle for today, to keep our interest intact! The relationship between editor and author is the final focus (before the panel discussion!).

We will get 20 now and the remaining tips will appear on http://www.ELTTeacher2Writer.co.uk/50-ways. Why is Sue qualified to give this kind of relationship advice? She has been an author for 20 years and has worked with a whole range of editors. Most of them seem to have survived. She has (l)earnt(!) an enormous amount from these editors and is still learning. It is these lessons she wants to learn.

Be familiar with your working environment

The more efficient you are in your work station, the quicker you will work and the more likely you are to meet your deadlines and your editor will love you!

  • Know your keyboard. E.g. taking a screenshot on mac that Kath shared earlier. Ctrl+Z=undo. Ctrl+A=select all. Ctrl+N=New page. Ctrl+G=Go to. Ctrl+K=insert hyperlink. Ctrl+Y (Ctrl + F4 on windows)=repeats the most recent action
  • Know the difference between a hyphen and an en-dash. Hyphen is to hyphenate compound adjectives. En-dash is for ranges of numbers, dates, times. If we don’t use the right one, the editor will have to correct it when they get to it!
  • Know how to create a shortcut! (In Word: “Customise keyboard”) http://www.screencast.com/MjjNSdjXPf
  • Know how to use Jing or similar for making screencasts. Quicker than explaining what the problem is in digital materials, you can screenshot it and highlight the place.
  • Use ‘split screen’ to create an answer key!! (So useful!!!)

Communication

  • Find out how your editor likes to communicate and use that method (email? phone? Skype? face-to-face?) If you are using Skype…
  • Set your webcam at a flattering angle! And be careful what is in frame. Have you brushed your hair?
  • Be honest. If you are struggling with a deadline, tell your editor – don’t make excuses!

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  • Agree a method of file-sharing. Dropbox is easy to use. Publishers use FTP. We Transfer is for big files. Box is like Dropbox, more functionality but you have to pay. Google drive good for collaboration.
  • Choose a good system for file naming. Keep it short, enough info but not too much. Start with a date – year month then day. Use v for version number. Use underscores rather than spaces. At a glance you can see which is the most up to date!

Etiquette

  • Keep your editor in the loop. Don’t bypass the editor and speak directly to design. Don’t send an invoice until you’ve checked with the editor that the final draft has been accepted. Two examples of keeping the editor in the loop.
  • Acknowledge receipt of emails!
  • Respond appropriately to feedback. How? Don’t be defensive – try to get the bottom of the feedback is sending. Avoid binary confrontation. Choose your battles. If the editor likes one picture and you prefer another one, let it go. It’s not that important. Much less important for instance than how many vocabulary exercises you can get into your unit. Not worth the hassle, you won’t win, so let all but the most important battles go.
  • What does the editor want? Same document with track changes or a new document? And know your schedule.
  • Trust your editor. Their job is to make you look better. Don’t question every suggestion the editor makes. They are the objective eye that your material needs.
  • Try not to pester your editor – batch your queries. They have lots of projects not just yours!

Miscellaneous

  • Use minimal formatting: tabs not multiple spaces.
  • Use Evernote to store texts from the internet – you can save as bookmark and have all the info your editor needs. ELT and Evernote=a match made in heaven: ELTJam.
  • Know your idiosyncrasies. Apparently two spaces after a full-stop is wrong – why did no one tell me?
  • Don’t write nasty things about people in emails… Be nice, show respect, spread the love.
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IATEFL 2016 Materials Writing SIG PCE – Print VS. Digital; is it really a competition? (2)

Katherine Bilsborough kicked off after the break, and she is talking about Writing for Primary. 2 years ago, she spoke about ‘Becoming a digital writer‘. Since then, she has realised that we are not digital writers, we are materials writers who are writing for a digital age. This is something that came out of the recent MaW SIG conference. As Ceri said, it’s not black or white, it’s grey. Katherine, though, says it’s more like a chess board. Some is black, some is white, you move in different ways and sometimes you win and sometimes…!

If you are talking about primary, you are talking about 6 years of a child’s life. There is a big difference between year 1 and year 6. We need to be aware of their cognitive skills. E.g. they may  not be able to read yet. We need to think about their world view. They are very me me me oriented, so pair work doesn’t always work! If you make something in class, then everybody needs one to take home! With VYL, attention span is 5, 6, maybe 10 minutes max. It is also, or can be, a lot of fun.

5 key areas that Katherine identified for primary writing are:

Primary –

  • content
  • illustration
  • appropriateness
  • rubrics
  • key ingredients

She has picked out these 5 areas but some others may crop up as well.

Primary Content

When you start off writing a primary course book, need to take into account several things.

  • The syllabus (be involved in writing or received from a publisher; might be one level of a 5 level course for e.g.)
  • Young Learner Exams (publishers want to include materials that help to prepare learners for these e.g. Starters, Movers, Flyers)
  • Policy (local or national – e.g. in Spain the education law was in place for many years but has just been voted out so everything is in limbo)
  • Key competences (trying to develop the whole child e.g. citizenship, keeping clean and tidy etc as well)

Katherine finds the Cambridge YLE page useful to refer to as it has lots of wordlists for each level, of what words children of each age group/exam group are expected to know at that level. This is useful if you don’t have the syllabus etc. all worked out in advance. It’s also helpful to look at Key stages on BBC Bitesize site, to see the kind of things that children are learning and doing at different ages, to get an idea of what you can have them do with your materials.

21st Century skills – creativity, communication, collaboration, critical thinking. These are crucial. Our job, to think of a primary learner activity that encompasses these… Easy. Been doing it since the beginning. Just that now it has a label that needs to go in the book! Now of course there are digital elements that can be brought in to do things in a different way, but the point is it’s NOT new even if it’s the newest buzzword.

Illustration

Vitally important. The first thing that gets looked at. There are a few things to take into account. What should we consider when we decide between photos and artwork? model’s age/characteristics? supportive or decorative?

Publishers think for youngest learners, mostly illustration, as they get older, introduce more photographs. However, photos are coming in younger and younger. Nowadays in the ‘digital world’, younger children have more access to photographs so it makes sense? More and more kids watch stuff like discovery and educational style programmes marketed for kids (be it on youtube or TV) while cartoons/comics are seen as Saturday morning break material. Re model’s age and characteristics, Katherine usually told that they are presented as the same age but look a little bit older. If you are 9 you want to read about 10 year olds not 7 year olds! In terms of physical characteristics, it’s changing – more variety now, becoming more inclusive. Illustrations are usually supportive but can be decorative. In an artwork brief, it should be one picture including all the items of vocabulary rather than a set of different pictures one for each word. Katherine’s no. 1 digital aid for working is: Scanners. As, with primary, you draw everything as it should look on the page (sketches, sometimes quite detailed as very important), that scanned scrap of paper goes off to the publishers and then the illustrator turns it into what you see on the page. We rarely see them at conferences but they are very important! We are all invited to write our favourite tool on the flipchart at some point during the day.

