‘Weather…Or Not’ the new online editions for each month

IntroductionThe new edition of ‘Weather…Or Not’ iBook, developed using iBook author, is based on the four principles of intercultural communication outlined by Newton, (2009):identify differences and similarities between cultures and investigate them, reflect and decide about future actions. Other important influences are Bonvillain (2006) and Dorothy Brown. Both women explore the notion of culture from slightly different perspectives: Bonvillain from anthropology and Brown from the classroom of English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).

The final strand of influence is personal and has come from classroom experience using workbooks the author previously wrote and desktop published, which look at culture in New Zealand over a calendar year; ‘Weather…Or Not’ series, ‘Keeping Culture in Mind!’ series and ‘Throw Away Your Dictionary!’ – for guessing unknown words in context. After many years of CALL, the author was also the e-coordinator for the Language Studies department for two years, introducing the use of blended learning through Moodle as the learning management system (LMS) migrating from Blackboard. More recently the use of e-portfolios for course assessment has allowed the trial of some of the units, within the institute’s new Learning Spaces for open plan blended learning.

BackgroundIn the early 1990s there was a need for an ESOL activity book, written explicitly for low literacy level students but flexible enough to be used by higher levels too, to learn about culture and the natural environment around them as it was happening. The idea was to try and diffuse some of the homesickness prevalent amongst students by allowing them to identify with the local environment, and to have fun while they were doing it. Although they were interested in nature and how it was different from their own countries, the most successful activities always turned out to be about cultural differences and similarities.

In hindsight, if more reflection and decision-making had been embedded and ways of incorporating Bloom’s taxonomy, for example applying, analyzing and evaluating, had been used in the first edition, some of the conflicts, which arose due to intercultural miscommunication, may have been deflected. The ‘Keeping Culture in Mind’ series explores these issues in more depth and a pdf for each month (a unit) is embedded into the new digital edition of ‘Weather… Or Not’. This extends the book considerably and may help to address these conflicts.

RationaleThe iBook is based on the constructivist approach, which emphasizes the ‘importance of context in learning and instructional design practices’ (Duffy & Jonassen, 1992). Higher order thinking skill activities in the book create the best language learning conditions so students are encouraged to communicate and improve their language based on their life experiences and culture. The move is away from traditional pedagogy of form and structure to communication in socially meaningful activities. However, for pragmatic

purposes, a section in each unit, which explores the main grammar structure or form in activities, has also been added for revision or self-study.

By using a digital/blended learning environment, the world inside and outside of the classroom is able to be explored and compared, students can gain confidence through independent learning, access data anytime and anywhere, diversity, equity and social justice issues are addressed to some extent, there should be an increase in digital capability, and use of the ubiquitous hand held devices become useful for learning and rather than solely for social purposes. A more dynamic classroom environment is inevitable as long as the drawbacks are taken into consideration: According to Russell and Sorge (as cited in Pitler and Hubbell, 2007), “: Integrating technology into instruction tends to transform teacher-dominated classrooms into more student-centred ones.”

Drawbacks and some solutions to blended learning/using digital format presentation in face-to-face classroomsThere are at least 6 major issues to be considered for successful incorporation of iBook use in the classroom and some of these are outlined by McGill, Beetham and Gray, (2016): 1. Students do not always understand instructions for online activities. It is vital that instructions for every activity are clear and simple not only for classroom success but also because some students will be accessing through a LMS in their own time. Verbal and written instructions are best, and even modeling activities first if possible for example; in Learning Spaces it is the most successful way to ensure instructions are being followed correctly. A screen cast video of instructions is also invaluable but time consuming! All apps have detailed instructions in the book and on opening the app.2. There is inequity of access with device ownership, although these days this is less of a problem in New Zealand and working in small groups around one device encourages collaboration. Although many of the apps work on any computer, iBooks only work on ipads, iPhones and MacBook’s (laptops). Currently all the e-books have not been completed so android access is not possible yet.3. The students trust that learning with a digital device is not only secure but that the iBook will achieve the same outcomes as learning with a traditional hard copy that is, there is a readiness to learn in this mode.4. There needs to be some provision for the ~10% of learners with disabilities. Screen size may be an issue for visually impaired but the ‘two finger spread’ enlarging text is helpful. Our counselors usually provide other support, such as interpreters for the aurally impaired.5. Blended learning perceptions by teachers may not match the reality of students’ satisfaction. In a recent survey in the United States of 1000 students (Bothwell, 2016) reported blended learning was not as engaging for students as either 100% online or 100% face to face in the classroom. In addition there is also the interesting observation by Mike Sharples (as cited in Bothwell, 2016), chair in educational technology at the UK’s Open University:

