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Audio Dissection

Language is as much a skill as it is a subject. Therefore, language learning must involve not only vocabulary and grammar study, but also practice and training of the skills necessary to communicate in a foreign language: speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

Listening comprehension is often regarded as an ability that is gradually acquired through constant exposure to the target language, when in reality, it is a tangible skill that can be improved through conscious practice and training.

Audio dissection is a technique that trains the ear to pick up the sounds of a foreign language that would normally be missed or misinterpreted. I first used this approach to training listening comprehension when I was listening to a TED Talk in French on YouTube. I found that I could only make out bits and pieces — a few words here and there — so in an attempt to increase my comprehension, I replayed small sections of the audio over and over again until I was able to make out every word of what was said. Since that first French TED Talk, I have refined this approach to improving listening comprehension to the method outlined below.

Materials
• An audio or video sample of the target language. It is best if the speakers are native speakers of the target language so that authentic accent, pronunciation, and syntax can be studied.
• Repeat/pause feature to pause and replay the audio. This is the most important tool for audio dissection.
• A transcript of the audio in the target language; this may be in the form of captions/subtitles (optional).
• A transcript of the audio in the native language; this may be in the form of captions/subtitles (optional).

Goals
• Improve listening comprehension
• Improve understanding of authentic accent/pronunciation
• Increase vocabulary
• Improve understanding of authentic syntax and sentence structure

The Steps of Audio Dissection

NOTE: The goal of audio dissection is to understand every word of every sentence. If you cannot hear or understand a certain word in a sentence, you do not understand that sentence. A good way to ensure that you understand a sentence is to write it down. If you cannot write down the sentence word for word, you do not understand it.

1. Listen to the audio/video once fully without any transcripts and without replaying. This step is to determine the difficulty of the selected clip. If, after listening, you are able to understand approximately 60-90% of the material, the clip is of a suitable difficulty and you may proceed to dissecting it. However, if you are not able to understand at least 60%, you may not be able to improve your comprehension significantly even after dissecting the audio. Likewise, if you can understand more than 90%, the sample is too easy; you would get more out of dissecting a more challenging clip.

2. Start listening again. Play the audio in segments, pausing after each phrase, each sentence, or every couple of sentences. After you’ve played a segment, test your comprehension of what you just heard: Were there any words you didn’t know the meanings of? Were there any words you didn’t recognize? Was anything completely unintelligible? If the answer is “no” to all of these questions, you may want to confirm that you understood the segment by writing it down, saying it aloud to yourself, or listening to it one more time. Then move on to the next segment of audio. However, if the answer to any of the above questions is “yes,” you need to “dissect” the audio segment.

3. This is where the loop/repeat feature is crucial. Some MP3 players have a loop feature, and if you are on a computer, you can keep your cursor at the beginning of the audio segment on the timeline and simply click when you want to restart the loop. Figure out which part of the segment is unclear. To do this, first figure out whatever IS clear. Write down or say out loud everything that you CAN understand. This will help to single out the part that you have difficulty with.

a. After you have determined where in the audio segment the part you don’t understand lies, ask yourself these questions to discover more about the unknown segment: Is it a single word? Is it a phrase? What part of speech is it? Is it an idiomatic expression? Answering these questions may give you more insight into the nature of the unknown segment you are dealing with.

b. Use the context around the unknown segment for additional hints. For example, if you know that the segment is saying “The boy got on the bus but then realized he ______ his backpack” (maybe you are listening to a story), try to predict what the unknown part may be. In this case, “forgot” or “dropped” may make sense. Once you have a prediction and have translated it into the language of the audio, re-listen to the segment and see if the sounds you hear in the unknown segment match up with your prediction.

c. If you are not able to make a prediction based on the context, use the transcript in your native language to figure out the meaning of the unknown segment through reverse translation; use the meaning to figure out the word in the target language. For example, if I hear a phrase in Mandarin that I know means “I am leaving ______,” and I cannot make an accurate prediction about the unknown part, I would use my English transcript to find out that the meaning of the phrase is “I am leaving on Tuesday” (remember that transcripts can simply be captions or subtitles). Even though there are two ways of saying “Tuesday” in Mandarin, I know to choose one over the other based on what I hear in the audio.

d. If you are still unable to decode the unknown segment, try to transcribe the sounds that you hear phonetically. This may help you figure out the spelling of the word, which will allow you to look up the meaning. In phonetic languages such as Spanish, this technique is useful because the pronunciation of a word is directly correlated with its spelling. In other languages like English or French, however, homophones may lead to misinterpretations of spellings. For example, in French, the words fois (“time”), foie (“liver”), and foi (“faith”) all have the same pronunciation, which is why it is particularly challenging to develop accurate listening comprehension in non-phonetic languages.

e. As a last resort, refer to the transcript in the target language, which will provide the spelling for whatever words you were not able to hear. It is important that this transcript be used as a last resort, because the process of trying to decode the sounds that you hear is what improves comprehension ability, not simply getting the answer from a transcript.

f. If no transcript is available in the target language, skip the unknown segment and move on. You may be able to figure it out later.

g. NOTE: I recommend that as you go through Step 3, you write down any new words you learn or any patterns in the accent/pronunciation that you notice. In addition, it is necessary to re-listen to newly dissected segments multiple times to allow your mind to absorb and make sense of the sounds that it missed earlier. This is a crucial part of the process because you are training your mind to pick up what it could not recognize before so that when you hear something similar in the future you will be able to recognize and decode it immediately.

