Over the last couple of years e-learning has been a hot topic. If you did not have some sort of e-learning environment in your school you were thought to be old-style. However when the publishers of textbooks discovered the internet they began by translating their textbook in a digital form. This has no added value what so ever and stopped many teachers interest and use of ict. Luckily by now environments exist that are not carbon copies of textbooks.

What I would like for this topic is a discussion on the use of the various environments (which one is good and why) and to esthablish some form of defenition of e-learning. Of course any other thought on the topic are more than welcome.

The “e” stands for “electronic”, but it tends to be understood as “electronic” in the narrower sense of ICT rather than including, for example, television, VCRs, DVD-Video players, etc. The DfES in the UK defines e-learning thus: “If someone is learning in a way that uses information and communication technologies (ICTs), they are doing e-learning.” Unfortunately, the “e” has been too closely associated with distance learning rather than using ICT in general. So in some people’s minds e-learning means using the Web in distance learning mode – which is just one of its manifestations.

Marco is quite right in saying that many publishers have just translated their textbooks into digital format. This is not what e-learning is all about. As a teacher of modern foreign languages I – like most of my colleagues – have never relied entirely on textbooks. In my earliest days as a language learner in the 1950s I was aware of the importance of audio media: I had access only to a radio, a record player and a reel-to-reel tape recorder at the time, but they were extremely useful. By the time I became a teacher in the 1960s we had TV, VCRs and audio-active-comparative (AAC) tape recorders that were capable of presenting a native speaker model for the learner to respond to, i.e. recording his/her own voice and playing it back without erasing the original audio track. In other words, as a learner and teacher of modern languages I have been a user of multimedia for around 50 years.

When affordable microcomputers appeared in the late 1970s they were silent – a frustration for language teachers – and we had to wait around 10 years for proper multimedia computers to appear. Wonderful! All the media that we had used in separate formats were now rolled into one, including AAC facilities (so-called “virtual language labs”). Then in the 1990s the Web appeared – more frustration, as it could not deliver high-quality sound and video. The sound was fuzzy, and the video clips were of postage-stamp size and continually hiccuped. Video on CD-ROM was not much better than video on the Web, but the sound quality on CD-ROM was superb. The big breakthrough in video came with the advent of new formats such as MPEG, and now DVD-Videos and DVD-ROMs offer excellent quality video.

Video quality on the Web is still a problem. Language teachers have got used to using high-quality video, drawing on foreign language broadcasts via satellite TV, and now we have DVD-Videos and DVD-ROMs that offer high-quality video with varying possibilities of interaction, including useful facilities such as switching subtitles on and off – an excellent aid for language teachers – and slotting one’s own voice into role-plays. But look at most of the websites that offer video broadcasts, e.g. the BBC, TV5 and Deutsche Welle, and the quality is, frankly, poor. I access BBCi on broadband, and it’s still not up to the standard that I need for teaching. It hiccups at peak times and the screen is too small. Now that I am used to crystal-clear digital TV at home – with an increasing degree of interaction – I expect much better than this. And I still find the Web frustrating insofar as I have not yet seen a website that offers AAC exercises, which are a feature of many CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs.

For examples of what can be done in a Web environment see LeLoup J. & Ponterio R. (2003) "Interactive and multimedia techniques in online language lessons: a sampler", Language Learning and Technology 7, 3: http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num3/net/default.html. It's an interesting collection of materials, but almost everything illustrated here could be implemented better and with more spontaneous interaction in an offline environment, e.g. on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.

To summarise the main point of this little historical excursion, it appears that every technological leap forward has been accompanied by a technological leap backwards. If you embrace the new technology 100% and reject the old you end up making pedagogical compromises. As a teacher, I refuse to make pedagogical compromises. I use those aspects of new technologies that offer something genuinely new and useful and continue to use older technologies until the new technologies catch up. E-learning still has a lot of catching up to do, and the Web is not the panacea.

Thank you for this historical excursion. being an historian myself i can always appreciate those

I agree that we should have a mixture between old and new pedagogical styles. Why use something new when the old is working good? However there is a need for e-learning in the broadest sense . For me I never realised that vcr's etc were also part of e-learning. So I am one of those people who tend to look at the narrower view

Do you know of one environment that works satisfactory? eg perhaps Blackboard?

I am familar with Blackboard and with WebCT. Frankly, I don't like either environment. I find both environments too cumbersome for the average learner at school. They may be OK in a business environment or a university, however, where the trainees/students have access to good technical support. I favour something much simpler: a bank of resources that can be downloaded and used by teachers in the classroom. These may include worksheets that that can printed off or interactive multimedia materials that can be used either in online or offline mode. The powers-that-be are making e-learning too complicated.

Again i agree with you. My colleagues in the economics department have designed their own website with resources and worksheets and that works very well! Simple and easy to use. For them eg there is absolutely no need for complicated environments as eg blackboard. i feel that at the moment many teachers are on the way of developing their own 'environments'. Perhaps that is the way to go?

Reading bulletin boards is so much like being the office worker at the Nurses' social gatherings. There are so many subject specific words and language as to exclude yet encourage a foreigner. Although I recognise that this is a British education initiative, as a non-Brit I want to learn.
I always enjoy Graham's comments (having been a sleeper on a MFL list for some time.) But I actually still have access to a "blackboard" with chalk and think it has merit. One thing I miss with the electronic age is the immediacy of blackboarding interesting ideas (spelling even) and asking students to add comments. As yet I haven't found an electronic way to do this.

