| |
|
|
P2P AND
LEARNING ECOLOGIES IN EFL/ESL
by Barbara
Dieu,
beeonline (at) gmail.com
Aaron P. Campbell,
aaronpcampbell (at) gmail.com
and Rudolf Ammann
ammann (at) gmail.com
Abstract
This article briefly introduces the peer-to-peer
(P2P) concept and applies it to an educational context. It argues that a
pedagogical approach based on P2P can support learning ecologies that both
complement and transcend conventional classroom structures and practices,
ultimately benefiting learners. The authors discuss both the pedagogical and
technological prerequisites for peer-centered learning to occur, suggest
possible tools, and provide examples of EFL/ESL projects. Personal
Web-publishing in language learning contexts is described as an attempt to
bridge the gap between the learners in the classroom and potential conversation
partners on the Internet at large, resulting in a network of support and
encouragement.
The Background of the P2P
Concept
The quality of human
interaction is influenced strongly by the social structure in which that
interaction occurs. We can gain insight into this relationship by
examining the two extremes of network architecture. How the server is
configured largely determines how its clients interact. On the one hand is the
structured hierarchy of the client/server model, where communication and
transaction between any two nodes on the network are mediated through a central
server.
On the other
hand is the 'peer-to-peer' model (P2P), in which each node in the network
functions as both client and server simultaneously, resulting in a
decentralized, fluid system of "equipotent members" (Bauwens,
2005). Interaction in P2P networks, then, obeys the dynamics of
cooperative participation, where relationships arise organically to meet mutual
need and last only as long as that need remains. As Bauwens explains, P2P
is not anti-hierarchical or anti-authority, but it mediates against fixed-hierarchies
and authoritarianism. The hierarchy that arises in P2P is natural and flexible,
and is based on quality of contribution and communal consensus. Both models can
and do co-exist.
Figure 1. Structured Hierarchy mode: http://dekita.org/gallery/wiaoc/slides/sc1.png
and Distributed Peer to Peer mode: http://dekita.org/gallery/thumbs/141-peertwopeer2.png
Historically, the structure of our educational systems has been
overwhelmingly of the client/server type, reflecting an industrial capitalist
model of production. A rigid administrative and instructional hierarchy
(the server) was set to deliver standardized knowledge to its students
(clients) on a mass scale to meet the demands of society at large. Opportunities
for P2P forms of interaction have been limited. The Internet, however,
presents us with unique opportunities to practice P2P in more formal
educational settings.
To better understand how a peer-centered approach can benefit language
learners, it is helpful to examine more closely the teacher-student dynamics of
the traditional model. In many institutions, classes are usually large, while
time to implement the syllabus is limited, resulting in minimal communication
between teachers and students on subjects other than those prescribed by the
syllabus. Interaction in the target language generally occurs through classroom
simulations, while listening and reading material is selected and presented by
the teacher. Very little, if any, interaction occurs with people outside this
closed environment. Therefore, students exposed to the target language through
contacts at home or work, or those who can afford to travel abroad, are miles
ahead of those who have to rely solely on the classroom.
When it comes to implementing technology in such
institutions, the pedagogical approach often does not change. Language learning
software is purchased, integrated into the curriculum, and delivered to
students. Learning management systems are designed to replicate the
conventional top-down, controlled transmission of the traditional classroom
mode, where learners perform simulated, structured activities in a
passive/receptive mode. The use of the Internet in such a model results in
materials that are downloaded to complement the textbook or other classroom
activities. Real-life participation in authentic modes of communication is
rarely attempted, and therefore the communicative and expressive potential of
the Web is diminished.
Our world –
physical and virtual – is not homogeneous, structured, and standardized; but
rather it is complex, diverse, heterogeneous, fluid, and unpredictable.
Learners have varying abilities, different skills, and unique personal goals,
and yet in the traditional classroom, they are rarely encouraged to show their
talents, create their own content, take control over their own learning, and
reflect on the process to gain further insight. Deep learning occurs when they
put their knowledge and skills into action, when they utilize their creativity
and inventiveness, and when they learn from one another through cooperation,
striving to gain new insight, knowledge, and skills. Instead of forcing
standardized knowledge upon learners in a strict curriculum, how can we guide
our students to acquire what they need so they can express their thoughts,
share them with others, and negotiate meaning in self-directed ways? How do we
move from dependence towards greater independence and inter-dependence? How do
we adopt a more process-oriented approach and interact in a more open and
decentralized fashion which allows for self-directed participation, informal
communication, inter-cultural and inter-linguistic development? Although there
are no simple answers available, we can gain insight into possible solutions by
examining the concept of learning ecologies.
