M.A.T. – ESOL
This is my Independent Professional Project (IPP) from the School for International Training. I will clean this up eventually.
Lost Memories: Computer Based Action Mazes
Notes on this version (5.0) of the Independent Professional Project:
This document was html’d in December 1996. The graphics portions of the document is not available. Page numbers have been eliminated and missing graphics are currently replaced by a generic substitute.
JUMP TO: [Online Version of Maze] [Cover Page] [Abstract]
[Chapter One] [Chapter Two] [Chapter Three]
[Chapter Four] [Chapter Five]
[Glossary] [Appendix A] [Appendix B] [Appendix C] [Bibliography]
LOST MEMORIES:
A USER’S GUIDE TO THE PEDAGOGICAL PLANNING, CREATION AND
IMPLEMENTATION OF INTERACTIVE EDUCATIONAL COMPUTER MOVIES
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MASTER OF ARTS IN TEACHING
DEGREE AT THE SCHOOL FOR INTERNATIONAL TRAINING
BRATTLEBORO, VERMONT
BY
LAWRENCE B. DAVIES
APRIL 1995
© LAWRENCE B. DAVIES 1995 (1996, 1997)
NO PART OF THIS PROJECT MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, OR TRANSMITTED, IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING, RECORDING OR OTHERWISE, WITHOUT THE PRIOR PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR
This project by Lawrence B. Davies is accepted in its present form.
Date ____________________________________________________________
Project Advisor: Janie Duncan
Project Reader: Strattan Ray, Columbia Teacher’s College
Acknowledgments:
I’d like to thank the following people who helped me on this project. Without them, this paper would not be possible.
Mike Jerald for getting my foot in the door, Lex Kontrovitz, Ginger Ertz, Mike Nieckoski, Michelle Cohen, Antonio Antonucci, Peter Lamb, Jeaneen McAmis, Brian and Tukta Long, Layton Croft, Kelly Brehan, Rhonda Lesperance, Mario Rinvolucri. Special thanks to Albert Dudley.
People who read some of the preliminary drafts and contributed invaluable insights include: Todd Kay and Peggy & Scott Rule.
And as always, thanks to my wife, Atsuko Noguchi, for her love and support during my school year and IPP writing.
ABSTRACT
This paper describes in some detail the background of the planning and creation of interactive stories, gives a brief pedagogical justification for their use in the classroom, describes the software “Lost Memories” ≠ an interactive educational movie prototype ≠ and finally suggests some supplemental lessons to support the writing component of the interactive story as the beginning step to making full use of this new medium.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure Page
1. A nested classroom
2. The general set-up for Lost Memories
3. The first card
4. A recirculation card
5. A masking card
6. Indeterminate and bad endings
7. A happy ending
TABLE OF CONTENTS (Click on a word to jump to the topic)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Chapter
2. Action Mazes: Pedagogy and the writer’s processes
3. Lost Memories: The story and types of cards
4. The software: Other sections
APPENDICES
A. Complete text of the “Lost Memories” story
B. Installing and using the “Lost Memories” software
C. Some sample vocabulary screens
Chapter 1
Action Mazes and writing
From my Kenyan beginnings and Japanese experience
In 1988, as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya, I submitted a small article to be published in a book of techniques to be given to volunteer teachers in subsequent years. The article explained the makings of the “Action Maze,” an interactive story explained in detail by Mario Rinvolucri (from this point on, I will refer to the “Action Maze” as simply a “maze” for the sake of consistency for you, the reader).
In the article, I used the metaphor of the medical doctor, because I wanted to convey the idea that it was important to look at the cause of the problem and not just treat the symptoms of the “disease.” Treating causes and not symptoms has consequently become even more important to my basic teaching philosophy as it has developed over time.
In subsequent years, as I began my teaching in Japan, I found myself coming back to using this “medicine” in many of my classrooms. I began to develop a more methodical way to present a maze and it soon became the most important part of my lessons in teaching composition. For all of my class levels, from false beginners to upper intermediate students, I found using a maze, presenting its structure, and requiring students to conceive, plan and write an entire maze to be a useful construct in teaching composition. It was also useful to teach the process of creative writing and how it might relate to other types of writing.
Mazes that were produced by students did not sit idly in my stacks of memorabilia from other bits of homework that I had assigned to students, but were recirculated and used as an incentive for other students to write their own mazes with multiple endings. This also fit it more closely with some of my own theories relating to teaching. Students would decide on the content of the materials they learned and would play a large part in the preparation of those materials, which would be used in subsequent classes with new students. It was, and still is, a proactive approach to education.
As I became more interested in computers, starting in 1990, I explored ways in which a computer might be used to enhance the teaching techniques that I had already developed outside of and including the maze. I started at what seemed to me the most logical point. I would use the computer word processor to teach students some basic writing processes, such as composing a business letter, writing personal information, expressing opinions, comparing and contrasting two people or things. Most importantly, the computer would be most suitable to show students how to draft, revise and redraft: it was an ideal medium.
At some point in all of this, I had begun to learn HyperCardÅ, a Macintosh based programming language. I was learning how to make simple pieces of software and again was beginning to think about ways in which this might help me add to the teaching techniques with which I had already learned and become comfortable.
Some issues emerged regarding the use of creative writing. Many of the textbooks I had encountered were of the generic “English for the sake of English” ilk. The emphasis of these books was on studying (usually through concentration on the grammar or the form of the language) some situations where the language might need to be used. I was tiring of this type of teaching English as a subject, and was more interested in bringing some kind of content into my lessons; it was becoming apparent to me that I had to move beyond thinking of learning and teaching other languages simply as a means of conveying grammatical principles of the language without considering some of the implications of learning the language.
On more closely examining other classes I was teaching, I realized that there was a correlation between the classes I enjoyed teaching, and how I found myself extensively preparing those classes, versus the relative stagnation and dislike of classes I had to teach using a pre-set text or curriculum in which I had to prepare very little. I found in the classes that I enjoyed teaching (which as of no surprising consequence were the classes that the students also enjoyed more), I had been developing project work as a way to supplement the dearth of communicative English activities that most of these former types of classes were forcing me into teaching.
This correlation arose most prominently in my Japanese Culture and Composition classes. In both of these classes, I was preparing from scratch all of the materials for use. I used a variety of teaching styles and lessons. I started also to look at other forms of presenting material that would be challenging and interesting for the students. I used more pictures, more music, more computer programs, more recorded material.
These days, in every third month, a rapid advancement of computer technology is announced. Digitized video has already become a reality (through systems such as QuickTimeÅ for the Apple Macintosh). The future for this technology is unpredictable, but it is exciting to anticipate the changes.
Now, eight years from that first brilliant spark of energy in that steamy Kenyan classroom, I find (to continue the medical metaphor) that the “medicine” is still working and that there are pedagogically sounder ways to make this “medicine” so that it can be used even more often and with “side effects” that are beneficial to the creative process; the multiple marriage of computers, creative writing, content based English teaching, filmmaking and student-generated subject matter could all come true as embodied in the interactive educational movie prototype I developed: “Lost Memories.”
Intent of the Paper
In doing more background research leading up to the writing of this paper, I have found other voices to do my speaking for me. I find that I have extensively quoted outside sources. I have chosen these sources to highlight and more eloquently state what my original intentions are, and I am therefore, in deep gratitude to all those whom I have chosen to cite here. It is not my intention to rely on the work of these other people, though; it is to use their work as both a framework and as a foundation for presenting my work and my ideas on this topic. I do not wish to mislead you in this case.
My purpose in this paper is to detail the steps I took and further embellish the background of this body of work, in the pedagogical considerations, software design and implementation, and general production of the interactive educational movie (from this point on, I would like to use “movie” in the place of “interactive educational movie” again, as above, for the sake of brevity).
It is also my purpose here to encourage you to use these kinds of materials in your teaching.
