Connectivism is an educational theory which although not mainstream has been gaining traction in recent years. The idea behind it is to make education reflect the 21st century. It is most frequently used by MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), by organizations like Khan Academy, The Open University, and online British Council courses to name the more well known. That being said there has been a move to introduce this to classrooms as we know them with 'blended learning'.
Learning is connectivist if...
It removes the teacher from a central leadership role and puts them in a guidance and facilitation role.
It puts the teacher as a source of knowledge on par with other sources e.g books, the web, museums/art galleries/information centres, peer learning, and guest speakers to name a few.
Digital learning is key.
Learning goes beyond the classroom.
This appealed to me as a teacher who shares the same ideals, and who is always looking to build on my knowledge and practice.
Over the past 9 months, I have ran a connectivist course with one of my adult courses. The course was pre-intermediate, with university students. I chose the time frame as this is what it takes to progress from pre-intermediate to intermediate in most schools, I chose the level and age as this is a very common level and age, which I have a lot of experience with (as do most ESL teachers). The experiment will be presented in 5 parts.
Part 1: An overview.
Part 2: The first 3 months.
Part 3: the second 3 months.
Part 4 The final 3 months.
Part 5 Reflections.
Classroom management
The idea is that students take responsibility for themselves and their team with a few functional guidlines. Students watched a video by Steve Jobs in the first class and had to write down his tips for success. We then created a class contract with some guidlines and a series of fines for breaking each one with the proceeds going to the end of term party.
Activities
Treasure hunt - Information is placed around the room, students have a series of questions to answer.
Google hunt - Similar to the last one but using google.
Tea party - Students are given questions but only one answer, They must mingle to find and write down the other answers.
Chopsticks - the information or text is in fragments, students have to race in turns with a pair of chopsticks to answer questions with their partner.
Kahoot
Siri - This was good for finding information and speaking practice.
Fieldtrips - Every so often we would do our lesson somewhere different like a local art gallery, or museum. Discovery tasks or English language tours would be used with a big conversation/debate at the end.
Ted Ed - Sometimes I would plan lessons around Ted talks,
Film English - This website has some amazing films that can help students practice language points.
Project Based Learning - Projects were used to explore themes and practice language in an authentic and communicative way.
Skype buddy - I worked with another teacher at my old language school in Spain who teaches students of similar levels to arange a skype buddy for each student as an extracurricular way of practicing speaking.
British Council Learn English - This website has many listening, reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary tasks to help students to practice.
21st century skills mini lessons - These often took the form of guided challenges and focused on skills like sending an email, confidence in speaking, team work, digital literacy, vritical thinking, research, creativity.
Flipped classroom - Occasionally students would be given a lesson where they had to find the answers and teach the grammar point or vocabulary to the class.
Guardian, BBC, Short story websites.
English Pronunciation app - Students would download an app and practice certain sounds at home.
Video - This helped me to observe my own lesson, and also helped students record speaking at home to undertake self correction or to allow me to correct.
Homework and extra curricular
The idea is that students shouldnt feel forced to do things, and that they should learn because of intrinsic motivations. Not only this, learning should be authentic and should not just be confined to the classroom. To address this, I gave homework like 'a list of ways to practice speaking, listening, reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation in your free time' including apps, films, events, websites. I then followed up on this by asking students for a weekly review of the activities they tried. Other times I gave a kahoot, or a fun task e.g for 'make' and 'do' students had to do 3 things with 'make' and 3 with 'do' e.g. make a cake or do homework and take a selfie of this activity. Students then had to email the selfie to me with a sentence about each.
Finally we also created a schoology page where students and I could share assignments, information, awesome things they found, plan projects outside of class, and ask questions. Alongside this we had an email stream where we also shared things.
In the next part I will review the first 3 months.
Below are some resources about Connectivism if you are a little curious.
Books
Connectivism for EFL teachers: A theory of learning for a digital age - by Thomas Baker
Connectivism &connected knowledge - by Thomas Jerome Baker
Websites
http://education-2020.wikispaces.com/Connectivism
http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/article01.htm
Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx5VHpaW8sQ
https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud
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