Appropriateness

We all know about PARSNIPS but for primary there are things you might not have considered…

  • An escaped tiger with a happy ending – too traumatic
  • A chant about a witches brew – market including Turkey and Egypt, no witch craft
  • Kate and Joe talking about their homework – can’t have them because they might be sitting in a bedroom, so it had to be Kate and Cloe, much more difficult for listening!
  • Film review of Australian film Red Dog – there are dogs and somebody’s arms on the film picture, which is dirty
  • Anne of Green Gables – no, because boys won’t like it (!!!)
  • A story about a little boy who shrinks after drinking a potion – too druggy!!

If in doubt, leave it out! (Or at least run it by the editor!) It’s not worth it. Having an argument isn’t going to win you any points.

Rubrics

We saw three rubrics for the same activity.

  • Picture of an ear and a scribbling pencil
  • Listen and colour
  • Listen to the dialogue and colour the objects
  • Listen to the dialogue and colour the items that Leo and Fatima mention.

The simpler the better! Applies to all ages!!

Key Ingredients

  • Stories – genre? ongoing/one-off? language? word count? no. of frames? Katherine does this kind of work away from the computer, sits down with language and bits of paper. In the beginning there were print stories of various kinds, then along came audio, then dvds with videos (sometimes pictures moving one to the next), IWB (replicating print, animated visuals), devices (with interactive elements) and finally augmented reality. In Katherine’s last project, she wrote stories for a 12 level BBC English course for children and this included augmented reality for one out of three stories per year. You have to start layering, it’s almost like writing a script for a film. It’s very interactive and brilliant fun, but it takes a lot of writing. You have to write the story and work out how it’s going to appear and then present that to the publisher so that they/the team can understand it! Lots of role-play/gamey/decision-making elements involved. Katherine finds Puzzlemaker and Word Scramble for making puzzles to cut down on time.
  • cross curricular – used to be CLIL but then it wasn’t really CLIL so became cross-curricular. “These lessons give kids the opportunity to do something a bit different and they learn different skills – skills that aren’t normally taught in the English lesson. They’re a nice change for the teacher too.” – a quote from a teacher, Ma Carmen Losa. For the writer, means more research. Just because we are adults doesn’t mean we know everything! Katherine likes Fun Science and Technology website and NASA kids club website, as well as, again, BBC Bitesize. Lots of art gallerys around the world have kids sections. National Geographic also has one. Using websites designed for children means we have the right kind of language to use. Katherine still looking for an online children’s dictionary. It would be useful for obvious reasons!
  • culture – need to make it relateable to children e.g. what do people have for breakfast in different places like Jamaica? What hours do children go to school in New Zealand? Easy to find out on Facebook! Crowd-sourcing on Facebook is a very useful tool as you can get a load of answers/responses.  Time for Kids “Around the World” – a day in the life (hour by hour) of children around the world. Shortcut keys on a Mac are very handy for “I want something that looks like this:”
  • literacy – Vocab kitchen is useful: put in a text and you can see what the CEFR levels are and change the words in red (too hard) until they come out green (easy)! And use the synonym list in Word.
  • rhymes, chants songs – Vocaroo is really useful for recording and sending sound clips as emails.

Writing materials for the Play Station generation

Fiona Mauchline is a teacher, teacher trainer, materials writer and blog curator. She is focusing her talk on the people we are writing for in secondary materials writing rather than the materials themselves. 11-19. Born between 1996 and 2005: A significant period in the history of digital entertainment! Nintendos, Wii, Playstation with headphones and kids speaking. Fiona’s son speaks four languages a day, only 2 of which she taught him, picking it up this way. There is a huge generational gap between teacher/writer brains and their brains. This is something that needs to feed into the materials.

‘Umbrella topics’ from typical course books for lower secondary/lower levels. How many can you think of? Recycling, hobbies, clothes, music, food, films, sports, shopping, holidays, town/going out, school.

Beware the Twilight Zone – the shady area that teens don’t like going into. Also, it’s about what they want to talk about with whom! (Or not!) E.g. with parents, siblings, other family members, teachers, pals, closest friends, other classmates, ‘others’… Some topics may be better for writing than speaking as writing to the teacher rather than having to share with people in the room. Some they may not want to talk about with anybody. Anything where you might be judged. In the world of the migrant, ‘family’ and ‘home’ – might be judged. Holidays – not everyone can afford to have holidays. If you live in the Canary Islands, “talk about your holiday” doesn’t work as there is a huge gap between rich (off to New York) and poor (never left the island). So when aiming at teens, think about the sensitive areas.

Fiona got her older teens to make a list of topics they would like to see in course books. They made a long list. Can you identify the 7 no’s?

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3 groups of No:

  • History – e.g. Mandela
  • Music – Madonna, ABBA etc

Boring: old-fashioned, dusty, been done too many times. Not for 15 year olds.

  • Video games
  • Fashion

We do it, we don’t talk about it. Too personal. It is divisive and leads to judgement.

  • YouTubers who do crazy things
  • Travel to far away places, exotic destinations
  • Food we’ll never eat e.g. insects

Irrelevant, remote from their reality and always will be. Travelling to countries near your own, you might do one day. Far off super-exotic places, not so much.

The Stress Factor

Everybody feels different and wanted to be the same, all felt like outsiders in some way. 99% of teenagers think it. All feel inadequate. Learning a foreign language means saying stuff in another language in front of your classmates: not a comfortable/happy thing!

12% of teenagers (Young Minds and Mind) in the UK today between 11 and 15 with diagnosable mental health issues. A huge portion of that is stress-related or stress-triggered. Slightly higher in boys than girls. Keep the stress down!

Screens

The screen generation. Research done in Sweden and Florida.

Mental overload: scrolling, navigating, clicking, eye ‘flicker’, light quality > less ‘mind’ space for processing/comprehension than with text on paper. Not harder to learn, harder to know – tends to stay in shorter term memory rather than long term memory. Difference between remembering something and knowing it. However, kids have developed the capcity to ignore the buzzes, bells etc in life, i.e. dealing with distraction.

For certain things, screen will better, for other things, paper is still better. For example, reading longer texts is more efficient from the learning point of view on paper. The topography of a page – 8 corners (double spread), margins, visual clues that aid memory. Screens don’t really have that. The paper course book shows how far you have got as the year goes by. Big books and little books weigh the same on a kindle. Paper is good for weightier, more serious text work. With Digital, use short texts and exploit the scroll function/other features. E.g. the capacity for predictions – much more effective on screen with scrolling and keeping things hidden.

It doesn’t particularly matter what we think. The bottom line is the attitude and habits of the people who are going to use them. 52% prefer screens, 48% prefer books. Not everywhere allows for screens. Books smell better… (according to the teens Fiona questioned).

