When we visited the Landschulheim Steinmühle we were told that the school is planning an interdisciplinary project including the new media.  The project is going to be a virtual classtrip to Australia. Due to the fact that I spent a semester abroad in Australia I was inspired by this idea immediately. If I had all equipment I needed, all the time for preparation and, most important, all the technical knowledge, I would programme a virtual Australian world in which the students could move around as in Second Life. By this, they would be able to explore for example Sydney, climb Harbour Bridge, walk through the rainforest and feed kangaroos in a sanctuary. To ensure a certain learning outcome I would work in certain activities. Let me give an example:

One station of the classtrip would be Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park.

In the course of that the students would have to climb Uluru. On their way to the top they would reach certain points on which geographic information would be given. With regard to the curriculum, Uluru would be a good example of Weathering, in greater detail exfoliation or onion weathering. It occurs in very warm climates when exposed, non-vegetated rock is repeatedly heated and cooled. The surface layers heat up and expand more rapidly during the day and cool and contract more rapidly at night than do the inner layers. This sets up stresses with the rock which cause the surface layers to peel off, like the layers of an onion, to leave rounded rocks and hills. So far for the academic background. Of course, one has to prepare the content in a creative way to catch the interest of the students. Alternatively, the classtrip could be made after this topic has been discussed in school so that the students would have to reactivate  and apply the things they have learned before. The methods used to present certain topics could vary from WebQuests to expert chats, to name only a few. However, I also know that I could never realize such a project because I lack the technical knowledge.

On the other hand I do not want to give up the idea of an, lets say, “artificial” classtrip to Australia. Due to this I’m thinking about a simplified version of such a classtrip and the possibilities of its realisation. One could for example create a blog on which the different destinations being traveled are presented in units, including tasks the students have to work on. They could be asked to create blogs to present their results or to write diary entries about what they learned so far on their trip. 

Anyway, I have to admit that all these ideas are not really concrete yet, but I’m working on applying some structure to them soon. If I fail, I will think about another project.

[For those who don't know: We are going on a field trip to Landschulheim Steinmühle on December 17th, 2008 and are supposed to prepare some questions for our visit]

Question 1: How is the purchase of New Media equipment financed?

Question 2: Have you experienced any shortcomings regarding the use of New Media yet?

Answer the previous questions

Answer to question 1:

The Landschulheim Steinmühle is well equipped with New Media. Beside one computer room which contains around 26 laptops and a video projector, there are  two mobile laptop stations with the same amount of laptops. These can be used in any classroom. Video projectors are present in every classroom. The staff room is also well equipped, containing laptops which the teachers can use at any time.

The answer to my question somehow surprised me: I asked how all the equipment was financed and we got to know that everything was a donation from a regional company that wants to stay anonymous – in my opinion a very uncommon behaviour.

The computer room

A mobile laptop station

A video projector is present in every classroom

Answer to question 2:

My second question was about the experience of shortcomings in the use of New Media. By this I did not mean the usual technical problems that can arise, but the influence on for example students. The teacher told us about a case in which a girl became victim of bullying on the internet. Classmates created a group on schülervz “against” her and started gossiping and bullying. The poor girl was really suffering from that attack. In another case a teenager was caught in a contract, because he ordered things online and agreed to obscure terms and conditions without reading them.

The school tries to prevent future incidents by teaching the students the dangers and correct use of the internet.  Furthermore, informative meetings on that topic take place in which both, parents and children are welcome to take part in.

All in all I think that the fieldtrip to Landschulheim Steinmühle was worth it.  We got the possibility to see how New Media is integrated in modern school life and were able to ask tons of questions on the teachers experiences with New Media. It would have been great if we have had the possibility of interviewing also students, but at the same time I thing that this was simply too hard to realise.

Media education plays an important role in my old grammar school. I went to the St.-Ursula-Gymnasium in Attendorn (www.st-ursula-attendorn.de) which is a private school under sponsorship of the archbishopric Paderborn.

The school comes with two computer rooms, with 16 computers each. The students of the Oberstufe have the possibility to access another computer room with 6 computers at any time. In addition, there are 4 computers in the library, which can be used by everyone.  

The school established a general programme including the use of New Media in the different grades of Sekundarstufe I: New Media Programme (General)

Beside this, there are some more projects encouraged in certain subjects,  for example e-mail projects in foreign language classes. By this students get in touch with students from English – French – or Spanish speaking countries (depending on the subject).  The projects are guided by a teacher.

