Students teaching students coding and programming via a video-conference
ECIS 2014: ES Students as Conference Presenters“Gr5 students from the Anglo-American School of Sofia taught ECIS’14 conference attendees how to Code & Program over Skype!“ The session showcased collaborative work of teachers and students in the integration of the ISTE Standards into the Foreign Language curriculum. Their session was titled “Students Teaching Others How to Code and Program: Employing students as technology leaders to integrate Coding and Programming into the curriculum and develop 21st Century literacies and learning skills.” During this project ES Students from Ms. Pavlova’s Intermediate French class learned both language and technology skills by preparing to teach others. They used age appropriate coding and programming software to develop educational games that help our younger students learn French vocabulary related to weather and clothes. Students also acted as ‘technology leaders’ by teaching Mr. Gagnon’s Gr5 students in the US how to code and program so they can become technology leaders in their school, as well. Student games and their screencasts with software tutorials are available on our website: www.learningbyteaching.weebly.com.
We have used this approach in various projects in the past where students acted as technology leaders by teaching peers and adults including teachers, CTAs, parents and other educators how to use ICT applications. This technique is known as speed-geeking and it is considered as an efficient way to introduce a large audience to a number of new technologies. Ms Tareva first learned about this technique at another ECIS Conference, two years ago at the ECIS ICT Committee Meeting. She loved it and decided to try it with students. Since then we have been using it on a number of occasions where students acted as technology leaders by teaching peers and adults like teachers, CTAs, parents and other educators how to use ICT applications. The first similar event that took place in the Anglo-American School of Sofia was the Parent Coffee Morning in December 2012 on "Leveraging technology to enhance learning". The next one was tech teaching slam session during the International L-Ten Technology Conference in January 2013, followed by an informal technology PD session for the AAS CTAs in May 2013. The last event was a presentational teaching session at the Balkan Google Summit in December 2013. Earlier this year our little technology leaders delivered technology PD to our teachers and CTAs as a part of my MA research on the effect of employing students as technology leaders on student motivation and their learning skills. The integration of Coding & Programming @French and our US teaching sessions, however, marked the first application of this approach virtually, via a video conference. Presenting at ECIS was the culminating event for our students and we, as educators, are very proud of their achievement.
The concept of teaching as a way of learning has a long history and often successfully extended to involving students as teachers in various forms throughout the centuries. Innovative practices that employ students as technology leaders have been emerging to shift the traditional teaching and learning arrangements and accommodate current demands for technology enhanced 21st Century education.
Such practices utilise students’ technology expertise in schools by engaging students to deliver learning not only to peers but also to adults as best practices of technology professional development and have the potential to foster enhanced pedagogies and redefine the role of teachers from that of authoritative lecturers that provide unidirectional instruction, towards that of coaches, mentors, designers and guides, leading students towards effective learning. Initiatives that employ students as teachers challenge the perception of teaching as a rigid, one-sided responsibility based on teachers’ expertise and authority, and that of learning as a solely student, novice responsibility and it purports to position the students at the centre of the teaching and learning process. By providing students with the meaningful, authentic opportunity to act as teachers, they can enable leadership, collaborative, problem-solving, and communication skills through active, self-regulated and collaborative learning while listening to students’ voices on how schools can be more relevant to real life. 31st October: Whole class coding instruction 4000 miles apartLast week, 27th - 31st October, 2014, students from Ms Pavlolva's Gr.5 Intermediate French class taught Ms Samantha's 5th grade class in the US how to code and program with 2Code, Scratch and Hopscotch via e video conference. This was the culmination of our technology rich French project on 'Weather and Clothing' where students developed educational French Language Games. Last Friday, we had our second event on students teaching students. The whole Gr5 Intermediate French group had the opportunity to teach peers in the USA to help our foreign ‘students’ take their coding and programming skills further. Once again our little ‘teachers’ transferred their knowledge that they developed while creating interactive French vocabulary games for our less advanced language learners.
28th October: Whole class coding instruction 4000 miles apartThis past Tuesday, a small group of fifth graders from Ms. Pavlova’s French class connected through Skype video conference to teach their US peers how to code and program. The session provided a blended online and face to face interaction. Students from Ms. Samantha’s class in New Hampshire had a chance to attend three stations where AAS student tech experts taught them to use 2Code, Scratch and Hopscotch. This was the first from a series of events where AAS students teach others to help them become technology leaders, who in turn will deliver coding and programming training to others. Six of our AAS students are preparing for the culmination - a remote interactive workshop for the audience of ECIS Conference 2014 in Nice, France.