Fiona’s email: fhmauchline@gmail.com

 

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IATEFL 2016 Materials Writing SIG PCE – Print VS. Digital; is it really a competition? (1)

Having got up at 05.15, got a train at 07.18, negotiated Birmimgham New Street station (I’m going to walk – I’m already lost – right, where are the taxis?!), registered, been rescued by Sandy Millin (as ever!) I am now ready for MaWSIG PCE part 1. For those who don’t know about MaW SIG:

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Rachael Roberts explains that the speakers are going to be look at creating both print and digital and the interface between the two and that the day will culminate with a panel discussion. We are asked to write questions for the panel on the post-its floating around the room. She then goes on to the flight attendant thing (safety announcements) in record time and reminds us of the SIG day which is on Friday  and includes the Open Forum at 12.30 followed by a ‘MaWSIG Meet-up’

Ceri Jones – Same but different

Ceri started teaching in Italy in the 1990s and enjoyed creating materials from the beginning, and soon also for publication! Since then she has published just about everything you can think of!

Ceri opens with a question based on her experience over the last few years – are print and digital so different? Is it print VS digital, so black and white? She asks us to decide if we think they are the same or different. Humans learn by finding similarities or differences, and what we find depends on our mood also. She showed us a book called the Pointless Book, written by a ‘YouTube couple’. The book is blank pages throughout, lots of tasks, a blindfold drawing challenge. The App for the book shows Alfie (of the couple) doing the tasks, so bringing it to life. Then she shows us something called ‘Google Cardboard’ – $10 and comes in an Amazon flatpack, and you blend it with an App…

Ceri will look at a very specific learning outcome and look at different manifestations through material to ‘get at’ that outcome. Print only, blended, digital only scenarios, all working with the same very small learning outcome. We were asked to identify with one of a list of scenarios. I picked ‘blended 2 – ftf coursebook plus platform‘ for my current context. We are going to look at various scenarios along the cline.

“Describe a Memorable day in the past”

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First we imagine an elementary group – keen to talk, missing some language, this linguistic need is identified. Ceri tells us about what happened with her students in class. She chose a video from Vimeo and shared it with the class: https://vimeo.com/15304152  Goes from day time to night time, a load of activities patched together in the video. We were asked how we would scaffold that f2f.

  • brainstorm ingredients of a perfect day
  • categorise them under places, activities, people
  • prediction re video
  • view and check
  • discuss how the video measures up with their idea of a perfect day

How do you take what works for you in class initially and put it on paper as materials? Does it translate? What about limitations: print only (no video link-up); budget allows for 3 or 4 stock images; half to two thirds of a page max; need to engage with topic and introduce a vocabulary set plus the brief (see pic above).

  • stock images
  • vocabulary box
  • gap-fill exercise
  • personalised discussion

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What about the learning experience? Moving to a new scenario: how does this become a digital lesson? How do we convert the print product into digital?

  • video file
  • interactive activities (i.e. on the screen, with the computer!)
  • multiple screens
  • engage in topic
  • intro vocabulary set

Budget? Way beyond any project currently in existence!

How would the digital material be used? Very important question – is it just the student + screen? Something to use in class? In a virtual classroom? The answer is yes to all these things. To work, it has to be as free as possible, blending all situations.

Next Ceri shows us some printed grammar material. Dialogue, noticing questions, extra practice. What happens if we do this digitally? Ceri shows us an example and asks us to look for the similarities and the differences. There are limitations on both sides. She suggested the sample might suit slower students at home. What is the best way to handle something like this? E.g. student working on their own might need more structure added e.g. a table to complete through drag and drop.

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Finally, we look at the communicative task. How would it be structured in the various scenarios? What would be the differences? What would be the advantages for ftf and digital?

Ceri says she reckons she has posed a lot of questions and given no answers but we will be thinking about this kind of thing all day so it’s ok. We’ve seen some examples from both sides of the fence and seen limitations/disadvantages of each but also the advantages which exist for both.

She suggests that if the digital is moderated then the potential is very exciting! But…very often it isn’t!

Ceri’s blog: http://cerij.wordpress.com

Genevieve White – Adapting  ELT Materials: how to digitise a print course

Genevieve is based in Shetland, thinks she may be the only one! She tells us this will be quite a practical session with loads to pack in. Looking at the skills needed, the challenges faced and a hands-on adaptation task. There will be a prize!

A quick introduction to her own writing experience: a mixture of the concrete process of adapting materials but a personal process of adapting mentally in terms of beliefs about how languages are learned. She wrote a bunch of lessons on Word and then had to put them onto a platform when it was ready. It didn’t really work and she had to do a lot of adapting. She has also adapted student print books into digital format. More recently she has been adapting workbooks to go online. Different projects make different demands on your skills. Sometimes demands are technical, sometimes they are demands on your creativity, it all depends.

Are the skills needed any different from those needed for print. What skills do ELT writers need? Time management, reliability, ability to stick to a brief, awareness of market, creativity. For digital?

Skills

Creativity within tight constraints. Important for all types but particularly important with adapting print to digital. E.g. a small pool of words (beginners book) to create multiple screens of engaging activities.

Good communication skills. For all, but v important for print-digital because you receive huge amounts of information – student book, teacher book, answer keys, link to platform, audio and sound files – so much information, more than usual, so good communication skills essential. You need to be able to look at all that is sent, be in touch with the project manager and organise your questions (there will be lots!). A good project manager will be delighted to help, even over Skype etc.

Up-to-date tech knowledge. Obviously. But…a lot of projects that Genevieve has worked on involved fiddly platforms to navigate. To save time, it is a good idea to spend a bit of time familiarising yourself with things you are expected to know about BEFORE you are in the middle of a project. E.g. dropbox, being able to edit a pdf, being familiar with tracking changes and responding to comments.

An awareness of how digital material is experienced by learners. If you haven’t tried to learn a language online, have a shot. E.g. Memrise.com (check!), Livemocha.com, fsi-languages.yojik.eu, http://www.busuu.com/enc (need to visit the latter 3!)

Challenges

Need to think very carefully about the support and interaction. For digital learners who are using the materials for self-study purposes, need to think about what is missing i.e. the teacher and replicate that role. When we adapt a print page to a digital format, need to think about the teacher’s role and include certain lesson routines within a digital sequence. Need to think about how the lesson will flow – warmers, intros, practice, feedback etc. A good teacher can make a dull lesson come alive, how can digital replicate that? I.e. engage learners. Could be pictures, questions, short video clips with gist questions. You can use a clip for a warmer and then the same clip for a language activity later on.