4. Now that you have finished dissecting your audio/video clip, listen to the whole thing from start to finish without any transcripts to see how your comprehension has improved from the first time you listened to it. If there are still segments that you are not able to understand, refer to your notes and try to recall your original dissection for that segment. Repeat this step as often as desired.

5. Listen to the audio sample with the transcript in your native language. This is to ensure that you correctly understood the meaning of everything you heard. Repeat this step as often as desired.

6. Listen to the audio sample with the transcript in the target language. This is to ensure that you have correctly understood the exact words that are being said. Repeat this step as often as desired.

7. Repeat Step 4. At this point, any gaps that you still had after Step 3 should be resolved by Steps 5 and 6. Your comprehension of the audio/video clip should be nearly at 100%.

What has been accomplished?

If you chose a clip that was of appropriate difficulty (above 60% initial comprehension) and you followed the steps of dissection for the entire clip, your listening comprehension should have increased significantly. The usefulness of this technique stems from the fact that native speakers follow speech patterns that are not obvious to non-native speakers. For example, in Spanish, the ending -ado is often pronounced as -ao by native speakers. If you notice this pattern during an audio dissection, it will be easier for you to recognize the next time you hear it.

Although the main goal of audio dissection is to improve listening comprehension, it is a compound exercise that trains many aspects of language. Similar to reading, listening is a great way to learn new vocabulary. By dissecting audio clips, you will not only learn new words but also learn to use them in context. This leads into one of the other most important benefits of audio dissection, which is understanding authentic sentence structures. As language learners, we must be aware of the differences in syntax and word order and usage between our native languages and the target languages. The best way to build this awareness is to study native, authentic sentences structures, which is exactly what audio dissection encourages.

This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in April, 2015. At the time, Akshay Swaminathan was a student at the Academy for Medical Science and Technology in Hackensack, NJ. He began studying foreign languages independently at the age of 14 and achieved proficiency in eight languages. In high school, he ranked in the top ten nationally in the National Spanish Exam and Le Grand Concours (National French Contest), and he completed his school’s five-level curriculum for both Spanish and French by the time he graduated in 2015. Inspired by the YouTube polyglot community, he challenged the traditional classroom paradigm for foreign language instruction by incorporating unique learning strategies into his language study, which he shared on his YouTube channel.

Connecting the Community

Tracey Smith makes integrating English language learners into her school’s community a lesson in empathy

I’m the principal at Brookwood Elementary, where we serve more than 1,200 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Approximately 10% of our students are English language learners (ELLs). That may not be an especially high percentage (my previous school was 25% ELLs), but our ELLs speak many, many different languages. We have two students from Romania who speak zero English. This morning, I met a family that just arrived from China. None of them speak any English at all. 

We’re an elementary school, so these kids are eleven and under, and they’re coming into a school where they know no one and they don’t know what people are saying to them. I tell my staff that if we can help these kids feel safe, happy, and successful enough in communication that they can contribute to the classroom, I think that’s a success story. 

At Brookwood, we have a Positive Learning Environment Committee that chooses a theme for every school year. For this year, the theme is “we are connected,” so our common goal is for everything we do as a school to inspire every single teacher, student, administrator, and employee in our building to feel that sense of interconnectedness. Here’s how we’re using this mindset and other social-emotional learning (SEL) principles to not only overcome the language gap our ELLs face but to make all of our students feel that they are part of the same supportive community.

Recognizing the Diversity of ELLs

As educators, we often use “ELL” as a category for all of our students who don’t speak English as their first language. When you’re dealing with little kids who are new to a school, though, you have to remember that all ELLs are not alike. 

In my previous school, Mashburn, almost all of our ELLs were Hispanic students. Because these families were mostly Spanish speaking, we tailored how we welcomed both students and parents to the school and the community. We always made sure we had somebody who could speak Spanish, and my teachers and I made a point of doing cultural activities related to the Spanish-speaking countries our kids came from.

At Brookwood, we make welcoming our diverse population of ELLs part of everyone’s job. 

Our Whole-School Welcoming Committee

When students arrive here in Georgia from all of these different countries, they often lack social awareness. They don’t yet understand our customs and norms. They don’t feel at ease because they don’t know their place in the classroom. Of course, language plays a big part here. These students may not know how to go up and make a friend because they don’t know the right words to even introduce themselves. Relationship skills are one of the cornerstones of SEL, and from the first second an ELL student arrives at our school, we do everything we can to model how to create emotional connections with people around them.

Before we meet a new student from abroad, we make a point to learn a little bit about their culture. How do they greet each other? How do their families function in relation to the educational system? Some cultures believe that school and home are separate entities, while some believe in a partnership. We’re working to provide all of our families with what they need from us, without making them feel like we’re intruding on their privacy.

When I say “we,” I mean the whole staff. When families come in to register, our secretary will let us know what language they speak, and we’ll work together to make them welcome. When we’re placing kids in homerooms, their teachers will look to see if there’s another student who speaks the same language so they’ll have each other. If we happen to have a teacher who speaks their language, she’ll teach the other teachers some common words. 