Furthermore, students have the possibility to join an afternoon group called “AG Simulation” in which they make use of the developer software Visual Basic.Net to programme simulations and learning software for the subject history. The part taking of this course is voluntarily. Short Article on “AG Simulation”

Next, I want to give you an example of how computer’s are used in class. In the school’s yearbook of 2007 there is an example given of using Adobe Photoshop for Digital Image Processing in Arts. Student Article on Digital Image Processing in Arts (2 pages)

I can remember that some of my teachers also included New Media in the classroom. Although I don’t remember everything exactly, it is still in my mind that we for example had to create a PowerPoint presentation on Caesar in grade 8 (subject: Latin). Furthermore, we had to do quite a lot of research on the internet for projects and presentations in Geography in the Oberstufe (e.g. to find out in which stage of economic development a country was according to Rostow’s  Model …). Most of the time these searches were unguided. We were free to use PowerPoint for presentations, but I remember that only a few students made use of it. I remember that I never made use of it, because I was afraid to handle it and nobody showed us how to use it properly (the creation of the PowerPoint presentation in grade 8 was only a crash-course …). Sometimes we made use of the programme Euklid in Maths.

What I remember and also liked best was the use of computers in social sciences. The topic of our last term was “socionic”, a mixture of social sciences and computer sciences. Dealing with this topic we made use of Sugarscape, “an artificially intelligent agent-based social simulation”.  These simulations can carry out a great number of different scenarios and are useful to visualize how societies develop under certain conditions.

If you are interested in this visit http://www.sowi.st-ursula-attendorn.de/zw/zw_netz.htm and ask me for the password to download more detailed information. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to publish it without a password because it’s protected by copyright.

I especially liked to work and learn with the sugarscape simulation. It was motivating and facilitated the comprehension of social theories. Additonaly, we got the possibility to create our own sugarscape scenarios after we got into the topic.

So all in all I would say that I got in touch with New Media in school relatively often, although the sequences were never too long (except for the sugarscape simulation in social sciences). I think my former school is still on a good way to school its students to become media competent.

I want to present a project that is about the creation of a newsletter. I found it on the internet ( www.innovative-teachers.de ) and liked it best, because it involves various kinds of new media. First of all the students have to do some internet research, process and layout the information by using Microsoft Office programmes like Word and finally present or post their newsletters on the web.

In this special case the topic was “Ethics and Journalism”, created for the subject German. The topic is integrated in curiculla of many German federal states. Anyway, it was more the method of creating a newsletter than the topic that caught my interest on that project. I think you can use the method of establishing a newsletter for various subjects and topics included in curiculla.

The project was organised as follows: After some introductory lessons which gave information about the project and the structure of a newsletter in general, the students formed groups of 4 people. Each group was supposed to create one newsletter. The students had to arrange duties like for example who is responsible for the design, lectorship or editorial staff. But before they could start to concentrate on the creation of their newsletter they needed to do some research on the topic to gain useful information.  This shows that the students acquired additional skills beside the bare content. They had to do some research on the internet and in the liberary, analyse their findings and decide which information was most suitable, which increased their academic skills and media competence. In addition, the students had to use Microsoft Office programmes to process their information. Difficulties could be solved in the groups easily, the students experienced self-consistent and cooperative learning.

There was no information given on which role the teacher played in the project, but I think one can assume that the teacher was kind of a moderator and supervisor.

The students liked the challenge of creating a newsletter. They were highly motivated to bring in their media knowledge and very proud of the results at the end of the  project.

I’m sorry that what follows is in German, but the project was carried out at a German school and I thought it would make sense to share the following information with you.

Example of a newsletter

Project Overview

The students also got the possibility to evaluate the project at the end. Three different evaluation sheet were created:

Groupwork Evaluation Sheet

Research Evaluation Sheet

Overall Evaluation Sheet 

Hope you like the project as well

The two people in the cartoon should work through the session to learn something about the core rules of netiquette …

I found it interesting to work through the session “Internet Communication”, because I learned a lot of things I haven’t known before.

I like the section on methodology best, because it includes a lot of useful information on how to use the presented communication tools for teaching. Due to this my comment will concentrate on that section. The method of e-mail friendships is especially effective for foreign language education. When I was in school, our English teacher arranged pen pals from English speaking countries via the “International Youth Service” (IYS). We were pretty motivated to write our new friends and, most important of all, to learn foreign languages, because we experienced that there was a use of learning foreign languages. Nowadays this way of communication has become old-fashioned, but the same is possible on the internet, via e-mail friendships.

