Return of the students

Today was really the first day that I had a decent group of students at the Internet Cafe - it's rather late in the semester (week 9) for this to be happening. After weeks and weeks of catering to 3 students at a time it seemed like a real invasion when 9 of them descended on the multi-purpose room, but when you write about it afterwards, it doesn't sound like that many. I'm guessing that a lot of students have independent learning portfolios to finish off and so most PLAa (practical language activities) are probably going to be quite busy this week. Today was definitely a good day to get a sizeable group as I planned an activity that works well with groups - questions in the news.

As is often the case, students said that they enjoyed the work away from the computer the most - this is where they share news items that they have read about, in conversation with other members of the group. This reinforces a couple of things that I have learned from the internet cafe: firstly, that the computer works well for our students if you integrate it with other activities which allow them oportunities to socialise and converse (and perhaps in other settings, write). Secondly, that students should always work in groups with 2-3 students sharing a computer, and helping each other to interpret text and create meaning. It seems to me to be very important to try to avoid in-class activities that isolate students from each other, with the possible exception of when we are trying to model out of class, independent learning practices. Even then, I think students have a lot to learn from each other. Working together on self-access resources during class time may be one way of fostering an environment in which students ask each other for help with their classwork.

Traveler

Today we visited one of the many virtual worlds available through digitalspace's traveler application. I was expecting all kinds of technical problems but it was much smoother than I thought it would be. It probably helped that I had just three students to look after - that made setup quite a bit easier to supervise. We found a number of people online in a space called 'the batcave' and so headed over there to see what was going on. I was met by Dominic, who helped me sort out audio settings, and overcome any lingering technical problems. Then the students (Christine, Mandy and Wawa) arrived as well and Dominic got them set up too.

We talked to people from Ottawa, Washington and somewhere in NZ, which was quite a buzz. Wawa struck up a lengthy conversation with someone and was still chatting long after I left the room. It seems like a good way to practice fluency out of class this, as we all enjoyed creating our avatars and relating to other people in the virtual environment. A lot of the time students complain that they don't have opportunities to practice their spoken language with native speakers in authentic situations (they don't put it like that), because of the cultural situation here in Hong Kong, or for whatever reason. If students have the hardware at home to run this application, then this must open some doors to them - I was surprised at how smoothly it ran. As I left, Dominic invited us back so that he could take us to some of the different rooms that he has created in the 'batcave'. I think it would be a nice idea to take him up on this offer.

Update

After a quiet summer the ELC Internet Cafe has gotten off to a rather low key start in 06-07. I blame my busy schedule, and consequent laziness. I have got to get back into experimentation mode!