We are pleased and honoured that a colleague of ours, Chris Roland, has written our second guest post, all about Inanimate Alice, an engaging digital fiction project for learners.

What is Inanimate Alice?

The best thing to do, in all honesty, is to go to the Inanimate Alice website yourself, load up one of the episodes and have a look. If you ask me for a description in words I’d say something like: the Inanimate Alice stories are digital readers, combining text, images, sound and interaction to take you with Alice on a number of her adventures as she moves round the world with her parents. But it’s more than that. The overall effect of IA certainly adds up to more than the sum of its parts. The screen’s all black, the text flickers with static audio or dark drum n’ bass style rhythms that exacerbate the tension, very real photo images and the hard edges of architecturally precise building plans contrast with childish doodles and musings. As you can see, talking about IA is quite fun, especially as it blurs the line between various medium types, between the reader/viewer paradigm and when used in a language classroom, between text as vehicle for language and text as vehicle for story for its own sake.

Who wrote it?

Inanimate Alice is the brainchild of Ian Harper. He enlisted crack digital artist Chris Joseph to give the story the powerful screen presence you see and novelist Kate Pullinger to put words into Alice’s mouth. Ian’s vision for Alice is really something and goes far beyond the four episodes you can currently find on the site. There are 10 planned instalments and a number of possible projects that may branch off those too. One nice touch is that in each of the episodes, Alice is a little older, so we’re actually watching her grow up as the episodes progress. She begins as an eight year old girl with an interest in gadgets, imaginary characters and stories. As far as I know she will become a successful fashion designer, but we’ll have to see what surprises Ian has in store for us there.

So who are you?

Good question. I’m an English teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer. I got involved in the project a couple of years ago and have written the blueprint for an adapted ELT version of the first episode ‘China’ consisting of 3 separate graded versions, for Pre-Intermediate (A2), Intermediate (B1) and Upper Intermediate (B2) which include graded language, specific exam practice, language games and extra features like scoring and dictionary functions – all designed to increase the effectiveness of IA in the CALL room. As I say, this is a blueprint and there are no fully working versions of ELT Inanimate Alice at the moment. I’m also one of the moderators on the Inanimate Alice Facebook page, set up by Laura Flemming.

Does IA have a place in the traditional English classroom?

I think so. Have a look at this:

You may look at this photo and wonder what it has to do with a state of the art digital literacy programme like Inanimate Alice. Well, featured in the picture is a group of 20 Spanish secondary state school teachers on an intensive teacher training course that I gave at the British Council in July of last year. The course was provided by the Council for the Ministry of Educational of Catalonia and I called it ‘Getting the most out of your materials.’ In the photo we are busy preparing paper based visuals for conversation activities, cutting and pasting from magazines in the old fashioned way.

The point I’d like to make with this is that blended learning packages and digital resources can co-exist quite comfortably with more traditional teaching methodologies, paradigms and mindsets. On this course we did this cutting and pasting images from weird pseudo-scientific magazines one day and the next my teachers were cutting and pasting from Google Images to simulate student made picture dictionaries on a screen. I would go further and say that given the limited access to computer rooms that many state school teachers experience, and the variety of contexts teachers find themselves in, then more than a question of being able to co-exist, it’s a question of needing to. The day before this picture was taken, the very same teachers you can see here were up in the computer room following Alice’s exploits across China, Italy, Russia and the UK

How can I make sure lessons with Inanimate Alice work?

Many teenage students will seize the opportunity to do something new like go to the computer room and work on Alice with appetite and enthusiasm but a few will seize the same opportunity to test the teacher’s classroom management skills by ‘playing up’. A third category, and perhaps the majority, will be neither overly enthusiastic nor disruptive and their participation will really depend on how tight the teacher’s lesson plan and task design has been. For this reason, when setting up an Inanimate Alice, or any other, activity – be it digital, paper based, spoken groupwork or out of class assignments – my motto is ‘Structure. Structure. Structure’.

Now the first things your average teenager will ask themselves (often on a subconscious level), when given a language learning task in school, are: “What do I have to do? What’s the easiest way to get it done? What will happen if I don’t do the task? Will the teacher know and what will be the consequences? Is there a system of evaluation in place with actual marks (grades) awarded? Are all my friends getting down to work? Are we ‘having’ this as a group?” So what we need is a tangible task for the students with obvious checking points with regards their participation. This is what I call structure for the student.

We also need structure for the teacher. By this I mean that however ‘wow’ an activity, it has to provide the teacher with information such as grades or evidence of task completion or learner production, that they can add to their term grades, records of work or class portfolio.

Next week I’ll tell you about a specific activity you can do with IA.

Chris is based at the British Council Barcelona. He teaches young learners, adults and business classes and gives as many conference sessions as he can on top of his regular contract hours. When he isn’t doing something teaching-related he’s probably training for marathons, walking up hills or shooting billiards. His own site: www.regandlellow.com has powerPoint stories for very young learners, including Reg and Lellow themselves and also Humphrey Bogin. Please take a look!