… the survey results do not show that “blended learning is a failure”, but either that universities do not yet know “how to blend properly” or that “there is a

difference between what students say they like and what they do better at” (para. 16).

6. There is a mismatch between the learning outcome and the app or design of an activity. Although this iBook is not a course with assessments but a resource facilitators can use to supplement existing textbooks, syllabus themes, input into community library ESOL support etc., blended learning design of an activity needs to take into account the learning outcomes. This means the instructional design must also consider the perspective of the learner and be the same across the classroom and the online experience (Anderson & Maurice-Takerei, 2016). 7. The writer must ensure all links in the text are active so as not to waste the student’s time by going to a site that is not free anymore or has been withdrawn. This also means the facilitator must check them all before the lesson too.

There are two more drawbacks form the teacher’s perspective:1. The facilitator needs to be familiar with e learning and enjoy using this format. Confidence is essential and the ability to switch modes and adapt existing material back to a traditional approach is very important should there be any downtime with the server or any other IT impediment. Most apps replicate well-known interactive communicative activities that teachers are already familiar with.2. The facilitator needs to be prepared to support digital literacy when other students are unable to explain and help, because users need to be reasonably digitally capable. Collaboration in small groups requires that at least one of them is prepared to be the ‘leader’ and share their knowledge – not just take over the driving seat! This drawback can be overcome by an initial needs analysis, induction preparation into courses, or ongoing support through online sites, for example http://studentsuccess.ie/toolbox/tool8/ - /

How is this digital textbook different from its hard copy original? Although ‘Weather…Or Not’ iBook essentially replicates communicative activities and skills lessons from the 2003 edition with apps, the Level 2 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (L2) student is able to add notes to reading, discussion and listening activities as well. This was illustrated in the CLESOL 2016 workshop. Listening, video and external links such as to Quizlet.com for vocabulary learning, were never part of either earlier editions, but trials so far have received positive feedback in online anonymous surveys in the author’s workplace. Considerable care and attention has been paid to matching the learning outcomes with an appropriate app.

Incorporated into the new edition of ‘Weather…Or Not’ is the ‘Keeping Culture in Mind’ series in interactive pdf format. They appear early in each unit for real engagement with culture and fulfill Newton’s (2009) principles quite thoroughly. This still allows writing by the student in each activity, links to external sites for listening, videos, vocabulary and content extension.

While existing text books contain universal themes on housing/artifacts, holidays, family, love and storytelling, the series ‘Keeping Culture In Mind’ also explores universal

themes that do not usually appear in Level 2 ESOL books, such as: birth, religion, social organisation, and impact of history on culture. All fourteen units of the ‘Keeping Culture in Mind’ series are available for download currently from the website: http://www.englishteacher.co.nz.

Within each major theme, there are also related minor themes, for example: gift giving/reciprocity, promises, role models, and global citizens. In the exploration of the main and subthemes, students determine where they are on the continuum between the two extremes of individualism and collectivism. It is important before using ‘Weather… or Not’ that students are made aware of the concepts of individualism and collectivism, and where they are on the continuum: ‘Keeping Culture in Mind’ Unit 2/February- Social Organisation p. 28 has a simple categorization exercise and the answers are on p.33 if students are not sure. Alternatively, Unit 1 has a quiz in the ‘About Culture’ link from the Home page http://www.englishteacher.co.nz

For the purposes of this iBook and in line with definitions from Bonvillain (2006), individualists are characterised by being ‘me centered’, that is: they can ignore the family or customs of the group; are independent of the group; are competitive at an individual level; often come from a nuclear family; believe time is money in terms of decision making; communicate directly; believe in private ownership and privacy; and generally come from countries that have been industrialised for a long time. Collectivists are characterised as being ‘group centered’, that is: the family or group comes first and is more important than the individual; are (or were in the recent past) from big families; have group ownership; are dependent on the group; believe relationship harmony/consensus is more important than individual desires; think silence is meaningful; often communicate indirectly and believe time is relative to harmony.