Empathy First, Language Second 

When these students first arrive and don’t have much English vocabulary, we work to make a connection with them and help them to feel safe and successful. I tell teachers that if, on their first day, a student can tell you that they need to go to the bathroom and they can play with somebody on the playground, it’s a good day.

We use an SEL curriculum, 7 Mindsets (7mindsets.com), in all of our classrooms, and with every new arrival, we teach our English-speaking kids about empathy. We ask them, “What would it be like for you if you were at a school in Romania? Or in China? Or Russia? How would it feel? Wouldn’t you want somebody to come up to you and just take your hand and walk you over to a swing and say, ‘Let’s swing’?”

Those ELLs who are new to the school and the country may not know the words “let’s swing,” but playgrounds are universal. Kids chasing each other and playing ball is universal. Playgrounds break down just about any language barrier, because kids don’t need language to play. For our ELLs, having one kid be a friend to them and help them play makes their day complete. Once they feel welcome and safe, then they can start learning the language.

Turning Language Barriers into Language Bonds

We do whatever it takes to overcome language barriers. When kids first arrive, we use Google Translate to learn basics of their language like “bathroom, “welcome,” “Do you need help?,” “Are you feeling okay?,” “Are you hungry?” We have one fourth grader all of whose tests are given one on one so that a teacher can help him understand. But really, kids are amazing. When you create a culture in a classroom where kids feel connected and want to support each other, the kids who don’t speak English will learn it very quickly.

We also empower our ELLs to teach us their languages and cultures. When they help the rest of the class learn, they feel like they don’t have to completely be somebody they’re not—and at the same time they fit in more. Every October, we have Heritage Night, a festival where families can sign up to perform. Kids get onstage and do everything from hip-hop dancing to playing instruments that I’ve never seen before. There are all kinds of amazing things we can learn from each other.

The Shared Language of SEL

All of our students are part of our Monday and Friday meetings, in which we focus on SEL. On Mondays, the whole school does the same mindset lesson. Then, on Fridays, we do a follow-up class meeting during that time. Our fifth graders partner with our kindergartners once a month to work together on a mindset. There’s not a fifth grader or a kindergartner who wants to miss that. It’s beautiful, and it’s a powerful way to model the mindset “we are connected” for our new students. Our students love this time together, and the proof is in the attendance figures. Our Mindset Lessons start at 7:40, and we’ve actually seen a decrease in tardiness on Monday mornings, because the kids want to be there.

But our approach to SEL is much more than those two meetings, and it goes beyond the walls of the school. We want to make parents feel like they’re part of the community, too. Even if they don’t speak much English, we can all share the common language of SEL. We send all of our parents a “Mindset of the Month” video so they can see what their kids are learning and they can talk about it at home. Every Wednesday, I send a weekly newsletter called the Brookwood Beat. I’ll include inspirational videos or something that touched my heart that I think will touch theirs. 

We embed the vocabulary of social-emotional learning into everything we teach. Even when our ELLs go to their pullout classes to work on vocabulary and schema, the teachers talk to them about mindsets like “everything is possible” and “acting and adjusting.”

A great example of acting and adjusting would be if an English-speaking student asked an ELL, “In the U.S., this is how you ask somebody if they want to play. How do you do it in your country?” Making the new student feel a part of the school isn’t something we can teach in one lesson, though. It has to be in everything we do.

Tracey Smith is the principal of Brookwood Elementary in Forsyth County, Georgia.

Research Examines the Economic Benefits of Bilingualism

Ingrid T. Colón gathers the financial evidence to support multilingualism

“fluent bilinguals earned more than $5,400 annually than their monolingual peers“

Helping students retain and strengthen their home language affords them many cognitive, social and even health benefits. Research shows that multilingualism can have many economic benefits, too. According to a report published by the New American Economy, the demand for multilingual workers more than doubled from 2010 to 2015. Specifically, demand for bilingual employees who speak Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic has increased, particularly in the finance, healthcare, legal services, and customer service sectors.

Due to the rising demand for multilingual workers, states are expanding (or considering expanding) their dual language education (DLE) programs. Both Utah and Delaware have undertaken ambitious initiatives to create and expand dual language programs in an effort to help build a multilingual workforce. Utah’s State Board of Education website, highlights that students in DLE programs “are better prepared for the global community and job markets where a second language is an asset.” Delaware’s DLE program recognizes that students in these programs will obtain an economic advantage in the job market.

These trends align with research (paywall) by Patricia Gándara, co-director of the UCLA Civil Rights Project and a leading researcher on language policy and the economic benefits for multilingualism in the U.S. labor market. Employers are increasingly looking to hire individuals who are able to serve a broader clientele and collaborate with colleagues across distances and linguistically diverse groups.

Specifically, in a 2014 study, Gándara, along with co-authors Diana Porras and Jongyeon Ee, surveyed 300 employers (representing all sectors of the economy) and found that a majority preferred hiring bilingual staff—particularly in the areas of management services, retail, construction and health care.

Additionally, Gándara explains that although some employers don’t necessarily compensate bilingual employees at higher rates for their language abilities––many bilingual employees tend to earn more. This is due to the important contributions that bilingual employees provide to the workplace. Moreover, employers compensate their bilingual employees by offering them more job security and promotion opportunities.