As for DVDs I am frustrated by their inablilty to fast forward to the exact section I want, to play back more than once and to allow me to do the things I could do with my VCR.

Are British schools so well resourced that all students can access a computer every lesson? The site I work at at the moment is encouraging web based lessons, but we have 5 computers for each secondary class of 25 plus. Even word processing is an adventure.

One last question, "What is ofsted?" please?

Also I completed a university unit using Web Ct and can not speak strongly enough if its inadequacies. It was sterile, unfriendly, hard to navigate and BORING. Sorry. I am now challenged to find a better solution. I have been using an intranet system with my students with an email response. I write a message and all respond.
As a teacher librarian, as well I have an email system where students ask for help with research topics by email. I reply and really use it to make face to face contact. But at least I am forwarned as to what the student is trying to find.

Of course the old style blackboard has merit, i use a whiteboard and do not think i can teach without!!!

My biggest 'frustration'with dvd is the fact that you cannot stop them at a certain point and then resum watching some days later, as one can with videocassettes. Not good for the cassette but very good for the user

Can you perhaps elaborate some more on the system you use with your students (in tranet/email)? Do you eg also use a website?

My DVD player - a Philips bought around two years ago - remembers where I left off. I can select Resume from the menu or select a specific scene to jump to.



I have retired from teaching. I got fed up with increasing bureaucracy and management interference. My last job was a university language centre director. I accepted an early retirement package in 1993 - a golden handshake and an inflation-related pension for life. Now I just do free-lance ICT training and occasional consultancy work. I manage two websites:
http://www.ict4lt.org - ICT training materials for language teachers
http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk - my business partnership
My CV at at: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/cvgd.htm

I'll be taking a two-week skiing holiday in St Johann in Tirol, Austria, from the end of this week. That's one of the joys of early retirement!

How about the electronic whiteboard? See:
http://www.thereviewproject.org
http://www.g2fl.greenwich.gov.uk/temp/whiteboards



My DVD player - a Philips bought around two years ago - can do all of this and more. I can pinpoint a precise section, slow it down, freeze it, play it backwards, etc, and jump to any scene anywhere on the disk instantly. I can also switch subtitles (translations or closed captions) on and off.

Are British schools so well resourced that all students can access a computer every lesson? The site I work at at the moment is encouraging web based lessons, but we have 5 computers for each secondary class of 25 plus.What is OFSTED?[QUOTE]

It the Office for Standards in Education, a government-appointed inspectorate that acts as a watchdog on education: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk

Well i also own a philips, bought one year ago and that one has non of the possibilities you mentioned! Perhaps I bought a wrong one?

Enjoy your holiday!!!

I just bought the cheapest one offered by the the local discount store - bearing a brand name that I recognised. It took me a lot of searching through the manual to find out how to do all the different things, however - there's too much choice. The main problem I find with DVD players is that you have one set of controls that relate to every DVD - i.e. the player controls such as being able to jump to a title/chapter, playing fast forward, freezing frames, etc - and then you have a different set of controls that are related to each individual disc. You thus have a different navigation system for each disc, and this can be very eccentric! I bought the first part of Lord of the Rings at Christmas 2002, and I am still trying to work out its navigation system!

Sorry to disturb the discussion on the merits of various DVD players but the pressure at the moment seem to be for schools to purchase a VLE. Having had a year with Digital Brain - I can make some observations but these can wait until tomorrow. It is getting late and to quote the mp3 I have just listened to - tonight the bottle let me down. Not really relevant but a nice tune

[/QUOTE]Sorry to disturb the discussion on the merits of various DVD players but the pressure at the moment seem to be for schools to purchase a VLE. [QUOTE]

Yes. sad isn't it? Who needs a VLE? Looking at what's going on in some of the schools that I have visited, I think they need a VLE like a hole in the head.

What is a vle?

Thanks Marco. Yes what is a VLE?

Perhaps they mean Virtual Learning Environment? If that is the case I agree that schools can do better without. It cost a lot of money and you can achieve the same in using your own intranet and soem additional website.

I assumed it meant Virtual Learning Environment, such as Blackboard and WebCT -and I agree with Marco! VLEs in a school situation are a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Universities and larger businesses can probably afford to set them up and maintain them. What schools need are more websites that offer quality, downloadable resources that can be used in the classroom, e.g. on an interactive whiteboard or as interactive learning material in a computer lab.

My subject area is MFL. Do we really want to set up whole university courses in VLEs? Do we really want to deprive young people of the valuable experience of leaving home, studying and socialising with their peers, joining societies, going to clubs and parties, travelling, and falling in love? Do we really want to breed a generation of screen-gazing zombies? And who is going to employ someone who has obtained an e-languages degree? Most employers expect a languages graduate to have had many hours of face-to-face contact with native speakers and, preferably, to have spent a substantial period of residence abroad. See David Noble's excellent series of articles:
Noble D. (1997-2001) "Distance Education on the Web", a series of five articles: http://communication.ucsd.edu/dl
Noble writes:
(Part I of the above series)

I didn't know what a VLE was either and I found this information on the JISC website JISC - VLE information



Looking at these lists it seems that many of us are already doing most of this already using simple systems already present in schools a colleges. I can't see anything which couldn't be done using Blackboard, and most of it could be done much more simply using MS Office tools. It seems like the educational equivalent of a "home entertainment system" which just bundles everything together.