Lastly, I am not proposing that using computers in the classroom is a be-all, end-all solution to the problems of education that are found in all situations at all levels. My focus in this paper is not on the computer program itself, but on the processes that went into its creation. As I attended TESOL ‘94 in Baltimore, I had the chance to meet a distinguished professor whose specialty, among other things is program development and the use of technology. Being young and eager and relatively new in the field, I told her about my work with computers and how exciting the prospect of developing computer materials was. Her response to me can be better summed up in a short article she wrote for a book on interactive language teaching and is as follows: “We should be evaluating the nature of specific situations and not the effectiveness of ‘technology’ in language learning. Effective use of technology in language teaching has to do with the role and content of audio and visual materials and how these interact with each student’s language-learning experience.” With this in mind, then, I will now indulge myself with my undertaking.
Please note: I am writing under the assumption that you have basic knowledge with the computer terms familiar with users of Apple Macintosh computers. If you are unfamiliar with the terms (such as “point,” “click,” “drag,” “icon,” “window,” and the like), please refer to the glossary of computer terms that I have included in the final sections of this paper, or consult a Macintosh user familiar with the terms.
I hear and I forget,
I listen and I remember,
I do and I understand.
(Chinese Proverb)
Chapter 2
Action Mazes:
Pedagogy and the writer’s processes
implementation and justification based on research and planning
In this chapter, I will introduce an ideal class using a maze. I will use a questioning framework to discuss some of the pedagogical implications that went into the implementation of the maze. My purpose in this is twofold. First, it is actually my way of thinking through my ideas. As such, these should not be considered set in stone, but should serve to represent where I am in my thinking at this time with these ideas. Second, they are here for you to see and use in the process that you will follow if you decide to create software of this type. It is meant to touch on some issues that are currently circulating in this area about just what benefit, if any, can be derived from this new, unmanifested frontier of language teaching. Lastly, I will close with some brief observations of the results of these implementations and their potential pedagogical applications.
A typical lesson with an Action Maze
As an introduction to what goes into the research, planning and implementation of a maze, and to argue that the use of a maze is a technique based on pedagogical principles, I have chosen to follow the chapter format used by Diane Larsen-Freeman in Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. I hope this will give you a better sense of my intentions in the purpose of this paper as I describe each of the pedagogical features of the software in later chapters.
Experience
As we enter this class of intermediate Japanese college women, we notice that the students are seated in groups of 4 around a computer. Since this is a large class of 36 students, there are 9 groups of 4 students in front of 9 computers grouped in 3 nests of 3 computers each (see figure 1 above). The room is quite large to accommodate this number of students and computers. This also allows plenty of space for the teacher to circulate around the room and allows the students within each group to face each other.
The students have read through a different maze before, in similar groupings, on basic index cards, so they know what to expect while they “play” the story. After a brief review of what the students are to do, the teacher indicates that the students may proceed. One student from each group turns on the computer and locates the appropriate story by double clicking on the icon that the teacher has just described. Soon, the screen shows a blue colored background of a card with several icons on it. There is also a small piece of text on the card (see appendix A for the complete text of all the cards in the maze). That same student then reads the text that is on the card displayed in front of her, while the others in her group listen intently. She turns to the other members of the group. They carry on a discussion as to what the best choice seems to be, as the card on the screen ends with the question: “What do you do?” and presents three choices for the group to make before they can proceed. Japanese is used intermittently here in the discussion with no interference from the teacher, who has noted that Japanese has been used. One student asks for the meaning of a word and another student in the group tells her in Japanese. Each student in the group presents her opinion. The exchange might be as follows:
S1: Going south is opposite from the movie theater. The movie theater is in the northeast part of the city.
S2: Yes it is, but which way is it best to go, then?
S3: Well, the shopping mall is east and the city hall is west.
S2: Yes. That means that going east is probably better.
S1: Yes. East looks to be the best direction.
S4: I see how going east would not be wrong.
S3: OK, going to the shopping mall is the choice then!
At this point, one of the students clicks on the button for the shopping mall. The screen has a visual dissolve and a new screen is presented to the students. Another student then reads the result of the situation which is contained on this new screen. This new screen also ends with a question similar to the first screen’s question and the students understand that they are to debate again where to go next. One student asks for the meaning of a word on this screen. No one in the group knows, so a student presses the option key on the keyboard and clicks on the unknown word. The computer records the word and presents a definition of the word with several example sentences. The teacher comes over at this point and asks if there are any questions. The students indicate they don’t need any help yet.
A little later, some students call the teacher over. Their conversation is similar to the following:
S1: We don’t know where to go. (Pointing at the screen) We keep coming to this sign. We’ve seen it about four times now!
T: What did you do when you came to the sign?
S2: Well, first we went to the shopping mall.
T: Then what happened?
S1: There was a scary guy there so we ran through the traffic light and he beat us up.
T: Why did you decide to go through the traffic light?
S3: He was a scary guy.
T: Is that what you all thought? Well, there was another choice there, wasn’t there?
S4: Yes, but he was screaming, and we all agreed that it was better to run away.
T: Yeah, that’s scary, but trust me (teacher grins), ask him for directions and see what happens.
This exchange between the teacher and students is almost playful, as the students search for answers to the teacher’s questions. The teacher says the last line reassuringly, but also with a bit of playing the devil and moves on to another group. The teacher continues to circulate among the groups, answering questions, challenging students’ decisions, playing the devil and playing the angel, too. There are bits of laughter, screams of anguish and frustration, hands raised, and a general din of reading out loud and discussion. Some students even turn to students in other groups for consultation, but the teacher intervenes as often as possible in a class of this size, and gently guides each student to stay within her group to reach a consensus.
Finally, one group of students lets out a cheer of excitement and they raise their hands to show that they have completed the maze and found Rex Darling, the movie star hero they have been seeking. The teacher stops the rest of the class and asks all the groups to start their mazes over again on the computer. He asks the “winning” group to reread the maze from the beginning and invites the other groups to follow along. After the first card is read, the teacher asks another student from another group to read the subsequent card. The teacher changes groups and students with each progressive card being read, with the “winning” group telling the others which choice they should make.
As students come to the last card, the teacher asks them to think about how this maze was set up and asks the students how they decided on their choices. Each groups chooses a speaker, who explains why her group chose their particular trail, where the maze went, whether they had reached an alternative ending or were still circulating around the maze in a seemingly endless loop.
The teacher asks the class if they are satisfied with the ending of the maze. Most agree they enjoyed the ending, but some want a different ending. The teacher says it’s a good idea to try to write an alternative ending to the maze and asks the students to think of some endings as homework and come prepared to discuss and even write out some possible different endings. With that, the class has finished.
In lessons in the next few weeks, the teacher will do the following:
1. Ask the students to retell the story in the maze as it was told by the winning team. Then do the same with the other teams.
2. Ask the students to write a dialog or several dialogs that would fit certain parts of the maze.
3. Ask the students to read their alternative endings, after they have worked on them both in and out of class.
4. Ask the students to brainstorm ideas for mazes they want to write, assign them homework to write an opening card and bring it to class. Have students read their openings and as a class decide on two or three good mazes that they would like to continue to write.
5. Show an outline of the maze “Lost Memories” to the students and explain to them the various types of cards they can write and practice writing those types of cards.
Thinking about the experience
This has been a very active class and the students have spent a lot of time and energy working to find the “best ending,” while working in their small groups, and while interacting with the teacher. Students also showed a variety of emotions during the lesson, several laughed at the funny story, or the solutions proposed by others; several students were a bit angry and frustrated and showed their emotions openly to the teacher and their fellow classmates. Some students seemed quiet at first, but quickly became leading advocates for certain choices to be made and held firm to sway the group to see their point of view.
Reviewing the principles
I’d like to continue the Larsen-Freeman format that started this chapter, by using her ten questions as an initial guide to explaining various facets of the maze.