But what does this research mean for English learners (ELs) who historically have been educated in ways that promote their acquisition of English often at the expense of their home languages?

Gándara notes recent findings from various researchers showing the disadvantages that ELs experience when their home languages are not developed and supported. For example, Orhan Agirdag, a professor at KU Leuven and the University of Amsterdam, analyzed two national longitudinal data sets to compare and contrast the earnings of fluent bilinguals (e.g. can speak, read, and write a non-English language “very well” or “well”) and English dominant monolinguals. Agirdag found that linguistic assimilation (e.g., losing your home language to become English monolingual) comes with significant financial costs. Specifically, he uncovered that fluent bilinguals earned more than $5,400 annually than their monolingual peers.

Moreover, using data from surveys of adult children of immigrants in Southern California, researcher Rubén Rumbaut found that those who are fluent bilinguals were more likely to complete their high school education than those who grew up speaking only English or were non-fluent bilinguals. Additionally, he found that fluent bilinguals hold higher occupational prestige in their jobs and confirmed that bilingualism has direct and positive impact on earnings.

These findings highlight the potential costs associated with losing your home language and why the language instruction programs used to educate ELs are so consequential—even bilingual programs. Gándara argues that the type of bilingual education programs offered to ELs matter for their long term outcomes. In the U.S., transitional bilingual programs (TBE) have been the preferred form of bilingual instruction. These programs don’t advance students’ home languages to their full capacity, rather, TBE programs are designed to temporarily support English learners’ home language as they transition to English dominant instruction. In contrast to TBE programs, DLE programs use an additive approach, which elevates and values students’ home languages while providing opportunities for students to become bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural.

A compelling body of research shows that having a strong hold of one’s home languages facilitates the learning of new languages, including English. And as Gándara notes a “failure to nurture these linguistic skills in the children of immigrants exacts a cost to the earnings of these potentially bilingual/biliterate students.” The linguistic abilities that ELs possess and bring to U.S. schools need to be supported and developed—not erased.

To that end, states and districts should continue their efforts to create and expand DLE programs that elevate the linguistic repertoire that ELs bring to their schools. Part of this work must include ensuring that EL students have equitable access to these programs so that they are afforded the opportunity of reaping all of the benefits that come with being multilingual.

This article was originally published on April 25, 2019 by New America.

Literacy Starts in the Library

Literacy is the foundation of everything we do for our learners. Reading is a required skill for every subject, whether it is science, English, math, or social studies. If this foundation is shaky, it can cause a student’s academic world to get much smaller very quickly.

At one point in our history, a person was considered literate if he or she could read and write. Now a literate person must read, write, speak, listen, view, access, evaluate, and ethically use information. It is a much broader spectrum that must be addressed in order for students to leave our K–12 environments ready to be fully functioning members of society. This goes beyond college and career. This is about the quality of one’s life in today’s world.

When students are starting to read, they tap into one of the very things that makes us human: stories. We tell stories, we read stories, and we learn through stories. Our minds are strategically wired for stories. For most of human history, we learned how to be successful in life by listening to stories, learning them, and retelling them to the next generation. The evolution of the oral tradition to the written tradition allowed readers a broader perspective by providing a window into people and places outside the realm of personal experiences.

Interest-Directed Learning

Young children are naturally curious, so the role of the elementary teacher is to create an environment in which they gradually release students to take ownership of their own learning. This does not mean throwing them in the deep end of the pool to see if they can swim, but it does mean educators are designing instruction that is developmentally appropriate and offers opportunities for self-directed learning.

If Johnny is fascinated by muscle cars, then let Johnny read about muscle cars, write about muscle cars, and demonstrate mastery of learning targets through that specific interest. I am not advocating for educators to stand back and let children’s learning become limited in scope—there are subjects and facts that need to be learned—but that we allow students’ individual interests to drive their learning whenever possible.

K–2 students are not reluctant readers as long as they are given the opportunity to find books that speak to them personally. Allowing even the very youngest students some autonomy in book selection leads to a much more pleasant relationship with reading and books. If you have reluctant readers, my first question is going to be if they have complete and open access to a wide variety of materials from which to select and the freedom of independent self-selection. That is the key.

Libraries and Personalized Learning

The school library, when professionally staffed, is the original personalized learning classroom. That is where students first discover who they are as readers. Libraries are one of the last places in the school building where a student has complete free choice over the content he or she chooses to read for pleasure. Highly qualified librarians understand that there is no such thing as “boy” books or “girl” books. They have a deep knowledge of literature for the age group they teach and can recommend books based on students’ individual interests.

The library allows students to pursue their interests without judgment. Knowing what a child likes to read is an intimate relationship. A good librarian guards that privacy and finds no greater joy than to watch a student light up with the discovery of a story that resonates in the heart.

This is also true when it comes to research. Many times, elementary teachers give their students a laundry list of possible topics, and these younger students often find it hard to decide which topic to research. The librarian can ask clarifying questions to help the student narrow down the research topic in which they are interested.

This way, not only can we help that student locate appropriate sources, but often it results in a student developing interest in a completely new topic. If he or she is engrossed in the topic, the research is not quite so painful, and may even be enjoyable.

Librarians also manage digital learning tools for research, which can help students discover their interests. The PebbleGo database, for example, provides our youngest learners with their first exposure to vetted, expertly curated articles on a variety of topics.

