Aurasma - Collaborative jigsaw reading activity

Using Aurasma to set up collaborative jigsaw reading activity

Eleven months after my last post I am back blogging again. Since then I completed my Master's at the university of Warwick, I relocated to Spain, found my first teaching job and attended my first English language teaching conference. Right now, I am teaching 40 hours every week which leaves no time for blogging (even eating sometimes). At the beginning, it was really challenging. Trying to find the best teaching material for your learners in an ocean of different ELT materials has been a daunting experience especially the first three months. It is that period at the beginning of someone's teaching career in which you ask yourself, ‘Is this job for me?’And my answer is yes! It was that conference that I mentioned before that helped me to overcome this obstacle. Because of this conference, I am back blogging once again. The people that I met there, their passion for teaching English which they embodied into great ideas put me back into the game.

Augmented Reality technology and Aurasma

This post is a part of a series of blog post that will deal with different aspects of my dissertation, broken into short, easy to read, chunks. In this post, I will talk about some activities that I created for my Master's dissertation entitled 'Augmenting an English language teaching textbook using mobile-Augmented Reality technology to examine its impact in real classroom scenarios'. At the end of the series, I will also include a blog spot with all the difficulties that I faced while using Aurasma in an ELT class which every should know before stepping into a class and thinking of using this technology.

First and foremost, those activities make use of Aurasma, an Augmented reality mobile application, which blends the physical world with the virtual into a unique Augmented reality experience. If you are interested in learning more about the application and how to use it, there is another post on my blog which briefly explains the technology and which also includes a detailed video I created on how to use Aurasma Studio; a platform, accessible through your web-browser, which makes creating Augmented Reality experiences a piece of cake. You can find this blog post here.

Activity

My goal with all the activities was to create them in order to correspond to the modification as well as the redesign of the SAMR model (Puentedura 2014),  and at the same time, reaching the higher order thinking skills through the activities.

The first activity was based on a text from a very famous ELT textbook. I changed the book's reading into a jigsaw reading activity in which the learners were given a different source of information based on the text's  topic. The topic was about different ways of living a long life.

• One group of students was asked to read the textbook’s text.
• The second group was asked to use ‘Aurasma’ and scan the right half of the picture located above the book's text. This would trigger an article from a website dealing with a kind of superfood called kale.
• Finally, the third group of students was asked to watch a video which was about tips on living a healthy life. The video was triggered after the student would open ‘Aurasma’ and scan the left half of the picture above the textbook’s text.

 All sources were related to each other so that the students could then mingle in order to exchange ideas and tips on how to improve their lives. After that, learners would get into teams of three with learners from the other groups so that they would come up with a list of the top tips for living a healthy and long life.

The ideas behind the activity

So, as you just read I used the book's images as the trigger images for the Augmented reality material. I did that in an effort to increase the book's value by introducing the concept of a changeable book that would be altered according to our teaching context. Instead of replacing the book, by acknowledging its value, I tried to build upon it and use it as a springboard for providing extra and relevant information.

Depending on my students' level, age and interests I could have possibly used a different article or video. Also, thinking about the amount of new information that we are introduced every day, the video or the article which I used last year might have become outdated by now. With Augmented Reality and Aurasma I can just keep my trigger images and associate them with new videos or articles. Still, I would use the same book as the basis in which I would relate the Augmented Reality material. So, instead of demoting the ELT book, I am improving it, and making it an integral part of my teaching.

Moreover, augmented Reality gave me the opportunity to incorporate an article and a YouTube video into my lesson without having to print anything or move the students from their seats in order to sit in front of a computer for example. Thus, on the one hand, I didn't have to deal with printers and on the other hand with finding a computer for every one of my learners. One of the possibly greatest powers of this technology is the fact it requires minimum effort from the side of the student. In other words, students just open Aurasma, point the mobile phone's camera to the triggering image and the material, I decided to give them, is right there on their screens.

All work is done by me beforehand and therefore, makes technology a lot less disruptive. There is not need for changing seats, turning on a computer, typing and trying to find the correct website etc. And even if this activity had been done with a mobile phone, learners would still need to open their internet browser and write the correct web address. The nature of AR allows for the right material to be displayed when learners trigger the respective images that I have set to serve as the trigger images while preparing the activity. This allows for a smooth and unproblematic experience which allowed the teacher to be minimally involved in the activity. Therefore, it can be said that possibly one of the affordances of AR is to promote a learning experience, which can flow without the intervention of the teacher, due to the guarantee that the learners will be presented with the right material. 

Finally thoughts

To be honest, this activity which was the first among the three that I did with the class the participated in my research was quite a failure. Even though I had a very good understanding of the technology, problems emerged that hindered my research. Those problems I will extensively present them in a blog post at the end of this series. However, having experienced this failure, I tried the exact same activity with my group of learners and that time the activity was a success. My learners were engaged in the activity throughout it. Having done quite a few jigsaw reading activities with this group of learners. This modified jigsaw reading surely caught their attention. I was pleased to watch my learners watching the video a number of times until the have felt that they had a good understanding of its content. 

Finally, I feel that learners should be given the freedom to take control over their learning. Next time I would try this activity with another group of learners I would encourage them to go on and search the recommended list of videos that appear next to activity's video in YouTube, as well as similar articles in a way to make them more responsible about their learning, increase their exposure to English, and give them the opportunity to self-direct their learning.

Extra information

At the end of this blog post, you can find the page from the ELT book that I used to base my Augmented Reality material. You can download Aurasma, open the application, follow my profile Aurasma profile named Antonopa, click on the page below to make it larger, point your camera with Aurasma application open and experience the Augmented Reality material. 