Learning Ecologies
In the biological world,
the field of ecology concerns itself with the study of the patterns of
interrelationships between organisms and the environment in which they live.
Ecology is a holistic science, and one of its fundamental principles is that of
interconnectedness in complexity. No one given organism or environmental factor
can ever be isolated and treated as if existing apart from the ecological
system, since what happens to that organism affects the ecosystem, and vice
versa. Relationships in an ecology are never fixed, but rather self organizing
and fluid, shifting in response to ever changing environmental factors. A
healthy ecosystem is one in which balance is maintained in the face of these
changes. Maximum adaptability and flexibility are keys to its survival and
ability to thrive. The structure of a biological ecosystem is not unlike that
of the P2P structure of network architecture as described above, which hinges upon
the free cooperation of unique participants in a fluid network. What arises
then, in a P2P model of online interaction, is an Internet-based ecosystem,
which in an educational context, results in learning following an ecological
model.
In his talk “Learning,
Working & Playing in the Digital Age," John Seely Brown (2000) offers
some guidance on how to best learn in an environment supported by technology.
Instead of isolating learners in artificial and rigidly structured courses in
which the teacher and selected print media are the main source of knowledge, we
should guide our learners towards more fluid and dynamic “learning ecologies”
in which “navigation, experiential learning and judgment all come into play in
situ,” where they can learn through discovery and experimentation, creating
and sharing their own content. George Siemens (2005) adds that in these
environments “learners can forage for knowledge, information and derive meaning
… acquiring and exploring areas based on self-selected objectives”, while
Martin Terre Blanche (2005) suggests “transitional ecologies that ease
learners’ entry into the 'real world', ecologies where seasoned practitioners
work and learn.” Learning ecologies are "a collection of overlapping
communities of interest, cross pollinating with each other, constantly
evolving, and largely self organizing." (Siemens 2003)
The advent of the Internet with its open
networks of cooperating users and an increasing number of tools and platforms
has brought new opportunities for educators to guide learners into such
learning ecologies and put them in touch with other speakers of English, so as
to develop their communicative competence through authentic interaction.
In order to
decide which tools to use and how to best use them, we should first examine
where we stand between the extremes of hierarchical structure of traditional
institutions and the fluid, ad-hoc learning ecologies. We should then
look for ways to bring peer-centered approaches and tools into the curriculum
to complement the learning goals. When adopting a tool, we should consider the
larger purpose it should serve: how its nature can best support the learners’
diverse needs. Some learners need more guidance, while others will need to be
encouraged to leave their comfort zones and experience the open spaces before
them.
Pedagogy
In
EFL/ESL, a peer-centered approach guides learners in a situation where they can
use and improve their language skills in self-directed ways while conversing
with peers. It gives them access to a distributed network and familiarizes them
with the available tools. It also requires teachers to provide assistance:
technical, educational and moral.
What are the
building blocks of such an interactive process? Brian Alger (2002) mentions
people, places, and things as three primary sources of design for learning and
puts narrative, interactivity, and mobility at the core of the learning
process.
Narrative offers
students the opportunity to record their observations, talk about themselves,
their interests, and events that that have marked their lives, and reflect on
how this experience has changed them. Storytelling is creative self-discovery.
It develops awareness and encourages them to voice their experience and ideas.
It provides a realistic context for communication and interaction, facilitates
language practice, develops fluency, and stimulates imagination. Adding voice,
photos, and video to the text is a powerful and creative way to illustrate
these personal stories and bring them to life.
Language is
social and a meaning-making activity. It is through language that we reflect
our thoughts, identities and selves. In the dialogical exchange with others and
with ourselves we interpret, gain insights, and modify our perspectives
constructing meaning and understanding, in different contexts, at different
times. Our culture and background (past-me), our project and perspectives
(present - I), and the projection of ourselves (future-you) come into play when
we connect to people, places and things and act in the world of which we are a
part. And it is through this interaction, unfolding and intertwining of
processes together with the friction that results from it, that we become more
aware of our ambiguities and question our assumptions while learning a foreign
language experientially.