It is a beautiful thing when students in K–2 find articles they can read and understand. It is so much easier to teach the research process to students if they have opportunities to use that process from the very early grades. Those connections are cemented in their minds, and the journey to higher levels of research becomes that much easier.

Elementary teachers have a responsibility to create a literacy-rich environment in their classrooms in which reading is encouraged and can be engaged in freely. It is less important what students are reading at this age and more important that they are understanding and thinking critically about what they are reading.

We all know that there are books and great pieces of literature that students should probably read and know, but when we spend so much time worrying about raising test scores rather than building the love and joy of reading, we are completely defeating the purpose. Test scores will naturally rise if students enjoy what they are doing—because they will do it with joy and do it more often.

This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in September, 2017. At the time, Susan K. S. Grigsby, EdS, was the district media specialist with Forsyth County Schools in Cumming, Georgia.

AI Detects Psychosis Risk Through Conversational Language

A new study has found that machine-learning artificial intelligence (AI) can successfully detect and predict which individuals would go on to develop psychosis with an accuracy of 93%. The study, which was published in published in npj Schizophrenia, showed machine learning says that frequent ‘sound words’ (words associated with sound) is one clue to the later emergence of psychosis. The researchers also developed a new machine-learning method to quantify the semantics in people’s everyday conversational language.

The researchers investigated potential linguistic indicators in 40 participants of the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study (NAPLS). NAPLS works with youth in the San Francisco Bay area that believe they may be at-risk for psychosis. The onset of Psychotic disorders and Schizophrenia typically occurs in peoples’ early 20s, with the warning signs (prodromal syndrome) beginning around age 17.

Researchers also found that speaking with low semantic density (or more vagueness) was also a sign for onset of psychosis.

“Trying to hear these subtleties in conversations with people is like trying to see microscopic germs with your eyes,” says Neguine Rezaii, first author of the paper. “The automated technique we’ve developed is a really sensitive tool to detect these hidden patterns. It’s like a microscope for warning signs of psychosis.”

The study shows that AI and machine learning can be useful in early detection and prediction of psychosis, for which currently there is not accurate measure. Machine learning learns from experience and from patterns. Because of that, machine learning can spot patterns in people everyday conversational language that may slip past doctors, even those who have undergone training to spot and treat those at risk for psychosis.

“The results point to a larger project in which automated analyses of language are used to forecast a broad range of mental disorders well in advance of their emergence.”

Aside from detection, the study also shows an glance inside the thought processes affected in the mind of someone with the onset of psychosis. The results were consistent with previous works suggesting that patients with psychosis have impairments in using words to generate higher order meaning. Further research could investigate more ways in which AI can detect and analyze mental illness, and offer insight into understanding the mechanism of which these illnesses are caused.

Unpacking the Box

Technology has become so prevalent in modern, mainstream educational systems over the last few years that it now seems redundant to consider EdTech as a separate topic for educators, since it permeates all areas of teaching. However, technology is more than a delivery system—it has the capacity to provide vast amounts of teaching resources suited to all different learning styles and to enable students to work at their own paces with interactive materials that interest them. However, experience in the language-learning field, where immersive self-study programs have promised fluency for all, has shown that most learners require the personal attention that only a well-qualified educator can provide to inspire them to succeed.

A few weeks ago, the winners of the $15 million Global Learning XPRIZE were announced (see p. 11). The idea behind the competition was to “challenge innovators around the globe to develop scalable solutions that enable children to teach themselves basic reading, writing, and arithmetic within 15 months.” The idea of using smartphones to help the world’s 250 million illiterate children learn to read and write is incredibly attractive, but the competition organizers were well aware that technology alone, even if it is open source, cannot solve the problem.

An infrastructure of educators, mentors, and technicians will be needed to implement the programs and motivate learning. Just to field test the education technology solutions in Swahili, reaching nearly 3,000 children across 170 villages in Tanzania, XPRIZE enlisted the help of United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the government of Tanzania to make sure that the apps actually got into the hands of children and that the technology worked. Now, the challenge will be to make these new tools accessible to the millions of children who need them and to ensure that they are supported as they strive for literacy. 

Of course, access to technology and basic infrastructure is much better in the U.S. and other more developed nations, but the XPRIZE reality illustrates the point that for EdTech to be successful, it requires the support and involvement of educators and other human-engagement specialists. Even the team behind Duolingo—which Apple chose as its iPhone App of the Year in 2013, was voted Best Education Startup at the 2014 Crunchies, and was the most downloaded app in the education category in Google Play in 2013 and 2014—is developing the app’s pedagogical side and promoting it as a blended-learning companion for classrooms.

EdTech offers learning opportunities that were unimaginable a generation ago, and as the sector matures, the importance of the educator to be the personal motivator, the “guide on the side,” and provide the social and emotional context for learning is now being universally recognized. Teachers need EdTech to help make their teaching as rich, multilevel, and exciting as possible, but EdTech needs teachers to make it work. 

Ontario Invests in French

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The Canadian province of Ontario will invest about CAN$20 million in projects and initiatives to support students, parents, and teachers in French-language schools over the next twelve months from its new $330 million Priorities and Partnerships Fund (PPF), which funds high-impact initiatives that directly support students in the classroom.