The note on the former IYS’s website shows how important internet communication has become and its impacts on more traditional ways of communication:

But now back to the virtual session. In my opinion, the realisation of e-mail projects in school might be difficult, especially in low grades in connection with foreign language education. The students should have certain language skills before they write to, for example, an expert. Otherwise he might not take them serious. Additionally, I think it is not as easy as one might think to reach unknown people (here:experts) via e-mail. Nevertheless, I consider the idea of getting information via e-mail correspondance a good method for other projects.

Concerning forums, I like the idea of discussion forums best, although some features should be improved for its use in school. I consider the fact that a user is not notified if somebody replies to a posted thread as a shortcoming. Students are not always so well organised and motivated to look up new threads every evening. In my opinion discussion forums make most sense when they are voluntarily. It might also be used to gain knowledge that goes beyond the curriculum to give interested students the possibility to gain deeper information on a topic that is not discussed in detail at school.

I also like the idea of using MOO’s for educational purposes. I haven’t heart of it before, but I got quite curious about it. It was great help to read what you should be aware of and ensure before working with certain methods.

A general thing I still don’t like about the VCT sessions is that there is no workbook for this course. Right clicks are only allowed in the “subordinate windows”, so you have to print out all other pages if you want to re-read them in the future. Why isn’t it possible to release a workbookfor the VCT as it is usual for the courses on the VLC?

First of all I have to admit that I have hardly ever done any internet research for term papers at university. I was always afraid of the information overflow and the risk to be lead up blind alleys by questionable information. In addition, most instructors, especially professors, make often clear that they do not consider the internet as an appropriate source for academic research.  After reading the unit I think, those peolpe are simply afraid of the internet due to their lack of media competence.  I wish they could read through the unit as well.

The unit gave me a great insight into the possibilities of internet research, that I’ve not known before.

Before I read through the unit I was not aware of Meta-Search Engines, Catalogues, Boolean logic and Specialized Engines (just to name a few examples).

Nevertheless I doubt the efficiency of the presented Wiki-Web. From my point of view it is not suitable to gain information for scientific research, but one might use it at school or to get a rough idea of a topic. But you can never be sure if the given information is really reliable.

I was happy to get to know how to quote internet sources.

I consider the presentation of WebQuests and the information about guides, half-guided and free search as very useful for our future job at school. It gives one an idea of how to organise certain projects.

All in all I think that I gained a lot of knowledge thanks to the unit. I think I reached one further step on the steep stairs leading me up to a broader knowledge of media competence. I also became excited to try out a project including internet research at school.

 Please click to enlarge this image to maximum size

The poster of the group that dealt with practical question number six was most relevant for me. In my opinion it reflects the importance of this course, because it shows how easily new media and technology can be mistaken. Additionaly, it implies some standard oppositions that can be argued.

The group chose to put the quotation that their discussion (poster) was about on top of their poster. Furthermore, they put a hypothesis in the center of the poster, saying “What if computer skills and media technology were the most important things to learn in school?”. Around this hypothesis they wrote 3 positive, 7 negative and one neutral headword.

As I already stated in my introduction I think that the poster has a way to negative tone towards computer skills and media technology. We have learned so far that there are certain dangers and shortcomings, but most of them can be simply solved by the acquisition of media competence. If you know how to use the possibilites those technologies offer properly, you can make use of a lot of advantages.

To give an example: The group wrote friends with a question mark and asks if there was social contact and competences any longer if their hypothesis were true.  This critical view on communication is a frequent misapprehension. New media, especially E-learning, does not lead to an isolation of the people. It makes simply use of other, more modern forms of communication such as e-mails, message boards and chats.

At the same time I think that the poster shows that the given statement could be easily mistaken. I interpreted it totally different. Of course it might be that I’m wrong, but I want to give you an insight in how I interpreted it:

The surface message might lead to a critical view, but I think that this study/those teachers just wanted to make clear the importance of computer skills nowdays. All your scientific knowledge will lead you nowhere and will therefore be useless if you weren’t able to handle a computer to publish it in the future. The development of new technologies comes about pretty fast, no matter if you care for them or not, but you simply have to care if you don’t want to loose but use your abilities and knowledge in the future.

Dear VCT-team,

I worked through the virtual session “Learning Theories and Principles of Learning” and want to give you an insight into how I experienced it.