It is interesting to note that China’s ‘one family’ policy has changed a cultural value, and that some more recently successful industrial economies in Asia have also become more nuclear family oriented. These and other rapid changes such as: social media, internet networks, globalisation, and natural disasters’ effects on local economies have also had considerable impact on where people feel they are now on the continuum.

Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, are generally thought of as a collectivist culture but they are also changing and often lean more towards individualism on this continuum. This is due in part to frequent intermarriage with European settlers, peer pressure, the media, and initial contact with European culture, particularly missionaries etc. Similarly, older civilizations from the Middle East and Africa still tend to be collectivist in nature and these people make up a large proportion of refugees in New Zealand. Many are represented in our ESOL classes but the distance from the pressures of family and New Zealand lifestyle have also brought about change.

A lot of New Zealanders of European origin have become more tolerant of any differences in collectivist fundamental beliefs, perhaps due to intermarriage and a raised awareness of the implications of the Treaty of Waitangi. This founding document from 1840 influences the views that New Zealanders have on an almost daily basis and many

collectivist notions have been introduced as a result of it. One example is the number of tribunals (small local courts with three judges), where issues are discussed with all involved without time restraints. This iBook is committed to biculturalism in the context of Maori and the integration of settlers from other countries into New Zealand society.

Design ‘Weather…Or Not’ is comprehensive in its breadth of intercultural themes, subthemes and literacies - textual, visual and oral. These themes are not always considered in depth at Level 2. Additionally, by grading the language, learners with just enough language skill (that is, knowing three basic tenses - past, present tense, ‘going to’ future - and basic comparatives), are enabled to express their own cultural points of view. Discussing culture should not just be the prerogative of more competent level 3 and level 4 language learners.

Vocabulary apps introduce & revise vocabulary or links to Quizlet.com can be exploited in ‘Keeping Culture in Mind’. According to Dizon (2016), Japanese L2 students who used Quizlet.com for independent learning of vocabulary were able to make ‘statistically significant gains’ with Coxhead’s (2001) academic vocabulary (word) list (AWL) over ten weeks. Moreover, ease of use, usefulness and behavioral intention indicated positive perceptions by the students. Our L2 students currently use teacher created Quizlet sets for vocabulary support and they are linked through our learning management system. This use of Quizlet.com and apps in ‘Weather…Or Not’ student feedback this year, anecdotally supports the above findings.

The workplace has been influential in the design of engaging activities in this book. They are student centered, interactive, explorative, collaborative and relevant. They are intended to bring the world into the classroom - directly through the pooling of cultural knowledge or indirectly through Internet sources. The iBook ‘Weather…Or Not’, through ‘Keeping Culture in Mind’ series inputs in each unit, was created to increase critical and reflective thinking, which impacts on learning and the deeper cognitive processing of knowledge. There has also been considerable collaboration between Maori colleagues and myself to achieve an accurate bicultural element.

In some cases it has been difficult to fully explore all aspects of verbal processes and their competency for example,; cadence, accent, connotation and style. The language best suited for comparing these is a higher level of literacy. Similarly, vocalics (speech characteristics), which are acknowledged as non-verbal processes and obstacles to intercultural communication, have not been included.

