Microsoft Innovation Award
Making a Meal of…
Mr Stephen Collis
FULL TIME FRENCH TEACHER
(+English Teacher)
…Addicted to Innovation
I almost hope the Microsoft award offers ‘Innovators Anonymous’ meetings to help me crack the habit!
I’m an innovation-oholic.
NOTE:
I HAVE ESTABLISHED A TEMPORARY LOG IN FOR YOU TO LOG IN TO THE BEYOND BORDERS WEBSITE
GO TO:
TYPE INUSERNAME: microsoft
PASSWORD: itpractical
Today’s Menu:
An aperitif:
…….. Who I am
An entrée:
…….. A profile of my school and my general use of IT.
*** The Main Course ***
……..My website facilitating online student communities “Beyond Borders”
Dessert:
…….. My vision for Beyond Borders
Coffee:
…….. Spreading the word, building the network.
Your Aperitif
<Who am I?>
Stephen Collis meets a computer:
-discovered computers aged 10 (1985) via a ‘ZX Spectrum’ dad brought home. I typed ‘CTRL+BREAK’ and then ‘LIST’ to get into the BASIC code of a game. Picture my wide eyes, fascinated! The rest was history.
Almost went into programming:
-Despite a degree in teaching (not IT), I worked for Tricon Restaurants for 3 months creating them an Microsoft Access database.
-My love of people trumped my love of technology and I became a teacher.
Call me…
Myers Briggs type: ENFJ, extroverted, persuasive, diplomat.
Internet addict
MMORPG-player
Book-worm
Song-writer/singer
Hopelessly Christian
Lover of languages (and my lover, Mrs Collis, teaches languages too!)
Finally, I am equally stunned by two things:
-the choosing by schools/teachers of technologies that are not worth their while (no wonder they are discouraged and give up).
-the untapped potential of efficient, practical use of technology to achieve real outcomes while saving time.
Entrée
<My school and my general innovations…>
Strongly Supported by my School:
-My school is extremely supportive of innovative projects
-It has set up the name ‘the Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning’ to help innovative staff engage in the wider educational community, and to support staff in their innovative ideas.
-The Executive of the school has consistently given me room (and encouragement & practical help) to take initiative in going in new directions.
Quick growth in elective French students:
I must be doing something right:
-Student uptake of French has skyrocketed since I joined the school 5 years ago. In fact, this year French was the most popular elective amongst Year 9 and 10 students.
-All my HSC students thus far have achieved a Band 5 or 6.
School Equipment and my Habits:
-Most of our classrooms have a digital projector, speakers and live internet connections.
-I use PowerPoint every lesson, and save the PowerPoint files systematically for use in future years.
-Our school has an array of digital still cameras and digital video cameras. I’ve used these to great effect, especially in promoting the study of languages to the student community.
-Our school has monitors up around the school and I’ve submitted a range of video files of my classes that play on repeat (with other announcements) so that other students can see what fun we’re having.
-We use ‘Moodle’ as an LMS. See below for my uses of it.
Pioneering use of Wikis, ‘Workshops’, and Audacity.
Wikis
Our school’s LMS has a wiki facility.
-I developed a range of activities for language students with wikis.
‘Workshops’
Another feature of our LMS:
-students submit work
-the system redistributes that work to the student’s peers for feedback
-Fantastic for giving students insight into the marking process – I use them regularly.
Audacity
-Free software that allows voice recording, editing, and can export to MP3 format.
-Turns a computer room into a language lab!
-Allows creation of fun ‘radio plays’ in the target language, the use of voicemail over email, asynchronous debates/discussions.
Desperate to ‘Spread the Word’ about technology:
-At school I help my colleagues tap the potential of all these technologies.
-I’ve taught colleagues across Sydney to use them through presentations at Professional Development events.
-I presented their use at the New Zealand Association of Language Teachers annual conference 2006.
-These technologies have uses that go WELL BEYOND language teaching!
-I would find it profoundly satisfying to have further opportunities to dialogue with the international education community.
Teaching French as an entirely online course in 2007:
Interactive
Next year I will be teaching HSC French courses entirely online. Online education is nothing new, although I believe our school is breaking ground in offering online HSC courses, but the challenge of language courses is that they need to be interactive, because language is interactive.
Online Resources and Videoconferencing:
Not only will my online students have access to online MP3 and PDF resources, audio and video lectures, online PowerPoints, quizzes and activities, they will also take part in face to face lessons using videoconferencing (Paltalk) for about 2 hours a week. Finding a viable videoconferencing solution was a major challenge, especially balancing quality with pricing, but Paltalk works well and is relatively inexpensive. I’ll be advertising the French course online using Google ads, and I hope to pick up some publicity through newspapers.
Your Main Course: Beyond Borders
However, my main project has been the development of the online collaboration and communication website ‘Beyond Borders’.
History of Beyond Borders:
In 2005 my school Principal, Stephen Harris, reported back from a trip to Europe about ‘WKTO’. (
The idea of ‘WKTO’, pioneered by Mr Bernard Garcin in France, is that students from different schools share a virtual workspace online, and work in ‘virtual classes’, using a particular language to communicate.
We had been awarded some money from the AIS for language teaching innovation. Mr Harris suggested to me that I establish a ‘Southern Hemisphere’ version of WKTO.
So, I created ‘Beyond Borders’ in term 4, 2005. I thought the name was right, given the power of the Internet to transcend language and culture. The IT staff installed the software ‘Moodle’ on the school’s server for me, which I then set up and developed. ‘Moodle’ is a highly customisable ‘LMS’. My thanks to Mr David Harris who has often helped me discover the potential of ‘Moodle’ and troubleshoot technical problems.
