Creating videos For Use in the Classroom

Creating videos For Use in the Classroom

July 22, 2018

Photo credit: flickr user chelsea(: Creative Commons License

Editor’s Note: Josie Jesser created videos of elementary school students speaking Spanish as part of our COERLL Collaborators program. Here, she explains her process.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth even more. Even just two minutes of “screen time” can engage or re-engage students by pulling them into a world outside their classroom. As soon as the faces appear on the screen, the students’ curiosity is switched on. Who are these people? Where are they? What are they saying? I’ve found the engagement multiplies when the images are of students the same age as mine. With this classroom experience in mind, I set out to create a few more options for my students in the Spanish classroom. I wanted to film kids the same age as my students, speaking Spanish naturally but answering simple questions so the students could understand.

Here is what I learned:

  1. Our best resources are in our own backyard – see if your school district has any Dual Language Schools and reach out to the administration to set up visits to these schools.
  2. Be clear about the purpose of the videos (that they will be Open Educational Resources) and ask for names of specific teachers that would be willing to work with you and suggest students that would be comfortable in front of the camera.
  3. When making appointments to film, request a quiet location in the school, such as an empty classroom or corner of the library at a time it’s not being used.
  4. Explain to these teachers that you’ll need parents to sign permission slips (Media Release Forms), which you can collect on the day you show up.
  5. Use a tripod. Whether an iPhone, iPad, or digital camera is used to film, a tripod ensures consistency and steadiness for the viewer.
  6. Keep the camera at the students’ eye level.
  7. Have the students look over the questions before you start filming, so they can think about answers.
  8. Film 2 students at a time, so 1 student can ask questions and the other can answer.
  9. Good questions are never yes or no questions, but the type that encourage students to talk for a little while. For older kids, asking their opinions, their feelings, and what-if scenarios are always great. For younger kids, asking them to describe their daily world works well.
  10. Remember to keep it light and fun!

Good luck!

For more information:

—

Josie Jesser joined the Girls’ School of Austin faculty in 2013. Ms. Jesser completed her Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies from Dickinson College and her Master of Arts in Latin American Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. Ms. Jesser has worked as an interpreter and translator (Spanish, Portuguese) and she has lived in Argentina and Brazil. She has also worked in the technology sector, providing client support for Latin American clients. She loves teaching and working with students!

Categories:
Methods/Open educational practices (OEP) Spanish Technology-based language learning
A network to showcase OER for language learning

A network to showcase OER for language learning

March 19, 2018

Editors note: This post was originally published on the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources blog

The Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL) just launched the Language OER Network (LOERN), a page on our website to list language educators who are creating, using, or promoting open educational resources (OER). Every person featured on the page receives an open digital badge from COERLL. In this effort to acknowledge, validate, inspire, and connect open practitioners, we have already distributed badges to 41 teachers, librarians, and administrators.

We built the Language OER Network because we realized that more people than ever have started to understand what we do and are interested in getting involved in their own open projects. We are always thankful to hear from K-12 teachers and community college and university faculty who spend the extra time and energy to find the right open materials to support their students’ language proficiency. The Language OER Network exists to acknowledge this work.

Even though the open movement is gaining momentum, a large number of teachers and administrators either don’t know or misunderstand what OER is. Teachers who do advocate for openness often report that they are doing it alone. Badges provide teachers with proof of their accomplishments, to validate to their colleagues and employers that using and making OER is scholarly, creative work.

Language teachers (plus other staff, administrators, or students involved in OER for languages) can earn as many as six badges on the Language OER Network, for being either an OER Teacher, OER Master Teacher, OER Creator, OER Master Creator, OER Reviewer, or OER Ambassador. From what we’ve seen, this follows the natural progression that many people take, from the basic use of supplementary OER, to the full involvement of sharing the benefits of OER with others. We hope that this set of badges will inspire people to keep opening up, eventually earning all six badges.

We would also love if people embarking on new open projects could look at this page and find others who have similar ideas, to connect with them and potentially collaborate. With the number of people pursuing OER right now, it’s likely that many of them are doing similar projects and could benefit from sharing ideas and resources.