If language
learning happens in different contexts, with different people at different
times, educators should not confine it to the classroom alone. The world
outside does not speak the language of the classroom so we must venture outside
its walls. Guiding learners into uncharted territory (learning situations over
which neither teachers nor students have complete control) gives them exposure.
Letting them interact with whoever they choose according to their interests and
needs will allow them to own the words though which they express their identity
and voice their thoughts, thus relating the language to their individual
selves.
Narrative,
interaction and mobility will help learners “develop ecological and interpersonal
perceptions in the language, on the basis of which they can construct
trans-lingual and trans-cultural selves” (van Lier, 2004).
As for the role
of the teacher, Kramsch says (1993, p. 31), “a dialogic pedagogy is unlike
traditional pedagogy – it sets new goals for teachers – poetic, psychological,
political goals that…do not constitute any easy to follow method…such a
pedagogy should be better described, not as a blueprint for how to teach
foreign languages but as another way of being a language teacher.”
Tools
A range of new different
web-publishing and social networking tools nowadays allows people to improve
the quality of their learning experiences and help them become more
self-directed learners. Among these tools are weblogs (also known simply
as ‘blogs’), which due to their ease of use and low barrier to participation
have made it possible for individuals not only to voice their points of view,
keep a record of their learning process, and share their personal reflections
with others, but also to engage in conversation with peers and tutors worldwide
on topics of mutual interest. While broadening their perspectives and
negotiating new meanings, learners also monitor their individual performance
and verbalize their intentions with increasingly greater fluency. Besides
supporting multiple modes of interaction (text, audio, photos, video), these
tools enable a truly peer-centered form of communication to arise.
Figure 2. Conventional LMSs and blogging
systems (after Farmer, 2005,
retrieved from http://dekita.org/gallery/wiaoc/slides/blogenvironment.png).
There are a
number of different weblogging services and tools available (see the comparative chart at http://writing.berkeley.edu/tesl-ej/ej35/m1.html).
Free hosted services such Blogger and Wordpress (see list of URL’s at end of
article) count among the most widely used and least challenging to
novice users. Experienced users who are familiar with Web technology might
prefer a self-hosted application that gives them more control over their
weblog.
In addition to
weblogs, social networking sites can help foster interaction and communication
between students. Sites such as 43 Things, 43 Places, and Flickr
allow learners to move beyond their classroom, express their interests and
share their experiences while connecting with people from around the world. The
use of such tools complements the blogging process nicely, helping students to
build personal contacts and construct a personal learning network through
social networking features like profiles and tagging.
Tagging is an
open-ended labeling process (see Folksonomy at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy)
which enables users to categorize content through freely chosen labels (tags).
For example, 43 Things brings people
together who share the same goals, which are represented in various ways: in
tag clouds that correlate a tag's fonts size to its popularity (the more
popular the bigger), that can be sorted alphabetically, represented in
proximity to related tags, etc.
Who does not
draw a list of resolutions hoping to achieve them in the short, mid or long
run? Students choose goals from the home page list or add their own. They can
then describe or justify goals to be accomplished and give advice to others
about the ones they have attained while making use of tags to find and skim the
goals and profiles of other people, engaging them in conversation using the
available commenting features. Making public one's passions, goals, and
interests, and discussing them with other people, is much more engaging than
learning from a disembodied character in a language textbook.
Figure 3. Front
page of 43 Things showing most popular tags for what you want to do with your
life. From http://dekita.org/gallery/wiaoc/slides/43thingsb.png
Similarly, at 43 Places, students can describe their
hometowns, talk about places they have visited, and share the destinations they
would like to visit in the future. They can also provide travel recommendations
and encourage people to explore new places. Through its system of tags and
photos, they can also find the most popular spots other people have visited,
ask locals for suggestions, or interact with people who want to
go to the same places that they do. In this way, students can broaden their
horizons by visiting places around the world and interacting with people from
different cultures.
Digital cameras
and mobile phones have broadened the reach of digital photography. Through
photography, we tell stories and talk about previous experiences, many of them
personally meaningful. In the process of sharing, we also discover different
perspectives, alternative views of the world, unique glimpses of a culture, and
insights into humanity through everyday scenes.
Flickr is a social networking
site based on photo sharing. Its users post photos to a
"photostream" that displays these photos, blog-fashion, in reverse
chronological order. Every photo receives its own archival page with a
blog-style comment form, and comments can be inscribed below the images and
right into the images themselves using "notes". In addition, Flickr offers very sophisticated tools
for sorting and classifying photos, including sets and tags.
