Don`t Be an Alien

An author’s review of the work unit
“Don’t Be an Alien”
By Miguel A. Murcia
ABSTRACT:
“Don’t Be an Alien” is a work unit designed with MALTED, a freeware authoring tool which was reviewed in
the previous issue of this Newsletter. The unit embodies a wide range of sound teaching principles suited to the
technological work environment. At the same time, it draws from technological resources to enhance learning
and devise new settings and exercises. Paramount is its pervasive socio-cultural approach.
RESOURCE DATA:
Title: Work unit “Don’t Be an Alien”
Authors: Miguel A. Murcia Fernández & Mª
Dolores Díaz Montoya
Publisher and
contact information:
Dirección General de Políticas Educativas y
Ordenación Académica. Consejería de
Educación y Ciencia. Gobierno del Principado
de Asturias. Colección: Materiales didácticos
de aula – Secundaria. Plaza de España, 5.
33007 – Oviedo. Asturias
ISBN: 978-84-690-5587-8
2007
DL: AS-02658-
Platform: Self-contained CD-ROM (198 MB). O.S. Windows. Also available as part of the
MALTED repository at ITE.
Minimum system requirements: Pentium IV computer; 1 GB RAM; 52 x CD drive or DVD
drive; ear phones and microphone
Target users: Students of English at Bachillerato and 2nd cycle of Escuela Oficial de Idiomas
Target language: English
Cost-Individual and Site Licence: GNU (General Public Licence)
The previous issue of this Newsletter included a review of MALTED, a freeware authoring
tool supported by the ITE (the Spanish Ministry of Education agency dedicated to promoting
the educational use of ICT). This open source tool is targeted to the design of didactic
materials, especially for the teaching of languages. In this issue we are going to review a
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specific resource designed with the latest version of the tool, the work unit “Don’t Be an
Alien”. Originally published by the Consejería de Educación of the Asturian Principality as a
self-contained CD, this teaching material is now also available for download from the official
MALTED
web
site
(http://recursostic.educacion.es/malted/web/curso.php?
i
id=13&sec=unidades) . Obviously, having this material in sight will greatly help to
contextualize the commentary that follows ii.
1. Design principles of the work unit.
These are some of the central principles that guided the design of the scenes which make up
the unit.
■ First of all, special effort has been dedicated to making good use of multimedia languages.
As a consequence, together with text we can see lots of images as well as quite a few audio
recordings and videos. This allows for the reinforcement of linguistic messages and increases
the chances of comprehension and interpretation, also opening room for students’ different
learning styles.
■ Equally important has been the optimal use of the design resources provided by MALTED
3.0, especially for the simultaneous deployment of various channels (text, audio and video),
different ways of interaction, the application of automatic resorts, and so on (see below).
■ Next, the computer is treated as an integral basis for complex work forms, where a great
deal of utilities and open channels of communication (especially Internet services) coalesce.
■ From the point of view of teaching contents, a series of socio-cultural themes have been
given a central role in structuring the work unit. It is not a common occurrence to see this
important dimension of language to take this place, rather than grammar or specific situations,
for instance, as the main point of reference.
■ From the field of learning psychology comes the idea of configuring the scenes in such a
way as to cater for the perceptive habits of present day youths, typically socialized mainly in
audio-visual environments, often times to the expense of reading practice. This does not imply
just giving in to the dictatorship of images, but a new balance is sought, contrary to prevalent
practices in traditional classrooms. Here, textual messages are short and backed up by means
of audio-visual media.
■ Another key design criterion is the fostering of learner autonomy. Hence the unit’s scenes
incorporate: (i) a clear statement of the task in hand, (ii) sources of reference (grammar
explanations, skills development, a glossary, and so on), (iii) provision for the discretional use
of help, (iv) different learning paths, etc.
■ There is provision for all major linguistic skills to be practised, oral production included.
Assessment of oral production by means of speech recognition technologies is certainly a
conspicuous gap in software development, which has yet to achieve effective practical
application; short from that, here students are offered the chance to record and listen to their
own production in a realistic context of interaction.
■ As is well known, motivation is a key aspect in learning. To foster it, several game-like
contexts are included in this unit.
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■ ICT related methodologies are applied, such as webquests.
■ Last, but not least, the teacher is given a key role in guiding the students to exploit the
learning materials and in helping them to make decisions. Therefore, plenty of extra optional
resources are provided to expand work possibilities, following his/her own criteria.
2. Some old and new features in Malted 3.0.
MALTED, the authoring instrument, is an interesting tool to be used for various reasons. In
particular:
■ MALTED provides a design environment featuring a reasonably wide range of archive and
media types, though limited to those accepted by the Java multimedia environment, which
provides the technical platform for graphic presentation.
■ It embodies a relatively ample number of templates and integrated interactions which, when
properly and creatively used, allow for the design of a wide range of exercises.
■ But beyond individual exercises, the system is aimed at the creation of complex, fully
fledged units of work, like the one in hand, including the possibility of building into them
diversified paths to cater for mixed-ability learning.
■ The many built-in actions make it easy to navigate through the unit and everything
necessary for the user to interact with the scenes effectively. For instance, students value the
quick response to their work in solving the exercises. Yet, for the full assessment of each
student’s activity some extra worksheets must be provided, as MALTED lacks provision for
tracing individual learners’ work.
