Learning

The action learning cycle in this project set up an ongoing process where teachers planned what they wanted to do and then moved to the comic chat software to see if they could:

1. do what they wanted to do
2. develop the confidence and skills they needed to incorporate the activity into the classroom.
   

This supports the notion that teachers first need to build up their basic skills and confidence (Herrington and Oliver, 1997). The action learning cycle and the collaborative planning process enabled teachers to share ideas and discuss possible teaching strategies that informed their specific skill and confidence requirements.

Teaching

This aspect of the learning cycle involved the teachers implementing their plans within the classroom. The use of Comic Chat formed part of the overall approach for teaching the curriculum. Two direct impacts of chat on the teaching phase included an expert chat and chat with another class. Gary Clarke joined the students as an online guest to work with the students to build an online cartoon about gold toward the end of the unit of work. The class chat involved students from a primary school in Tasmania who had also been working on the Gold Rush.

Reflection

In terms of the teaching phase of the cycle, teachers taught their lessons to fulfil the requirements of the gold rush unit of work incorporating their planned chat strategies. Following the teaching phase was the opportunity to reflect on how things went. As there were two teachers teaching the same content and using the same strategies, there was a great opportunity for them to reflect individually and collectively on what they did and how it went in the classroom context. Teachers' reflections were recorded in personal diaries. Fogarty (1997) writes that reflection 'is the phase of the learning cycle that moves inert knowledge to relevant application.' (1997: 184). These reflections helped to inform a number useful strategies and protocols developed throughout the project.

Interestingly, teachers as the project progressed the teachers realised the need for structuring purposeful and authentic activities as Warschauer (2000) assertion that students would tire easily of casual conversation, was proved correct. Teachers also began to establish communication protocols to ensure valuable interaction took place. It became evident that there is a need to establish the criteria by which learners are expected to construct effective online responses (Woodring Blasé, 2000)

Analysis of the cycle

The action learning cycle was an ongoing part of the whole project. As the skills and confidence of the teachers grew so did the teaching strategies teachers would identify and ideas they would try to test out. Using the action learning cycle throughout the project saw the skills and confidence of the teachers grow. All teachers involved reported that their skills and confidence in using the comic chat software and using the program in the classroom. In fact confidence in relation to technology extended beyond the ICT used in this project. This comment by one of the teachers summed a general feeling in relation to the project:

Perhaps my "fear" of technology has lessened considerably and I am much more willing to use the computer within classroom situations.

A full review of the project is currently underway. Initial findings clearly indicate that students were motivated and very keen to participate in this medium including students who were reluctant to write generally. Poor readers were motivated to read other students comics and discuss them. Indicative results are consistent with results Warschauer (2000) identified including:

• high motivation and engagement
• development of effective communication in the new medium, and
• striving for excellence. In this project excellence manifested itself as students paying attention to their sentences and spelling before publishing in the online world.

Some student comments include:

One powerful motivating factor of the chat medium was providing the student with two roles - author and reader. Students could "publish" their work by entering their chat into the public domain of the chat itself and then by printing out the chat as a cartoon. Warschauer's (2000) findings that the chat medium provides learners with additional time to think about their language use and get a visual display of there utterances so they can then "monitor" their messages which may improve the quality of their work appears consistent with initial reports from the teachers in this project. This project confirms research conducted by Pellettieri (2000) that learners using chat have less anxiety and increased motivation for using language but its impact on grammatical competence is yet to be fully researched.

References

Carr, J (2001). Project pillars - Foundations for success in online curriculum projects. 18 April 2002

Fogerty, (1997) Brain Compatible Classrooms Australia: Hawker Brownlow Education

Herrington, J. and Oliver, R (1997). Multimedia, magic and the way students respond to a situated learning environment. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 13(2), pp127-143.

Leander, K (2000). Laboratories for writing. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43(7), pp662-668.

McCrae, D (2001). What to make, and why - Principles for the design and development of online curriculum content. Victoria: Curriculum Corporation.

Pellettieri, J (2000) Negotiation in cyberspace - The role of chatting in the development of grammatical competence. Network-based Language Teaching: Concepts and Practice, pp59-86. UK:Cambridge University Press.

Warschauer, M (2000) Online Learning in second language classrooms - an ethnographic study. Network-based Language Teaching: Concepts and Practice, pp 41-58. UK:Cambridge University Press.

Williams, M (1997). Online communities - challenging teacher practice. OECD Conference 1997.

Woodring Blasé, D (2000). A new sort of writing: E-mail in the E-nglish classroom. English Journal, 90(2), pp 47-51.

Zhao, Y., Englert, C., Chen, J., Jones, S. and Ferdig, R (2000). The development of a Web-based literacy learning environment: A dialogue between innovation and established practices. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 32(4), p 435.

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