The Use of Skype as an Internet Collaborative Tool in Initial Teacher Education
Author(s):
Lorraine Harbison (presenting / submitting) Marie Brennan (presenting) Peter Roche Daniel Sellers
Conference:
ECER 2016
Network:
10. Teacher Education Research
Format:
Paper

Session Information

10 SES 07 A, The Role of Digital Technology in Teacher Education

Paper Session

Time:
2016-08-24
17:15-18:45
Room:
NM-G107
Chair:
Shosh Leshem

Contribution

The objectives of this study are to explore the use of Skype as an internet collaborative tool in initial teacher education to:

  • support communities of practice,
  • engage in partnerships,
  • build professional capacity,
  • share expertise,
  • cultivate team teaching/team lecturing environments,
  • develop proficiency in the use of enquiry based and problem based learning,
  • lead innovation in teaching and learning,
  • promote quality educational research.

Fourth year initial teacher education (ITE) students in the Church of Ireland College of Education (CICE) take a compulsory module on Technology Enhanced Teaching and Learning in the primary school classroom. As part of this module, they learn about internet collaborative projects (ICPs).

An ICP is a project in which the internet is used to facilitate participants to communicate and collaborate on a common task. It enables educators to extend learning beyond traditional boundaries, physical locations and other constraints such as school timetables. An ICP can be within a class group/year group, within a school, with the local community and have a national or international reach.

 

Projects commonly used in primary schools range from those that have already been set up and require little or no organisation on behalf of the teacher such as the one hundred word challenge 100wc.net and Twitter projects like #digitalart or #twiction, to more complex internet collaborative projects that are facilitated by international sites such as GlobalSchoolNet.org, iEARN and Learning Circles.

 

Furthermore, they learn about the use of Skype to aid cross-border learner experiences, to create global citizens (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zni56lVckb0 for example), and to support inclusion in the classroom.

 

This module inspired this research which looked at the potential of using Skype to develop ICPs between students in ITE nationally and internationally.

The students were asked to outline a 200 – 250 word idea for an ICP and upload to their blog. In completing the assignment they had to:

  • outline their idea fully
  • succinctly explain the learning intentions / objectives
  • include any learning benefits, as they saw them, that would come from the children’s online collaboration
  • include proposed duration, how the exchange would be organised etc.

Method

Fourth year students from CICE, who are in their final year of a B.Ed. degree, were invited to a Skype lecture entitled "Parents Count Too - thinking about adults and maths”. The lecture looked at barriers to engagement (including the emotional ones!) and required the students to think about how they might look at ways of building school/parent partnerships in creative ways. The lecturer and facilitator jointly planned the pilot lesson and devised a lesson outline in which each of their roles were clearly stated throughout. Resources and prompt sheets were developed to be distributed during the lecture. A questionnaire was designed to evaluate the success or otherwise of the pilot Skype workshop. This contained a variety of closed and open questions. The five closed questions asked students to indicate their response on a five point Likert Scale. This was followed by three free response questions. The purpose of the questionnaire was to evaluate: 1. How well the aims of the lecture were achieved 2. The use of Skype as a tool to support the objectives of the lecture The lecturer provided an evaluation at the end of the lecture. The lecturer and facilitator set up Skype on their lap tops and did a trial run for sound and picture quality prior to the lecture taking place. The 12 completed questionnaires were collated and analysed. Furthermore, the pre-service teachers were assessed with regards to their engagement with the course assignment together with their professional reflections. Assessment criteria regarding the ICP were communicated to students prior to the project. Proposals were assessed on the following criteria: • Your idea is good, is outlined well and is achievable (30 marks) • Your project idea has well thought out learning objectives that are explained well in your post (15 marks) • You have made it clear how the collaboration envisaged in your project will truly enhance the children's learning (30 marks) • Explanations of how the learning exchange could take place and the duration of the project are reasonable, realistic and explained well (15 marks) Beginning in September 2016, two cohorts of ITE students, approximately 30 from Northern Ireland and 30 from Southern Ireland, will engage in a cross border study using Skype to connect the lecture rooms. The focus of the ICP will be to develop mathematics lesson plans incorporating the use of technology in order to support inclusion in the classroom.

Expected Outcomes

Positive aspects of the pilot Skype lecture were small class size; quality of the facilitator to take on the role of a “relationship broker” between the lecturer and the students and to facilitate feedback, using handouts rather than PowerPoints and more calm and relaxed for the lecturer to deliver the session in a virtual environment than meeting ‘real live’ people. Having facilitator and virtual lecturer aided positive dynamic in the room. Students commented that the Skype lecture developed a community of practice in which they were involved in the lecture as ‘teachers’ rather than ‘students’. Negative factors for the lecturer were to gauge levels of engagement and the poor sound quality. Pre-Service teachers in this study acknowledged that ICP is “a great resource/methodology to use in the classroom. ICP enables a group/classroom to interact with another group/class and create a project, over the internet. This works very efficiently, as the there are no boundaries, in regards to distance from the other group/school”. A wide variety of curricular areas were chosen for ICP, such as Geography, History, English Writing, Music, Social, Personal and Health Education together with Physical Education. The importance of establishing ‘a global classroom’ as a means of achieving learning objectives were captured in teachers’ accounts of ICP. Participating in communities of practice was acknowledged by teachers’ as a way of developing and transforming teaching and learning. ICP is not subject restrictive but lends itself to all subject disciplines. ICP provides opportunities to critically reflect upon current pedagogical practice and approaches to teaching and learning and to explore alternative models of teaching. ITE student cited factors such as building self-esteem, reducing anxiety, encouraging understanding of diversity, fostering relationships and stimulating critical thinking among their ICP objectives.

References

Boling, E. Castek, J. Zawilinski, L. Karen Barton, K. & Nierlich, T. (2008). Collaborative Literacy: Blogs and Internet Projects. The Reading Teacher, 61(6), 504–506. Karchmer-Klein, R. & Victoria Layton, V. (2006). Literature-Based Collaborative Internet Projects in Elementary Classrooms. Reading Research and Instruction, 45(4), 261-295. Ligorio, M.B. & H. Van der Meijden, H. (2008). Teacher guidelines for cross-national virtual communities in primary education. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 24, 11–25.

Author Information

Lorraine Harbison (presenting / submitting)
Church of Ireland College of Education
Mathematics and ICT
Dublin
Marie Brennan (presenting)
University College Dublin
Peter Roche
Dublin City University
Daniel Sellers
Church of Ireland College of Education, Ireland

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