Once one session was implemented, I shared my feelings and thoughts with Maria, the classmate I did the project with, and we arrived to the conclusion that these projects should become an impulse for language teachers to incorporate telecollaboration in their lessons.
Despite we began the project with lots of fears and insecurities due to our lack of experience both in teaching and in telecollaborative practices, we can now assert that our project has totally succeeded. It is for this reason that we want to encourage other teachers who had not previous knowledge or who were not decisive enough to apply this methodology before, to be brave and do it , since it brings to the students an authentic purpose for communication which we think is very difficult to supply with other resources. We believe it can be said that English in both School A and School B is a course that most of the students detest, maybe due to this lack of authenticity that characterizes English lessons in Spanish schools, which makes students feel it is a pointless and a difficult language. It is probably due to this reason that when we first introduced the project to our students and they realized it would be in English, we both identified a feeling of frustration in their faces. However, this did not surprise us, given that we had in mind that it could easily happened. For this reason, we tried to motivate them saying that they would change their conceptions towards English during the development of the project, since we had designed highly visual elements which would surely help them to understand the concepts, regardless of their English level, as well as new technologies that would engage them a lot. And we were not wrong. The fact of designing hands-on experiences, including technologies in every lesson and, above all, collaborating with children from other school made our students forget their disappointment and use English without even noticing it. Through the evidences we were daily collecting, we have been able to see that our students were learning a good deal of both English and contents related to our human body while they were having fun. It has delighted us how our students were willing to continue with the work the next day, how they used the dictionaries without being asked to do it to look up new words to use in their videos, and how they arrived to our classes saying “I have a new idea when we record, we can act as if we were at the cinema…” or “ Can we do a trip to visit the other school?”. These little details are the ones which make us feel proud of our time and dedication to this project. Another example was when students were watching the other’s school video. They were astonished by seeing other students working with them, and they really felt the need to work with them and know more about the project. Even those shy students who usually abstain themselves from participating, were willing to talk and share their ideas with the rest of the class. Of course, it cannot be denied that some challenges have arisen during the implementation of such an innovative project. One of our biggest fears was the cameras use. We were not sure if students would treat the gadgets accurately or if they would just touch everything and lose the focus of the task. In the first session, we had some problems with the cameras, since all the students wanted to record and they lost a little bit the purpose of the activity. This fact made us lose a lot of time, but luckily we could finish all the activities planned. At the beginning of the next session we reflected on this issue with our students, who realized that the most important thing was not to record, but to have time to practice their speech to be able to send it to the other school. Luckily, in the next sessions students were that into the tasks that they did not intend to do something “funnier” at any time, a fact which made us proud of our activities design. By far, another fear was the noise levels. In the first session, it was a bit difficult to keep the rest of the class quiet while a group was recording, since this was something new and really engaging for them. However, and from the first session on, this problem was reduced as we made them see the result: lots of students were talking behind, so the recording was not clear enough for our partners to understand it. They immediately saw that there was a real reason for them to be quiet and the recordings were each time more accurate. Another challenge we experienced was the roles distribution. None of us had done it before, so we were not sure about the reaction the students’ would have. In the first sessions, it was a bit complicated for students to understand that everyone would end by performing each role. However, they all wanted to be “technicians” since the very beginning and it was not easy to try to calm them down. In the following sessions, as they were seeing that the roles were rotating, the problem disappeared. Added to that, it should not be forgotten that the implementation of such an approach calls for a good deal of preliminary preparation and planning, since teachers face the dual challenge of covering both communicative and disciplinary competencies. This goes hand in hand with the next hurdle we would like to raise, which gazes at the risk of trivializing either the contents or the foreign language in an attempt to reach all the students. As we see it, breaking down large amounts of information into smaller tasks due to the students’ poor command of English can be greatly beneficial to aid them to understand tasks, but lowering down significant contents can give room to an underachievement of basic knowledge. It seems to us that the solution to this issue can be obtained through the carefully design of scaffolding, which provides children the necessary assistance to bridge the gap between what they cannot do without help and what they can do autonomously. Realia, visual organisers, substitution tables and word banks, the diagrammatic representation of information, understanding through seeing, or responding through doing are outstanding resources that we have used to offer students this additional support that they undoubtedly need to understand others and to make themselves understood in a foreign language. Finally, presenting the tasks in an attractive way for children, through games or interactive activities has also been fundamental to counterbalance the cognitive demands that entails giving a lesson in a foreign language. In fact, learning by playing games involves further engagement in cognitive learning and is also an outstanding way of making everyone participate, so this is something we are very proud of from our project. Finally, arranging our schedules was something difficult too. Doing this project entailed a good deal of coordination between both schools, since we needed each other’s videos to complete our information during the different sessions. This was very stressful at first, since we had to ensure we implemented the lessons the same days. In fact, we first planned to do a synchronous telecollaboration in the fifth session but it became impossible because we could not coincide in time. After having implemented the teaching sequence, we both agree that we are flooded with a feeling of pride and satisfaction. Yes, we have made it!. At the beginning, when we decided to jump into this project, we felt quite nervous and afraid for the fear of failure. However, thanks to the support we were giving constantly between us, all the time we have devoted to make the most of it and all our effort, have yield outstanding results. Despite the challenges above mentioned, what cannot be denied is how satisfied we feel now. Definitely, and after having implemented this teaching unit, we have come to the conclusion that the activities that language teachers must promote need to be communicative, contextualized and meaningful for the learners, which will probably involve investigation and discussion among them in order to produce a final product that aims to answer the question of the project, promoting collaboration and interaction with different class members. What is more, this communication is precisely one of the skills presently required, so, why not let them start? |