A successful print lesson has a nice flow, how can this be carried over into digital? Put yourself into the shoes of a learner and sequence the activities so that the learner can do them step by step with opportunities for reflection, repetition, practice and revision. We need to think about how to build into complexity into tasks vis a vis print material. With online materials, the complexity needs to be built in more gradually. As, with print material there is the teacher who is aware of all the students needs and can tailor things if students aren’t getting things as quickly as they should etc. Need to balance cognitive complexity, linguistic complexity and task complexity. Digital material can provide support via hints, useful language boxes and global tools e.g. a dictionary. Scaffolding and sequencing activities properly ensures that students can take control.

Sensitivity to cultural differences needs to be ensured. Publishers will have a list of things to avoid! Genevieve tells us about a prepositions of place unit with items of furniture in a bedroom. Students had to record their voices describing where items were in their room. She had a limited list of items and prepositions. She was getting bored and so did an artists brief with a messy room and things all over the place. It got sent back because in some cultures messy rooms are a no-no! In one brief she put dvds on the bed. Thumbs down. Apparently putting dvds on the bed is dodgy….! Being aware of these issues can save time.

A checklist from Scott Thornbury all about how SLA research can inform edtech.

  • Adaptivity
  • Complexity
  • Input
  • Focus on form
  • FB
  • Interaction
  • Chunks
  • Personalisation
  • Investment
  • Output

Works as a checklist for adapting materials to digital. See Scott’s blog post for detailed explanation. E.g. input should be rich and engaging. Need chunks not just single words. Personalisation is hugely important to bring into digital materials. She says it is not prevalent enough in digital materials.

Task time! Outcomes Pre-Int Unit 2 ‘Shops’ p16-17

We have 8 minutes to look at the activities, identify lang focus, theme etc, and say how we would adapt this digitally for self-study. We need to create a sample which we will be pitching to the rest of the audience. No publishing contract but a prize to be won! It was fun discussing it and then hearing others’ ideas, and it brought us right up to the end of a very interesting session, as well as the first tea break!

 

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Materials Writing SIG Conference Session 5 – Emerging new pedagogies…

Our final session for today (whew…! I am already exhausted!!) is presented by Kirsten Holt and Thom Kiddle, with the title Emerging new pedagogies: should we change the way we design classroom activities?

We started with a pictorial trip through classrooms of the ages and their evolution:

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From rigid and inflexible, through a bit of paper appearing, a bit more paper and flip desks, breaking out of the set format, then in came computers, and tools, but it is all still very teacher led. How much evolution?

We continued with an evolution of tools:

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Cassettes, OHP, electronic pencil sharpener, VHS…. explosion of All The Technology.

We have gone from projection on a screen by teacher, or all students sitting in a lab individually or on a computer at home. The boundaries are all now more blurred. Physical location is much more flexible. Students carry immensely powerful devices with them all the time.

In Japan, for example, you can hover your phone over a page and the characters start talking to you. Blur between print and technology. Augmented reality.

Tension between “no mobile phones in class” and what they could do. What is best practice? Do we know? Or are we swimming wildly in a plethora of potential without really knowing what best practice is nor how to implement it? What do we have to hold on to in terms of principles?

We have principles and pedagogy. John Drury in the early 20th century advocated that student centred learning should be the way forward. He encouraged students to become independent, critical thinkers.

Kirsten suggests it should be learning in a digital world, education in a digital world, teachers in a digital world. Rather than “digital learning” or “digital education” or “digital teachers”.

Online offers potential interaction in a digital space outside the classroom either entirely or in a blend with classroom learning. Boundaries between physical and digital are being removed. There has also been the rise of the flipped classroom. The presentation phase is pushed outside the classroom space, accessed by learners in video or text form as preparation for the in-class follow up. SOLEs have emphasised that the teacher has to add value in the classroom, for it be worth the student coming into class! What does the teacher have to do to add that value to the space?

Thom told us about a project he worked on with teachers working alongside tech guys who said, tell us what you want to do and we will make it happen! It didn’t last. 4 out of 15 things were able to be done. He wanted the teacher trainers to think about what they wanted to do, how it would work in the classroom, and not worry about the tech but what ideally they would like to do, and a few things that came out:

  • Infinite canvas community board: scrolling was a good thing! The screen allows as many comments as necessary. Looks like Padlet. It allows in an online space a snapshot of answers to a particular question. In a flipped space it gives a teacher a snapshot of student opinion on a particular question and know what topics to focus on.  Can also be used to feedback and share group work outcomes with other groups by summarising it on such a screen.
  • Threaded forums based on video content. An initial video is uploaded and then students can reply with microphone or their own video or with text. This was used in a blended programme for students to make short videos of possibilities and limitations of their own teaching contexts.
  • Watching a video that pauses when you comment with a question and it tags the video, and the video continues once you have finished. Your comment then pops up when someone else watches the video and they can respond. This could be used by the teacher to “annotate” a video with questions for the student viewer.

It’s a tool not THE tool. Using technology to embrace learners’ output as input in the classroom.

Kirsten then talked about a model for pedagogy. She compared the usual balance in course books with the experiential model, and wondered if materials give enough opportunity for experimentation:

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Kirsten also mentioned Flipped Classrooms and how out of class work isn’t homework but preparation for maximising learning time and extending what they have done in class:

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She compared it with Task-Based Learning but more extended. And then went on to talk a little bit about how Macmillan English Campus could be used in this kind of Flipped Classroom way, giving as many choices as possible to the students – where students do preparatory activities and then in class the teacher builds on that by facilitating use of the language.

We finished by discussing questions:

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What do YOU think? 🙂

Kirsten also recommended that we have a look at “Tech tools for teachers” on Onestopenglish for tech tools that are not only for fabulous wifi connections!

It was a good session that managed what I thought was impossible: it engaged me enough to make me forget how tired me and my fingers were…

It also brought the MaW SIG conference day to a close. The wrapping up took the form of an open forum discussion, followed by a raffle (I won a book! Happy days!) and then drinks. I scooted off before the drinks because I had to trek back to Sheffield – just as well I did, as it was it was well after 9 by the time I got home!

Thank you to MaW SIG and sponsors Macmillan Education for a great day: am glad I bit the bullet and made the effort to get to London for it!

 

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Materials Writing SIG Conference Session 4 – Writing Skills for Effective 21st Century Materials

After the lunch break, we reconvened with Heather and Julie’s talk on Writing Skills for Effective 21st Century writing.

Julie started by giving us a bit of background into their research over the last few years, explaining that the work informing today’s session continues to build on what they have talked about at past conferences e.g. IATEFL last year.

Materials development should be at the interface of theory and practice but actually it isn’t: it takes a long time before theoretical recommendations can become pedagogically recognised. Findings from conversation analysis could help us to write more natural sounding dialogues, research into pragmatics could help us teach politeness, so there is lots of potential but…

“ELT is not a matter of bridging the gap between theory and practice, but closing it” (Widdowoson, ELTons June 2016).