Can you give me an example of a specific activity you do with IA?

Sure. So a clearly defined task, teacher monitoring and evaluation are paramount. With this in mind I divide the class into pairs. I feel that three at a single computer is too many. Many schools do not have a terminal for each student however. When students are sharing, I insist that they swap the person controlling the mouse every 5 minutes. Less dominant students will say they don’t mind and cede the mouse to their fellows. They do mind. They want a go on Alice really – and it’s the teacher’s job to see that they get it. So, each pair watches an episode of Alice. The existing episodes of Alice are of unequal length, so I tend to work with either China and Italy together (which are shorter) or Russia and the UK.. The episode each pair watch is specified on their worksheet, which I’m not including in this article because it really is better if each teacher thinks through the exact micro-mechanics of the activity for themselves and produces their own handout accordingly, which will be best suited to their own specific context.

Full instructions are provided on the worksheets to supplement my initial explanation of the task. Students will often ask the teacher rather than refer to their worksheets but some students will read the instructions so I always say it’s worth putting them on. As they watch their episode, each pair write down 10 difficult vocabulary items appearing in the story and afterwards write the definitions of these words on the same worksheet (I allow them to use an online dictionary but the moment I see their own Facebook accounts opened, that’s it, the stack of paper based volumes I have as standby comes into play).

This is the first task. When each group have their vocabulary lists and definitions checked by the teacher they proceed to the second task which is to watch their respective episode again, this time writing down 10 comprehension questions about the episode. For example, those watching China might write: How old is Alice? What colour is the painting that her mum does? What’s the name of that machine she plays with? They also write the answers but this time on a separate sheet. The ‘worksheet’ for this one consists of a paragraph of instructions and the numbers 1-10 in the margin.

Again, each group have their questions checked and receive a group grade. This gives the teacher chance to clear up any ambiguities in their questions. Each member of the pair needs to have their name on each sheet – no name no mark – and the questions need to be written in two different styles of handwriting to show there has been equal participation.

After this each pair swap questions with another pair who have viewed a different episode. This involves having everyone finish as close together as possible and occasionally a quick photocopy of one set of questions may be necessary if there is an odd number of groups and thus more people doing one episode than another. Students then work through the new story, answering their colleagues’ questions using the vocabulary lists produced by the other pair to help them, so each pair is simultaneously teaching and testing, and being taught and tested by the other. Finally the answered questions are returned to their creators for correction and are handed in to the teacher for final marks collection. A lot of work for the teacher? In actual fact, the more individual marks a teacher takes in, the less work they have to do come the end of term evaluation.

Sounds good – how well does it work?

It works beautifully and I like the fact that students play these 4 roles of lexical investigators, analytical question makers, task achievers and solution finders. You can see that there’s a lot of structure here, but this is the type of structure that is needed and appreciated by front line teachers if we are to envisage using materials like Alice alongside regular materials and methodologies. It’s very difficult for any online programme to provide all of this structure by itself, so this is where teachers come in and why their role in an Inanimate Alice class is essential. As you can see, I’m a big fan of what I call ‘micro-mechanics’ – the nitty gritty of task design – and I think it’s on this that a class lives or dies.

Is there anything else I can do to try to make sure things go well?

Whenever we’re dealing with the CALL room, I would advise going in there before the class, turning on all the computers and making sure you have done everything you are going to ask the students to do. That way you will find out if all the terminals are working okay and if everything is loading up fine. It will also prime you for any procedural ‘hitches’ students might encounter. The second thing to do, if you have time, is actually load up each episode on each terminal, so students are ready to go. If not, write up where they go and which episode to watch very clearly on the board – so that they have instructions there and on the handout.

So where’s the play?

Recently I’ve been deconstructing my classroom activities and asking this very question, prompted by the realization that my students often find or introduce a game element into activities that was not what I had imagined they would find fun about it when I planned the things. At recent teaching conferences I’ve been bringing up my little play symbols (made with the help of the aqua ball font at www.flamingtext.com) to help make the point more visual.

Another very useful thing to do during planning is to go through the episodes you are going to work with and script them, actually writing down all the language they contain yourself. This will give you a good idea of what level the language is and help you predict any difficulties your students will have lexically.

My point is that if there isn’t an element of play, students will invent one. They need it to survive. If their ‘play agendas’ can run in parallel to the teacher’s lesson aims then great, they’ll normally be happy with that. But if there’s no other way, their own need for play will come at the teacher’s expense.