How this iBook on intercultural communication differs from other sourcesWith the exception of the ‘English Unlimited Series’ (2010) and the online component, which explores culture in every other chapter in one page, this iBook is quite different from other practical ESOL textbooks on intercultural communication. New Zealand is a young country with a fast growing multicultural population derived from three quite different sources: the Pacific region (for example Melanesia), annual refugee quotas from the Middle East (for example Afghanistan), Africa (for example Ethiopia) and Asia (for

example Cambodia) (New Zealand Immigration, 2016). Its changed immigration policies allow an increasing number of immigrants from all over Asia rather than the traditional ‘English speaking’ or European country sources of the past. Hence, this workbook of intercultural activities is particularly relevant to ESOL students in the New Zealand context but not exclusively so. Teachers and learners in Commonwealth countries, where the indigenous culture has been marginalised by a larger European population over time, such as Australia and Canada, will also find this book useful.

There are other ESOL textbooks currently available with great practical culturally related activities (Corbett, 2000; Novinger, 2001) but they are for much higher literacy levels. The comprehension and vocabulary required for all these books can frustrate L2 learners and too much time can be spent decoding the information content. No other iBooks on intercultural communication exist for the Pacific region.

There is a section called ‘Plans for the Future’ at the end of every unit of the ‘Keeping Culture in Mind’ series. This important principle is about making decisions after reflection. This does not appear in any other textbooks. According to Newton (2009), it offers opportunities to explore the ‘third space’ i.e. language learning through cultural content, and it positions the student between language and culture It is also a more concrete reflection of awareness about new information and forces the student to really think about what practices they will adopt or reject, and what attitudes they have or will consciously cultivate in the future. Note: in Weather…or Not iBook, reflection and decision making (Newton, 2009) is currently in every unit of ‘Keeping Culture in Mind’ embedded in each unit in the introduction pages of ‘Cultural themes’.

Layout of ‘Weather… Or Not’ Each month of the year (unit) follows the same format:• Introduction to cultural themes, with a few images to peak curiosity and includes a pdf

from the ‘Keeping Culture in Mind’ series, which is related to the same month.• Useful high frequency relevant vocabulary for each month and extended vocabulary

learning with apps for collocation, pronunciation, meaning quizzes, word family extension, spelling, and revision guessing games. Sometimes there is a thematically relevant pdf unit of ‘Throw Away Your Dictionary!’ (2009), a workbook to develop the guessing of unknown words in context, which links to the theme.

• Discussion to activate the vocabulary . A ‘Find someone who…’ exercise, with notepad apps for reporting results and sometimes exploring differences arising from one of the questions, for example, June has a quiz about number plates, which leads to the creation of a personalized number plate and follow-up guessing game. Alternatively, there may be related extra activities about important cultural events in the month, such as completing a table with dates of anniversaries or special days (for June - Queen’s Birthday weekend etc.)

• Listening Apps include skills development for example gap fills, tagging places on a map, comprehension quizzes, matching to pictures, ordering information in timelines or ordering presentation of main ideas, role-play, vocabulary matching

of relevant new words, discussion arising from the listening etc. Sometimes the listening is the ‘Information about the month’, which was previously a reading in earlier editions, but other listening activities are used as well for example songs. ‘The Chocolate Song’ by Marcus Turner in April relates to Easter eggs so apps include rhyming words in songs, matching, and a cloze.

• Reading and/or grammar and literacy activities: Skills development activities have apps to test in-depth comprehension, scanning, reference words, main ideas, and other activities like retelling and discussion arising from the theme. Grammar is similarly developed, for example, too much/many, like for similarity, past/perfect tense, present tense for true statements, prepositions of time, acronyms (adjective development), comparison including as…as, countable and uncountable nouns (continued), when with zero conditional, if with first conditional, modals of permission, should/it’s a good idea to Etc.

Literacy: Some but not all aspects are developed for example in May poems are created then copied into online Mother’s Day cards, July birthday cards involve humour, e-postcards are in August, signs and symbols are used in September. In March, mathematical literacy includes digital and analog time.• Conversational strategies and practice: These may be a video (screen casts of Power

points with spaces for repetition and practice) or group work for example responding in January/April, showing empathy in May, stressing of important words in July.

• Video quiz/Photography: Initially videos were made with Zaption.com but after the site changed video quizzes have been used from www.englishteacher.co.nz ‘Listen to New Zealanders Talk’. Photography is a way of utilizing the camera on digital devices and develops from simply showing pictures and talking about photos relating to the themes, to the use of apps on students’ devices, for recording, to change photos, storage and using for books/presents etc.

