To program or not to program? That's the question!

Every student should have the opportunity to learn computer science since it helps foster problem-solving skills, logic and creativity. Steve Jobs claimed that “Everybody in the country should learn how to program a computer... because it teaches you how to think”. There is no need to be an expert or to start big in order to program, the only need is to be willing to accept challenges!

It is the purpose of this presentation to explore Selby and Woollard (2013) suggestions about teaching which support the XXI c skills our students need to develop computational thinking  (algorithmic thinking, evaluation, decomposition, abstraction, generalisation). Then, I will delineate an authentic teaching practice I carried out with my 6^th form students at Colegio Newlands, which proved successful for the attainment of these strategies.

Learning how to programme in the classroom becomes an authentic and meaningful task conducive to language learning (Breen1985: 61, as cited in Mishan). Students are engaged in real world activities, such as the ones experts carry out. The only difference is that the context that is used is meaningful for them at their age, and the final goal is an authentic one: to design their own videogames using Kodu, a visual programming language tool.

In this talk I will also share different experiences that teachers can carry out in order to include programming in their lessons. I will demonstrate how language, technology and content can be integrated effectively in authentic tasks which require students to develop critical thinking. For instance, students can learn about Victorian England designing the city with Minecraft. Even when there is no technology or connection at school, programming can occur in meaningful authentic contexts. The final objective is to create a PLN (Personal learning network) to create connections and contribute to our professional development for the benefit of our students.

Bibliography

Jobs, S. (2012). Interview: Steve Jobs says everyone should learn to program. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCDkxUbalCw. [Accessed 25-04-2017].

Mishan, F. (2005). Designing Authenticity into Language Learning Materials. United Kingdom: Intellect Books.

Selby, C. & Woollard, J. 2013. Computational Thinking: The Developing Definition. Available: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/356481 [Accessed 25-04-2017].

Authentic texts or Authentic tasks? Towards a balanced reading diet

According to Alderson (1984:1) the demands of a globalised world require students to master a reading knowledge of a foreign language (FL) for their academic studies as well as for their professional and personal development. As a result, students are often assessed with a reading comprehension test that should demonstrate their reading abilities in the FL. Yet, this author claims that it is common for most students to fail to read in the FL as they seem to lack either basic understanding of texts, speed, knowledge of the language or mastery of reading strategies

One of the reasons for this failure may be derived from the lack of authentic activities. Teachers who ask students to answer direct reference questions in reading tasks do not appear to foster authentic reading comprehension compared to teachers who ask students inference questions, which go beyond the literal comprehension of information and demand for reorganization, inference, prediction, evaluation and personal response.

According to Van Lier (1996: 128, as cited in Mishan, 2005:15) authenticity does not get into the classroom by means of the materials or lesson plan, it is realised in the act of interpretation, and may be judged in terms of the degree of participation and personal involvement of the learner with the text. This idea has critical implication for the pedagogical classroom since what is important is what we do with a reading text rather than whether it belongs to a ‘real’ context.

It is the purpose of this presentation to address teachers’ current practices in relation to reading tasks in an attempt to help them broaden the scope of activities aimed at the readers’ understanding of written texts within an authentic pedagogical act. This talk will offer ideas on how to aim at authentic reading tasks which foster the acquisition of comprehension strategies. As Clarke puts it ‘teaching materials should reflect the authentic communicative purpose of the text’ (1989: 75, as cited in Mishan, 2005:71)

References:

Alderson, J.C. (1984). Reading in a foreign language: a reading problem or a language problem? In J.C. Alderson and A. H. Urquhart (eds.), Reading in a Foreign Language (pp 1-24). New York: Longman.

Mishan, F. (2005). Designing Authenticity into Language Learning Materials. United Kingdom: Intellect Books.