1. What are the goals of teachers who use interactive educational software?
It seems that the main goal in this particular instance is a many faceted one. It is to provide a meaningful, contextual situation in which students feel comfortable to express their feelings; to learn strategies to help them find out about information that they need to know; and to learn to interact with others in decision making skills in pursuit of a common goal.
2. What is the role of the teacher? What is the role of the students?
The teacher has several roles. He acts as a bank of lexical information for the students. He is not so much an arbiter, as a mediator. In computer terms, he is the interface between the student and the computer/maze itself. Being intimately familiar with the story and its contents, he can guide the students through the perils and pitfalls of the maze. In this capacity, too, he is devil’s advocate and troublemaker in seemingly good times or the guardian angel when times seem bad.
The student quickly understands she has several roles to play: she is a player in a game, a player on a team, a committee member, a valued associate and both an arbiter and a mediator at various times and to various degrees. She can also be called upon as an initial resource “expert” in the areas of vocabulary, cultural or sociocultural norms.
3. What are some characteristics of the teaching/learning process?
In initial stages, emphasis falls on the skills of listening and reading, that is, input is paramount. The speaking skill quickly becomes necessary as a way to process the input. The input is then channelled and further processed consciously leading to an emphasis on developing creative writing skills. Students also learn to depend on each other as resources before turning to the authority of the knowledge bank of the teacher. Later stages rely more heavily on the writing process and the class progresses to new levels of awareness.
4. What is the nature of the student-teacher interaction? What is the nature of student-student interaction?
The student learns to see other students as both students and teachers and therefore the student-teacher interaction is dependent on the students’ not having the lexical/functional capabilities that are obtainable from the teacher. It shares many elements of the “humanistic” or “whole language” movements in teaching in that individual students are treated as real people with real needs that have to be taken care of. The teacher in several of these instances fulfills that role.
Also at work in the interaction here is the fact that the teacher moves away from display questions, that is, questions he already knows the answers to, and toward referential questions in which there is a genuine gap of knowledge and the teacher asks the questions to fill that gap. The interaction is completely real. This follows closely, too, on the Vygotskian idea of the Zone of Proximal Development in which the teacher asks questions which help the student to determine the answer she is looking for rather than simply supplying the answer.
5. How are the feelings of the students dealt with?
Stronger feelings of the students are taken into consideration as energy that can be channelled to creative use for the benefit of the student and the entire class. Both negative and positive feelings permeate the class and are encouraged. Students come to understand that a wide range of feelings is a necessary part of the creative process and they are encouraged to explore ways of unlocking this range of feelings in themselves and in others through the process of creative writing.
6. How is language viewed? How is culture viewed?
Language is primarily used for communication. It becomes important to understand the metalinguistic and paralinguistic aspects of language. Culture, being inextricably linked to language, plays on the important aspects of gesture, facial expression, nuance, register, shade and gradation, in the production of meeting the communicative needs of the situation.
7. What areas of language are emphasized? What language skills are emphasized?
Functions such as clarifying, requesting information, negotiating, agreeing, disagreeing, describing people, describing scenes, describing situations and describing actions receive the most emphasis here. All four skills are emphasized as a means of treating the student as a “whole person.”
8. What is the role of the students’ native language?
Use of the students’ native language is tolerated, though not openly accepted, to clear up ambiguities relating to meaning in the initial stages of the processes used here. The teacher takes the position that students in monolingual settings, and especially here in the Japanese monolingual classroom, do not have enough experience communicating in the L2 to have the confidence to use it immediately or securely. He also understands that over time, the students will gain the security needed to use the L2 even with other L1 speakers. Emphasis in the early stages of the students’ L1 reliance is best minimized by the teacher.
9. How is evaluation accomplished?
Evaluation is built into the storyline of the maze as follows: students progress or regress in the storyline as their comprehension fluctuates. At points of frustration, as when a group of students encounters a card previouly encountered, students inherently understand that a gap exists between their comprehension and the successful completion of the story. Problem solving skills become a central focus at times, and students work more at their own pace and on those aspects of the material that seem most important to them at the time.
10. How does the teacher respond to student errors?
As communication in functional/situational aspects of the language seems to be a greater focus than intensive grammar/translation aspects of the language, student errors, like their use of L1, are downplayed and the communicative act is emphasized.
Conclusions
The most important points arise here as to how students’ feelings are dealt with and the apparent confusion that can arise from using such contradictory feelings that occur in the classroom. Elbow explains this contradiction astutely: “Thinking in contraries usually holds us back because it so often leads us to stalemate or warfare; yet, if well managed, it is the very source of progress.” This is yet another way of looking at the students’ ideas or feelings as perfectly valid. It is a way of putting more of the power of learning into the students’ hands.
Friere affirms the importance of empowering students more as he explains:
“To acquire literacy is more than to psychologically and mechanically dominate reading and writing techniques. It is to dominate these techniques in terms of consciousness; to understand what one reads and to write what one understands; it is to communicate graphically. Acquiring literacy does not involve memorizing sentences, words, or syllables ≠ lifeless objects unconnected to an existential universe ≠ but rather an attitude of creation and re-creation, a self-transformation producing a stance of intervention in one’s context.”
It is the cultivation of these attitudes that seems central to the use of the maze.
Finally, Dvorak ties all of these principles into a simple, but appropriate aphorism: “In order for student writing to be more effective, and for the reading of student writing to be more enjoyable, it is important to create other purposes for writing.”
This concludes the second part of the paper in which I have discussed pedagogical background of a maze. I have tried to give you the taste of actually using a maze in the classroom and how a typical lesson might go.
A paper of course, cannot justify the true and intense feelings that permeate the classroom while a maze is being used. I have tried to present what I consider a synthesis of several of the best classes I have had using the maze. Of course, results have varied from marked indifference to the activity to outright enthusiasm to be the first group to “finish” the maze with a happy ending. This latter class was able to transfer smoothly, and in cases, brilliantly, the experience of reading a previously prepared maze to the conception and writing of their own mazes.
My intention here also, was to make the following chapter more easily accessible, and you may now proceed with the necessary schema for examining each part of this particular maze.
Chapter 3
Lost Memories:
The story and types of cards
Principles
Before I begin the discussion in this section, I would like to cite the following as principles (in addition to the above) I have used when writing cards for a maze, and call attention especially to the first principle below. This passage is taken from the foreword in a series of textbooks that I have used on numerous occasions with a usually high degree of success. This success for me was in terms of students interacting with each other and with me. Many times, I saw students actively engaged in the process of discovery, and I was able to establish a strong relationship with the class, based on the content of the lesson; a lesson not devoid of substance, but one in which we had set out with a clear goal from the beginning of the lesson, and could therefore concentrate our efforts on the finer point of the lesson without missing out on the larger goals we were trying to accomplish.
I have found that the ideas contained below (taken from the foreword in the textbook series) are always within my thoughts in the creative processes of making a maze. Alan Maley, writing in the Oxford Supplementary Skills Series:
Our authors have had in common the following principles (during the process of preparing this textbook), that material should be:
Äcreative ≠≠ both through author-creativity leading to interesting materials, and through their capacity to provoke creative responses from students;
Äinteresting ≠≠ both for their cognitive and affective content, and for the activities required of the learners;
Äfluency-focused ≠≠ bringing in accuracy work only in so far as it is necessary to the completion of an activity;
Ätask-based ≠≠ rather than engaging in closed exercise activities, to use tasks with payoffs for the learners;
Äproblem-solving focused ≠≠ so as to engage students in cognitive effort and thus provoke meaningful interaction;
Ähumanistic ≠≠ in the sense that the materials speak to and interrelate with the learners as real people and engage them in interaction grounded in their own experience;
Älearning-centered ≠≠ by ensuring that the materials promote learning and help students to develop their own strategies for learning. This is in opposition to the view that a pre-determined content is taught and identically internalized by all students. In our materials we do not expect input to equal intake.