Sometimes distance learning is an excellent way to share ideas and learn without having to waste time travelling. These types of software could help a tutor to deliver a course to people spread across the world but not in a school or college.

Have I missed the point of VLEs? Does anyone see a real advantage in them?

Refering back to the original question


I would be very interested to read views, and examples, of how e-learning might improve student's learning experience. I'd like to think beyond the website of worksheets if we can. Could peer-to-peer technology help teachers share resources more effectively. How is e-learning helping students to become better prepared for their lives. What are the best innovative ways educators have started using the technology currently available. What are the "competences" which can be well taught using e-learning? Is there any research to show topics that e-learning is definately not good for? (mmm.....perhaps conversational German for example....althought using a little headset and a platform called Interwise I took part in a live discussion with group of teachers in 7 countries from the comfort of my own desk, quite successfully as part of eSchola 2002...so I'm not entirely sure about that.)

Of course! And, as I have argued in another part of this forum, the British Open University has an excellent track record in delivering distance learning, my wife Sally being a prime example of a "failed" school leaver who ended up with a good OU degree comprising elements of English Literature, Sociology, History and Philosophy.

I am puzzled by the way in which some universities are setting up VLEs and what they aim to achieve. A group of German universities have set up a VLE for students of linguistics - students who are physically present at the universities in question, so I am not sure what real advantages such a VLE offers. Professor Dieter Wolff talked about the VLE in his EUROCALL 2003 keynote (http://www.eurocall-languages.org). If I remember correctly, Dieter indicated that many students liked the idea of being to access all the teaching materials in one place, but many said that they would prefer to be able to print out the materials rather than read them on screen. A substantial number, however, said that they preferred the spontaneity of debate that arose in a normal classroom and the ability to question their tutors on the spot. Dieter Wolff writes in his abstract:



You can learn German via the Web. I am a former teacher of German and recently contributed to the BBC German Steps course at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/lj

And, of course, you can converse via the Web with native speakers in other countries in synchronous mode using a variety of different audio and videoconferencing systems or in asynchronous mode using Wimba (http://www.wimba.com). But even the BBC could not come up with a solution to the problem of recording and playing back one's own voice in a Web environment - it's extremely useful to hear how one really sounds - so in German Steps we ended up inviting the learner to speak to the screen without the possibility of recording and playing back - which is a standard feature of most multimedia CD-ROMs for language learners, e.g. Eurotalk's "Talk Now" series and Auralog's "Talk to Me" and "Tell Me More" series.

Nothing, however, can replace the experience of learning the language in the country where it is spoken, enjoying the local food, wine and beer, and chatting with the locals - and this is exactly what I am going to do as from Sat 10 Jan, when I set off for two weeks'skiing in the Austrian Tyrol. This is therefore my last message for a while...

No, well perhaps one.

At this moment my school is adopting the idea natural learning. Within this concept we have abolished subjects as a whole. In short; students do something we call achievements. During one of those achievements the students uses every necessary skill to complete and pass the achievement. If knowledge is necessary the student will go and look for it because the students experiences the need for that knowledge.

For this argument it is important to note that if you have no subject the old-style grade system is no longer useful. Therefore we needed to come up with something completely different. We called it a portfolio.

Perhaps, and this is a big perhaps, a vle can play a role in this. Eg as a online portfolio or storage system. As i am writing this i realise that my original point still stands, all this can also be achieved by using intranet and websites!

But it sure makes the organizing easier!

VLE - Virtual Learning Environment.

The one we were using can be found at

http://www.digitalbrain.com

This is not a recommendation or a condemnation

What do you see as the advantages and disadvantges of this vle?

My school participated in a trial run of one VLE model two years ago. 3 of us, all of whom run websites, went on a 5 day course learning how to set things up, create activities that were compatible etc. The only advantage any of us could see in the software when compared to activities already online, was that scores were recorded and could be manipulated in a variety of ways. However the time taken to set up these activities was much greater than it would be to create a decent decision making game, investigation lesson or series of tasks with open ended outcomes. The marking facility could only test recall of knowledge. Fine for revision purposes but hardly what is needed in day to day teaching and learning. In short, the VLE was an extremely expensive waste of money. None of the learning functions of this model were any better than things that can be found online free of charge and the recording systems were little better than those available on things such as mygradebook.com. Also, it was an extremely complicated system, the vast majority of our staff, who are fairly well versed in ICT things, couldn't understand the lesson creating tools, nor did they have the time to create.

The only benefit that we have seen from this form of E Learning has been with our Post 16 students. We have a joint Sixth form with another local school and the communication tools make life a lot easier. That said, it was obvious that this function could be fulfilled free of charge via e-mail lists provided by smartgroups.com or yahoogroups and the message board facility seemed a rather silly expense given that there are umpteen free providers of forums: invisionfree.com being the free version of the software powering this forum.

The authorities would be much better off creating LEA sites that guided teachers to available online resources and lessons, had central message boards and forums that could be used for collaborative projects and central e-mailing systems so that staff across an authority could communicate. If advisors collected materisls from schools there would then be a central spo from which people could grab resources. Cheap, saves time, enables online collaboration with neighbouring schools and doesn't waste time or money on pointless thrills that benefit nobody. All you'd have to do is teach people how to log on...