Flickr can be used with learners
of any level who can start by filling information about themselves in
the profile section. Then they search for others who share the same interests
by clicking on the tags of their choice. After viewing the photos, they can add
contacts. Three levels of privacy are offered: contacts, friends and family.
Flickr users can recognize each
other as "contacts" and will have their contacts' most recent photo
uploads referenced as "thumbnails" on their personal homepage
whenever they log in to the site. Each of these photos, of course, is an
invitation to comment, an activity Flickr
users avidly engage in. The site's conversational nature is further
underscored by the Group feature, the ability of every user to start a group
about any topic, and have fellow users either contribute photos to a common
group pool or discuss the group's topic on a bulletin board.
Flickr is a good example of a
visually rich, participatory, and socially engaging environment that can
be successfully used in a language learning context. Reading the
comments other people have made helps learners put together a list of
expressions they can later adapt and replicate. For low level or intermediate
level learners, tagging their own photos with appropriate key words, adding
titles, notes, and short descriptions are the first steps to starting
conversations in writing (http://www.flickr.com/photos/17345667@N00/116329924/).
A photo or set of images can serve further as an anchor for personal narratives
and story telling or be associated to quotations or poems learners look for
on the net and later discuss.
One possible
educational use of Flickr is
illustrated in a short project on the Dekita headers (http://dekita.org/weblog/rotating-headers)
which involved two classes of EFL students from Brazil and Japan being
introduced to the photographs of Josef Stuefer (http://www.flickr.com/photos/josefstuefer/),
an Italian photographer who publishes his work on Flickr under the Creative Commons
License (http://creativecommons.org/). The
students chose the photos that should be used for Dekita's header graphics,
justified their choices and participated in a conversation with the
photographer and Dekita's designer (http://www.flickr.com/groups/dekita/discuss/49447/).
Figure 4. Example Dekita
headers justification comment. Retrieved from: http://dekita.org/gallery/thumbs/140-impressions.png.
This voluntary, largely
unplanned, experiential activity brought together people who shared a common
interest. It arose organically and involved participants in an authentic
exchange rather than a classroom simulation.
When
participating in social networking sites such as 43
Things, 43 Places, and Flickr, students gain access to the
English language as it is actually being used around the world. Instead of
focusing on the language in the abstract, learners become aware of the
subtleties of the “living language”, of existing discourses and situational
needs. As van Lier mentions (2000, p. 246), “from an ecological perspective,
the learner is immersed in an environment full of potential meanings”. Just as
organisms in a biological ecology build relationships with other organisms,
students build conversational relationships with other people, thus increasing
their exposure to authentic uses of the language.
Cultivating open
ecologies
Although the Internet holds
great potential for connecting learners with conversational partners in an
expressive, self-directed way, we should be aware that by working on the
Internet and using its latest tools, we do not necessarily leave behind conventional
pedagogy or traditional practices. As weblogs and other tools are slowly
finding their way into language courses, teachers need to understand the
advantages that peer-oriented uses of the technology can offer, so as not to
hamper personal expression, self-directed learning, and the movement toward
greater learner autonomy.
Ideally, weblogs
give learners a place on the Web to call their own, allowing them to post their
links and publish their thoughts, opinions, and feelings to a worldwide
audience, thus permitting a wide range of authentic communicative interaction
to occur. Yet learner blogs can be easily mishandled, as shut off from the
world at large as is the conventional classroom. This usually happens when
teachers fail to understand the kind of open ecologies weblogs thrive on and
instead treat the medium as a vehicle for online homework submission.
Educators who
ask their students to blog might wish to consider questions such as these: Do
the posts originate from interests and passions intrinsic to each student, or
are they responses to blanket assignments such as, "This week, please
write a letter or story following the model we studied in class?" Is
reading other blogs, linking, and the building of social networks encouraged? Can outsiders who do not know what happened
in class read the weblog, participate, and feel included in the conversation?
In an excellent
post on the basics of blogging, Anne Davis (2005) stresses that students need
to learn by exploring what others have written, make connections, and strive
for writing that matters, and she poses questions that will make a reader think
and want to comment:
Some of our best classroom discussions emerge from
comments. We share together. We talk about ones that make us soar, ones that
make us pause and rethink and we just enjoy sharing those delightful morsels of
learning that occur. You can construct lessons around them. You get a chance to
foster higher level thinking on the blogs. They read a comment. Then they may
read a comment that comments on the comment. They get lots of short quick
practices with writing that is directed to them and therein it is highly
relevant. Then they have to construct a combined meaning that comes about from
thinking about what has been written to them in response to what they wrote.
