Mozuku

The thing above is a QR (Quick Response) code. QR codes can contain various information including text, links, phone numbers, and even some images. They are primarily aimed at cell phone users recently and are becoming increasingly common in advertising. At the recent Wireless Ready conference, one presentation discussed the way in which QR codes can be used in classes. You see, these codes are easily generated with one of the many online generating services (just google QR cod generator). And once you have the code squares, you can print them out or paste them into a blog or website. You can use the codes to have learners put short texts (up to about 140 characters) into their cell phones. These messages can be saved and learners can take them with them. The presenter at Wireless Ready was doing interactive treasure hunts with groups of his learners. Of course, you could also give some important vocabulary or usage information. The best part is it involves no downloading for either the creator or the user, and no internet access fees.

As I wrote in my posting about the Wireless Ready conference, one of the most depressing aspects about the Web 2.0 movement in language education in Japan is the rather dismal record educators have with getting students to use the tools associated with this movement. Regularly, for learning.

Certainly there’s a passion gap. Teachers are finding themselves suddenly surrounded by students and schools that have tools that allow them to do things that the pedagogy has been pointing to for years. Back in 1996 already, Paul Nation wrote, after a comprehensive literature review, that language learners/facilitators should be doing the following with roughly the following amount of time dedicated to each: meaning-focused input (25%), meaning focused-output (25%), form-focused input (25%), fluency practice (25%). At that time, it was nothing more than a dream that we could get our students doing meaning-focused output in an EFL setting for a quarter of their learning time. And meaning-focused input consisted of classroom language and teacher talk, tapes and videos used in class, and tapes made by teachers for students. But now it is possible to do it, with authentic and meaningful language exposure and use. It’s no wonder that teachers are excited, and then a little frustrated and disappointed when students don’t show the interest they should.

I think, though, that there are many reasons for the lack of student use–some timeless ones like laziness and different priorities–and some others that Activity Theory can help us to put in perspective. In Acting withTechnology, Kaptelinin and Nardi (2006) explain how tools are culturally loaded mediators that color the way people act. That sounds intuitive immediately, but when we think on it a little, the implications become more significant. The example the authors give is the ax. Once early humans got the ax, the things around them could be seen in light of how easy or difficult they were to chop up. That is, tools are one of the ways we experience the world and they help to define the norms of our culture. And that really is the key word: culture. We know what an ax is and what it can do, or at least we think we do, and it is our understanding of what it is and how we use it that is a part of the culture of the group we belong to. But even for as simple an instrument as an ax, different people around the world have different notions of what it is and what it does. For example, is it used for recreation or work; is it used by men, or women, or children, or anyone; is it important to learn to use it well, etc.? Now, when we consider our new learning tools, we have to understand that teachers and learners may be firmly lodged in different cultures and every person brings to a course his or her cultural understanding of the tools the instructor wants to use.

The ways the teachers see the tools–their possibilities and applications–are not usually the ways learners normally see them. The teacher will look at an iPod and think it is a wonderful device for delivering listening content and participating in authentic communities of use. The learner will likely see a music player, at least at first.

And like cultures that mix anywhere, there are overlaps and there are gaps and the first step to identifying these is to take some serious steps into the other culture. Nobody learns very much about a culture by visiting a restaurant once, and not many people learn much of a country’s language by making a short vacation there. Willingness to try, willingness to immerse, sustained use (required and supported!), and a good amount of time and reflection bring results. We know this about culture and language; it is true also for tools. So with the use of new tools, or old tools for different uses, it is important to ask ourselves some questions: What is the learner’s culture regarding this tool? Am I asking the learner to do something beyond that? How can I gain the student’s understanding and support (enforce, if necessary) their use of the tool? When we think about the culture of tools, the answers to most of these questions come easily. In light of the lack of administrative support for most of these tools, teachers can start building bridges between courses, so the tools are used in multiple courses with different instructors. That will help to create the immersion needed for success. That’s my plan for the upcoming year, and I’ll let you know how I do. Specifically, I plan to use blogs and several online applications for vocabulary training and writing practice.

I’ve been reading  Acting withTechnology (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006), a book about Activity Theory and how it relates (particularly) to interface design. One of the many interesting ideas that come up in the book is the notion of curation. When I first heard it, I thought of curator, as in museum curator, and the idea of what goes on in a museum: identifying, organizing, verifying, and documenting. In Activity Theory, however, the term has a very particular meaning. According to Kaptelinin and Nardi, curation “is a deeply social process through which materials are strategically revealed to others, or hidden from them” (pg 159).