“We continue to take action to protect what matters most to Franco-Ontarian families by putting them first,” said Lisa Thompson, minister of education. “Every Franco-Ontarian family in this province should feel supported when it comes to ensuring their child has access to a meaningful and modern education.”

PPF funding will support a wide range of projects and initiatives, including:

Assisting French-language school boards in the implementation of aménagement linguistique initiatives in French-language schools in Ontario, engaging students, and developing their sense of belonging to the French-language school system and their community.

Supporting six French-language school boards, with a view to building the capacity of administrators, principals, and teachers in data collecting, analysis, and identifying next steps. 

Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) meetings organized regionally by French-language school boards to support SHSM programs in schools, share expertise, and encourage networking among school boards.

Funding for l’Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens (AEFO) and Council of Trustees’ Associations (CTA) to promote the success of French-language students with special needs. 

“Education for francophone students in Ontario is imperative, and I am proud of the work our government is doing to support students and families in our French-language education system,” said Sam Oosterhoff, parliamentary assistant to the minister of education.

There are twelve French-language school boards in Ontario, with 470 French-language schools; more than 108,000 students attend French-language schools, and the province is home to more than 620,000 francophones.

Spanish-Language Cuban Radionovelas to Be Digitized

From the 1930s to the 1950s, Cuba exported more Spanish-language daytime and nighttime radio shows than any other nation in the Spanish-speaking world. When Cuban immigrants landed in Miami post-revolution, they began creating their own original Spanish-language radio soap operas, called radionovelas. 

The Latin American Library at Tulane University is digitizing a large collection of 1960s-era Spanish-language radionovelas and encouraging academic study of Cold War soaps. 

From his office and studios on the fifth floor of “the Freedom Tower” in Miami, Italian-American Louis J. Boeri and his company, America’s Productions, Inc. (API), formed a radio-programming empire, selling their products to the U.S. government, to 200 radio stations in Latin America and Spain, and to Spanish-language radio stations in the U.S. during the latter half of the 1960s. 

The Louis J. Boeri and Minín Bujones Boeri Collection of Cuban-American Radionovelas, 1963–1970, provides a selection of titles from API’s unique entertainment catalog contained in the collection of the same name held by the Latin American Library, the vast majority of which falls within the radionovela genre. In 2016, the Latin American Research Resources Project (LARRP), part of the Global Resources initiatives of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), generously funded a pilot project to digitize eight titles from the extant master audio recordings created by API for its entertainment library. Each title with its constituent episodes will now be available in digital audio format for the first time since they originally aired in the late 1960s. Along with the radionovela recordings themselves, the collection includes images of some of API’s promotional materials that describe the process of creating a radionovela program and brief storyline descriptions, ephemera, and photographs of the actors, actresses, writers, and production staff of API.

The digital version of the Louis J. Boeri and Minín Bujones Boeri Collection of Cuban-American Radionovelas is a rare resource for the study of the history of the political, cultural, and commercial ties between the U.S. and Cuba via public broadcasting during a pivotal moment in the 20th century. The collection offers new perspectives and insights into the use of media as political and cultural propaganda by Cuba and the U.S. during the Cold War era, as well as the history of popular culture and mass media in the wake of the 1959 Cuban Revolution among Spanish-speaking audiences in the U.S. and the Spanish-speaking countries to which the programs were exported.

The Latin American Library plans to have the first third of its collection of radionovelas available for online research by December.

Making Learning Come to Life

“Ultimately, the outcome of maker education and educational makerspaces leads to determination, independence, and creative problem solving, and an authentic preparation for the real world through simulating real-world challenges. In short, an educational makerspace is less of a classroom and more of a motivational speech without words” (Kurti et al., 2014, p. 11).

Have you ever considered how many parents ask their child the question “What did you do in school today?” to only be answered with “Meh,” “I don’t know,” or “Nothing”? Parents want to know what their children have spent their days learning and are often faced with unenthused responses or no responses at all. This leads to the inevitable concern that their children haven’t learned anything, are struggling, or are unhappy with school. This concern can be increased tenfold when their children are new to learning the language or have special needs. The year 2015 brought about a change in this passive response with the entrance of makerspace in education. Before we all roll our eyes at yet another educational buzzword, makerspace is actually the resurgence of the foundational educational pedagogy of constructivism and is changing the nature of teaching and learning. Now, when the question “What did you do in school today?” is asked, parents are being shown projects that provided the  best seven hours of their children’s lives, thanks to the makerspace.

Makerspace is a global trend that is part of the DIY movement.

These spaces started as community centers where the average Joe could meet up with local experts to pursue a passion project or hobby. Imagine a facility with tools and materials to invent, tinker, and construct. This movement has found its way into education over the last year. Libraries and classrooms are being transformed with 3D printers, robots, and bins of recycled materials. What is exciting is that makerspace is more than just a space; it is an educational mindset. A makerspace mindset allows educators to shift away from ready-made knowledge to a classroom environment ripe for exploration, creativity, innovation, and collaboration, with hands-on materials and real-world problems (Donaldson, 2014; Papert and Harel, 1991; Schön, Ebner, and Kumar, 2014; Schrock, 2014; Hatch, 2013). In short, teachers are changing the way they teach, which is causing students to change the way they learn, and this is a very good thing.