■ The latest version features, together with a totally redesigned graphic editor, much simpler
and more intuitive to use, the incorporation of auto-actions, that is to say, automatic resorts
that react with fixed actions to certain events, such as entering a new frame, clicking on a
given object, or the positive/negative checking of a task.
All of these resorts and functionalities are widely exploited in the present unit.
3. A selection of work scenes.
The selection of work scenes that are illustrated below try to orientate the teachers’ direct
inspection of this material. Agreed, nothing can replace personal exploration and evaluation of
the unit, least of all its application in real teaching situations, which is the true litmus test of
any teaching device; but within the scope of the present review, at least they may point at
some of the design trends that have been enunciated above.
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From the beginning, the presence of socio-cultural contents is paramount.
The unit refers the student to various sources of information and incorporates some computer
resources, instructing the student in their use as work tools.
Many exercises dealing with content comprehension are based on images, animations and
videos.
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Some popular songs connected with cultural topics are brought in as input for listening
comprehension.
Linguistic information is presented through a combination of textual, aural and visual
channels to reinforce and diversify learning.
The discrimination of different accents spoken in the major English-speaking countries is also
dealt with as an aspect within the culture learning framework.
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Feedback to students’ work is taken as a chance to provide expanded topic information
through various channels (short texts, pictures and videos).
The three preceding screen captures illustrate just as many game-like contexts –a crossword, a
version of the ‘hangman’ game, and a simulation of a slot machine- to frame learning or
evaluation activities.
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Finally, this scene makes provision for eliciting oral production within a realistic simulation.
The students’ speech is recorded and reproduced interspersed with pre-recorded sentences to
simulate a ‘real’ conversation.
All of these features and their teaching implications are fully described in a comprehensive,
navigable Teacher’s didactic guide that completes this unit’s assets.
4. Classroom evaluation of the work unit.
As mentioned above, the classroom supplies the final test of any teaching material. What
follows are some extracts of the evaluation report provided by Avelino Coto Álvarez, an
English teacher at IES “El Piles” (Gijón, Asturias), as part of the unit’s piloting requested
before publication.
"La unidad "Don't Be an Alien" ha proporcionado a los alumnos un amplio abanico
de propuestas, pistas, métodos para fomentar el trabajo autónomo: glosarios, explicaciones,
métodos de búsqueda y selección de información en la red, posibilidad de trabajar con
programas de tratamiento oral en sus dos direcciones ordenador-alumno; y alumnoordenador. En algunos casos los alumnos también han aprendido a trabajar con un
procesador de textos y a organizar carpetas y documentos, a utilizar criterios para una mejor
selección de la información por medio de buscadores, etc.
(…) Los alumnos han considerado este material como muy completo, que trata temas
no revisados en los libros de texto, es original en su presentación por el uso de material
multimedia (vídeos, canciones, tarjetas gráficas…). Han valorado como aspectos muy
positivos: la variedad y diversidad de las actividades (comprensión auditiva, juegos,
cuestionarios, etc.) y tareas (producción de textos escritos, grabaciones orales,…), los modos
de interacción y la mayoritaria presencia de elementos motivadores (juegos, canciones,
crucigramas, etc.) que según ellos alejan este material de los modelos “repetitivos” del aula
normal. Los crucigramas, en concreto, les gustan por ser interactivos y proponer rutas,
procedimientos y estrategias. Los adjetivos que los alumnos usan son “divertido”,
“original”, “entretenido”, “actual”, “moderno”… De hecho, éstas han sido de las pocas
sesiones donde he tenido que forzar a los alumnos a terminar la clase, pues querían más…
(…) En general, a mi modo de ver, este tipo de unidades de uso autónomo y llenas de
recursos multimedia, si bien, hoy por hoy, no pueden sustituir del todo a los recursos
tradicionales, suponen un enorme paso adelante en el campo de la enseñanza, pues además
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de despertar la motivación y la curiosidad de los alumnos, y de mantener su atención, sirven
para aumentar las posibilidades de conectar con sus intereses, creando un espacio propio
para el tan traído y llevado tratamiento de la diversidad. Los alumnos pasan de ser meros
“receptores” de teorías y conceptos, de mantener un papel “pasivo”, a ser alumnos
autónomos, a trabajar a su propio ritmo según sus competencias personales, a utilizar los
recursos disponibles fomentando el desarrollo de esquemas de interpretación del entorno de
la información en el que cada día más nos movemos en esta sociedad actual; a investigar,
averiguar, descubrir y comprender, personalizando el aprendizaje y desarrollando los
intereses y aptitudes de cada alumno y cimentando sus capacidades. (…)”
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i
If this unit is downloaded from the MALTED web site, the system will ask you to install the Java multimedia
environment and the MALTED plug-in in your computer. Just follow the tips provided by the installation manager.
Once the installation process is completed, the unit will be installed by default inside the folder C:\Malted\projects\.
Next, the Malted Navigator must be launched by double-clicking on the ‘Malted_Navegador.exe’ icon, present inside
the ‘C:\Malted\’ folder. Finally, select the work unit in the selection window for it to be displayed on the screen.
Most of the MALTED Project resources, including this work unit, are also available for free distribution on a new
DVD. Use the official application form in the MALTED web site.
ii
Failing that, a quick revision of this work unit’s main features can be obtained by consulting this two-part video
presentation
lodged
in
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpmjaUH0uzk
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661CCrHgL4o.