Even though we are publishing the Language OER Network to benefit teachers, it benefits COERLL as well. LOERN will be a tapestry of open language education that will help us demonstrate what this multifaceted movement is all about. Since launching the page in the past month, we are excited to have already learned about new people and projects from across the country. We look forward to hearing from more open educators, and also hope that in the future we can find a way to acknowledge more types of open educational practices, which are just as important as open resources, but harder to quantify.

Read about your colleagues and their open projects, and join the community! https://community.coerll.utexas.edu/

Categories:
Badges Methods/Open educational practices (OEP) OER initiatives Open education philosophy Teacher Development
OER for a Common Goal – Meeting the Needs of Spanish Heritage Learners

OER for a Common Goal – Meeting the Needs of Spanish Heritage Learners

March 9, 2018

Editors note: This post was written by COERLL partner Jocelly Meiners, and originally published in Tex Libris, the blog from the libraries at the University of Texas at Austin, for a special Open Education Week series.

In recent years, the development of Spanish language courses designed specifically for heritage language learners has gained much attention throughout K-12 and post-secondary education in the US. Heritage language learners are students who were exposed to Spanish at home while growing up. These students usually have a broad knowledge about their cultural heritage, and varying degrees of language dominance. Over the years, it has been found that these learners have different pedagogical needs than second language learners, and that they benefit greatly from language instruction that is catered to their specific needs. Throughout the country, as more institutions realize these needs, Spanish instructors at all levels are forming programs and creating materials to serve this student population. It seems that we all have some common goals: to help heritage Spanish speakers develop their bilingual skills, to empower them to apply those skills in academic and professional settings, and to feel proud of their cultural and linguistic heritage. So if we all have similar goals in mind and are all working on creating programs and materials to serve these students, why not share all the work we are doing?

I have been teaching courses for heritage Spanish learners here at UT for over 4 years, and about a year and a half ago I started working as the community moderator for the Heritage Spanish Community. This web-based community, which is hosted by COERLL (The Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning), serves as a space for Spanish instructors to collaborate, share and communicate with others about the teaching and learning of Spanish as a heritage language. We encourage instructors at all levels to ask questions on our online forum, to help other instructors, and to share the materials they are working on. Open Educational Resources are an excellent way to share these types of materials, since they can easily be adapted to the specific needs of each instructor’s particular student population.

As community moderator, I add useful content to our website, create interesting questions for discussion, and encourage others to explore our website and share their work. I have also been able to share my own materials as OER, and it has been very rewarding to hear from people in other parts of the country who have found my resources useful and are adapting them for their own heritage Spanish programs. I believe that if we all collaborate and share our resources openly, we will be much more successful in attaining both our personal and common goals.

Jocelly Meiners was born and raised in San José, Costa Rica and moved to Austin, TX to attend UT, where she obtained her undergraduate education, as well as an MA in French linguistics and a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics. She is currently a Lecturer in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at UT, where she teaches courses for Spanish heritage learners.

Categories:
Methods/Open educational practices (OEP) Spanish Teacher Development
Happy Open Education Week 2018!

Happy Open Education Week 2018!

February 28, 2018

Open Education Week is a celebration of the global Open Education Movement. Its goal is to raise awareness about the movement and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide. Join us March 5-9, 2018!

Language OER Network Launch

Here at COERLL, we’re excited to launch a new network for promoting open projects in language education. The goal of the Language OER Network (LOERN) is to showcase the work of open educators in the field of language learning and teaching. If you are a language educator or student who uses, creates, or promotes open educational resources (OER), COERLL would like to recognize your innovations by listing your name on the LOERN page and by sending you a COERLL badge.

Teachers and students are featured as an OER Teacher, OER Master Teacher, OER Creator, OER Master Creator, OER Ambassador, OER Reviewer, or some combination of those roles.

Please also follow us on Facebook and Twitter to hear from OER Master Creators and Master Teachers about how they have integrated openness into their curricula.

Stories From Open Educators

We’ll also be publishing blog posts here on this blog from language faculty at the University of Texas who have created open educational resources.

OER for a Common Goal – Meeting the Needs of Spanish Heritage Learners by Jocelly Meiners
Creating an OER for Turkish-language learning has made sharing my ideas possible! by Jeannette Okur
Open Access at the Core of Materials Development for LCTLs by Orlando Kelm

Open Education Worldwide

Other organizations around the world are celebrating Open Ed Week too. Learn more about the movement and the events and materials available at openeducationweek.org/.