“With Web 2.0 came technologies that afforded online interaction and user created materials and these altered the authorship paradigm, as well as blurring the line between materials and the tools that produce them. (Mishan and Timmis, 2015, p.79)  – We put lots of things online, we see possibility for communicative interaction between students, but what are we going to do with all of that?

The study

When doing this research, for ‘digital materials’ they took a very broad definition – any materials that use technology in some way. Their methodology involved use of focus groups and individual interviews and spoke to 8 writers and 11 editors/publishers.

Research questions:

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These were used as a springboard for discussion with their participants rather than something rigid to be stuck to. The discussions were very interesting and yielded lots of rich data. We discussed some of the statements drawn out of the data:

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The findings fit into 5 main categories:

  1. Technical differences
  2. Pedagogy
  3. Management of process
  4. Possibilities of digital (this category had more positive things)
  5. Commercial considerations (business issues, marketing issues)

Technical Differences

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First of all, a lot of people talked about working within parameters. Writing to a particular template/brief. There are a limited number of activity types within digital – these tend to be closed activities: drag and drop, gap-fill, matching, YES/NO…  This is also because they tend to be self-study materials so need to be accessible to a student not mediated by a teacher. People also talked about mobile/tablet use and repurposing materials. You might not have long texts but three shorter texts, for example, in order to avoid too much scrolling on the smaller screen.

Mobile items can be quite bare and limited:

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Secondly, often print material is being converted to digital materials, rather than people writing directly for digital. Materials can look the same in the course book as on the screen. However, activities designed for use in the classroom need to be changed to work in a digital format. The issue of feedback provision: What will you say when they provide the right answer? “Yay! You got it right!” vs. “Correct.” and what about when it’s wrong? Are you going to tell them why? If yes, it’s going to be very expensive because all the possible answers and reasons together with feedback would need to be input. So feedback needs to be cost effective. Having a variety of different acceptable answers is great but very expensive. To get around these issues, more sophisticated authoring tools are needed and therefore a lot of investment. The level of the product is low, very basic stuff BECAUSE of the limitation to the closed style questions, for the reasons of cost effectiveness already discussed.

Thirdly, you need to think in great detail about how the student or teacher will use it, what will be there on the screen? What will they need to do? What will be on the screen at the same time? You need to be able to visualise it (which requires experience of using it?). Scrolling issues add to the difficulty of reading comprehension and text length.

Lots of scrolling:

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Finally, you need to think about layout issues. E.g. on a tablet when you tap for the keyboard and it takes up half the screen, will important things be obscured? When you offer the choice of answers, will the answer choices hide the question?!

Layout can be tricky:

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Rubrics also need to be extra clear so that students can access them alone. Fonts need to be sans serif Sego to make it informal in ESOL materials. Colour is also important. Standardisation between publishers in template use would be nice!

Pedagogy

Again, we discussed selected statements from the data:

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Before hearing about the findings:

People were debating the usefulness of digital and what value it adds. Is it just about practice? Receptive skills? But how rich is the input to learners from these materials? Obviously it depends on the particular material but these were some general concerns. It could be useful for lower levels to be able to click on a video and hear instructions again, or hear a recording in shorter chunks as scaffolding. Are the the tasks types and questions too repetitive or do learners like that?

Lesson flow was another issue. Two pages of a coursebook can demonstrate some flow and some understanding of where you are going but if it is divided into 20 screens what happens to that? Feedback is an issue if something is marked wrong but is actually right because there is a stray full-stop, for example. Productive skills can also be problematic, because it is difficult to enable practice speaking or writing through digital materials. Students can record themselves but what do they do with that? What happens to the social aspect of the activity? People learning together and collaborating? Will the cost be increased? There are possibilities such as forums, chat rooms, blogs but the question surrounding all of these activities is that they are quite open activities – is that a problem? Would the learner see it as developmental or be disappointed as not getting a score after spending half an hour in front of their screen? The context of use and how that impacts on pedagogy is important here.

Cognitive load can, it was perceived, make certain listening tasks more difficult. E.g. listen and match/type/tap a box. All the tapping and typing as well focusing on the actual language. Therefore it is important to make the activity cognitively engaging but not the technical aspect of doing the activity!

Tablets and classroom management also came up. If you haven’t taught in a classroom where tablets are being used, then it is difficult to visualise the issues around it. Classroom management is affected – you need to control when the tablets are used and when focus is on teacher. If everyone has a tablet, activities could be differentiated quite easily, according to level or learning style. With listening, will you play it from the front or have students listening individually with headphones. That makes a big difference in how the activity is going to work. There are lots of possibilities to consider – how are they being used but also how COULD they be used?

Student engagement/user experience is important to consider as with some digital materials, there is no teacher to draw students in and engage them. Students might need more changes of focus than in the classroom, where interaction with other students and the teacher helps.

Adaptive learning was also something that came up in the discussions. It needs more thought for it to work properly. Adaptive learning also loses the “flow” mentioned earlier with course-book pages.

Is there too much material? It could be overwhelming but it could be a good thing, differing opinions – also depends on how it is exploited and the quality of the materials. Converting print to digital expands material as you have to build in extra scaffolding. It means that you end up with a huge body of material that can become quite unwieldy to produce and manage. You also have to consider the teacher training element – teachers are not trained to use all tools effectively because they don’t exist everywhere so it can’t be a standard element of ITT.

Finally, how are students actually learning from these products? What are they learning? Is it the most effective way to learn? This needs to considered, both for digital and for print. Why don’t we know? Access to classrooms is difficult for researchers, teachers don’t have time to look at it in detail themselves. End user experience is as important as the content itself. But it also requires longitudinal studies, which have their issues of expense and time and resources.

Some of the criticisms are equally applicable to print materials, if we consider print self-study materials as well. So it’s not just about print vs. digital.

Management of Process

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Time started getting short at this point so we launched directly into hearing about the data:

Delivery – keep it simple, stick to the brief and be aware of the functionality of the software from the outset, as well as the style guidelines. (E.g. 24/7 in print but 24-7 in html). The template developer role is important. In an ideal world, the author would receive a sample unit of examples of activity types so that you could know exactly what you were aiming for and how it would work. It would also help if discussion was possible so you could check if things would work.

The scale of projects is ever more massive. The number of people and volume of material involved is greater than print which was already huge. Yet, schedules are tighter for digital as the student book is produced first but the digital package needs to launch with it on completion (!)

People expect digital to be quicker to produce but it is not so as there is more content required (videos, adaptive learning, assessment criteria). And, of course, the “editorial eye” is just as necessary, even if writers are writing directly into a template. Mistakes can happen and you need someone with an overview to pick up on those, which makes a huge number of screens to check.

In terms of self-publishing, you need to be thinking along the lines of detail required by a publisher’s book proposal form.