Before reading this chapter
You may want to follow along this chapter while actually using the program, though you can read through the chapter without it. For maximum comprehension, though, I would strongly advise you to turn to appendix B on installing and using the software.
ACTION MAZE CARDS
The opening card: setting a clear goal
(Note: Please refer to the schema on the previous page for an overall feel of what the maze would play like, given the various choices.)
The opening card of the maze is probably the most important card. It has several purposes, each of which needs to be given consideration if the students are to interact as expected given the content of the story.
Like any good story, the card introduces a character or two. This character is usually designated with the pronoun “you,” so that it invites the students into a kind of a role-play or dramatic situation. Role-plays and drama offer a degree of interactivity that go beyond a merely passive role that most stories or exercises in textbooks offer to students. This element, therefore, is essential if the student is to become more involved throughout the story.
The first card also presents a conflict situation. The conflict should be meaningful to the student, that is, anticipative and applicable to the student’s future well being. This was a simple enough choice for me, as I decided that giving and getting directions was one of the first order of survival skills that any student of any language needs. My experience in foreign countries has led me to focus on this particular skill because this is where I found I tended to concentrate my own studying.
Further, this conflict would be best met if it were easy to understand; the story is easy to grasp and straightforward. At the same time, it should be ambiguous enough as not to offer an easy solution; the problem presented may seem easy to solve at first glance, but contains elements of uncertainty so as to sustain interest in solving the puzzle. Good murder mysteries contain both an easy to understand plot and an element of uncertainty that sustains the readers’ interest until the resolution. I cannot overemphasize the importance of both of these elements. The characters that the students will meet and the situations they will find themselves involved in are ambiguous enough in real life. This element of simulation, I believe, is very stimulating and good practice for when a real situation of a similar type arises. I believe this component is an additional bonus of the story; students gain the skills to perceive potentially ambiguous situations as they arise, and to work their way through the ambiguities toward a desirable resolution of the situations. This is achieved mainly through some of the critical thinking skills they have acquired through playing the maze.
Finally, the first card should present 3 or 4 different possible ways to react to the situation. They could (and should) range from obviously aberrant choices to choices that offer fine distinctions of behavior. The results of each of these choices are, of course, initially up to the teacher to resolve, but as I will show, they can be beneficial to future lessons or future directions to which the teacher can take the class.
Lost Memories First Card
To illustrate the above, I turn to my story, Lost Memories. I chose this story, a story I had previously written, because I saw its potential as a springboard story more than anything else. I had used the story before in four different levels of composition classes at the Junior College in Japan in which I had taught for two and a half years. I found the content engaging and enjoyable enough for my 19-21 year old female students. It also acted for them as animpetuous to write their own stories.
In its most present incarnation, Lost Memories is about a slightly eccentric woman named Trixie, who is obsessed with seeing her favorite movie idol, Rex Darling. Trixie’s problem is that she has a bad memory and can’t remember how to get to the theater where Rex and his movie are playing, even though she lives in a very small, though sometimes dangerous, town. The added incentive in this story is that Trixie has a chance to meet and talk to Rex in person, thus setting the stage for what will ultimately be a test of Trixie’s nerves in asking various and sundry strangers for directions to the theater, listening to their explanations accurately and then choosing to turn the right way at various confusing street signs that occasionally come up on her journey to the promised land ≠ the Latchis movie theater ≠ and into Rex’s arms.
Remembering directions is one of my personal banes, and, as I have observed through countless classes and situations, not too uncommon! It is a natural topic for stimulating conversation.
Let’s look at the first card as it appears in the program (figure 3 below):
The situation is very clear and the goal has been set. The details that have been left out are the key to stimulating student involvement. Where exactly are you now? How much time do you have? Is it really that difficult to find the theater? What are the people in this town like? How difficult will this task actually be? What happens if you can’t find Rex in time?
The street sign presents the first major problem for students as it establishes what direction the student is facing. The confusion initially comes from the fact that the student is facing south. I have seen in a number of instances where this small detail is overlooked by the students and later comes in during discussions about paying attention to directions and establishing clear points of reference. I also believe that the superficially easy storyline should be obfuscated by these types of diversions as it helps to sustain heated debate between and among students.
Another important aspect of this first sign is that the choices presented meet the criteria I explained earlier. When students have decided that going straight ahead is obviously the wrong choice, for the theater is in the northeast part of the city and going south won’t help, they are left with going either to the east or west. Here, logic usually wins out and students decide that at least to head east is the right direction, while others, given the cultural background, note that many shopping malls contain movie theaters. I found this an interesting cultural aside, and one to which I tried to add more culture in this latest version of the story.
Lastly, the students have a clear goal. Again, I would advise having a clear goal to strive for on the first card not be taken too lightly. I have written a few other stories and have seen other students’ stories in which a lack of a clear-cut goal fed into a lack of investment in the activity. The romantic aspect of the story taps into the individual student’s imagination and feeds the dramatic aspect of her role-play. This in turn stimulates her to think critically about what she needs to do to get to the theater and carefully strategize her arguments for making the choices that will be presented to her in subsequent cards. I believe, too, that this is good practical life training, and it has become important for me to set up situations in some mazes where some risks have to be taken in order to reach a particular reward.
Recirculation Cards
During the course of the story, students are presented with a number of cards which contain a variety of confusing and potentially rich sources of decision making. As they are working in small groups, frequent debates about which is the most logical or most adventurous path to take occur. On several cards, I have made the choices ambiguous enough so that usually two out of three choices presented have a potential to get to the exit card that carries a ‘good’ ending. However, I realized in the process of writing earlier stories, that I had a lot of work to do making each path a story in itself. I used recirculation cards (see figure 4 below for an example) to resolve more than one previous situation and reduced the time it took to write a complete story. Therefore, several cards in the course of the maze serve as a way of continuing the storyline without detracting from the main story. Called “recirculation cards,” they serve three main purposes: A) to help put the students back on the right track when they have chosen an obviously wrong way to go in the story, B) to increase or reduce the number of different endings that the story can have, and C) in this particular maze, to add another layer of ambiguity to the story.
The first arose because some groups of students, usually those with lower linguistic competence, misinterpret the situation and choose what is obviously the wrong way to go. To illustrate, in the first card, the sign points straight ahead to the south, but thestudents have been told that the theater is “somewhere in the northwest part of Brattleboro.” Though I intentionally and initially did this to playfully trick students into choosing that direction, I realized that several students took very seriously the idea that going either north or east was a very important task. They realized through their initial mistake, that they should keep track of the direction and distance that they should travel. In subsequent rewritings of the storyline, I found it better to be ambiguous, and removed most references to which direction students were facing and whether they were X number of blocks from city hall or the shopping mall. I noticed many students producing maps. However, from real life experience, we rarely make a map of directions that we have heard on the street. I felt, therefore, that a de-emphasis on this would be most realistic.
Second, I found that these recirculation cards are neither a negative nor positive reinforcement. They serve as gentle reminders that further work needs to be done in understanding the situation. They lessen the frustration of having the wrong choice lead to a disastrous or unfavorable ending. On several occasions, it served to reinforce the resolve of the small groups to work more closely together to come to a favorable ending.
Creating different endings can also be time consuming and frustrating for the producer of this type of material. I have read many adventure stories, most notably the Choose Your Own AdventureÆ series intended for native English speaking teenagers, and have found a majority of the story endings to be filled with violent endings that do not reward the reader for the work they have done to that point. I found that in my story, the same thing was happening. In the four different endings I have written, two end violently, one has an ending that involves other criminal behavior and the other one is of the kind that I would like to work more on in the future: the kind of encouraging ending that the student has to work a little harder for her to have the character achieve a better result.
Writing endings is probably the most frustrating process. I want to consider what exactly I want to teach my students about conflict resolution. At this point, I have found that having more cards recirculate lessens the prospect of having to write myself out of potentially dangerous ending cards which do not reinforce some ideals that are important for me.