Categories:
Badges COERLL updates Methods/Open educational practices (OEP) Teacher Development
Celebrating Multilingualism

Celebrating Multilingualism

February 21, 2018

Photo credit: Naomi Barbour

Note from the editor: Naomi Barbour writes a guest blog post in honor of International Mother Language Day

“That doesn’t help me,” Yousef observed, having looked up a new term from his Biology class in the dictionary to check the meaning in his first language, Arabic. “I don’t know that word.”

“I wouldn’t be able to do this in Chinese anymore”, Kevin told me, with a slight note of anxiety in his voice.

“It’s easier for me to write my outline in Japanese. Is that ok?” asked Riko, hopefully.

Comments such as these from students are typical in my job as an English teacher at an international school. They speak to the tensions that students feel when learning in a language that is not their mother tongue. These tensions make up part of their identity and it is important for students to have the time and space to reflect on what it means to be multilingual. By discovering the benefits and challenges of multilingualism, they can gain a deeper understanding of themselves and the world they inhabit. For these reasons, I decided to dedicate some class time to exploring with my students what it means to be a multilingual learner. As always, I tried to include activities in all four language domains: speaking, listening, reading and writing.

First, I got them to focus on their first language with a simple activity called But, Because, So. I gave them a sentence stem, “My first language is important…” Students had to complete the sentence in three different ways, using but, because and so.

Next, we worked on a definition for multilingual. We did this as a Think, Pair, Share activity, maximising oral interaction in the classroom. Only after creating our own definition for multilingual did we consult the Cambridge Dictionary of English, where we found that a multilingual person is someone “able to use more than two languages for communication”. Important: nowhere in the definition does it say that you need to be fluent in those languages.

In later classes, we explored the benefits of multilingualism through a Market Stall activity. On individual numbered strips of card, I printed fifteen benefits of multilingualism, including developing improved critical thinking abilities and problem-solving skills, as well as being more efficient communicators in your first language. These were divided out randomly among the students, who also had a graphic organiser on which to note down all the benefits. First, they read their own benefit carefully to make sure they understood it, checking for any difficult vocabulary. Then they mingled round the room, “selling” their benefit to their classmates. They were not allowed to show their card; they had to communicate and explain it orally.

Students went on to do a reading comprehension looking at additive and subtractive bilingualism. They discovered that at the same time as learning a new language, they have to maintain and develop their first language. Otherwise, they are at risk of subtractive bilingualism, in which further languages are added at the expense of the first language and culture. Among others, James Cummins at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto has published widely on this and related topics. Students then used that material for a group activity in which they had to pretend they were the school leadership team and come up with ways in which to support and celebrate multilingual students at our school. They had some excellent ideas, such as providing first language support classes after school.

Finally, students wrote an essay on the prompt: What benefits can multilingual students experience and what are some ways to support these students at our school? They had to incorporate language from our unit language objectives and were assessed on the WIDA writing rubric.

What better way then to celebrate International Mother Language Day on February 21st by exploring with students the ways in which multilingualism not only benefits them personally, but also helps make the world a better place for us all? The United Nations cites multilingual education as a way to help achieve their Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 and the theme for this year’s celebration is Linguistic diversity and multilingualism count for sustainable development.

Take some time to celebrate mother languages with your students and colleagues. How about a challenge on February 21st to teach someone your favourite expression in your mother language? For those who share the same mother language, there may well be local expressions that you could teach. If your students and colleagues like using social media, new expressions could be tweeted out using #motherlanguageday. Happy International Mother Language Day!

—

Naomi Barbour is a High School English teacher of multilingual learners at Asociación Escuelas Lincoln, an international school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has always loved learning languages and was delighted to add River Plate Spanish to the list when she moved to Argentina from her native UK.

Categories:
Methods/Open educational practices (OEP)
Writing Resources That Give Students the Freedom to Explore

Writing Resources That Give Students the Freedom to Explore

November 22, 2017

“El aquelarre” by Francisco de Goya is in the Public Domain

When he began compiling his textbook anthology Leyendas y arquetipos del Romanticismo español, Robert Sanders knew that his students weren’t taking upper-level Spanish to become professors of Spanish literature. They were mostly minoring in Spanish with other career goals in mind. This sort of insight into students’ needs is what makes open resources authored by language instructors so valuable for modern education.

