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!

Grammar quizzes

Today we went to Chris Greave's Virtual Language Centre and tried our luck with the grammar roulette. Some were luckier than others... It was a useful exercise because we learned about different categories of error and it was a nice, fun way of testing our proof-reading skills. Once we had spent a while playing this game, we made up some quizzes of our own, using the hot potatoes software. That was nice too becuase it introduced an element of competition against each other - not just against the machine.

When I asked the students if they thought this was a useful activity they seemed to think that it would help their proofreading skills, and that they could use what they had learned for their general academic writing. Personally, I hope they go back to the site a few times to try and re-inforce what they learned as well. It seems to me that this kind of activity is useful for raising awareness but the effects wear off rather quickly!

The landmark game

It's been almost a week since we played the landmark game which is essentially a variation on the kind of information search games that I've been getting students to do in the Internet cafe over the last couple of weeks. Things are finally starting to catch up with me and so I haven't put this activity on the web yet, but essentially these are the main steps:

1. Students search for information about a famous place, preferably one that won't be known to other students
2. They then write a number of 'I'-statements about the place, for example 'I am one of the tallest buildings in the world'.
3. The I-statements are posted to a forum and other students try to find the landmark by searching the internet as well.

This worked fairly well in terms of getting students involved and there was good interaction around the computer again, but I'd like to find a way of sharing information off the computer for this activity as well. It probably just needs some kind of follow up like a group discussion where students have an opportunity to say why they chose thier landmarks, and maybe come up with some different ways of categorising or ranking them.

Students seemed to enjoy the activity, but also commented that there could have been better opportunities for face-to-face interaction. And of course, someone commented that there weren't enough biscuits to go around, or something like that.... sigh....

Questions in the news

The idea of this activity was to research and discuss interesting news stories, but unfortunately (as one of the students pointed out) we didn't actually get around to the discussion stage. In future, it will have to be organised so that we cut to that part sooner. Still, there is a lot of good interaction happening around the computer, with students helping each other to find information and designing quizzes for each other. You can see some of the questions that they came up with at the Yahoo groups page. We had barely enough time to post responses to the questions before the session came to an end. It's nice to have the students' responses online but as I suggested earlier, I think in future I will change the second part of this activity into a discussion, because many of the students want that kind of activity from the club. As I am discovering, it's a question of balancing the online work with the skills development that students are after.

Tell me about your country

Today's activity was a kind of integrated skills activity - you can see it here. Students selected a country they were interested in and researched it on the internet, with the aim of telling everyone else about it later. We got some really good conversation out of this, both around the computer and during the subsequent interactions, when students were comparing 'their' countries. Just for the record, the countries chosen were:

• Thailand
• Japan
• Australia
• Brazil

Later, students posted a message about their country to the whole group, though these varied in sophistication. Some students were content to provide a hyperlink - I hope that the look of complete horror on my face conveyed the complete inadequacy of this response. I've asked students to respond to the postings as well, but we'll see if anyone is keen enough to follow this up...

Travel chat

Sarah was the only person to come to the ELC internet cafe today, which made for a relaxing change (things have been very busy recently). When I showed her the range of activities that have been developed up to this point, she chose to do an online discussion about travel. As I've said before, these can seem a bit artificial but they do give you an opportunity to practise some of the features of spoken language in a less pressurised form. You still have an unfolding discussion, but there is more time for you to think about what you want to say and to make changes as you go. Sarah also seemed to like the idea of being able to keep the discussion transcript afterwards - I hope that she has a good look at it and picks up on some of her mistakes....

The tunnel maze

Well, it's been a while since I've reflected on progress at the ELC Internet Cafe - things have been getting busy! The last few sessions have all involved trips back to SchMOOze where I have led students into the tunnel maze underneath the Administration Building. If you ever get lost in here, you have to answer a string of grammar questions to get out alive (in which case your name is recorded on a plaque at the entrance) and the interaction with the site is kind of fun.

I've been trying to encourage students to get characters and log in to the site on their own time but when I checked with Mehitabel (the site owner) I found that not many had gotten that far yet. I suppose it's early days yet. Still, if any of you students are reading this, you know I'm checking up on you!

Students have enjoyed the activities in SchMOOze, but we definitely need more time for this. 50 minutes just isn't enough to understand how to use the site, do something worthwhile and have a moment's reflection. Some sort of structured follow-up would be good so maybe I should start collecting email addresses and spamming my students with ideas for learning? But even then, it would be difficult to know if anyone was responding to that. Sigh...