References:

Puentedura, R., R (2014) SAMR In the Classroom: Developing Sustainable Practice [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/archives/2014/11/28/SAMRInTheClassroom_DevelopingSustainablePractice.pdf

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Soft Chalk - Creating web based lessons

Soft Chalk

What is soft chalk?

Soft Chalk is a web lesson builder. In other it is a tool that enables teachers to create digital lessons. Teachers can make use of their own material or they can search through the built-in search engine for materials and put them together to create the lessons. What is more you can share and borrow your lessons and other people lessons respectively by uploading them to the soft chalk online repository.

Free to use?

Soft chalk is free to try for 30 days but after that it requires you to pay the amount of 495$ which is considerably high. However, the 30 days trial gives the chance to decide whether this tool is worth your money or not.

Example material

Click here -> SoftChalk Prepositions of place Lesson

I created an example lesson in which I deal with the prepositions. The lesson will be suitable for a group of either adults or teenagers learners at an elementary level/ A1-A2. For this lesson, I tried to follow an inductive approach. Learners, after a very brief introduction which explains what prepositions are, are given a text which I wrote for this activity. Learners need to scan through the text in order to locate the prepositions. The purpose of this task is to give them the opportunity to "notice" the prepositions inside the text. At this stage, mistakes are expected, therefore, a low score in the activity would be normal. However, learners through activity two would hopefully be able to figure out what the prepositions are and not confuse them with the articles. The reason I chose the articles a, an and the to be the wrong answers is the fact that the learners should be familiar with the indefinite and definite article therefore they should be able to figure out that the rest constitute a different group of words. Then learners move to activity 3 in which they are given a picture (picture 1) with different colour boxes and a tree. Learners should scan through the text once again and locate the prepositions in order to be able to distinguish between the different places that are mentioned in the text. Then they need to move the labels (bus stop, convenient store etc.) into the correct boxes.

By the time, they finish with the labelling activity learners should be familiar with the prepositions and figure which words consist them. Then one the same text but without the prepositions, learners need to choose the correct prepositions. Learners are urged to recall the picture in which the label the different place in order to finish this task. Finally, now that they have been presented with the target language and have practised it they are asked to create their own paragraphs in which they will describe what is around their own home as in the text.

Target Audience

Softchalk is a tool that gives teachers the opportunity to decide on their target audience. As long as, learners have basic IT skills they can experience a soft chalk lesson. The reason why there is not a particular target audience is mainly because soft chalk can be described as a tabula rasa. What I mean by that is that soft chalk is just the platform in which teachers will create their lessons. By lessons, I refer to complete lessons similar to those taking place in a classroom. Therefore both activities and theory can be included. As a result, depending on the context of the lesson the target audience may vary in terms of proficiency. Concerning multi-modality, soft chalk will be particularly appealing to visual learners. Auditory learners will also find soft chalk interesting depending on the teachers' approach when creating the lessons. For example, a lesson that asks learners to watch a series of videos and do some activities based on them would be motivating for that type of learners. On the other hand, kinaesthetic learners will find softchalk monotonous and demotivating considering the fact that the only movement that takes place is limited to moving the mouse and typing on the keyboard. Last but not least, analytic learners will be benefited by softchalk. The company who created softchalk are rewarding teachers for excellent lessons every year. All the lesson had one thing in common. They were given small chunks of knowledge followed by activities. As a result, information and instructions were given in an explicit manner. What is more, each of those chunks which include theory and activities had very clear goals and objectives. What is more , the range of activities the softchalk offers are particularly relevant to the analytical learner's taste. Those include matching, labelling and jigsaw activities. Finally, due to the fact that softchalk promotes those small chunks of activities and theory, learners who get easily distracted and find it difficult to concentrate would be particularly benefited by this approach that softchalk promotes.

Does it meet our pedagogical goals?

In terms of feedback, softchalk records learners scores for the teacher to identify the learners' weaknesses. It gives real-time feedback, as a result learners are given the chance for self-correction. Concerning writing tasks such as essays in which the answers are very long, those will be store in order for the teacher to read them later give them appropriate feedback. 

Concerning the four language skills, writing and especially reading can be sufficiently practised. Again, however, the affordances for language learning depend on the teachers' correct use of this particular technology. Normally, each lesson will include a reading task followed by an activity, based on the task , which will lead to activities that require higher-order thinking skills. At that point, learners will need to reflect on the learning process or create an authentic piece of work such as an essay which is similar to what I did in my lesson with the writing activity.

Limitations

While creating a lesson, I realised that what I was creating was a web equivalent of my normal lessons that would take place in a traditional English classroom. However, when I tried to include a speaking activity I came to realize that this is not possible. What is more, listening is not provided in the possible activities. Finally. groupwork is also missing from softchalk. However, at some point in this presentation I said that softchalk is a platform which can enrich with material from another source as well. For example in my first post, I talked about Voki, a tool that lets you create speaking Avatars. Voki avatars can be embedded in a softchalk lesson to provide learners with some spoken language input. Similar to that, learners might be prompted to write a collaborative essay by embedding a Google doc link. Finally about speaking, learners could be given a speaking task along with a link of Vocaroo which is an on-line tool capable of recording one's voice. After that, learners could post the link of the recording in a space created by the teacher similar to the one I created for the writing task. To conclude, as long as we have knowledge of the various ICT tools, we can embed them in our lessons to provide our learners with ample practice of the different language skills.

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