Leyendas y arquetipos is an openly-licensed introduction to nineteenth-century Spanish literature for intermediate university students of Spanish. Dr. Sanders chose the works of poetry, drama in verse, and short stories for their literary interest and the social importance of their themes. After piloting the book with students, he compiled vocabulary, historical, and cultural annotations to facilitate comprehension.

Dr. Sanders made many choices in compiling and writing the anthology to allow students the flexibility to pursue their own interests. He did not prioritize any one interpretation of the texts in the anthology. The discussion questions mention scholarly works as a jumping off point for analysis rather than a definitive interpretation. The author biographies in the anthology are short in order to encourage further investigation and richer discussion by students, and the book lists sources for further research, such as Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, the Centro Virtual Cervantes of the Cervantes Institute, or the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the Spanish National Library. In his course, students have  even created their own multimedia take on a chosen work by creating fan fiction, graphic novels, film storyboards, and musical compositions.

The multimedia potential of the book is also reflected in the paintings, photographs from films, and other art that are as valuable as the texts in their potential to teach about literary and social movements of the time. The art provides a whole other avenue of exploration and analysis to students.

Dr. Sanders compiled the book himself with support from the Portland State University Library, which has supported the prolific creation of open textbooks (several of them for languages) in order to save students money and provide a customized learning experience. The book has a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, which means that anyone can copy it, share it, and make modifications, as long as they give attribution to the author, maintain the same license, and do not make a profit off of it. With this in mind, what could you do with this book? Has it given you ideas about reading with your students? Tell us in the comments.

Learn more:

Categories:
Methods/Open educational practices (OEP) Spanish
A Treasure Trove of Videos for Language Teaching

A Treasure Trove of Videos for Language Teaching

October 7, 2017

Photo credit: YouTube user Pefu & Lukyson Creative Commons License

From the editor: The following is a portion of a transcript from an interview with Dr. Christian Hilchey, which was originally published in COERLL’s newsletter. Dr. Hilchey explains how to search for and get inspired by openly licensed authentic videos.

We use films. We use songs. But oftentimes, we can’t share those because they are copyrighted. I started finding these excellent videos by conducting searches for open content on YouTube. I would go to YouTube and search for content under an open Creative Commons license. Unfortunately, some key words weren’t working for me at all.

Finally, the best key word that I stumbled upon was “vlogs” (video blogs). And then I combined the key word “vlog” with another word like “Christmas.” So, “vlog Christmas” or “vlog zoo” or “vlog vacation.” And I found that there were a lot of people posting vlogs and that they weren’t a one-off kind of thing. Typically, the kind of person who was posting a vlog was… writing several dozen about their personal experiences. So, what I found helpful was to go to specific users themselves to find the richest content. Once I found a good vlog series, I would search through it like an archive. It really was as simple as that. But the key was to find the right vlog. At that point, it was looking for patterns in the archive. What kinds of videos were they posting? How did they title their videos? So it was really about finding that rabbit hole that previously was unknown to me. But once I found it, I was amazed by all the good content and was able to mine it quite easily. It changed things for me overnight. I went from having no open video content to having a surplus of really excellent materials to choose from.

A lot of times, as educators, we are looking for really specific content. I think to find the “good stuff,” educators need to be more flexible. Instead of looking for something specific, it is better to find high quality content and then think about how to incorporate it into your lesson or materials. Actually, I think that my experience looking for open content reflects my experiences fifteen years ago that led me to learn Czech so successfully. These language-learning experiences with native speakers weren’t necessarily planned. They were experiences talking about things that I didn’t expect them to say or talk about. So what I have found is that being more open to what could be useful to the learner, what could be said, has allowed me as an educator to think outside the box and to say, “OK, I wasn’t planning on talking about this content in this particular way, but there is a lot here that I can use for the classroom.”