With an ever-growing student population of English language learners (ELLs) in our schools across North America, we need to consider our approach to offering higher-level learning opportunities that also support the development of language and social skills. Often, we can observe students who are missing “foundational” literacy and numeracy being pulled out of the classroom to receive one-on-one instruction for these missing pieces because they “must learn this before they can learn that.” Makerspace is allowing students who are “missing pieces” to still learn, reason, problem solve, and innovate without having to rely on mastery of the English language. My own mindset as an educator had to shift when I began teaching in an inner-city school environment for a group of students that had severe special needs. Our school population was also over 70% ELLs. The opportunity to “pull out” students who struggled was gone when it would have meant pulling out more than half the class. I started to ask myself, if I only relied on teaching the basics, when would they have the chance to shine? I was inspired by the story of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

William Kamkwamba was a 14-year-old boy living in extreme poverty and famine in Malawi in 2002. He was forced to drop out of school and spent much of his time at the local library flipping through magazines and books about electronics. One day, he was inspired to build a windmill for his community as a way to provide electricity and irrigation. Using blue gum trees, bicycle parts, and materials collected in a local scrapyard, William constructed a very rough but very functional windmill that could power a cell phone. He did not have a teacher telling him step by step what he had to do, he was not receiving remediation for the English language, yet he was still learning. William was inspired to solve a problem, he had a reason to learn, and he was able to make his learning come to life. This story challenged me as an educator to provide this kind of learning environment—for all learners, regardless of ability.

My classroom began to shift. When it was time to write a story, we took a break from papers and pencils and instead brought out Dash and Dot robots. Students who would have relied on an adult to read and scribe for them were now learning how to use drag-and-drop blocks of code to program their bots to act out the stories in their minds. They designed costumes, they made cardboard settings, and some of them told the first stories in their school careers. When it was time for math, we used an inexpensive drone to explore distance, speed, angles, and weight as we built devices to deliver necessary medical supplies to war-torn regions, a concept many of my students understood the need for all too well. When it was time for science, we used a Raspberry Pi computer and camera to create a time-lapse security camera to understand the nocturnal habits of our beloved classroom chinchilla.

This mini maker movement started to show me for the first time not what the students could not do, but what they could do. They displayed learning that was previously inconceivable simply because they had never been given the opportunity. This type of learning in our schools is often reserved for the best and the brightest students. Yet after allowing my classroom to become a launch pad for learning, there was a noticeable decrease in classroom misbehavior, students had less anxiety, and there was a dramatic increase in engagement in learning, expressive language, reading ability, and foundational numeracy. Suddenly we were designing websites instead of writing reports for social studies; we hacked our word wall with the Makey Makey so it could talk instead of memorizing flash cards; we built flight simulators out of recycled materials using Google Earth instead of reading about aerodynamics in a textbook.

Throughout all of this, we sought out community experts, we researched blogs, we used tools, we created art, we tested, designed, and improved, we made mistakes, and finally we made learning come to life. This was a passionate group of learners committed to a goal. Some of our students could not read, some had trouble sitting still, some needed a little more help, but all had a chance to shine. These projects turned out to be the greatest year of learning ever, something everyone still talks about. Shouldn’t every student have the chance to learn the same way? By moving makerspaces from our garages and community centers into our schools, we have this chance.

Making is a universal language of learning. This hands-on, physical expression of understanding can allow for both students and parents who are English language learners to see and hold what has been learned. This can be done in any school, with any students, on any budget. My first “makerspace” was a bin of materials from the dollar store and a $35 Raspberry Pi computer. A makerspace is about good teaching and learning, period. Educators do not need to be intimidated by high-tech, expensive facilities.

Educators can start small, with one idea and project, and build momentum from there. The maker movement is a vehicle that will allow schools to be part of the necessary return to constructivist education—a movement that will allow students to be creative, innovative, independent, and technologically literate. It is not an “alternative” way to learn, but what modern learning should really look like (Stager, 2014). For our ELL and struggling students, this movement will help better prepare them for a world where they can be computer programmers, engineers, and inventors far beyond what remedial educational alone could have done. We need to believe they can do it, and we owe it to their future to try.

In the movie Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks, there is a moment in which he makes fire—a passionate event in which he was the creator of an epic moment of learning, so much so that he shouted “I made fire” to the heavens. This is the moment we want for our children. We want school to be an opportunity to make fire and love learning so that they come home and cannot stop talking about that moment. The greatest seven hours of their lives. That is an educational makerspace.

This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in August, 2017. At the time, Trish Roffey was an emerging technology consultant for Edmonton Catholic Schools in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In that role, Trish specialized in supporting teachers and students to explore makerspace, assistive technology, coding and robotics, and blended learning. Trish was also an avid maker who was always tinkering on her next project.

Drawing on Ideas for Language Learners

For more than 40 years, education researchers have advocated the use of concept mapping as an effective approach to fostering higher-order thinking skills, moving students from mere knowledge acquisition to knowledge utilization and creation (Novak and Cañas, 2008). By specifying and linking concepts in a concept map, students and language learners create a visible structure of their understanding in a given domain that can be modified over time to assimilate new concepts and reflect new understanding.

In short, concept mapping can move learners toward more in-depth learning, i.e., more meaningful learning, by facilitating the process of linking new concepts with existing knowledge and experience. Concept mapping is an effective strategy for educators to use to support English language learners (ELLs) and prepare them for success in school and beyond.