Masking cards
Some cards serve merely to hide the fact that there are recirculation cards or ending cards following the choices. To obfuscate this, I decided on cards which I dubbed “masking cards.” These cards’ main purpose is to provide a screen, or mask, to the recirculation or ending cards. It is also a way to maintain a more plausible storyline. They function mainly to deter student’s reliance on paper and pencil for working out the problems that more traditional maze dungeon stories use: that of a vast underground cave full of “rooms” that the student goes through and can easily map out for easier navigation. Finally, it encourages students of the same group to invest different functions in different students within the group by giving them more specific roles to play as information banks for the entire group. I have included a sample (figure 5 below) which results from an exhaustive encounter with the “information woman” at city hall who gives clear, concise directions, but which are so long as to be confusing to the reader. The movie that accompanies this card carries additional, quickly spoken directions. Both give the students, as a group, an out for not remembering clearly what she had to say.
Ending Cards
When constructing a story of this type, you can make an unlimited number of endings. However, I have found, and as I have said at length in the chapter on Recirculation cards, it is better to limit a story like this to 4-7 endings. There are many reasons for this and many things to keep in mind when you build you own story.
One or two “happy endings” are sufficient to keep any story moving along at a brisk, interesting pace. The students tend also to understand quickly how a story with a lot of different endings suddenly makes the task of writing that much more challenging. Given the limited time you have to prepare materials and given the amount of time needed to create this particular type of material you will understand this, too, and you will be able more easily to make your students understand. The happy endings are truly happy, not only in the sense that the story worked out well for the characters, but also that the group that has taken the time to interact with each other and work on the best possible solution to a problem, has finally been rewarded with a successful ending. This is quite rewarding for everyone involved and serves as a very important motivator when you give a writing assignment for this type of story.
Some endings involve gently reminding the students that they have strayed off the task of finding the movie theater. One card reads, “You roll down your window as you speed along the freeway. Ahhh, feel that air, what a beautiful breeze…” This is more of an indeterminate ending than anything else.
Bad endings are necessary, too. The biggest difficulty here is keeping it realistic and trying to avoid violent endings. Violent endings are the easiest way to resolve an ambiguity that cannot be resolved. The men on the motorcycles that appear in one string of the story are an allusion to the Bosozoku gangs of young Japanese, usually in their late teens and early twenties, who drive around the major cities in early morning hours and rev their engines up so high that they wake people up. They are usually just harmless, bored urban jungle survivors, but there have been cases where they have caused violence, bodily harm, and even been involved in cases involving fatalities. Many of them are finally recruited by the Yakuza, Japanese Mafia. It is with this cultural schema that I wanted to include this in here. In the United States, “Bikers” have a different type of outlaw reputation, but are definitely more prone to violent behavior. I present a situation in which the student has no choice but either to interact or run away from the situation. In the case in which they run from fear, something bad happens. In the case in which they choose to interact with the potentially dangerous and violent character that I have presented, he turns out to be very friendly and gives simple directions to the theater (In fact, I based this character on a biker I once met several years ago who destroyed all my notions of the superficial stereotypes we attribute to those of that inclination).
Of course, I cannot predict or insure that this is what will happen if this type of cultural interaction were to occur. But I felt it more important to reward being proactive and not reactive to what appears to be a potentially dangerous situation. In so doing, I was hoping to encourage students not to judge by initial appearance or action and that an honest, forthright behavior could be rewarded. In my presentation at Sandanona, the group of students who chose to do the story ended up running the red light, avoiding the potentially dangerous situation, but ended up having their car vandalized by the motorcycle men. A colleague pointed out that this ending was quite violent. I hope that I have been able to somewhat address his remarks by my presentation here.
Some bad endings, though, serve more to let students know that they are very far off track of what they should have figured out collectively. It is a reminder, as other cards are reminders, that there is still work for the students to do, either in understanding the vocabulary, or the situation, or the functions that they are required to perform.
I would also like to stress that you don’t have to have any “bad endings” at all. It is quite easy to write stories that have different, less satisfying endings that conclude with “Try again” or “Maybe you decided to do something that wasn’t possible.”
Movie Cards: introduction
Several cards in this incarnation of the maze contain short segments of digitized video that I shot between the months of April and June 1994 with the help of my fellow students. I shot this video to demonstrate the potential of this medium through my prototype software. Though the video segments are all quite short, ranging from a mere second to a whopping four-second shot, their purpose should not be downplayed here and their intent needs to be clarified.
“Video is a supercharged medium of communication and a powerful vehicle of information. It is packed with messages, images, and ambiguity, and so represents a rich terrain to be worked and reworked in the language learning classroom.” In this spirit, then, I hoped that even a taste of video as a means of illustrating the story, would be a further incentive to the students when it came to their production of a maze and which I will explain further in the next section.
I am working on several planes here; the creative process takes on multi-dimensional aspects from this point. Students think of stories as small movies in which they are the producer-director-actors. Their thrill at these concepts creates an almost unavoidable motivational high that I hope to channel into further creative forces. Students begin to see the story in terms of the sounds and sights that lie behind the story. Their imaginations become more engaged; their affective barriers fall; they become more receptive to learning. Please see the chapter on follow-up activities for a more concise description of ways to exploit these motivational highs.
Movie Cards: their use
As illustrated above, certain cards have an “eye” button to show that there is a movie to accompany the text (see figures 5 and 7, above). A click on the eye will play a short movie. Some movies are without sound and merely show movement, such as a movie which accompanies the prime recirculation card showing our heroine “Trixie” hunched over her steering wheel looking first left, then right and finally straight at the camera. This short, rather uninteresting clip, serves to keep the students moving along; it is a kind of silent, perhaps overly subtle incentive that this small character’s actions are entirely dependent on the actions of the group of students who are controlling the maze. It is an anticipatory step forward in the course of the story. This is a dimension that is a step above the passivity of watching a television program or rental store video: the students realize that they have a hand in determining what segment of the narration they are going to see next.
The implications of using video within the bounds of the maze are beyond the range and scope of this paper and I will be pursuing further research in this area. Suffice it to say here, that when it comes time for students to produce videos of this nature, much consideration as to the content of the video is borne by the students in their groups and even more genuine decision making skills are tested and tried; students are afforded the opportunity to take control of their learning.
In this chapter, I have tried to explain some of the motivations behind the different parts that make up a maze. I have tried to include some background based on past experience with mazes and guide you to consider some actions to take when in the process of putting together a story of this type.
Chapter 4
The software: Other sections
In this chapter, I will detail those parts of the software that are separate from the main story found in the maze.
There are two additional sections of note included in the software’s conceptual stages at this time. The vocabulary sections, in two parts, are the most extensive of these sections. They consist of a vocabulary section of American street signs and an extra-linguistic study of facial expressions usually used by Americans. The other section is a brief explanation of getting help on-line. This is available within the confines of the program itself while reading the story. There is also a part in this section on viewing the map. Neither of these sections has been fully implemented, and they cannot therefore be used while reading the main story.
Vocabulary Sections
Aside from the main stories, there are two vocabulary sections. Though these have not been fully implemented in the program as of this writing, I would like to explain the idea behind them, how they will most likely be implemented, their function, and how I expect students to interact with them. I have also included a few brief illustrations (in appendix C) and examples of how these parts of the software might be used.
Vocabulary of traffic signs.
Idea – I chose to implement the vocabulary of traffic signs because I saw a few themes in the story that I felt would justify more in-depth practice in this area. Since the story centers around getting and following geographical directions and interpreting some signs, I thought it a logical extension to gather a variety of signs to use as a listening/response exercise that could be implemented in the program. Also, the fact that most signs in the United States do not conform to international standards made the idea of practicing reading important signs and distinguishing them from unimportant signs more appealing.
Implementation – Though none of the following has been implemented, I present it here as it is currently in my mind as a sort of a “wish list” approach. Given a competent programmer, I do not see any difficulty in successfully integrating these ideas into the program. I have also added some illustrations (appendix C) that can currently be found in the software, but are not yet fully functional. This is to give you a visual feel for this part of the program.