That sounds a lot like an EUN community. I have been using two myself and from an administrator viewpoint it works. Yes i know that the software they used to use was archaic, but this has changed recently!

One question; what does LEA stand for?

In the Netherlands we have a program called Wintoets that can achieve just that!

Wintoets homepage

LEA - Local Education Authority

Just a thought - given the international flavour of the forum, would it be worth having a guide to educational terminology somewhere on the forum? Many of the things that teachers take for granted are unique to one countries education system afterall.

Good idea! Perhaps we`can start one here?

First, I'll introduce myself, I'm Eric Perlberg and I'm the Director of ASW2, the first UK school to offer A levels entirely online and soon we'll be offering the IB online. I was a classroom teacher for 30 years (USA, Switzerland, UK) previous to starting and directing the ASW2 project (short for A School Without Walls, a term coined by the radical educator Ivan Illich). The project has been totally funded by Southbank International School in London.

E-learning has the power to really radically alter the ways we learn. But not in the way generally talked about in the media (replacing teachers, boring, mechanistic style programmed learning, etc). For starters, you might want to read work done by the Pew Symposia on learner centered programmes based on high-quality, interactive learningware, asynchronous and synchronous conversations, and individualized mentoring available here (http://www.center.rpi.edu/PewSym/Mono4.html) . These ideas lie at the heart of ASW2.

Additionally, for certain population groups interactive (ie with a tutor) e-learning would bring a big improvement for example
1) students who have severe restricted mobility issues like hospitalised students and prisoners
2) students who are statistically low in number and geographically dispersed like high maths students and "gifted and talented"
3) students in very remote areas
4) young professionals who are constantly on the move like youth league football players
5) mature students who work but want to learn (we get a lot of these at ASW2)
6) in certain cases, where there are teacher shortages, an online class is far better than no instruction at all. And I don't want to imply that online learning is not as good as face to face learning because for motivated students, it is and there's a growing body of research to support this.

Equally, blended learning or the use of elearning tools in the context of traditional classrooms can also be very useful (and remember, we don't need a computer for every student in every classroom, more and more students these days already have a computer at home)

1) streaming videos of, for example, science demonstrations or working through maths algorythms available over the internet could be accessed by students who were absent on the day they were demonstrated or taught or used for revision
2) databanks of lessons on syllabus topics geared for different ability levels, available online could support what teachers have taught during the day when students are struggling with their homework
3) uni students could be enlisted to support secondary students over online discussion boards during homework hours solving several problems at the same time (eg the current debate about uni top up fees)
4) resources for such regular activities as filling out UCAS forms or activities we never get time to teach like time management, study skills etc could be online and be used to support the regular curriculum

Edited to activate hyperlink

Welcome to this part of the forum!

I agree entirely. It also has the potential to radicalise the way we teach. However, this is not guaranteed. The history of innovation shows that the early pioneers play an important role in shaping the way it develops. So far, too much of what sells itself as education on the net is just a reflection of what goes on in the traditional classroom. If we are not careful, this will become entrenched and it will make it more difficult for the real innovators to change what goes on in our educational institutions.

The key to this is that those involved in e-learning ask the right questions. I fear that the question that most people are asking is: “how do I use this new technology to deliver what I do in the classroom at the moment”. Instead we should be asking: “what do I really want to be encouraging my students to be learning”. The follow up question is “how can I use the technology to make this possible”.

So far several things have exciting me about e-learning. One of these concerns the development of online simulations. (I will write about this in more detail later). Another one is the way that students can become producers as well as consumers of educational resources (another topic I will return to later).

The third development is the use of forum software to encourage students to debate important issues. Recently I was involved with teachers in France, England and Bermuda in creating a debate about child labour in the 19th century and in the forms that it takes today. Although I never met the students face to face, it was clear from the postings that were taking place, substantial learning was taking place.

Our planned International Student Debate will follow a similar pattern. I am convinced that everybody who witnesses these future debate will be impressed by the learning that takes place. It might not necessary improve their national exam grades (although I suspect it might) but it will play an important role in their development as world citizens.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=116

Earlier Pauline suggested it could be difficult for a non-British reader to fully understand the terminology. I would like to say as a British teacher I can’t! That is because I am only just slowly being introduced to e-learning and am not yet even sure what it is.

I guess it would be tedious for experienced e-teachers to add a little glossary to posts which would – briefly, please – explain the terms they use and the environments/resources they are discussing? Marco referred to an EUN community too.

Why is blackboard being spelt with a capital letter? Is it not the traditional, ordinary blackboard and chalk? What is WebCT?

I now think I vaguely understand the term ‘Virtual Learning Environment’ thanks to the information David and Dan offered. It doesn’t sound that useful for the effort it requires.

If we want to learn e-learning techniques that could be useful and which may be blended (nice expression: blended learning), surely we could learn a lot from places like NZ and Australia who are developing e-learning environments at Primary level to support pupils and an adult educational supervisor who may be on-site with pupils and parents, working under supervision with a distance teacher?

Does my habit of setting up a simple forum using Hotmail’s free facilities for my A level students count as e-learning? We use it to support classroom learning and their independent study through on-line discussions, sharing work and resources with each other, posting homeworks and putting up worksheets etc for them to access at home - some functions of which I am hoping to move to the school website when it is extended this year.