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The ECIS workshop consisted of three parts and continued for 135 minutes - an opening session, an interactive workshops session and a closing session. At the ‘Opening Session’, our seven Grade 5 students and Ms. Pavlova, who were at the AAS campus in Bulgaria, connected through a Skype Video Conference with Ms. Tareva and conference attendees in Nice and with Mr. Gagnon in the USA, to share experiences of our Grade 5 project Coding & Programming @ French. Students spoke from the learner’s perspective, Ms. Krasimira Pavlova (Bulgaria) spoke from the perspective of a Foreign language teacher, Mr. Stephen Gagnon (US) spoke from the perspective of a classroom teacher and Technology Integrationist, Ms. Ralitsa Tareva (Bulgaria) introduced the technology integration and the learning by teaching approach. During the ‘Interactive Workshops’ our students taught the conference attendees how to code and program via a Skype video conference using screenshare. They invited the audience to split into three groups and join one of their three learning stations each designated to showcase a coding&programming software - Hopscotch, 2Code and Scratch. Each audience group spent 15 minutes on a station and then moved to the next one until everyone had visited all stations. This was a hands on activity including a problem solving task, prepared by our students, that modeled the actual teaching session we delivered to Mr. Gagnon’s students in the US. Once all the audience had rotated to each table, students, teachers and conference attendees gathered back together for a short ‘Closing Session’. All of us, including our students, had an open discussion where they had the opportunity to ask questions and generate ideas on possible future integration of coding and programming and the learning by teaching approach in other educational areas.
Through projects that employ students as technology leaders utilising the ‘Learning by Teaching’ approach students learn independently by preparing to teach others. We have decided to incorporate the ‘learning by teaching model’ into the French Grade 5 unit on Weather and Clothing, because we wanted to offer our students a different perspective of language learning. We harnessed students’ passion for technology and offered our students alternative ways of learning in a real life, authentic context. During this integrated project Ms. Pavlova’s students learned to use the programming software independently, by exploration, through the development of their French educational games for their younger peers in the school. Throughout the project we observed increased student motivation and high levels of student involvement. Students significantly improved their writing skills, pronunciation and their use of French expressions and are now able to utilize language learning tools more purposefully. Along with the language skill, students have considerably developed their 21’s century skills such as collaboration and communication, creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving. They reached levels of independent and self-directed learning not easily achievable by traditional teaching and learning methods. Our 12 year old students were able to reach ISTE expectations for high school students ( e.g. Design, develop, and test a digital learning game to demonstrate knowledge and skills related to curriculum content. (1, 4) motivated by the exciting opportunity to teach peers in the US and then the ECIS conference attendees due to the real life, authentic context in which they were learning. They had a real goal in the real life and they took full responsibility of their own learning in order to achieve it.
Students’ interviews, a photo and a video gallery will be published in the next Issue of the AAS Newsletter(www.aas-sofia.org) on the 5th of December 2014. Follow our posts on AAS facebook, G+1 G+2 G+3 and twitter.
Along with gaining a plethora of technology skills the students have reached levels of independent and self-directed learning not easily achievable by traditional teaching and learning methods. Students have significantly improved the use of French expressions. They can now use language learning tools such as dictionaries purposefully and build more complex constructions confidently. The project will reach its culmination on the 22nd of November, when our ‘students-teachers’ will deliver a remote interactive workshop for the audience of ECIS Conference 2014 in Nice, France.
We would like to express our gratitude to Ms. Samantha, the Gr5 teacher and Mr. Gagnon, the technology integration coach at Stratham Memorial School, NH, USA for the wonderful collaboration. We look forward to hear back how the ‘students as technology leaders’ project develops in their school. These events are part of a bigger ICT integration project within the Grade 5 unit on Weather and Clothing in French. Ms. Pavlova’s students learnt to use the programming software and developed French Educational games for their younger peers in the school. It was made possible through the collaborative efforts of homeroom and specialist teachers to integrate ISTE Standards for learning, teaching and leading in the digital age (www.iste.org) and the 21Century Skills Framework (www.p21.com ) into the Foreign Language Curriculum. The project was another opportunity for our students to gain expertise and extend the 'Learning by Teaching' approach to the virtual dimension. It also marked a three-year long collaboration between Ms. Tareva and Mr. Gagnon, the Technology Integration Coach at Stratham Memorial School, New Hampshire, USA.
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Students' French Vocabulary Games:
Software installation and tutorials
Hopscotch
Access: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/hopscotch-programming-designed/id617098629?mt=8 Tutorials: A selection of tutorials by Hopscotch |
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Students' Tutorials - Screencasts
Hopscotch by Victor and Valerie |
Our Introduction! |
We will teach you a software called Hopscotch for iPAD that is free on the App store. The software purpose is creating programs.Hopscotch uses blocks and behind the blocks are a set of instructions or also called ¨code¨
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"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."
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2Code by Alexandra and Yavor
We will be teaching you all how to use 2Code to create a simple program. We will use 2Code, a web based version on purplemash. The purpose of this program is to teach you how to code and program by having fun.
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This is a really fun program to learn because there are tutorials and many challenges for you to solve. You can even use it to create your own challenges.
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Scratch by Stefan, Victor and Dimi
We are going to teach you how to use Scratch while practicing vocabulary related to winter and clothing.
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Scratch has three versions: The 'iPAD', the 'Web2' and the 'Download' version. We will teach you the 'Web' version.
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The purpose of Scratch is to teach you how to code and program
using blocks of code. |
Contact UsEmail
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Twitter: @rtareva @jstephengagnon Google+ K.Pavlova: https://plus.google.com/11127322759734462774 R.Tareva, https://plus.google.com/u/0/116228234977500260405 |