There are several research-based methods for applying concept mapping to language learning. Here are some of the ways teachers can use concept mapping to differentiate instruction for ELL students:

Pre-Reading

• Invite students to share what they already know about a particular concept in a concept map prior to reading. This approach provides students with the concepts and words that they are about to encounter in the reading text as well as an overview of the content to be learned. Then, ask students to add information to their maps while reading to provide a visual aid for building on their prior knowledge. This could be an individual or whole-class assignment.

Pre-Writing

• Task students with brainstorming about a given topic by making connections among ideas and analyzing information in a concept map in preparation for writing. Allow students to discuss their maps in groups and share their ideas for writing so they can hone or expand their focus as needed. After researching their topic, students can modify their maps to capture new information and organize their thoughts before writing their compositions. Research has shown that this approach helps ELL students improve their writing.

Vocabulary Building

• Enable students to create concept maps to define and better understand key vocabulary terms. Students can access videos, text, and images to learn about a term and then build a map that visually links the term to its various meanings, uses, related words, synonyms, and more. This allows students to personalize their connections to the vocabulary words, improving their recall and comprehension. The map provided in this post is an example of this approach.

Developing Critical Thinking

• Encourage students to create a concept map of a unit or topic with key terms and essential questions during and after a series of lessons. Help them to see the big picture of the topic as well as build a scaffolding of meaning, a governing framework for future success, by emphasizing the main ideas, key concepts, and principles.

By visually expressing the association of related concepts, concept maps help learners to find unseen connections between ideas, organize information easily, and create new knowledge, which in turn clarifies their thinking. This process of making knowledge explicit fosters the understanding of complex information for ELL students without elaborative written explanations. The concept maps are also useful visual aids that make later study and recall easier for language learners than with linear notes.

Assessment

• Use concept maps to ascertain student understanding of a concept or unit taught. By making students’ thinking and learning visible, concept maps reveal to teachers, and to the students themselves, the gaps in understanding at any given moment. After reteaching or employing interventions, have students adjust their concept maps to assess their knowledge development over time.

Reading Comprehension

• Ask students to build a concept map as they read a book or text, identifying main ideas, finding subconcepts, and linking related ideas together. An earlier post on close reading strategies shows how this method can help all learners, particularly ELL/ESL students, improve reading comprehension. Try any of these methods with ELL students to help them develop content-area knowledge, literacy skills, and critical thinking, as well as to evaluate their learning needs and progress.

Additional Background 

The Ideaphora concept-mapping environment is the latest and most comprehensive tool for facilitating critical thinking through web-based concept mapping. It builds on decades of research investigating the use of concept mapping as an effective approach to fostering meaningful learning (Hilbert and Renkl, 2008; Novak and Cañas, 2008). In addition, it benefits from years of research experience designing and integrating technology-supported concept mapping in the classroom (Anderson-Inman and Ditson, 1999; Anderson-Inman and Horney, 1996/1997; Liu et al., 2010; Muirhead, 2006).

For more than 40 years, Novak and colleagues have advocated the use of concept mapping as an effective approach to fostering higher-order thinking skills, moving students from mere knowledge acquisition to knowledge utilization and creation (Novak and Cañas, 2008). By specifying and linking concepts in a concept map, students create a visible structure of their understanding in a given domain that can be modified over time to assimilate new concepts and reflect new understanding.

In short, concept mapping can move learners toward more in-depth learning, i.e., more meaningful learning, by facilitating the process of linking new concepts with existing knowledge and experience. Research on concept mapping reveals the process can have a powerful effect on learning. For example, Brullo (2012) found that students who created concept maps while taking notes had better test recall, could access information more quickly during tests, and scored better on content post-tests than students who did not have the concept-mapping experience.

According to Brullo, students who created concept maps were thinking on a deeper level about the text prior to taking the post-test, as these students quickly recalled information and answered the questions. Research also reveals that technology can play an important role in simplifying and supporting the creation, modification, and management of learners’ concept maps (Chang et al., 2002; Liu et al., 2006; Liu and Lee, 2013).

In 1956, Bloom proposed a taxonomy of intellectual behavior important for learning, with acquisition of knowledge at the bottom and evaluation of knowledge at the top. Decades of research on how to promote higher-order thinking skills has led to a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy and closer alignment with 21st-century learning goals (Anderson and Krathwohl et al., 2001). The lowest level of learning in the revised taxonomy is “remembering” existing knowledge, and the highest is “creating” new knowledge—a differentiation in skill level also found in the Common Core State Standards.

In response to the revised taxonomy, Mayer (2002) advocated moving from instruction that focuses on retention of learning (remembering and understanding) toward instruction that fosters transfer of learning (applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating)—in other words, “meaningful learning.” Key to the concept of meaningful learning is the learner’s ability to link new ideas and information to prior experience and existing knowledge (Anderson-Inman and Ditson, 1999).

This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in June, 2017. At the time, Mark Oronzio was CEO and co-founder of Ideaphora, a concept-mapping platform for students to improve their comprehension of digital content while building higher-order thinking skills. Oronzio’s insight and leadership was based on more than 20 years of experience in executive-level positions for education technology companies, including Inspiration Software.

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