In Inanimate Alice, the play starts with clicking. I maintain that IA isn’t something you should show your students – ever. It’s something they should do. Watching somebody else click their way through Alice’s screens in definitely not play. Alice doesn’t work as a class movie. That’s why, as I mentioned above, I make sure that everyone is regularly clicking. The most successful play element of the episodes themselves has to be the doll catching game in the Russia episode. Here, on regular screens, students have to find a hidden doll then catch it as it falls from the top pf the screen, using a little Brad character on a skateboard at the bottom. I always specify that they can play this episode with the game option on. There are also the flower photographing, clothes grabbing and derelict building maze activities in the other episodes but with the dolls, Chris J. has really captured a retro computer game feel which takes me back to the days of the Spectrum 48k or the Commodore 64.

These are elements of play intrinsic to the episodes themselves. Then there is play that the guiding activity gives the opportunity for. Students making up their own questions can allow them the chance to try to catch out and confuse their classmates. If you have few students, then dividing them up and sending them off to work at different computer terminals in different physical locations, different rooms, can provide that element of ‘adventure’. There are also elements of play that involve the students’ imaginations in a positive way. A number of teachers, reporting on the Facebook page, have recently had their students write their own episodes of Alice, or to fill in the blank time periods of Alice’s life in between episodes and this can take a number of formats such as written work, PowerPoint presentations and class video clips of roleplays with students acting out Alice, Brad, Ming (her mum) and John (her dad).

And then of course, there are the elements of play that you will never see coming but that you can observe if you watch carefully. What is it about an activity that seems to animate your students most? Some of these play elements may horrify you; others might provide the inspiration for future activities. Many, many thanks to Kyle and Graham for giving me space here and all the very best to all DP’s readers!

Chris is based at the British Council Barcelona. He teaches young learners, adults and business classes and gives as many conference sessions as he can on top of his regular contract hours. When he isn’t doing something teaching-related he’s probably training for marathons, walking up hills or shooting billiards. His own site: www.regandlellow.com has powerPoint stories for very young learners, including Reg and Lellow themselves and also Humphrey Bogin. Please take a look!

Did you know that the average time spent playing video games per week is 18 hours? Imagine if your students spent 18 hours a week practicing their English voluntarily. Perhaps, you won’t be able to persuade your students to practice English for this amount of time, but you can get them to practice their English outside the classroom in a fun way! Many of the free games online are fantastic for language learning. My class time is highly focused on having students speak English, therefore, we rarely spend a lot of class time playing online games. Instead, the games are put on my class wiki for students and parents to enjoy at home. These games are optional, but I find that most of the children will play them at home with their parents guidance.

So what do you put in a wiki?

A wiki is like a class website, but easier to design. Wikis are free for educators and are advertisement free if you sign-up at Wikispaces for Educators or PBWorks for Educators. Both of these sites provide you with a variety of tools to embed (insert on your wiki page) to help students collaborate and build a language learning community full of resources. Below are some ideas to consider:

• Have a translation button to help students and parents understand the website

• Use video tutorials like the one below to help students and parents navigate the wiki

• List the vocabulary and grammar the students are supposed to learn with each game

• Conduct a parent workshop to teach parents how to help their children play the games and reinforce the language at home

• Supplement the games with related songs, stories, finger plays, activities and/or videos

  • In the English Story Time wiki, I list an English story the student can read that relates to the theme in the game

• Have students use other web 2.0 tools to provide support and excitement for the game

  • Have students design their game characters using the Voki website or upload drawings of their characters in Blabberize

• Have students write reviews of each game and how they believe the gaming experience can be improved. Encourage the students to share this with the game designer, because they will be motivated if the game designer responds.

Adding the “social” to game-based learning…

Have you watched anyone recently play a game on their Wii or PS3? You will notice that these games have virtual worlds and that players can speak through headsets to other players that are located in another part of the world. Several of our students already play these games and they enjoy them, because they get to compete with others, complete tasks with others, and interact with others. Language is learned through social interaction so it is important to add this dimension to the games we choose for our language learners to play. Wikis are great tools for adding the social networking aspect to your game-based curriculum.

Consider these ideas:

• Embed a Wallwisher so students can easily add in gaming tips

• Embed a Google Doc where students add tips and tricks to pass certain games stages

• Embed a forum where students can discuss game strategies. Wikispaces comes with a discussion page.

• Have students create graphs and charts on your computer’s software and post them on the wiki. These graphs can chart their progress on their games like how much time they took to complete a level.

  • These graphs add a competitive edge as students compete to raise their rankings.

Useful links:

• WowinSchools Wiki

• Video Tutorial- Creating a PB Works Wiki

What other ways do you envision wikis enhancing game-based learning?

Shelly Sanchez Terrell is a freelance technology teacher trainer, the VP of Educator Outreach for Parentella.com, and an English language teacher based in Germany. Explore her Teacher Reboot Camp Blog for tips on professional development and integrating technology effectively into the classroom. Feel free to connect with her on Twitter, @shellterrell.

“If the child is not learning the way you are teaching, then you must teach in the way the child learns” - Rita Dunn