Take an early chapter in a first year program. You are probably teaching [students] to name items. So, the focus is on nouns. If you start to look around, you will notice that people are naming things in real life. So, for example, I found a lot of videos where people give tours of their homes. And during the tour, they name items: “This is my television. And this is a chair I bought at the flea market.” Utterly mundane but really useful for language learning. Another example of a really great video I stumbled upon was a trip to the zoo. A Czech family visits the zoo and they point out and name all the different animals. The content was interesting and fun and it was perfect for learning animal names. Again, this was not something I was planning. But when I found it, I knew that it could be the basis of a lesson. I hadn’t thought about taking my students on a trip to the zoo, but why not? There are some very large zoos in the Czech Republic! It is not normative or typical to discuss Czech zoos. But they certainly exist.

You do have to watch and to listen to these videos. Sometimes, I will immediately dismiss a clip because the audio is bad or the video is sub par. Although… the fact that someone isn’t looking perfectly into the camera and isn’t wearing a mike often makes the video more real. I am trying to balance the issues that come with lower production values with the advantages of extemporaneous content. I remember the textbooks I used when learning Czech and we would mock the videos: “Don’t these actors sound silly!” Whereas, in these videos, the people don’t sound silly, they just sound real.

To learn more about vlogs:

—

Christian Hilchey is a lecturer in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author of “Reality Czech”, a full curriculum of open language materials for introductory Czech.

Categories:
Finding OER Methods/Open educational practices (OEP)
Engage and Explore

Engage and Explore

June 11, 2017

Photo credit: flickr user UrbanPromise Creative Commons License

From the editor: We asked master Spanish teacher and teacher trainer Rose Potter to create some activities that use COERLL’s resources to engage students and satisfy state and national standards for language learning. She created these five simple but effective activities, and describes her approach below.

As a young teacher in the 80’s, I often called upon images of Sra. Hartley, my high school Spanish teacher, to guide me through lesson planning. Upbeat, funny and highly energetic, we laughed and sang our way through the ALM drill and kill methodology of the 1960’s. Today, when training pre-service teachers, I understand that their default approach to teaching is the model they experienced. Because their teachers were also learners in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s their methodology may reflect that era – or, that of their teachers, products of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s teacher training. Over time, Madeline Hunter’s “anticipatory set” became “priming activity”, “warm-ups”, “bell-ringer review” and more. However, the methodology did not always keep pace. Instead, students often receive a mini-worksheet at the start of class. They are expected to sit quietly and respond to discrete point items while the teacher takes roll and prepares to teach. This century’s students have trouble doing exactly that. The expected quiet time may become a class management challenge.

Today’s LOTE (languages other than English) educators recognize that “warm-up” means preparing the eyes, ears and, most importantly, the mouth. Get them talking! Today’s term “engagement” goes beyond a writing or viewing task, it requires active participation on the part of the students. The steps are not complex: grab their attention, pose a simple task that requires interpersonal communication, use the task to build skills for more complex tasks. That’s it. You will see these steps incorporated into the five engagement activities I designed using COERLL’s materials. As you review then consider the simplicity of each step.

  • Engagement: this can be through an image or video projected on the screen that students see as they enter.
  • Interpersonal task: Pose a question to get them thinking before class begins. Ask your partner/another student: “Have you ever…? Do you like… Do you think… Compare what you see to…”
  • Build skills: The questions may contain unfamiliar cognates or verb constructs that make sense in context but are new to students. Keep it simple, but allow them the opportunity to discover the new learning through practice. Learning vocabulary and grammar as a function of communication makes it real for students.

The engagement is the first step of an inquiry-based, constructivist approach to learning, the 5E’s lesson plan model. Engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate. For my students, I’ve added a 6th E, Exit Plan, to assure that they close the lesson. Since using this plan with my LOTE students, I’ve seen an enormous increase in the potential for engagement.

To see more examples of the 5Es in action, take a look at the following resources:

—

Rose Potter is an Assistant Clinical Professor of LOTE Education for the UTeach-Liberal Arts Program at the University of Texas, as well as a teacher, writer, consultant, and mentor.

Categories:
Instructional Materials Methods/Open educational practices (OEP) Spanish Teacher Development
Become part of a language teaching community!

Become part of a language teaching community!

March 26, 2017

This Open Education Week (March 27-31, 2017), we’re highlighting the importance of participating in a community. Working with other language teachers can help you grow professionally and give you new ideas for reaching your students.  Read below for some vibrant communities you can be a part of. And remember: collaboration is easier when you put a Creative Commons license on your rubrics, activities, lessons, and other creations. This ensures that other community members can use your work more easily, while always acknowledging you as the author.