There are two modes that the student can choose from: the “browsing mode” or the “reviewing mode.”
In the “browsing mode,” the student can peruse the program at her leisure. It is an on-line picture dictionary in which she can access any picture in any order of her choosing. The exercise can be accessed through the main menu by pressing the button labelled “Vocabulary.” A dialog box comes up asking whether the student would like to study the vocabulary of signs or facial expressions. When the student clicks on the “Signs” button, she is brought to another dialog box asking whether she wants the “browsing mode” or “reviewing mode.” Here, there is on-line help explaining how to use all of the buttons. When the student clicks “browsing” she is presented with a series of six cards. Each card has four digitized images of various street signs found in the United States. She may choose to click on any of the four pictures. After choosing one picture and clicking on it, she is presented with a label for the sign, and a brief explanation of the purpose of the sign.
The “reviewing mode” is simply a multimedia version of a multiple choice listening examination or exercise. It is accessed as above, except the student clicks on the “reviewing” button to access this mode of the program. The first card of the series of six appears. There is a short delay, so that the student can become oriented to the meanings that the signs have. After the delay there is either a statement or a question which refers to one of the four images on the card. The statement or question is not accompanied by the written label as this is mainly a listening comprehension exercise. At this point the student has a few options: she can click on the picture that matches the statement or question, she can click on an icon that will repeat the statement or question, or she can exit the exercise. When the student clicks on a picture, her attempt is recorded by the computer and registered as correct or incorrect. If correct, the student is rewarded with a tone. If incorrect, the student is told simply to “try again.” If, in the six exercises, the student records more than 40% incorrect responses, the program will automatically restart at the beginning of the exercise.
Student interaction – students can do these exercises best in the language laboratory, outside of the classroom. I would assign these particular exercises to individual students rather than the group, though they do lend themselves to being practiced in pairs or threes. Here, I contrast the exercise with the maze. The maze provides useful group interaction and debate while this part of the program is more individualized and can suit the tastes of those students who have difficulties interacting with other students and feel more secure working in the impersonality of the computer.
Function – It is my hope that the exercises provide enough listening comprehension practice so that students will become familiar with how things can be described in English. The software also needs a feature that can gather pertinent quantitative data for action research such as getting the student’s name, time spent per session on part of the software, measure of time spent in “browsing mode” and “reviewing mode,” number of attempts at a question, number correct/incorrect, whether the student had to start at the beginning, data on which questions were correct/incorrect.
An example – To illustrate this, I would like to present the aspects of one screen from each part of the program and go through the step-by-step procedure. As the student chooses to study street signs and go through the initial instructions on how to use this part of the program, she clicks on the “start” icon. The screen dissolves to a subsequent screen.
In “browsing mode,” the student is presented with four pictures: a “stop” sign, a “no right turn” sign, a “no left turn” sign, and a “railroad crossing” sign. She clicks on one of the signs, in this case the “stop” sign. A label appears over the stop sign which says “Stop sign.” Accompanying this label is a brief audio explanation, such as: “When you see this sign on the road, it means you should stop before going through the intersection.”
The program here does not require the student to do anything at this point. She may choose to click on the stop sign again; she may choose to click on another sign; she may choose to move on to the next card; she may choose to go back to the main story; she may choose to quit the program. The options are entirely up to her.
In the “reviewing mode,” a similar situation takes place. Four boxes appear on the screen. In this example, one box is a sign that says “No parking, loading zone.” In each of the other boxes there are signs that say “No parking on this side,” “No parking, except for emergency vehicles,” and “No parking” with a universal “P” with a slash through it. There are also icons lining the bottom of the screen for “Listen,” “Exit,” and “Practice.” Several seconds after the screen appears, the student is presented with a sentence aurally. In this case, the sentence might be: “You can’t park here, because this place is reserved for ambulances, police cars and fire engines.” The student can then click on the pictures in the boxes, click on the “Listen” icon to hear the sentence again, or click on the other two buttons. When she clicks on the Emergency Vehicle picture, she hears a tone indicating she is correct. Here, another dialog box appears saying she was correct and encouraging her to continue. The student proceeds in the same way through the six listening exercises in this section of the program. However, at any time in the program, if she does not meet the minimum 60% correct responses, she is required to start the review at the beginning. For correctly completing the review exercises, she is given some as yet undetermined reward and her progress is duly noted by the computer.
Vocabulary of facial expressions.
Idea – James Gee points out that “whatever (small l) literacy has to do with reading, reading must be spelled out, at the very least, as multiple abilities to ‘read’ texts of certain types in certain ways or to certain levels.” It is my contention, then, that one type of “text” has to do with interpreting facial expressions to gain better intercultural communicative competence. It is with this idea in mind, and again in keeping within certain parts of the story line of “Lost Memories” that I decided to implement this feature into the vocabulary section of the program.
Implementation – As in the vocabulary of street signs, the implementation of this aspect of the program is the same. After a brief on-line introduction as to what the student should do, the students have a choice to enter “browsing mode” or “review mode.” In “browsing mode,” they may click on any picture for a brief explanation of the picture. In “reviewing mode” they hear an utterance that in some way describes one of the series of pictures presented to them. A correct response to a multiple choice question is recorded and given the appropriate reward, an incorrect response is recorded also and the student is encouraged to listen to the utterance again and given a chance until she has successfully chosen the right response.
Student interaction – Again, as in the vocabulary section for street signs, it is recommended that students attempt to do the exercise alone, outside of regular class time. Again, this will facilitate data gathering for action research and is therefore an invaluable tool. Nevertheless, I see no reason to discourage those students who would like to attempt to do it in pairs or triplets, though this could not, then, be used to collect data. This could also be done as an in-class supplemental activity to the main story and could be used with one class that focuses on this intercultural communicative competence aspect.
Function – As mentioned above, the action research aspect of the program can be exploited with proper programming to gather data on time spent on this part of the program, questions attempted, ratio of correct and incorrect answers. The main functional difference between this vocabulary exercise and the one on street signs is that the focus here is more on the sociocultural aspects of interaction. The pictures represent different people with different facial expressions ranging from happy and laughing to anguished and confused.
An example – The student follows the same routing for bringing up the examples in the program. They can choose either “browsing mode” or “reviewing mode” for whichever exercise they desire. Here, the student sees a digitized series of four pictures. The pictures are of the same person, but there are four different facial expressions. Again, as in “reviewing mode,” the student hears a sentence such as, “Megan just found out that she passed her English test.” In this case, the four faces would range from the happy face which would be the correct answer, to faces showing fright, anger and tiredness. In the “browsing mode,” the labels for the corresponding faces would list the same adjectives, but the sentences would be different.
On-line Help and The Map
On-line help can be accessed from any point in the software, either through the pre-title card or the main story. From the pre-title card, the student can click on the help button. From the main story cards, the student can click on the question mark button, found at the bottom of each card.
When either of these buttons is clicked, the student is brought to a card which contains buttons similar to those found running across the bottom of all of the main story cards. Each of these buttons, when clicked, will yield a brief description of that button’s function. Below is the same brief description that is currently contained in each of the buttons:
The question mark button – Press this button anytime you want to come back to this card to get help about any of the other buttons.
The directions button – This button will take you to a map of Brattleboro to help you to find your way to the theater more easily.
The hand pointing left button – Clicking on this button will take you to the card that you previously chose.
The hand pointing right button – There is really no need for this button at this point. It is there only if you have finished with the story and you want to see other pages.
The vocab button (”vocab” is used in its abbreviated version because I could not get the full word “vocabulary” on the button as I designed it) – Clicking on this button will take you to a vocabulary list of the words that you have picked out to print for further study.
The vocab test button (not yet implemented) – This button will take you to the vocabulary sections so that you can either browse or review some vocabulary related to the story.