Possibilities of Digital

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There are lots of opportunities:

  • Plan Ceibal in Uruguay: Every student has a laptop, and there is the classroom teacher but also a remote teacher. This kind of thing impacts the materials developer role as you need materials for the remote teacher, support for the local teacher, materials that will go on the screens…
  • British Council Nexus Project: Getting lower level learners online. Helping them developing digital literacy, self-confidence and motivation.
  • Gamification – making things into games. Games in the classroom, apps outside the classroom, on laptops… Badges? Levels? Can be motivating.
  • Augmented reality – second life type things, but also writing stories, producing scripts for animation on students’ screens in class (half the class see one thing, half the other).
  • More writing opportunities for freelancers but… the downside is that some of the work is not particularly interesting or challenging, can be quite mechanical and set fees are becoming more common than royalties. Working just for a fee may impact motivation – what is your incentive to go off promoting the product in your time?
  • It can be career enhancing to create online resources. Putting your own things online for people to use can get your name known and lead to other things…

Commercial considerations

<Missed that picture! Going full steam now!>

When publishers talk to customers and do market research, the customer can’t tell them what they want in terms of digital because they don’t really know what’s possible, which makes it difficult for them to articulate what they want and so for publishers to provide. Then there is the issue of predicting the market when technology is always changing, it is difficult to ‘future proof’ digital products. And what if a new game-changer comes out, so your new product suddenly looks dated as it launches? The issues of payment also arose in this category – should authors get royalties? Should the author role be promoted? The community of practice adds value to project, e.g. through the author promoting the product etc.

Conclusions

There is a lot of scope for materials (print and digital) to be more research informed. More research needs to be done into user experience of materials (funnily enough I was reading about this issue a few days ago in the intro to a mats dev book I borrowed from the ELTC library…edit: English Language Teaching Textbooks – Content, Consumption, Production edited by Nigel Harwood and published by Palgrave Macmillan)

A better quality of materials in digital would be good to see, going beyond the ‘workbook feel’, something more satisfying. Perhaps by incorporating different kinds of technology, making use of new possibilities.

Teachers need to be encouraged to research their own classrooms in this area. Training is also needed for how to integrate digital and print in the classroom. It’s really difficult for busy teachers to explore all the digital stuff and work out what would work well together in the classroom in terms of blending the digital and the non-digital.

Heather and Julie recommended How to write for digital media and How to write ESOL materials, both published by ELT Teacher2Writer and finished by showing us their reference list for this talk:

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Another very interesting session with lots of discussion to get our teeth into! During this session I was sitting next to Antonia Clare, so it was really interesting, in the discussion elements, to hear about things from a long-time published author’s perspective.

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Materials Writing SIG Session 3 – Looking after number one

Bev Alderson led the third session of the day. She tells us we will learn about the impact of too much sitting and take away tools/techniques to help counter this. Bev used to work in IT Management – 18 years – and learnt firsthand what it’s like to have a high-pressure desk-bound job. She pushed herself to the point of being very unwell and so life made her stop and learn how to work properly and look at wellness in a different way. She starts with the question “What do I want to achieve? What wellness techniques can I implement to help with that?”

Sitting burns 1 calorie where standing burns 3, sitting compresses digestion and breathing, so nutrients don’t travel so well. The average person spends 9.3hrs a day sitting – watching telly, drive, eat, work etc. This has an impact. Mind and body are in the same vessel, mind gets less oxygenated blood when sitting. It takes 90 seconds of standing for muscular and cellular systems to kick back in. They work purely by taking our bodyweight.

So, one thing we can do is interrupt our sitting. Stand up and move. Scientists reckon sitting for 6hrs a day = smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. However, there are three key things we can do to help:

  1. Ergonomics
  2. Preventing/alleviating symptoms of sitting
  3. Wellness plan

Ergonomics

The human body was designed to move not sit. We need to think about that and how our desk and chair work. Our spine was meant to be straight: Sit closer to your desk and you will sit up straighter. This will also line up shoulders and elbows. If people hunch over their desks for too long, the spine will curve permanently. The head weighs 5kgs. Hence the aches in the shoulders and upper back from incorrect carriage. Ideally have a chair that provides lumbar support to support the spine. A rolled up towel or cushion is an option. Don’t hold the mouse when you are not using it. It pulls your shoulder forward. Don’t cross your legs for too long as the alignment of your hips will go out and the spine will adjust to that and then will continue to do so.

*Being busy slows down pain receptors…

Your arm rests should be adjustable so that they support your arms. A wrist support is also useful. And for your eyes, every now and again look off into the distance then come back, to give your eyes a rest.

Preventing and alleviating symptoms

But even with a perfect sitting position, you still need to MOVE!! So interrupting your sitting is good. Bev showed us a series of exercises which it was very pleasant to do on a day that involved such a lot of sitting still! Below:

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These help to alleviate the structural changes that sitting unfortunately pushes.

Wellness Plan

You decide what to do to recover. What are the few doses of wellness you can do on a regular basis to support body and mind so that it works optimally for us?

What will you do every day?

  • You need to look for ways to move more.
  • Need to be active in moving body position throughout the day.
  • Food is fuel or fun? 80% fuel, 20% fun.
  • 10 minute walks
  • Use a water glass. Keep going to refill it (especially when your room is up two flights of steps…). Keep going to empty your bladder!
  • Do you need to be sat down for all your activities? Can you stand instead? Standing all day is also no good but breaking it up is good.
  • Do something fun every day! A dose of daily wellness! (Hobbies, socialising…)
  • Rest: take breaks.
  • Use breathing exercises to reset nervous system
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Materials Writing SIG Conference Session 1 – Working smarter not harder…

Today, 20th February 2016, is MaW SIG Conference day: New Ways of Working for New Ways of Learning. I have nipped down for the day and the venue is thankfully near to Kings Cross-St Pancras, meaning my train got in from Sheffield at 09.30 and I was in very good time to register before it was due to close at 09.55, having picked up a pot of vegan porridge at Pret for breakfast! (I won’t tell you what time I woke up this morning…)

Rachael Roberts kicked off the day with some introductory remarks. She feels the following quote sums up the push to digital: ‘provides a good sense of what the gold-rush must have felt like – people moving into frontier towns with little idea of what they were getting themselves into’. She went on to say that perhaps now the dust has settled, we can start to look at what is going on and the various impacts digital has had. The sessions today will do that from a variety of  perspectives.

Very quickly it was time for…

Working smarter, not harder: the nine characteristics of the Productivity Ninja (!)

The first session of the MaW SIG one day conference has an exciting title. Time to learn how to be a ninja!

@thinkproductive

#ProductivityNinja

Graham Alcott started his company, Think Productive in 2009. Says he is not a naturally organised kind of person. The inspiration for this business was going from having a very nice team of people around him to suddenly being freelance and being his own boss. You have to be your own boss and responsible for your own productivity and this forced him to ‘get good at it’! His background is in the charity sector but people were interested in the productivity stuff, which is how it all happened. Turns out quite a few people have been on time management courses, not something I could put my hand up for!