Though the situation the authors talk about is the interaction of research scientists at a company looking to develop drugs by analyzing genes, this got me thinking about language learning. There has been considerable research into the area of Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in recent years. Curation seems to me like a goal-driven social form of WTC. Curation seems to focus perhaps too exclusively on  the individual’s attempts to achieve objectives in the social situation, assuming that other factors are constant (attitudes to the company, personality, etc.). This cannot be said of students in a class. There are usually too few characteristics that are constant across learners. WTC is probably the better theory for describing the motivations and behaviors of students in a language classroom, but curation gives a nice way of talking about the ongoing process of what learners will share or not in communication with other students (and instructors). Language students have two things affecting their curation: one is the choice of what to share (often culturally determined) and the other is proficiency (what they are able to and not able to communicate).

It’s funny how you can go so long without hearing some things. In my case, one of these things was Activity Theory. For the last few years, I have been reading and hearing things that are related to it without ever hearing the name itself or having the theory spelled out for me. I was familiar, for example with Vygotsky, the mentor of Leontiev (the developer of the theory) and the originator of some of the ideas that are part of Activity Theory. His name and theory of zone of proximal development are often mentioned in TESOL literature, though rarely really focused on. I had read some of Wenger’s work, so often used to justify the Web 2.0 approach to (language) learning and teaching, and I was aware of the burgeoning interest in the social model of language learning. But somehow, I just didn’t hear about Activity Theory, until it was mentioned in a discussion. The name sounded interesting and so I made a quick trip to Wikipedia and found a short but enticing entry. This lead me eventually to a book by Kaptelinin and Nardi called Acting withTechnology which does a really great job of introducing and explaining the theory, including its historical development and recent applications. Though the main focus of the book is on computer interface design, there are sections looking specifically at Activity Theory in education. And the more I read, the more interesting the theory became and the more I began to see it as perhaps a theory that could bring the cognitive model of language learning and the social model of language learning together into a larger, more complete model. Shortly after, I came across a book that looks at Activity Theory in language teaching, called Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development, which I have taken delivery of but not yet read. It has some chapters on Activity Theory in language education.

So what is Activity Theory? It is a theory that aims to understand “…individuals and the social entities they compose in their natural everyday life circumstances through an analysis of the genesis, structure, and processes of their activities” (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006, pg. 31). This is done though an examination of activities, the purposeful interaction of subjects with the world (objects), including the social contexts. Analysis of activities is the only way to understand both the subject and the object, and the changes that occur in both through activities. This sounds a little overly general at first, but as we look at the basic principles of the theory, we begin to see how it starts to make sense and how it gives an interesting perspective on the phenomena we are examining.

• Human activity is directed toward objects, always. Objects can be things or objectives, and the activities that connect subjects with objects can change over time. Kaptelinin & Nardi give the example of a family and a home. Think of how the activity the family is engaged in regarding the home (buying it and living in it) change over time, and think of how rules, customs, norms and requirements of the family and wider community affect this activity.
• Activities can be analyzed at different levels: activities, actions (specific goal-directed processes), and operations (automated actions). Objects do not really change, but the activities (goals, actions, and operations) are dynamic.
• There are both internal and external activities. Internal activities are similar to cognitive processes. Externalization, on the other hand, occurs when internalized action needs to be repaired or scaled. It is a careful, self-monitored external working through of a process that an individual would otherwise do quickly internally. Activity Theory “…emphasizes that it is the constant transformation between the external and the internal that is the basis of human activity” (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006, pg. 70)
• There is a strong emphasis on social factors and this often focuses on tools, which are culturally loaded mediators that color the ways people act.
• There is a strong emphasis on development and one of the key research methods is the formative experiment, where the researcher monitors developmental changes over time.

I am still trying to get a good grasp of the theory and its application to education but it is starting to make a lot of sense to me and it is definitely calling out the limitations of cognitive approaches to language learning. In interface design, this theory has helped designers notice that there are higher and lower level actions (tasks) and place more attention to offering support for the the higher level ones. Higher level actions are meaningful tasks that do not change regardless of the specific technology or strategy used (for example, submitting a paper). Lower level actions are tasks that usually involve an application’s functionality (for example, attaching a Word document to an e-mail message). Activity Theory seems to be able to provide a context for the bigger picture. This is potentially very appealing, but for the time being it is certainly very interesting.