1. Outside the Box Rethinking Language Learning in the 21st Century
Dr. Sue E. K. Otto The University of Iowa

2. Factors that influence our thinking
“Digital native” students
Education trends and imperatives
Second language teaching and learning

3. What is a digital native?
Marc Prensky
Frontline: digital_nation – life on the virtual frontier
Aired on PBS, February, 2010

4. Digital Immigrants and Natives
The single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. ... Digital Immigrant teachers assume that learners are the same as they have always been, and that the same methods that worked for the teachers when they were students will work for their students now. But that assumption is no longer valid. Today's learners are different.
Marc Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

5. Instructional preferences
Many educators prefer:
slow, controlled release of info from limited sources
to provide text before pictures, sounds and video
to provide info linearly, logically and sequentially
to teach “just-in-case”
feel compelled to teach to the curriculum guide/tests
Digital learners prefer:
receiving info quickly from multiple multimedia sources
processing pictures, sounds color, and video before text
random access to hyper-linked multimedia information
to learn “just-in-time”
learning that’s relevant, active, instantly useful and fun
From “Closing the digital divide”
Jukes & McCain, 2008

6. Education trends/imperatives
Education reform
Student-centered, (inter)active instruction
Collaborative tasks
Performance-based assessment
New literacies
Doing more with less

7. Education Reform for the 21st Century
Conventional
Teacher-directed
Didactic teaching
Short blocks of instruction on a single subject
Individual work
Teacher as knowledge dispenser
Ability groupings
Assessment of fact knowledge/discrete skills
Reform
Student exploration
Interactive instruction
Extended blocks of authentic and multidisciplinary work
Collaborative work
Teacher as facilitator and mentor
Heterogeneous groupings
Performance-based assessment
From Using Technology to Support Education Reform, a report by Means et al. for the U.S. Department of Education, 1993.

8. Literacy
The condition or quality of being literate, especially the ability to read and write.

9. Information Literacy
Skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information that include the abilities to:
Determine the extent of information needed
Access information sources in many formats effectively and efficiently
Critically evaluate information and sources
Use information to achieve a specific goal
Understand the legal and social issues involved in using information and making ethical and legal use of it
Association of College and Research Libraries

10. New Media Literacies – MIT Style

11. Information Literacy Skills
They are not just skills for the classroom. And they’re not just skills for the workplace. They’re skills that involve creative expression, they’re skills that involve citizenship, they’re skills that connect people together at something larger than the individual level.
Henry Jenkins, MIT

12. Information literacy and language learning:
Ability to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information in the target language, interpreting it in the context of the target culture.

13. Doing more with less . . . Teach more students Do it for less money
Respond to
needs of individual students
demands of the globalized marketplace
Use technology to accomplish the above

14. Hybrid courses Reduced number of face-to-face class meetings
Deliver more instruction online
Listening and reading practice
Speaking practice/performance with voice tools
Grammar tutorials and practice
Assessment
Quizzes (online)
Oral assessments and chapter test (online in testing center)
Midterm/final oral exam (face-to-face)
Final exam (paper & pencil)

15. SLA theories, approaches and issues
Sociocultural Theory
Associate-Cognitive CREED
pragmatics
Processability Theory
Universal Grammar
interlanguage development
Input Processing
Complexity Theory
feedback
learner characteristics
Autonomous Induction Theory
Language Socialization
Systemic-Functional
Skill Acquisition Theory
motivation, beliefs
Interactionist Theory
Concept-Oriented Approach
Conversation Analysis
critical period

16. The Big Picture Digital natives: their skills and expectations
Education reform
Changing realities and expectations of educational institutions
Current trends in language pedagogy, changes prompted by SLA research

17. Fundamental changes Instructional mission Class time
Time outside of class

18. Change in instructional mission: [from knowledge to knowledge-able]
Focus on how, not what:
Skills and strategies
How to communicate effectively
How to observe, bootstrap, cope
How to look for, evaluate and interpret/analyze information
Practice (DeKeyser: Skill Acquisition Theory)

19. Rethinking class time Less teacher talk/lecturing
More group interaction and exploration
Information technology available to both teacher and students

20. Rethinking practice outside of class
(CALL exercises)
Podcasts
YouTube
Public discussion forums
Blogs
Wikis
FaceBook
Concordancers/corpora
Creative projects
Virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life)
Chat, IM, Skype
Twitter, texting
Web research
Games

21. Russian Language in Context
Advanced Russian students
Project on Vladimir Zherebtsov
Popular actor:
Forum:
Main tasks:
Visit website and gather personal information to answer questions.
Explore and find out information about the forum; register.
Students read recent postings for 3 discussion threads, write 1-2 posts per thread, monitor responses to their posts, document their forum activities.
Culminating reflections: differences between this forum and US forums; thoughts on the various tasks; what students learned/gained
Lesson author: Lyudmila Klimanova
FLARE SLA doctoral candidate, University of Iowa

22. Up and Down Sides Students explore/participate in authentic fan forum
Culturally authentic environment
Authentic language use
Interaction with Russian native speakers
Exposure to Russian pop culture
Student acceptance in forum not immediate
Some students not interested/not engaged
Difficulty in tracking participation (teacher)

23. The Spanish Civil War Learning objectives: Learning space with:
develop an understanding of the ideological debates informing the war
experience a select number of works about the war
analyze relationships among art, politics, and propaganda
Learning space with:
Round tables (seat 9)
Networked laptops (3 per table)
Multiple large computer/video displays
Whiteboards
Tom Lewis

24. TILE learning spaces Transform, Interact, Learn, Engage
Seeing peers and self as additional important sources of authority and knowledge
Student as active contributor, problem solver, and discussant
High expectations for preparation for class and in-class participation
Collaborative work with peers

25. Clickers: spot checking/discussion

26. Other class activities
Short introductory presentation (1 ppt slide, teacher)
Sight read Hernández poem “Nanas de la cebolla” (whole class)
Read/watch/listen to 4 internet texts—audio, video, readings— related to Hernández (teams) discuss and take notes teams report to class (teacher-orchestrated)
Watch scene from film Tierra y libertad (whole class); recap pros and cons of private ownership (teams/whiteboard)
[Quizzes and first exam]
Homework/outside of class:
Readings
Aperitivos (warm-up questions to prepare for next class)
Wiki
Midterm and final exams

27. 75 minute class period: Student group work: 50 minutes
Class discussion (teacher orchestrated): minutes
Teacher lecture: <5 minutes
Technology in play for: ~60 minutes (significant practice with tech resources and tools)

29. Mentira project (Sykes & Holden)
Mobile game: Fictional murder mystery set in Los Griegos neighborhood of Albuquerque
Played by students
with iPod Touch (using GPS capability)
out on the streets of Los Griegos

30. Rethinking
The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.
Albert Einstein