Apparently, a lot of time management books tell you to aim for perfection and everything will be fine. Graham says no one does it perfectly, not even the book writers, but we all have something to teach and something to learn with it. He thinks the idea of time management is dead, but attention management is its successor, and it is much more controllable. He has a book called Productivity Ninja.

The rest of the session was spent looking at the characteristics referred to in the session title.

1. “Zen-like calm”:

If you have a deadline, you know you have to focus on something and finish it by a particular time. You are present and in the moment, not thinking about dinner and social plans. Deadlines give you permission to focus. But what about having that sense of focus without having the stress of the deadline? Well, probably most of us don’t feel that way…

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Yet, the mind is for having ideas not holding them. So getting stuff out of your head is key. Hence why writing lists makes you feel better when you have a lot of things to do e.g. pre-going away! Information is raw material. We have moved from the industrial age to the information age. Putting cherries on buns is very predictable, and you know what success looks like. But when we are putting cherries on our own buns, we have to define how big the cake should be, how fast the conveyor belt should go, whether cakes are the way forward or cocktails would be better…

You are simultaneously boss and worker. Neglecting the boss or the worker too much isn’t good for productivity.

2. Ruthlessness

Sounds a bit scary but don’t worry. We are talking to-do lists: are you jumping on it or is it 4pm and you are winding down and you are not feeling capable of engaging with it? We probably have 2-3hrs a day of being able to give full attention to something. So we need to be ruthless with how we deal with those 2-3 hours. That time when you are really switched on. If you manage that time/your attention really well, then the rest of the time doesn’t matter so much. That 2-3 hrs done well means you don’t have to be ruthless about giving away an hour later on for a meeting etc. Not every hour is the same in terms of your resources of attention. Know your hours! Graham was ruthless with Facebook. Gave his password to his wife and got her to change it. This was in order to avoid procrastination. Be ruthless with yourself, know your foibles and temptations. Make it impossible to be distracted when it is your 2-3 productive hours.

3. Weapon-Savvy

Use the tools that are most useful to you, don’t be sucked in by coolness. Your thinking is more important. Psychology before technology. But, the Ninja needs a second brain. To download all the projects and actions we need to remember, that are “off the page” in terms of what we are doing/should be doing in the moment. There are many ways to do this!

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All these apps are cross-platform and you can download app versions on to your tablets etc.

But the task function in Microsoft Outlook works perfectly well too. Graham likes it. As does…pen and paper! Whatever you are comfortable with. It should be useful, not a distraction… A second brain that frees up your own brain to be creative and ‘add value to information’.

Email can be disproportionately stressful for what’s actually in there. You CAN get it to zero and then it’s easy to keep it there rather than let it build up again. It should give you a sense of completion and clarity, I hear. (I won’t tell Graham I have 24, 638 emails across my inboxes…) Apparently a much smaller number are actually “on the plate” or “critical”! (I guess that’s why I ignore the other 24, 630!)

4. Stealth and camouflage

Tactical hiding. The digital age is starting to become more culturally difficult/unacceptable to be unavailable. “Going dark” is the two days before a new piece of software is launched: developers make themselves deliberately unavailable in that period before the deadline. We need to create that. “Write book” on a to-do list won’t happen. You break it down. But it still needs a different level of focus from everything else. How do you get the space to write the book? Graham went to Sri Lanka…! A month of ‘stealth camouflage’. The idea of disconnection and focusing on stuff without the ‘white noise’ of distraction. (No notifications! No social media! No emails! No other people!) You don’t need to book tickets to Sri Lanka to do that. But you need to find your own Sri Lanka. A sense of complete disconnection even just for an hour (I guess ideally for your 2-3 productive hours of the day?!). Can be as simple as “A meeting for one” in the diary – protected time. Often seen as being a luxury, but it is important. Investing an hour off the grid will probably save you a few hours further down the line.

5. Unorthodoxy

Very easy, whether in the publishing world or in your car, to look at the competitors and try to copy them. Instead, try to take inspiration from unusual places. E.g. person who goes to the same set of cafes on a rotating basis, cuts down on making the decision of where to eat: recognising decision fatigue as a barrier to productivity. When you have a story to tell or a point to get across, try to view it through different lens e.g. 5 year old child, my mum etc.

Experiments – Graham did a bunch of productivity experiments. E.g. a month of email Fridays – only checking email on Fridays for a month. A month where any procrastination on decision-making was solved by a throw of the dice. Someone said you get a third of your decisions right, a third wrong and a third don’t matter. The dice-throwing gave momentum to the process. What all of the experiments came down to was playing around with the assumptions of how we work and day-to-day routine. Looking at what you do and flipping that. If you always have email etc. turned on, try having it off. If you walk to work a particular way, go a different way. If you look at email in the morning, do it in the evening. We are creatures of habit but messing with it can be a good thing! Doesn’t have to be as extreme as Graham’s experiments, even little things can have a big impact!

6. Agility

The two-minute rule: if anything can be done in less than two minutes, then when it comes in, do it straight away. You will spend more time putting it on lists etc. otherwise! And it also makes your to-do list more streamlined, so you can see the wood from the trees, if you don’t add every single little thing that you could have just done instead. The same applies to email: it’s very easy to delay responding if it is something a bit annoying but just do it quickly and then it’s done. Then if you have something big going on, when you come back to your to-do list afterwards, it’s easier to cope with, less unwieldy.

Context is king: Have different lists. A phone-calls list; a thinking list etc. Set up lists based on context – where you need to be, who needs to be there. So when you get interrupted, you can use the opportunity to tick things off the list that require that person. To-do lists app usually has “context” or “categories”. Use it! Or, different colours, different sections… (This I can do: I have used different colours on my sticky notes since our session at the ELTC on time savers! 🙂 )

7. Mindfulness

Came out of the time spent with the Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka. Graham asked a monk about mindfulness and how to do it, wanting some kind of app recommendation. The monk said “you just sit”. In 2011, Graham including mindfulness in his book was a risk. Nowadays it’s a buzz word. Graham asks, how often do we experience a sense of presence, of where we are, when we are sitting at work?

Lizard brain – the fight or flight part – is an important friend of ours but also a mortal enemy when it comes to productivity. You can have an amazing to-do list, be really organised and still be really scared of pitching your idea. Writing a book is 20% writing and 80% lizard brain management. Lizard brain wants to avoid risk and blend in, not let you put yourself in a place where you won’t survive. Lizard brain is also very critical, “no, that’s rubbish, don’t do that…”. Acknowledging that that is Lizard brain, not rational brain, is important. As, then you can access logical brain whispering away too…  It won’t go away but you can focus on your morning routines and be mindful about it. By starting your day on the email/FB etc, you are starting your day with everyone else’s priorities, not your own. Make space to think about YOUR day…

8. Preparedness

If you are not a naturally organised person, doing all the folders and colour-coding etc seems pointless. But, to be proactive (that New Year’s Resolution!) you need preparedness and mindfulness. “Preparedness is a service to me in the future” 🙂

You need a way of actively managing what you plan to do.