Pauline – it is by no means given that British students have access to computers to support their learning. In our 11-18 school the ratio of students to computers looks excellent – but the computers are all in constant use by the ICT and Business Studies Departments, and we only actually have one suite of 30 computers and the occasional use of another 20 or so for the remaining students (1600 in our school) to use per lesson! It takes weeks to get a class into the bookable computer room!

Indeed, only a third of teachers even have their own computer in their teaching room and less than that have a projector installed (although that is slowly being changed).

We will be getting a new building in a few years and one of the options under discussion is that instead of building and equipping bookable computer suites, we buy every child a laptop which may be used in any room since each could be built with the relevant facilities. Now that is genuinely exciting.

I am well pleased with some of the sites being suggested here as they look as if they will give me ideas and open my eager but untaught eyes to what might be done by a motivated teacher who has a simple projector attached to a web-accessed laptop, such as I have recently acquired! Nice one!

I am really looking forward to John’s later information on how students can be producers too. Do flag it up very clearly so I can find it, John! I have recently had my appetite wetted by seeing an OU site for English teaching which created multi-media resources, but also had students create them. It can be found here It may or may not be what you mean, but I am very curious as to how the children can produce relevant materials as it seems an excellent learning technique.

Now I am off to read the sites suggested here more thoroughly.

I have posted two articles about this at:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=170

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=169

A few comments about learning, e-learning, schooling and life.

I recently decided to take up photography. I found a great website, DP Review which is basically some guy in London who reviews digital cameras and built some discussion forums for discussing cameras, technique, computers in their relation to "digital darkrooms" etc. Well, since Jan. 1999 these forum have had (and I'm taking this off the website now... 222,504,066 posts. Talk about a learning community this discussion board must be receiving 100s of posts an hour on all kinds of topics 24 hours a day every day. Now here's something interesting. If you go in and start wading through some of the posts, and if you know anything about the topic, you'll see that there's a wide range of contributors from people who haven't a clue what they're saying but say it quite emphatically to people who are arrogant and obnoxious to people who give highly technical information to people who are kind and supportive to people who actually answer a question and more. And the dear reader is left to sort through this and make sense of it.

Now what I find interesting about this is that its a great place to learn quickly and its a great place to pick up lots of mis-information.

In fact, this is the general problem faced in the 21st century. The real problems we face today are not of the nature of ... what is the definition of bit or byte or e-learning... the real problems we face today are which camera should I buy at least as a metaphor for... how do we stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and waste, how to have a meaningful life, how to manage our environment while satisfying our desire to have an easier life which lasts longer, how to end injustice and inequity when the money spent on buying iPods will keep half the world's population free of malaria if the money was otherwise spent, who is right, Kilroy or Osama bin Ladin and how do we prove it to people who feel the opposite, etc (I'm sure you know the litany). In other words, the problems in real life we face are how to make sense of a chaotic and confusing amount of conflicting facts and no clearly discernable ways forward.

I sometimes enjoy watching CNBC, a cable channel here in the UK (and elsewhere) which has lots of interviews with CEOs and top-line management. I always hear the same things. They want creative, independent, self motivated work forces where people are able to take initiative and yet be good team members, where people have to know how to play their role and yet have the courage to speak up when things are going wrong and where people move from position to position because more important than being specialists (a 1940's need) they want people who can innovate and think outside of the box. Lastly, they need people who can sift through a mountain of information, separate what's relevant from what's less relevant and out of a maelstrom of competing factoids, ask insightful questions and develop meaningful answers.

Does this sound like the kind of people we're educating in our classrooms? I think not. Our model of education lies somewhere between the factory system for mass production popular in the 18th century and the tutorial system reserved for wealthy elite prior to mass education. Sure I believe in studying the classics. Of course I believe you have to crawl before you walk. But take them out of the context of human life and all you have is a boring assembly line designed to march people through a system which favours some personality types and disadvantages others.

I taught 10 year olds when I first started teaching. At some point the school I worked for encouraged me to take students back-packing and on wilderness trips including hiking and canoeing. It really taught me something. Many of the compliant young girls and boys who were so likeable in the classroom, who always did their homework, who had nice readable handwritings and knew how to write a good essay were suddenly hot and sweaty and kept saying... "Are we there yet" and "I'm hot" and "ooooh, there's a bug" etc. And some of the kids who were a real pain in the class, frequently boys who were hyper and couldn't sit still, couldn't spell well and didn't do their homework, these same boys were gently pointing at plants and naming them, were gathering wood for our evening fires, would set up the tents in no time in the pouring rain, etc. OK forget the political incorrectness of some of the characterisations, my point is that ...school is not real life...

Someone earlier in this forum mentioned that they saw e-learning as a bunch of kids who sat at home in front of a flickering computer screen with no social interaction. Sorry, but that's not the only option for e-learning and its a limited view of its potential. In fact, if there's any system which keeps us from developing good social skills its the walk in two lines, sit quietly in class, walk quietly in the halls 4 walled buildings called schools. Freed from the tyranny of the box, we could develop all sorts of paradigms for learning, socialisation, social responsiblity, caring, etc.