A word about ‘duty of care’:
It was absolutely critical that Beyond Borders be a safe online environment. This was achieved by:
-only enrolling students when their teacher is in contact with me.
-having a teacher at the local school accept ‘duty of care’ for their students, by logging in on a regular basis and monitoring communications.
-password locking the website, and only allowing students access to their particular project area.
-having students agree to the ‘Beyond Borders Charter’ before they can be enrolled. The Charter specifies, among a number of things, that students communicate with extreme sensitivity, and never give out private information, including their surname, email address, or photos of themselves.
Reflecting about this: the Internet is so powerful and yet an untamed & dangerous place. Educators need safe online spaces for their students.
Beyond Borders ‘Pilot Project’, Term 4 2005:
I recruited 7 schools from NSW and Victoria. They contributed 4 students each. We had two ‘virtual classes’ working to a highly structured project:
-every student had a role
-there were set deadlines and tasks
See the Beyond Borders ‘manual’ to see the structures used in the project. It was a great success, but high maintenance.
I simply don’t believe in high maintenance IT projects. Most teachers don’t have the time to sustain them. Revolutionary technology will catch easily from teacher to teacher due to its natural effectiveness.
Beyond Borders Re-Invented, 2006:
So I envisaged a ‘funnel’ method for Beyond Borders:
#1 Make it is as easy as possible to join and be involved.
#2 Adapt to the improvised rhythm of teaching, by making Beyond Borders deliberately ‘improvised’.
This has proved to be an extremely successful path. Emergent behaviour is manifesting itself in Beyond Borders. Teachers or students take initiative to stimulate online dialogue, collaboration, and the showcasing of work and everyone benefits.
In language subjects, a teacher might direct students to post an email to their forum on a particular topic, or to post a story, or to engage in a debate, or swap opinions. This might be set as homework, and the students are more motivated because they know they have an international audience of peers, that goes well beyond the ‘teacher’.
Beyond Borders infrastructure and tools:
Students log in to the website at with a username and password, and then go to their project area of the website, where they can use the following tools:
-an email forum
-a live text chat facility
-a wiki (that any student from the project can alter or revert)
-a blog (a blog for each student)
-a voicemail system (students attach MP3s of themselves speaking)
-a live audio chat system (using ‘Teamspeak’) running from our school’s server.
More than just an e-mail exchange!
The voicemail and VOIP audio conferencing system are recent developments, which came about after I discovered, respectively, ‘Audacity’ and ‘Teamspeak’ software.
‘Audacity’ allows students to record themselves using a headset, layer and edit the sound, and save the recording as an MP3. My students have recorded rap songs in French, and ‘radio plays’ which they then post online at Beyond Borders for other community members from around the world to listen to.
I discovered ‘Teamspeak’ while Internet gaming, and dreamt of including it as a Beyond Borders facility. The IT staff were supportive of the idea and installed it on our server. So now students can log in to the server at any time 24/7 and chat live with each other using a headset. Here are some applications:
-a live ‘debate’ involving students from around the world.
-Regular language practice each week in pairs (e.g. Australian student with a French student) or groups
-Monthly moderated international audio ‘forums’.
Growing Success of Beyond Borders among Students and Teachers:
Many of my French students have been logging in on a Saturday night to text chat live with native French speakers who are in France.
My French students have written & recorded witty ‘radio plays’ for the entertainment of students in New Zealand, Japan, the Cook Islands and France.
All my assessment tasks this term will involve dialogue via Beyond Borders and the establishment of student blogs.
Beyond Borders is still very young, but is growing very rapidly. There are currently no less than 23 online communities set up on the Beyond Borders website, operating in English, French, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Italian and German, and catering for Beginners to Advancedstudents. Not all these communities are active, many of them have been set up in anticipation of an influx of students from New Zealand after my presentation at their language teacher’s conference.
Thirty three teachers have joined Beyond Borders. We currently have about 160 recently active participants, but I am expecting that to jump to at least 300 in the next couple of months.
Dessert: My Vision for Beyond Borders:
My vision for Beyond Borders goes beyond language students and I am in collaborative discussions with my Principal right now about my ideas.
Beyond Languages:
Students of other subjects can greatly benefit from online collaboration. I’ve recruited an English teacher, a HSIE teacher and a Visual Arts teacher from my school and have set up project areas for them. The English literature discussion group, fondly entitled ‘Book out, here we come!’ is flourishing, particularly since I recruited students in France who are studying English literature to join the discussion. Upcoming plans include an online ‘debate via voicemail’ between my school and another Sydney school.
New Technologies:
Videoconferencing:
-still rather pricey, I am on the cusp of spending some grant money on a dedicated ‘Paltalk’ videoconferencing channel for a year.
3D Online Educational Virtual World:
-there are heaps of these already around the Internet, the most notorious being ‘Second Life’. ‘Active Worlds’ allows the creation of a wide variety of 3D graphical online environments and they’re already being used in education:
-closer to home, there’s this attempt using “enCore” GLU software:
-I intend to create a 3D environment that will replace Beyond Border’s chat system (this is easier than it sounds). Who knows where that might lead?
E-portfolios:
-allow each student to establish an e-portfolio on Beyond Borders
Online Resource-Exchange Service for Teachers:
-there will be an area of Beyond Borders to log in to and select their subject area, and either upload or download their home-made resources under subject-specific categories.
Coffee (or Port):
<Spreading the Word, Building the Network>
For the moment, I am putting time into getting the word out to teachers, through whatever contacts I have, that ‘Beyond Borders’ is:
-available,
-absolutely free,
-provides a safe, locked, and moderated environment for students,
-with little effort from the teacher.
Our world needs global and cross-cultural understanding. Language, combined with the Internet, offers a wonderful recipe for students to gain that understanding.