The eye button – Clicking on this button will show a movie or picture if there is one to see. Click this button when it says “hide” to hide the picture or movie before you continue.
The map button feature takes the student to a digitized map of Brattleboro. At this point, this feature is not fully implemented but goes on my wish list of things I would like implemented in the near future. When the map is accessed from anywhere in the story, a point on the map will flash and a label will flash saying “you are here.” Students will then be able to press another button which will show them the locations of the city hall, shopping mall, bank and Latchis movie theater. Though Brattleboro is a real town and the map is a genuine map of the town, the respective locations have been altered for the purpose of having this digitized map that the student can access.
This map, then, is a further self-contained lesson, not too unlike many large city information centers which have similar facilities to point out interesting places to go in the city, or contain information on proper subway lines and the like.
Upon review of the features I have implemented so far, most of this section will need to be extensively reworked to make it more understandable for the students. I have not spent enoughtime considering or researching many of the issues brought up in this section of the software. During the preparation of the software, too, I found this part of the program to be secondary to my objectives. I do not have any definite plans as to how I will go about making some of the changes in this part of the software as of this writing.
In this chapter, I have described the function of some of the minor features of the program and given some justifications for their implementation.
Chapter 5
Follow-up activities
In this chapter, I will detail some follow-up activities that serve best to strengthen the writing, sound, video and intercultural components of the maze, therefore aiding the students to produce a story to their liking and interest. I will not provide you with ways in which to introduce students to the use of computers in this chapter, though I do recommend that you consider carefully how this media will be approached in your teaching. Rather, I would like to focus on the creative processes of composition, revision and editing that are an integral part of maze making. I have chosen to present them as a series of lesson plans in a recipe book format so that you can use them and change them to suit the needs of your own classroom. However, they are not presented in any particular order as they have not been fully tested or used in any particular order. They are more of a compendium of ideal supplemental activities.
Format for describing these lessons
Objective: Keeping in mind the question “What do I want the students to be able to do at the end of this class period?” I will talk about what I feel is a reasonable goal for the class.
Time: This is no prescribed minimum or maximum time to spend on the activity. Rather it is more of an estimate of the time necessary for successfully completing the stated objective.
Preparation: This section again is not prescriptive. Rather, it is based more on my experiences and how to prepare for the class. It is also important to keep in mind that materials prepared should be used merely as a starting point for student creativity and be open-ended enough to induce a variety of interpretations to the material.
In class: In this section, I lay out a step-by-step narrative description of the ideal procedure. Again, steps can be moved around, changed, or varied in any way that you may see fit for your students. Again, as in a recipe book, I found this order to be most suitable for the activity and it fits in with my style of teaching.
Variation: I usually lay out some suggestions for variations that I can think of, though I am limiting myself here as in the other sections. Most of the variations listed below are variations I have either tried at some point, or have taken from other, uncited, resources that I have used over the years.
Notes: Here I try to give you some of my thoughts as to what I was thinking about when doing this type of activity. This is also an acknowledgement of some of my sources for the activities.
Note also that I have made the following abbreviations in this chapter:
ÄT – Teacher, the teacher
ÄS – Student, the student
ÄSs – Students, the students
ÄSWBAT – The students will be able to…
Lesson 1: What a character!
Objective: SWBAT create a fictional character and create a biography of that character. Ss will role-play the character with other Ss in the class to help them develop the character’s personal history.
Time: 45 minutes
Preparation: T prepares a few lists of suggestions of hobbies, professions, places in the world, types of foods, etc., for use during the character’s development.
In class: 1. T asks Ss to spend five minutes and create a character. T asks Ss to think of a name for the character, its age, its hobbies and interests, its job and any other aspect of the character that T deems important. Ss can use pencil and paper to brainstorm ideas.
2. After the five minute period, Ss pair up and role-play their characters. They are told that they have just gotten a new job and that they are to work with their new partner on the job. This face-to-face role-play is so that the characters can get a chance to meet each other and discuss their likes and dislikes and see how they will get along with each other on the job. They will have 10 minutes to do this.
3. After the 10 minute period is up, Ss are asked to switch partners and continue with the same activity with the different partner.
4. Ss take the last few minutes of class discussing some new things that emerged about their character when it interacted with other Ss’ created characters.
Variation: A role-play can be performed in front of the whole class with two of the characters. They are given a problem situation and then are asked to improvise a solution in front of the class. See lesson 3 below for a more detailed description.
Notes: This idea came from Marti Anderson’s presentation on drama in the classroom from the MATXXV spring 1994 Exalted Speaker Series.
Lesson 2: A maze is a maze is a maze
Objective: Ss learn about the structure of the action maze as a precursor for their initial outlining of their own maze. SWBAT demonstrate their understanding of the structure by use of maze cards.
Time: 20 minutes or more
Preparation: A set of maze cards for each group of 4-7 Ss.
In class:1. After finishing a maze, T hands out a set of cards to each group of Ss as above.
2. T asks Ss to lay out all of the cards on the floor (as a string of separate stories in flow chart fashion), by reading the cards and putting them in their proper order.
3. Ss are then asked to draw a visual representation of the cards as they have been laid out.
4. Individual representations are laid out and the class as a whole decides on which is the most appropriate way of representing the structure.
Variation: Each S in the class is given one card and must figure out where she belongs in the story line. Ss must tell their card’s text and then figure out their place in the story. Depending on the number of cards in the story, Ss can also be paired for this activity. One S should not have more than one card, though.
Notes: This could be further supplemented with talking about the movie series “Back to the Future” in which alternative histories happened as time travel created alternative realities. Another good film of this sort is “Groundhog Day,” starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, in which Murray finds himself reliving the same day over and over again, but is able to change different parts of the reality with each new day that he lives again.
Lesson 3: What’s the problem?
Objective: SWBAT understand how conflict can serve as a motivational tool and is therefore important to their story lines.
Time: 45-90 minutes, depending on the class level
Preparation: A series of short, easy role-play situations in which two Ss must solve a problem or conflict that has come up. Also, a series of situations in which there is not a conflict.
In class: 1. T gives out one of each type of card to each pair of Ss.
2. Ss are given 5 minutes to prepare a role-play based on the situation in the card.
3. After all the role-plays are done, a discussion follows as to which of the role-plays were more interesting. It should naturally emerge that the role-plays involving a conflict were more interesting.
Variation: Ss can be asked to write their own conflicting situations and have other groups then act them out, in a subsequent lesson.
Notes: Many conflicting situations that my Ss have created on their own have been very funny and entertaining. Conflict does not necessarily mean making a painful choice. Lesson 4: Sound enhancement
Objective: Ss will become aware of the impact of sounds on their lives and will come to appreciate the dimension they add to understanding.
Time: 45-90 minutes
Preparation: Find a video clip of a film in a language with which your Ss are not familiar. The scene should contain some extra-linguistic aspect that may be easily interpretable.
In class:1. Tell the Ss that you are going to play a short video clip and that they are to try to tell you what is happening in the scene.
2. Play the clip with the sound off and have Ss make observations about what they believe to be happening.
3. Play the clip again, but this time with the sound on. Ss will not be able to understand the conversation, but they will understand some of the emotional aspects of the conversation based on how the characters say what they say.
Variation: Use a clip in their native language or in English.
Notes: This idea came from the listening module in the Four Skills class in MATXXV academic spring term. This triggered a lot of my thinking on creating these follow-up activities for this paper. Lesson 5: Sounds interesting!
Objective: SWBAT identify and classify different sounds and relate them to a storyline. Ss will begin preparation for matching sounds and text/pictures in their own mazes. Note, this lesson should follow the “Sound enhancement” lesson above. This lesson should be done using the material prepared by T first. Ss then contribute their sounds in the subsequent lesson, which runs the same way as this lesson.
Time: 90 minutes
Preparation: A tape with about 20 different sound effects on it. A set of postcards with enough post cards for each sound effect. One tape recorder and tape of the same sound effects for each group of Ss in this and the subsequent lesson.