Getting to know the different theories of Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism and their impacts on learning was very interesting. I especially like all the examples given, because they make those theories easier to remember. In case of Cognitivism the example distracted me a little, because I became more interested in Japanese than the further content of the VCT unit … Anyway, I continued

One thing I do not like is that criticism is included only regarding Behaviorism. Due to this the other two theories (Cognitivism and Constructivism) cause, in my opinion, a way to idealized impression. An example for criticism on Cognitivism and Constructivism might be the fact that not all learners are able to take the responsibility to control their own learning. This counts especially for certain age groups, in which some students are not motivated, curious and intersted in most topics, except the other sex.

Another thing I like is the Theory Summary which is presented in a table. I think it is a good idea to visualize the most important facts. Furthermore it is well structured and easy to understand.

The quotations at the beginning of some parts caught my attention and made me curious for what followed.

I like the pages on distance education, lifelong learning and self-instructed learning, but I miss information on HOW to teach the students those skills. Anyway, I saw that this question is part of the practical and will be discussed in class. Due to this I think its absence in the unit is not too bad.

The History of Education gives a nice overview and shows that the topic of education has always been present among humans.

Finally, after all those pros and cons I want to let you know what I have learned from the virtual session. I got to know the theories of Behaviorism, Cognitivism and Constructivism and learned that they all have advantages and disadavantages regarding to what is to be taught. The unit also drew my attention on the importance of education and its development throughout history. Additionally it made me aware of the importance to teach methodological, scientific and social skills at school to assist students to become able to learn autonomously. I also hope to learn about strategies HOW to do this best in the following sessions.

Kind regards,

Tanja Walgenbach

P.S: A VCT workbook would be great to look things up in the future and you would not have to print out everything.

In our first session of the course “New Media in Foreign Language Education” we made already use of new media by watching an interview on the internet (YouTube). It was an interview with Mark Bauerlein who talked about young Americans and the internet. Our task was to get together in groups and watch a special section of the interview. After that we were asked to formulate our own statements and opinions about Bauerlein’s theses.

Group 1 dealt with the first third of the interview. In this part Bauerlein talks about the digital culture as a new opportunity to learn, but he also accuses teenagers of not appreciating the great variety of offers on the internet. He states that teenagers prefer social platforms like Facebook or MySpace only. Furthermore, he criticises that other kinds of “old” media like books are nearly not present in teenage rooms. To underline this he cites a statistic which says that 55 per cent of teenagers spend less than one hour per week for reading.

The group’s opinion on this was as follows:

Bauerlein is only right in parts and one always has to differ using the internet just for fun or serious stuff. Additionally, Mr. Bauerlein generalises too much. He only talks about American teenagers and one can’t be sure if the numbers he gives are reliable.

I agree, in parts, on both. On the one hand I think that the internet offers a great opportunity to learn and research on various things, but I don’t agree with Bauerlein saying that teenagers do not appreciate those offers. In my opinion it is not always easy (even for the younger generation who almost grew up with the great variety of new media) to find their way about. As soon as it comes to for example academic research or finding useful sources on a special topic many teenagers and students might feel lost, because this type of research is not as self-evident as to sign up on Facebook. We should offer them some help instead of blaming them for this circumstance. Consequently, new media in (foreign language) education plays an important role: It should sensitise teenagers for the great opportunities the internet has to offer.

Group 2, to which I belonged, concentrated on the second third of the interview. Here, Bauerlein states that students are stuck in the adolescent world and that it is the teachers’/ professors’ responsibility to pull them out and help them to access the adult world. This should be reached by giving adolescents the conviction that reading certain books is important to develop their mind. Bauerlein underlines the importance of the medium book and claims that adolescents have to be motivated by their teachers.

I totally agree on that. Nevertheless, I also think that teachers can’t take full responsibility for everything. Parents should support their children to use different types of media, too.

Further, Bauerlein argues about teenagers spending too much time on social platforms on the internet again. Our group only agrees in parts again, because we think that social contacts especially in puberty are important. Anyways, those social contacts should be also personal and not only on the internet.

The findings of Group 3 were similar. They agreed on Bauerlein’s statement that there are more important things than Facebook, but they also took the process of globalisation into account. This is that we have to be aware of the fact that we are not living in little, limited villages any longer, but our friends are spread all over the world and the internet with its social platforms is a great possibility to stay in touch.

We also discussed the risks of being manipulated by certain media. This is pretty easy if you don’t have a critical mind to think things over.

Movies can also open someone’s mind. Bauerlein tells the story of him going to a foreign film festival. The images he got to know there opened his mind.

All in all you can say that Bauerlein argues a lot about the internet, but the term “New Media” implies much more than the internet or movies only.

It is our job as future teachers to show and teach adolescents the possibilities of new media, how to work with it, and to make them curious and capable for it. This is in my opinion how this course relates to it.