What elearning can do is help break down the walls of schools which as Ivan Illich posited is the enemy of learning. Schooling in a box formalises knowledge in a way which makes it something to master rather than a tool for living. Currricula have their place but to my mind they have become the point instead of a tool to help in the education of an individual to face the world they live in.

Far from e-learning being kids sitting in front of a computer turning sallow from lack of sunlight, the computer should be freeing us from the tyranny of the box, letting us work and learn in a multifasceted way which includes formal lessons, real work experience, mandatory service to greater society, helping others, working in teams to solve undefined problems, etc.

No longer relying on local resources, students can work with various teachers throughout their days even teachers who don't live geographically near them but who are doing teaching on something that is important to them just as I learned a massive amount about photography from Photo.net one of the greatest learning resources for photography.

Sound too idealistic to you? Are you thinking... yeah, sure, Eric, you must have had some unique kids because the kids in my school are bored, unmotivated, disrespectful, and only care about sex, drugs and rock and roll. IMHO these are the real effects of the factory model of education and this is where e-learning comes in.

With tongue only partially in cheek I would love to see the government sell off all school buildings in the major cities for development into trendy flats. What a windfall of profit we would have. Plus the environmental benefits and traffic flow benefits of removing the whole set of problems centering around the school traffic phenomenon. Instead, I'd take that money from selling off the schools and not having to build ever more roads and put it into a series of programmes of local computer centres staffed by subject specialists supported by university students and local parents for more formal learning, then find activity centres which would be hubs out of which students would work on socially relevant tasks like helping old people do their shopping, keeping the environment free of trash and litter, working in hospitals, etc.

If you're not familiar with the successes of the home schooling movement you may find all of this fanciful but it is possible to have another type of learning system which is more structured towards the individual, which better prepares students for the kinds of skills needed for the 21st century rather than the 18th century. And maybe one result of such a system change is that when people leave formal education they wouldn't be so keen to stay away from learning, being susceptable to easy manipulation by tabloid newspapers and entertaining themselves to death sitting on sofas while downing massive amounts of bad food while the world around them falls apart.

end rant ;-)

I think you will find the concept of natural learning very interesting!
The Education Forum -> Educational Issues -> Debates in Education-> natural learning

Please let me know what you think!

Sorry you are right!

So here it comes:
EUN= European Schoolnet

The community option is a way for teachers etc to work together in a public or open structure. it is free for all to use and set up your own. However it sometimes lacks in speed etc.

Options you have
- a newssection for members to post news
- a bulletin board
- community email
- chat
- a forum
- possibility of having a file archive etc.

In theory a good system however it is hard to find on the internet...at least for some of my members

kiiquu, you seem to me to be asking the age old question: why are we teaching people and what do we expect from that education?

It seems to me that idealism is what keeps many of us in teaching and makes us good teachers. However, we have to be pragmatic. In the system into which most of the societies in this world are organised we find ourselves justifying education as yet one more market force. Put simply, if society by consensus agrees to pay for education for everyone, then 'society' expects some return for its investment: usually in the way of 'citizens' who conform and are useful to society. Of course, most of us in our societies feel it would be unfair to have an education system that does only that; that services industry for instance, so there is a strong strand of education for life in our educational systems. There is always tension between the two.

It is probably the 'education for life' strand which attracts most teachers to the job, but we inevitably find ourselves jiggling our desire to help youngsters develop their full potential as thinking human beings with the 'service' aspects of the job; the need to help them get on in the society in which they live by passing examinations and developing the sort of skills we are told they ought to have.

e-learning certainly has the potential to open education up to much of what you suggest, but will it be used to do so? I doubt it.

I remember reading much sci-fi in the sixties which predicted e-learning. In those days there was a strong feeling that technology would free people up; give them more leisure time and the capability to be fully realised human beings. That hasn't happened either, at least not as fully as was expected.

I don't mean to be gloomy. I do believe very strongly that without what you have called idealism, but which others might call hope, or even just plain high expectations, we would not strive to make what we have to do as worthwhile and as enriching as it is!

Hopefully e-learning will be an enriching experience because of the hard work, enthusiasm and thought that the teachers who are developing it in practice now are putting into it, in spite of the fact that schools will continue to have walls for a good deal while yet.

Thank you Marco for your explanation of EUN.

Has anyone experience in using an electronic whiteboard in class?

Your welcome

I suppose I use Virtual Learning Environments quite a lot. I've written about our experience on the E-Learning Initiative part of this forum too.

Basically VLEs *claim* to give pupils and teachers the same kinds of access to each other and to course material as they get in the class. My own assessment is that we're quite a way from that at the moment.

Most VLEs have some kind of chat function (where everyone talks to everyone); some kind of whiteboard (where everyone can 'place' web pages, documents, etc and draw things on it); and some kind of private chat (where individuals can talk - or 'whisper' - to each other). Users can sometimes create their own course pages (sometimes this requires the services of programming experts), and many VLEs have very sophisticated tools for tracking how much individuals use the systems and how often they look at particular pages. There are also often more or less crude ways of constructing tests and recording results. There's often a heavy emphasis on multiple-choice, since a) the Americans go for this in a big way, and they're the biggest market; and computers can handle multiple-choice test much more easily than most of the other kinds.

How well and quickly they work depends on the amount of bandwidth you have available, and on the quality and level of sophistication of the equipment you have at each end.