It's such a good way to begin the process of teaching reflective thinking.
(February 2, 2006)
In ascribing such a crucial
role to comments, Davis implicitly highlights the central importance of
learning ecologies. Educators should help language learners become part of such
ecologies by taking a peer-centered approach when deciding how to structure
learning activities. Once learners develop online relationships with people
outside the classroom and become more proficient with the tools that enable
them to do so, they are better positioned to attend to their own learning needs
beyond the physical and temporal confines of the institution.
References
Alger, B. (2002). The Experience Designer: Learning,
Networks and the Cybersphere. Tucson, AZ: Fenestra Books.
Bauwens, M. (2005). P2P and human
evolution: Peer to peer as the premise of a new mode of civilization. Retrieved
July 14, 2006 from: http://www.networkcultures.org/weblog/archives/P2P_essay.pdf
Brown, J. S. (2000). Learning, working
& playing in the digital age. Retrieved July 14, 2006 from Serendip, http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_edu/seelybrown/seelybrownorig.html.
Davis, A. (2005). Guidelines for blogging.
Message posted to EduBlog Insights, November 08, 2005. Retrieved July
14, 2006 from: http://anne.teachesme.com/2005/11/08#a4515
Davis, A. (2006). Comments make a
difference. Message posted to EduBlog Insights, February 02, 2006.
Retrieved July 14, 2006 from: http://anne.teachesme.com/2006/02/02#a5165
Farmer, James.
(2005) [Weblog] Blogs @ anywhere: High fidelity online communication. Incorporated Subversion. Presentation at
Ascilite Conference, Brisbane, Australia, December 2005. Retrieved on July
27th, 2006, from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/brisbane05/
blogs/proceedings/22_Farmer.pdf.
Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and Culture
in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Lier, L. (2000). From input to affordance:
Social-interactive learning from an ecological perspective. In Lantolf, J.
(ed.). Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 245-259.
van Lier, L. (2004). The
Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning: A Sociocultural Perspective. Boston: Kluwer.
Siemens, G. (2005). Designing ecosystems
versus designing learning. Message posted to Connectivism Blog,
September 02, 2005. Retrieved July 14, 2006 from: http://www.connectivism.ca/blog/32
Siemens, G. (2003). Learning ecology,
communities, and networks. Retrieved July 14, 2006 from elearnspace, http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/learning_communities.htm
Terre Blanche, M.
(2005). Designing ecosystems.
Message posted to Collaborative Learning Environments on 3 Sept 2005. Retrieved July 14, 2006 from: http://www.criticalmethods.org/collab/2005/9/news.htm#1125729002671
URLs of tools cited
·
43 Places - http://43places.com
·
43 Things - http://43things.com
·
Blogger - http://www.blogger.com
·
Flickr – http://www.flickr.com
·
Wordpress - http://www.wordpress.com
Editor’s notes
This presentation was
made as a regular session at the Webheads in Action Online Convergence on
November 19, 2005. The session took
place in the Alado Webheads presentation room. Recordings were made and can be
heard at http://www.digibridge.net/webheads/beeDekita1119.htm.
The presentation transcripts and illustrating slides are located here:
·
Aaron Campbell's - http://dekita.org/articles/the-p2p-concept
·
Barbara Dieu's - http://dekita.org/articles/p2p-eflesl-pedagogy-and-technology
·
Rudolf Amman's - http://dekita.org/articles/delicious-and-p2p-efl-esl-x
Aaron Campbell teaches EFL at Kyoto
Sangyo University, Japan. He is also a co-founder of Dekita.org and has been blogging with his students
since 2003. http://e-poche.net/
Barbara Dieu teaches EFL at the
Franco-Brazilian secondary school in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She has been involved
in international collaborative projects online (http://members.tripod.com/the_english_dept/
projects/files/collaboration.html)
since 1997, is a co-founder of Dekita.org and
co-runs the Blogstreams Salon at Tapped In.
http://beewebhead.net
Rudolf Ammann hails from Switzerland.
He holds an M.A. in English and Art History from the University of Bern,
Switzerland. He takes a keen interest in literature, language, art, design, and
computing. He is a co-founder of Dekita.org . http://www.dottweiler.com/
|