SchMOOze

Today we visited SchMOOze, a MOO (virtual world - in this case a university) set up by Hunter College in New York. I was delighted with the results, as we were immediately challenged to a game of Boggle by Mehitabel, the university president, who also happens to be a cat (!). It's been a while since I've played Boggle, but I don't think that's much of an excuse for being convincingly thrashed. Lucky for the students, they can say that English isn't their first language!

We all had a great time, it was all we could manage to pass the coffee and biscuits around, whilst logging in and finding our way to the Boggle room (we had a bit of help finding it). The students were very positive about the experience which is great - I wasn't convinced that they would like it, considering everything in SchMOOze is text-based and we rely so heavily on images these days. They all said they would use it again, so I'll have to find out if they make repeat visits. It seems to me that it would give them some good opportunities to use their English which they might not otherwise make.

Movie trailers

Another decent turnout today, but I was running a bit late and it was the first time that we had to make do without coffee - let's hope that doesn't happen again!! Today we had a look at some movie trailers, to see whether they can be used for language learning (there's an activity here). We watched one trailer together, for Brokeback Mountain. Students were able to say what the basic ideas of the film were without too much help, but of course the trailer leaves a lot up to the imagination. I suppose that it's a good way of practising prediction and anticipating content based on just a few clues. I wanted to show a spoof of this trailer as well but the site was down - such is life!

Later, students watched some trailers on their own and described them to each other, which was a nice way of practising listening and speaking skills. I was amazed to see the range of film trailers available on the web - everything from the 1931 (or is it 33?) version of King Kong, to the latest offerings. Students seemed to enjoy this activity.

One student pointed out that you can access trailers to all the films currently playing in Hong Kong, if you visit www.yahoo.com.hk, but the trailers have Chinese subtitles. For some students, the subtitles may be useful I suppose - one of the problems with this activity is that there are no English subtitles, so you can't listen and read - but I still think that if you're reading in one language and listening in another, then that's going to slow your progress down!

Concordancing

It seemed like a real crowd of people in the cafe today - after just 1, then 2 in the first couple of sessions, seeing six people waiting to do computer activities was quite a surprise! When I asked them why they had come they initially said that they thought it was a fantastic club, but then later admitted that it suited their timetable and they liked the idea of coffee and biscuits at lunchtime...

We did a concordancing exercise (rather low tech, I'm afraid) and everyone seemed to find it pretty interesting. We established that they all do some writing in their other courses, mostly lab reports, as they were mostly engineers. I was a bit surprised to hear that they also write the occasional essay for more theoretical subjects too. The students could see how the online concordancer could help them to guess which word they might need if they ever got stuck in their writing.

On the whole, I would say that we had a pretty good session, though I will be trying out something different next time a larger group comes in, which is to make sure that people are sharing computers. The interactions that this generates around the computers is supposed to be just as valuable as the actual activities you do.

Online discussion

Today Carmen and George showed up and after chatting for a while, we did an online discussion about travel. It turns out that both of them have been to Thailand and the Philippines and have had a chance to practice their English there. They mentioned that the standard of English in the Philippines is pretty good and that the people are very warm and relaxed. George also said that he would like to go to England because of its great history - he admits that he's a bit worried about speaking to English people though! Hopefully the practice he is doing here will help him iron out any little problems that he might have.... When we finished the discussion I asked the two of them whether they found it useful or not. They said it was a bit odd being in the same room and using instant messengers to communciate, and I have to admit they've got a good point there! I pointed out that they could use the transcript of the session to check for any mistakes they might have made, and to analyse their conversation, but it's still not quite the same as actually speaking to someone, I guess...

Internet Treasure Hunt - Chinese New Year

Hi everyone,

Today Sharon came to the Internet cafe and we did a short internet treasure hunt about Chinese New Year. Sharon says "it's fun using the internet to learn" and she is keeping the internet treasure hunt link for her BA TESL project on curriculum development. Sharon says that not all the younger generation are that serious about the Chinese New Year customs in Hong Kong (like not sweeping the floor on New Year's day and so on), but a lot of the older generation still are. The internet cafe is closing over the Chinese New Year break so until then, Gung hei fat choy!

First thoughts

This is the first of hopefully many posts to this blog and my aim is just to say a bit about what this club is all about. The idea of the ELC Internet Cafe is for students to get to know each other in a relaxed and informal atmosphere - while kicking back with a cup of coffee and a biscuit, and surfing the web or playing internet language games. I'm hoping we can have lots of fun, socialising and slip in a bit of learning as well. We'll make sure we do everything in English of course, so that'll help. The idea of this blog is to record the groups thoughts and reflections, and to document the whole process. I'm also going to put related materials up on the Info and pics page. The group meets for the first time next week, so with any luck there'll be some more postings soon...