The effectiveness as learning aids and the usefulness to the teacher depend quite a lot on the teachers (and others) who put content into the VLEs. The norm, in my experience, is that VLEs are bought by IT Departments, with very little input from end users. Subsequently, only the enthusiasts use them … and even they give up after a while!

IT technicians seem to think that the Windows 'tree structure' is a smart way of organising information … which is my explanation for why the 'navigation' structures of so many VLEs look the way they do.

I'll put up another post in a while talking about what I've done with VLEs.

So … on to my personal experience of VLEs.

A confession to start off with … I gave up on the type of VLE with loads of different functions a couple of years ago! The problem I had with them has very little to do with the specific functions of specific VLEs - in my view they all more or less as good, or bad as each other. It was more a question of how they fitted in to the organisations I was working for and in to my philosophy of learning.

To give you an example: the university where I work bought a Swedish system called Learngate about 18 months ago. To create pages on Learngate, you need the services of expert programmers, since everything is controlled by scripts. The result of this is that it's very difficult to avoid the 'standard' design the programmers have decided on … which is fine if you like it. I don't, so I don't use it. It's very difficult to convince IT people that standardisation in the appearance of course materials is often counter-productive. My students need to feel that they're in an environment that I've created.

Our Learngate system has also spawned a work group for the production of Learngate courses. However, they haven't realised that the production of on-line courses is a dynamic process - it's not a question of producing a shrink-wrapped 'product' which can be kept unchanged for a couple of years.

I used to use a really nice Irish VLE, called TopClass … but they don't make it any more …

Nowadays I use two systems: open web pages (our portal page is at: http://www.humsam.hik.se/distans/index.htm), and a desktop video conference system from a company called Marratech (http://www.marratech.com).

The great advantage of open web pages is that my students don't need user names and passwords. This not only removes a great source of worry and irritation at the beginning of a term, but it also means that my students' first contact with the web site is an inviting 'welcome', instead of an impersonal 'enter your password'.

There are some downsides, of course. It's more difficult to maintain copyright, for example, and to break other people's copyright, by using their material without permission. However, the nature of on-line material is that it changes all the time. You can't set it in stone, so it matters less if other people borrow it.

On-line courses for me are also collaborations between lots of different forms of interaction. If you look at some of our on-line courses via the portal page, you would find it very difficult to get a clear picture of what goes on, since a lot of the interaction is student-student, teacher-student and Internet tutor-student.

As you can guess, I'm a distance teacher, so a lot of the advantages of on-line work for me perhaps don't apply to 'campus-based' teaching. I'll post another message in a minute with a few thoughts about why on-line material is good in itself.

Electronic whiteboards are used extensively in the teaching of Modern Foreign Languages. We have sections on electronic whiteboards in Module 1.3 and Module 1.4 at the ICT4LT website: http://www.ict4lt.org

Here are some relevant links taken from Module 1.4:

Further information on interactive whiteboards
Walker R. (2003) "Interactive whiteboards in the MFL classroom", TELL&CALL 3, 3: 14-16. Available at:
http://www.e-lisa.at/magazine/tellcall/03_03.asp

Promethean: http://www.promethean.co.uk

Smart Technologies: http://www.smarttech.com
Mimio: http://www.mimio.com

Greenwhich LEA: A useful article entitled "Interactive whiteboards - a luxury too far?": http://www.g2fl.greenwich.gov.uk/temp/whiteboards

Leicestershire Comenius Centre: http://www.leics-comenius.org.uk. Click on IT & MFL on the homepage. This will take you to section containing ideas on using interactive whiteboards, plus a case study.

The Comenius Centre at Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds, maintains a website offering free resources for use with PowerPoint and interactive whiteboards - plus other free resources:
http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/comenius/free.../powerpoint.htm
See the index page at:
http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/comenius/free...urces/index.htm

REvIEW Project: Research and Evaluation of Interactive interactive whiteboards, University of Hull in collaboration with Promethean: http://www.thereviewproject.org. Supported by NESTA FutureLab: http://www.nestafuturelab.org

Usable Software Company: Develops and sells interactive whiteboard software, including software for Modern Foreign Languages: http://www.usablesoftwarecompany.com

David Richardson writes:



This is one of the major problems associated with VLEs. Around one year ago I went to a presentation of a new VLE designed for secondary schools in a region of the UK. It was a typical one-size-fits-all application. As a modern linguist, I asked the presenter to let us see the French materials designed for A-Level students. In terms of functionality they were about as advanced as the programs that I was writing in the mid/late 1980s. I asked about the facilities for playing back and recording sound – e.g. so that students could hear a native speaker’s voice and respond to it in some way, recording and playing back their own voice to see how they sounded – a useful activity that we have used since the advent of the AAC tape recorder in the 1960s. “Oh,” the presenter said, “we haven’t incorporated that facility into the system. It’s a bit difficult.”

So … why use on-line material at all. I was having a discussion with some avid First Class users a few years ago about web-based materials and I mentioned the advantage that you could show pictures easily. The immediate response was "but why would you want to have pictures in teaching materials?"

Advantage no 1 is therefore that you can easily make material in colour available to your students.

I've just been sitting making sound files this morning, whilst the plumber is here at home. If you go to this page

http://www.humsam.hik.se/distans/existstud...ish110index.htm

and click on the Phonetics Exercises links on the left, you'll see what I've been up to.