9. Human, not superhero

Recognise that some of this is difficult and you are human. But if you manage your productivity well, you can LOOK like a superhero. Although you are still a human being, no magical powers. There is no secret source or shortcut, you need to do simple things consistently and well. You’ll still screw up but that’s ok. Human beings and ninjas recognise that wrapped up in the culture that we have of need to succeed and be super-heros is failure and guilt about failure. Let it go.

Periodically, have a done list! Have a point to celebrate success. Lists are usually about the past (not done yet…) or the future (needs to be done by Friday, eek!). Looking at what is done is a way to be in the present moment.

The secret to success (according to somebody who’s name I lost!) is “Send thank you cards and book theatre tickets” – As a human being, recognising human connections is important. Say thank you. Book theatre tickets – gives you a constraint. If at 3 you know you are going to the theatre at 7.30, you have a constrained window to complete everything. Life deadlines help you manage the transition between work and life rather than letting work take over.

Graham finished by inviting us to choose one thing to change and do something physical with it (put it on a list…) so that you actually try and do it! I think for me it will be the “disconnect” one (‘Go dark’), to avoid the self-distraction undertaken to avoid having to think! (To quote one of the audience members who also wants to try the “disconnect” one.) I am self-distraction queen sometimes so this should be good. My proactive attention time is definitely first thing in the morning. I was good at using that when I was doing my M.A. – maybe it’s time to get it back! I also want to get back in the habit of starting the day with yoga rather than computer! (I did this morning 🙂 )

The most important gift you can give someone is not your time but your attention – thank you for yours: a lovely ending to the session. 🙂

Little question for my readers: Of all of these tips, which do you think you would want to implement or experiment with in YOUR life?

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Materials Writing SIG Conference Session 2 – Working in a digital space

The second session of the morning is by Antonia Clare, co-author of Speak Out. (Also Total English, ELT Writers Connected and Free and Fair ELT – I picked Speak Out  as that is what comes to mind first when I see her name…) She says she has been writing materials for a scarily long time – when she started, the internet existed but she didn’t have access to it. She would go to the library with a notebook in hunt of texts. She wrote with J.J. Wilson – he would provide lunch, she would travel there and supply the computer. They would submit drafts, then they would wait three months, do life stuff, and then receive the drafts back with red pen all over them. Every now and again, a writer would come to her school but other than that or the odd publishing event, no day-to-day conversation with other writers.

The first question is what has changed since YOU started writing? (My answer is quite short given I have only just started… 😉 )

For Antonia, the existence of the collaborative coffee shop – even in Norfolk! She doesn’t need to lug heavy reference works and dictionaries around. She can be in touch with co-writers over the world. She also notes the following changes with the move to digital:

  • less paper, a lot more screen time
  • in the last few years, more online collaboration than face to face
  • content and skills have changed – more multimedia content, and the skill set needed therefore has also changed: need awareness of different tools and apps
  • expectations (deadlines – no more three months between drafts! weekly deadlines not uncommon, small chunks of material rather than whole drafts of books; payment – no more royalties mostly; the role of writer has also changed – more to come on this)

According to the title of a Times Higher Ed article, “Everyone’s a winner in this digital space”. This title struck Antonia as this is the narrative we often hear in relation to digital – it’s better, smarter etc than old ways. In education, in publishing, in business, in government. Need to take a step back and look at that critically. Are we being snake-charmed? Or can we really add value to what we are doing, if so, how?

Online collaboration

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What struck Antonia – average office worker checks emails 36times an hr. 9hrs a week is used searching for information. More than a billion people using Facebook so we are all accustomed to new streams and other such tools, so such elements appear in online collaborative tools. The tools that production companies use for online collaboration will also generally integrate with well-known tools like Google drive.

Antonia gets up, does her work, reaches the point of no more for today, sends it to J.J. in New Mexico who is just getting up, and goes to get her kids from school etc, while he has a look and sends it back with his thoughts ready for the next day.

She reckons that it offers us opportunities and makes us keep learning, which is motivating.

A couple of projects that have grown from coffee house conversations that Antonia has worked on

Some others she is aware of:

  • The MaW SIG e-book
  • ELT teacher2writer – database for writers and publishers; series of e-books with tips on writing materials in its different aspects
  • iTDi.pro – online teacher training, for teachers by teachers
  • The Round – founded by Lindsay Clandfield and Luke Meddings
  • TEFL Commute – podcasts for English Language Teachers
  • PARSNIPS – some ss want to address taboo issues, so a group of teachers came together and wrote a set of lesson plans dealing with each of these issues.

So, lots of exciting, innovative projects going on as a result of talking – online, at conferences, in coffee shops real and virtual.

Collaboration tools

  • Dropbox
  • Google Docs/Drive (for sharing and editing docs)
  • Skype (useful for regular talks with co-authors)
  • Slack (you can set up channels for different projects, discussion and file sharing; cuts down on emails!)
  • Google Hangouts (For a Skype-like conversation with too many people for Skype)
  • Trello (for keeping tags on how a project is developing)

These can be useful for the sort of projects referred to above.

Publisher Content Management Systems (CMS)

These are huge spaces for documents relevant to a given project to be shared. Useful, tricky when the system goes down, difficult to access from a beach (if you need to work while you are on holiday – those weekly deadlines). Antonia doesn’t want to give the lesson plan to Pearson/the system before it has been back and forth between her and J.J. so she arranged to download it, do the back-and-forth then upload it at the end of that in time for the deadline.

Antonia’s Concerns

  1. virtual distance
  2. content control
  3. screen time

1. Technological interaction is replacing face to face interaction. And there is a lack of ‘depth perception’. Collaboration is more than passing data backwards and forwards. It is achieved through ongoing, meaningful discussions. Relationships. Antonia thinks online collaboration should be supplementary to face to face interaction, not a replacement.

2.Antonia thinks content should be an important driver of how the material is delivered, rather than the how dominating. The process is all separated out into components – needs to come together more. She thinks the future is being part of a collaborative learning community.

3. We spend too much time in front of our screens. We needs to find ways to get up and do something different. Stretch, shake, move, walk, play the piano, 10 minute burst of housework, weed the garden, eat goji berries, swim, shift device/medium, meditate for a minute, go and get a drink and don’t take it back to the computer, do something else while you drink it, take an hour for lunch… (How lovely – Antonia had us doing the twist like we did last summer! 🙂 )

We need to be savvy, careful and not lose sight of the content, then there is the opportunity for all to win.