• Answers are at the end of every unit.

Apps included so far can be used for; categorization, crosswords, word finds, spelling guessing games, gap fills for comprehension, highlighting, making links to meanings of a word, quizzes in many forms, and matching exercises. These apps may be for; pronunciation/meaning/listening, surveys and discussion with writing inputs, interactive timelines, word order exercises, voting/polls, personal prioritizing lists, notepads for writing and presenting ideas, geography name tags, interactive pdfs. Nearly all of these apps can be used in pairs/small groups or individually.

There are also a few distraction activities: slider puzzles, changes before and after, mazes, reveal the picture underneath. They appear as a box with the name linking to the part of the unit, and perhaps a symbol of the activity (for example a horse race for group or pair comprehension competition), but more often as a photo of somewhere in New Zealand, with instructions underneath. A lot of the apps have the instructions repeated inside the activity as well.

Other activities are more collaborative, like presenting and sharing information about an aspect of your culture, a role-play in February, contributing to the ELTPIX global student

photography site, presenting a slide show giving information, the reading game from edition 2 etc.

How to access the iBookCurrently, and for the foreseeable future, these books are free. The unit selected needs to be opened in iBook’s, so students must download the free app if they don’t have it from the iTunes store. They can access the 12 iBooks from their iTunes library but they need to enroll in the iTunesU with the code FNY-ABH-NND and download them into their own library first. If they already have iTunesU then there is a shortcut link: https://itunesu..itunes.apple.com/enroll/FNY-ZBH-NNDEventually, after more trials, the twelve iBook’s will be combined into one iBook. With the exception of the iBook apps, all the others require wifi to access as they are linked to external sites.

Pages within the iBook unit can be seen or accessed from either the index first page or by swiping left on the thumbnails at the bottom. If a text is blue, then students need to touch lightly on the right to access a scroll bar for the hidden text. Students need to be shown how to access the notepad and dictionary (that is, double click on a word for the dictionary, and press down firmly for a yellow box to appear for you to write on. The latter can be hard to do so, a notepad app has been added in every unit, sometimes for more than one activity.

In the workshop at CLESOL 2016, once participants were given a brief overview, they tried out the units, and this occupied most of the time. Once the workshop had finished, there was an informal session about how to use screen casts for writing feedback or for giving instructions. Screen casts have been used successfully by the author for at least 5 years now (2012) and highly recommended for student centered independent learning.

Future aimsAt present only iBook’s January to October are finished, and e-books January to May. The goal is to combine all of the iBook’s and e-books into one textbook each. A long-term plan is to add badges or ‘gaming rewards’.

Currently only January to May have e-books stored in Google drive for download, and although most of the apps and activities are the same, the android devices have a ‘rolling vertical screen’ so the flow is quite a different presentation to the iBook and pages do not correlate to materials. These e-books are not finished or prepared to be trialed yet!

Some units or parts of units are currently being trialed in L2, 3 & 4 at the author’s workplace and are available through the website, but further trial is necessary. There errors in the front page layout yet to be corrected but other errors are constantly revised and updated in newer editions, which replace the older ones on iTunesU.

After discussion with local public librarians, it seems that the iBook’s/e-books are suitable for public library groups, since the libraries are incorporating more devices for loan. According to the librarians I spoke to about the users, having the material presented

by librarians is less threatening than an English class, and would make them suitable for national distribution. It is also hoped that the organisation ‘English Language Partners’ would be interested, as they have used ‘Weather...Or Not’ for many years.

Diversity in New Zealand is enriching everyone’s lives but it does not come without its challenges according to my DipELT lecturer Dorothy Brown. By using the activities in this book, students will be led to a greater understanding between cultures and the identification of areas of miscommunication. Tolerance could be promoted between students from different cultural backgrounds by working through the problem solving activity in each unit, and in some cases conflict resolution techniques may also be used outside the classroom. It is not claiming to be the solution, but a work in progress towards a solution.

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