Advantage no 2 is that you can make things available to your students that either can't be printed on paper, or would cost the earth to find as commercial products.

The last link on the left on the portal page is entitled Novish. It's an exercise from a book that's now out of print. I programmed it in Flash, which took me a while to learn (by painstakingly going through the tutorials that came with the programme). I'm not a programmer by any definition of the term, but this one works for me. I'm working on a series of reading comprehension exercises using Flash too at the moment, where I'm taking the basic programming I did for the Novish exercise and just repeated it.

If you compare my Novish exercise with the one in the paperback book, mine works better, because I don't have to keep writing "don't look at the answers until you've had a go at the exercise".

I suppose this is a variant of Advantage no 2, but perhaps it's a separate advantage in its own right.

How many more advantages can you think of?

BTW, I've used electronic whiteboards in class - they're a great way of showing people web sites, for example.

This sounds interesting, but I couldn't locate that link. Could you post it again?

Edit: I found it now -sorry - bottom left link from here: http://www.humsam.hik.se/distans/index.htm

I've tried to do similar things and have found Flash a really good tool as you can develop some quite complex things using simple programming. It may well be just asking a little too much of 'regular teachers' to become competent Flash users in order to provide effective e-Learning.

However, I fully understand what you are saying. What the use of Flash - and the Internet in general - has taught me is there are very few barriers to prevent teachers publishing materials. Such materials can be as good and normally more specifically useful for our own students that commercially produced materials.

I find my main barrier to progress is time! The great thing about Flash is that the potential is unlimited - really open and dynamic materials can be produced.

Yes, I remember it taking me a long time to do my first Flash animation. I'd broken my leg, and I was laid up with my PowerBook, so I had the time to, finally, read the manual and do the tutorials. The biggest problem wasn't the actual programming, which is fairly straightforward. It was more getting my head around how Flash animations are supposed to work (I still can't claim to be entirely there).

The very first one I did was a vocabulary exercise about packing terms (crate, bale, barrel, etc) for Business Writing students. A colleague made some line drawings, which we scanned in, and then I created a series of 'pages' where students could guess, then get the right answer, then get a further 'page' with a lot of extra information (such as that bales are often used for soft, bulky materials, like wool and waste paper).

Then we adapted an old Mario Rinvolucri activity: a maze about a hijack, also from a book that's gone out of print (at least as far as I can tell). This time there are a series of decisions to be made (do you negotiate, or appeal to the head of another government, or stonewall, etc?) on each 'page'. Depending on what you answer, you get a whole other series of decisions.

Another adaptation of this particular piece of programming is the Writing the Date exercise that's somewhere in the Business Writing course, where students can click on a number of alternative ways of writing the date and see a short commentary on it (e.g. 02Feb04: this is the way many large international organisations write the date) - useful for Swedes who use the ISO standard (2004-02-02) which hardly anyone else does!

I'm also writing another variant of the Maze exercise with my 12 year-old daughter called 'The Empty House': you're on the way home from skating practice when you hear noises coming from the creepy empty house halfway down your street. Should you call the police, tell your parents, or go in and find out who's making the noises?

Another current exercise is a trouble-shooting exercise for the Swedish Army which involves negotiating with a civilian workshop for use of their equipment when you're on a peace-keeping mission. I'm also using the basic programming I did for the Maze exercise.

As you can see - it gets addictive! The basic principle I try to work to is that the real work happens in the heads of the students using the computer, so I try to include a series of decisions which involve discussion among people, rather than fancy tricks inside the box.

I remember the Heinemann Berer/Rinvolucri Mazes book very well - great fun and excellent for stimulating oral activities. I produced a computerised version of it (with permission from the publishers) for the BBC Micro during the 1980s.

We have an entry under Maze in the ICT4LT Glossary:
http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_glossary.htm
It reads as follows:
Maze: Mazes, also known as text mazes and action mazes, have been used by language teachers for many years for reading and comprehension activities and to stimulate conversation in the classroom: v. Berer M. & Rinvolucri M. (1981) Mazes: a problem-solving reader, London: Heinemann. An Action Maze is a collection of short pieces of text, each of which poses a problem and a set of alternative solutions. The learner can follow different paths through the maze but may end up in loops and blind alleys. The onus is therefore on the learner to read the texts carefully and to assess the situation accurately. Mazes are ideal for group work. Computerised versions of mazes can be written very easily in HTML or with a suitable Authoring Tool, e.g. the new Quandary package at http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/quandary
Mazes can be run online and offline. See also Ruth Vilmi’s Xercise Engine. See Ruth Vilmi's demo maze at http://www.kolumbus.fi/rvilmi/XEDemo/books...demo/index.html

Last year, as part of a study visit to Helsinki , I met Ruth Vilmi (do not think she will remember it )! Small world. I must say i was greatly impressed by her work.

Be careful! Think of the topic!

Does anyone have any experience of using Moodle, a new Open Source Virtual Learning Environment?

Moodle appears to be in the process of becoming a serious competitor to WebCT and Blackboard. The Moodle community is growing, in particular the Moodle language learning and teaching community. Moodle can be downloaded free of charge from http://moodle.org

We are currently evaluating Moodle as the platform for our new suite of free INSET courses. I must say that, so far, I've been very impressed - both in terms of functionality and (of course) price!

Jim