#langchat

#Langchat is a Twitter hashtag for all world language teachers to use in tweets to discuss anything regarding language teaching. Thousands of teachers use it daily to exchange information, get support and find new ideas to use in their classrooms. It is also used for 1 hour twice-weekly Q&A style Twitter chat. Discussion topics are suggested by/voted on by language teachers. The chats are Thursday 5pmPT and Saturday at 7amPT (the same topic for both chats).

FLTeach

The Foreign Language Teaching Forum is an integrated service for FL teachers, dedicated to encouraging communication, sharing, and collaboration at all levels. Our broad discussion topic is foreign language teaching methods for any level of instruction in all languages. Specific areas of discussion include school/college articulation, training of student teachers, classroom activities, curriculum, and syllabus design. Students in teacher training programs, teachers both new and experienced, administrators, and other professionals interested in any aspect of foreign language teaching are invited to participate in our discussions.

The basic premise of the list is that as professional Foreign Language teachers we are all in this together and are here to help one another. The moderators expect all participation in FLTEACH to be supportive and collegial and to follow the basic rules of good Netiquette.

  • Find out more about connecting with FLTEACH through #flteach on Twitter, on Facebook, in the listerv.

COERLL heritage Spanish community

The COERLL Heritage Spanish community is a space for instructors (K-12 and higher education) who want to collaborate, share and communicate with others about the teaching and learning of Spanish as a heritage language. On our website you can find and share resources such as articles, program profiles, classroom activities, event information, sylllabi, information on current affairs, etc. We also have a Heritage Spanish Café, which is an online forum where you can start conversations with other instructors about topics or questions relevant to the community. We would love for you to be a part of our heritage Spanish community.

COERLL FLLITE community

COERLL’s Foreign Languages and the Literary in the Everyday (FLLITE) group is for language teachers who would like to improve their students’ reading skills through the use of authentic texts of everyday genres, including memes, poems, blogs, and images.

Deutsch im Blick Facebook page

The Deutsch im Blick Online community focuses on connecting learners and teachers of German by sharing content; whether it is a fun meme or an article about cultural differences, learning or teaching material. On Facebook, you can connect and interact via likes, comments or direct messages to DiB. In addition, teachers can join the DiB google group and quizlet classes, to share teaching material. Here, you can also get in touch if you have questions or comments about the DiB material. Our overall goal is to create a fun space to promote learning and teaching all about the German language and culture.

Français interactif Facebook community

The Français Interactif Facebook group is a unique community of francophiles, francophones, avid language learners and teachers. Originally created in 2011 as a support group for users of the University of Texas at Austin’s Open Educational Resource (OER), Français Interactif (FI), our fanbase is now spread over six continents and nearly 300,000 strong. Followers will delight in daily provocative posts that share, introduce and discuss various cultural and linguistic aspects of French-speaking cultures around the world. Those who want to engage more actively with the FI community will find vibrant multilingual discussion happening on our wall and in the comment section of our posts. Want to share a resource? Have a question on the group? Experiencing a problem with the FI OER ? Reach out to our moderator via PM, and she will point you in the right direction.

  • Join us for la biggest francophone fête on la planète!

CALICO

CALICO, the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium is an international organization dedicated to research and development in the use of computer technology in language learning: computer-assisted language learning (CALL). CALICO began mainly as a group of people interested in using and producing technology-based materials for second/foreign language teaching. After more than 25 years of growth and experience, CALICO now includes language educators, programmers, technicians, web page designers, CALL developers, CALL practitioners, and second language acquisition researchers–anyone interested in exploring the use of technology for language teaching and learning.

 

Do you know of any more communities for language teachers? Let us know what they are and how to get connected in the comments! And for more information on open licenses, see the Creative Commons website. 

Categories:
Methods/Open educational practices (OEP) Teacher Development
Searching for open authentic resources online

Searching for open authentic resources online

December 1, 2016

Image credit: COERLL Creative Commons License

Authentic resources are essential for language teaching and when they are open – by carrying a Creative Commons or other open license, as opposed to a copyright – they present even more opportunities. On a practical level, if anything you do with copyrighted material ever leaves the walls of your classroom, you could potentially get in legal trouble. But in addition to that, if you ever share the lessons you create using authentic resources with colleagues, your use of openly licensed materials will allow them to make their own modifications and copies of your work.

We recently surveyed some language teachers and faculty about their techniques for searching for authentic resources, and most of their great ideas revolved around copyrighted materials. This makes perfect sense: copyright is pervasive, and materials with a copyright are easier to find and often more polished. But we hope that little by little, authors and creators will learn to change how they use outside sources and publish their own work, with licenses that give credit to the author and access to all.

Sometimes it is harder to find content with open licenses when searching with very specific search terms or specific topics in mind. Even copyrighted materials can be hard to find when you have a very specific resource in mind. As Rachel Preston, a French teacher in Austin pointed out,

Being flexible on search terms and going into my searches with an open mind often help me find resources that I would not have conceived of that are relevant and interesting.

If you let go of some of your requirements, a video or a text that seems to have no topical relation to what you’re doing in class can still be useful and interesting, with the right scaffolding. Christian Hilchey has some interesting tips on this in his interview in our newsletter. (In case you do want to narrow down your options quickly, Rose Potter suggests, “Always include the language, city or country in your search. For example, if you are looking for a sample of jai alai include, ‘jai alai basque Spain’ or you may end up with images from… around the world.”)

Another important aspect to finding open authentic resources is other people. It probably seems obvious that other teachers can help via social media, word of mouth, professional organizations, or blogs. But librarians may also be able to help; even without language knowledge they should understand licensing and online resources. You can also enlist students to search for resources. It teaches them digital citizenship, gives you an idea of what they’re interested in, and generates a whole stash of materials in a short period of time.

And of course if the internet doesn’t give you what you’re looking for, the outside world might have more realia than expected. Marcelo Fuentes, a grad student at the University of Minnesota, suggests,

I would encourage educators to use more materials obtained by themselves. You don’t need to travel: you can find materials in other languages in practically any city. Those pictures of graffiti, menus, brochures, etc., have a story, a connection to you, and because of that they will be much more interesting for your students than most things you can find online.

Or, you can follow German teacher Anke Sanders’ advice and get creative to make your own pictures, audio, or video. If you do make your own creations, remember that putting a license on them will allow others to benefit!

If you do need to use copyrighted materials (which includes anything with a ©, AND anything not labeled with a license), make sure you know the rules of fair use, and if you are having trouble staying within those boundaries, it is legal for you to link to copyrighted resources from your lessons, as long as the resource itself isn’t included in your creation. It can even be a good idea to try contacting the copyright owner for permission to use their content.

Whether it is an article about hot air balloons in Québec, a website about being green in Costa Rica, a video about the whistling language of the Canary islands, a video of middle school students talking about their vacation plans in French, or a video about traditional medicine in Spanish, there is a wealth of knowledge out there! Read more about ideas for searching in our newsletter article and please add any ideas for openly licensed authentic resources in the comments below.

Some authentic resource recommendations from the language teaching community

Creative Commons licensed authentic resources

  • CC Search allows you to search multiple websites for open content, depending on whether you are looking for audio, video, images, or text
  • Wikis, such as Wikicommons
  • Public domain image repositories such as http://www.publicdomainpictures.net and Pexels
  • You can search specifically for open content on Google and YouTube. Learn more in our newsletter article.
  • COERLL materials are all Creative Commons licensed and available for 15 languages

Copyrighted authentic resources

  • Corpora, such as the collection from BYU
  • Using the search term “infografía” plus a Spanish word or phrase (this idea comes from Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell – see her blog for more authentic resources tips)
  • “Notes in Spanish offers authentic conversations between a Spanish woman and her English husband… Some of the podcasts are a bit outdated, but many contain cultural themes/topics that are still relevant today. Students like listening to the conversations as it represents natural conversation between a native Spanish speaker and a non-native speaker. I like them because they expose my students to the Castilian accent while also serving as a springboard for culturally (and linguistically/grammatically) oriented conversations to emerge in my class.” – Joshua Thoms (Utah State University)
  • Several teachers recommended tourism sites, such as http://www.rendez-vous.tv/, recommended by Nancy Guilloteau (University of Texas at Austin)
Categories:
Finding OER Methods/Open educational practices (OEP)
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