In class: 1. Ss form groups or teams. T plays a recording of a sound effect, such as the wind blowing. Ss raise their hands and attempt to identify the sound.
2. T awards points to the team that correctly identifies the sounds first. The team with the most points after 20 sounds is the winning team and is given a reward that T determines.
3. T then asks Ss to work in their same groups. T distributes postcards to each group. Ss look over all their postcards.
4. T asks Ss to match 3 postcards with 3 sounds and explainwhy they matched the sound with the postcard. They write down the reasons on a piece of paper.
5. Each group of Ss then plays one of its sounds and shows a postcard to the other groups. Ss from the other groups try to guess why they matched that particular sound with the card.
6. Play goes around until all groups have shown at least one card.
7. As homework, ask each group to gather some sounds and some postcards or other pictures that they have collected or drawn.
Variation: Instead of postcards, T can prepare a few sentence beginnings or endings. Ss then have to match the sound with the sentence and justify it.
Notes: I can think of several other variations to this activity, all of which can enhance Ss’ awareness of the interconnectivity of sounds to images or phrases. I encourage you to try as many different variations as you would like with this one. You might also ask Ss to create their own sounds to fit your postcards or sentences. More simply, ask them to create their own sounds. Lesson 6: What a sight!
Objective: To raise awareness in Ss about how video can enhance comprehension.
Time: 45-90 minutes.
Preparation: Find a video clip in which there is a lot of dialog, but also in which the visual portion of the video fits closely with what is being said in the audio track.
In class: 1. Tell the Ss that you are going to play a video and they are to retell the scene.
2. Play the clip, but make sure they can only hear the audio portion of the clip, not see the video portion.
3. Ss work together to work out what meaning they have gotten.
4. Play the video again, now with both audio and video working.
5. Have a discussion on how different this was having visual images and compare their comprehension between the two different ways of interacting with the clip.
Variation: Cover-up most of the screen, but leave a little part exposed in step one of the activity.
Notes: This comes in part from Alex Silverman’s talk on using video, from the Exalted Speaker Series, spring 1994. Lesson 7: intercultural communicative competence component
Objective: Ss gain an awareness of different ways of looking at the world through observing a conversation between people from two different countries. This is done through a discussion of a dialog.
Time: 90 minutes
Preparation: Make a dialog in which a seemingly innocuous situation is complicated by the fact that the people from the two different cultures view the conversation in two different ways. For example:
Ms. Young: We will charge you $5 per unit if you order 10,000 units.
Mr. Kawabata: That’s a good price, Ms. Young.
Ms. Young: So you accept the price?
Mr. Kawabata: It’s very good.
Ms. Young: Great! Let’s talk about a delivery schedule then.
In class: 1. Present the dialog to the Ss and clear up any vocabulary questions.
2. Ask Ss to read the dialog.
3. Ask a series of questions about the dialog. Begin with simple comprehension questions such as, “Who is the man?” “Who is the woman?” “Where are they?” “What are they doing/thinking?”
4. Continue with questions about the situation. “What does the woman want?” “What does the man want?”
5. The third set of questions come to personalization: “Has this ever happened to you?” “Where?” “What did you do?”
6. The fourth set of questions has to do with investigating the cause of this miscommunication: “Where does this kind of problem come from?” “Where did it start?” “Why is it like this?”
7. Finally, the fifth set of discussion questions are a call to the Ss to take action to solve the problem: “What can you do if this happens in the future?” “What are some ways to change this situation so it doesn’t happen like this?”
8. Remind Ss that when they are in the process of writing their mazes that they should consider all of the issues that were brought up in the discussion from this class.
Variation: Ask the Ss to think of a time when they had a difficulty in a cross-cultural encounter.
Notes: Please see the endnotes for information on a more detailed and quite useful explanation and justification for this type of problem-posing approach to teaching languages.
Lesson 8: reading and playing others’ mazes
Objective: SWBAT have fun and enjoy each others’ work.
Time: 90 minutes +
Preparation: None. Ss have been working for weeks on their own mazes and now it is their time to sit back and enjoy them.
In class: 1. Have Ss form their original maze reading groups in order to go through the mazes.
2. Give each group about 15 minutes to read through a maze and find any ending. When the group reaches an ending. Ask them to stop and move to the next computer.
3. Try to make sure that each group gets through each maze, either with a good or a bad ending.
Notes: Make sure they get to appreciate the other Ss work by going through all of the mazes. I believe this to be the most important lesson: Ss learn the importance of appreciating the work of others.
GLOSSARY
Button. An object on the screen which, when clicked, causes the computer to perform an action that has been pre-programmed.
CALL. Computer Assisted Language Learning.
Click. To press the button of the mouse or trackball on the computer and then release it.
Close a file. To stop using the file.
Dialog box. A box presented on the computer screen in which the computer requests more information than has been supplied by the user. Dialog boxes are used mainly to store files inside of fold- ers.
Double Click. To press the button of the mouse or trackball on the computer and then release it two successive times quickly.
Drag. To press the button of the mouse or trackball on the computer, but not to release while moving the mouse or trackball. This causes the object pointed to, to move around on the screen.
HyperCardÅ. A programming environment used extensively in educational circles and the development of CALL software.
Icon. A small picture representing a document on the computer. Double clicking on the icon will cause some action to happen, usually launching of the program. Icons can also be found on but- tons in a HyperCard stack.
Mouse (also trackball). A pointing device used by the computer to help a person interface better with the computer.
Open a file. To start using a file, usually by double clicking on its icon.
Option key. One of the many keys found on the computer keyboard. Pressing the option key while doing another action causes the computer to respond in a pre-programmed way.
Point. To move the mouse’s pointer on the screen so that it is over an object that the person wants to manipulate in some way.
Stack. HyperCardÅ uses the metaphor of a stack of cards for the docu- ments that it produces. The whole of the program “Lost Memories” is contained in two stacks: the main stack and the sound stack, in which the sound resources are stored.
QuickTimeÅ. A system extension by Apple computer. This allows the playing of full motion video on a window in the computer.
Window. A small picture-frame-like graphical element in the computer used mainly to make the computer more user-friendly and therefore easier to understand and use.
Appendix A
Complete text of
the “Lost Memories” story
The complete text of the story, Lost Memories, as it appears in the software is as below. For technical reasons, I have not reproduced the cards as they are in the software. I have included important graphic elements that are essential for maximum understanding and enjoyment of the story.
One other embellishment I have made here is to include numbers in front of all entries and choices at the end of each entry. This serves more as a guide for you to follow the various strings of the story as they appear were you to make that particular choice. As an example, if you decided to go to the City hall as your first choice on the first card, then you should read card number four to continue the story line. I have also separated each card with a line to distinguish more easily between cards. Finally, on some cards, mainly the masking cards, I have put “(go to card x)” as it does not actually appear on the card when the student is reading, this means there is no choice and you should turn directly to that entry. Enjoy yourself!
Card 1 – Your name is Trixie and you decide to go to the Brattleboro Latchis Theater to see “Lost Memories,” the latest film by your favorite star, Rex Darling. You have also heard that he will be there LIVE and IN PERSON!! You don’t know exactly how to get to the movie theater though, because it has been a long time since Rex was in town. You jump into your car and drive off, hoping to find the theater. You remember that the theater is in the Northeast part of Brattleboro town. At a stop light, you notice a street sign:
Which way do you go?
2 – Left, to the shopping mall.
3 – Straight Ahead.
4 – Right, to city hall.
Card 2 – You turn left and come to a sign:
You go another few blocks and see another sign: What now?
4 – Take a left.
5 – Straight ahead.
6 – Take a right.
Card 3 – You continue straight ahead. Soon you see another sign:
It’s a very nice sign. As you drive past, you enjoy the warm air. You come to another sign: ——>
Which way do you turn?
7 – Turn around, to Brattleboro. 8 – Right, to highway 9.
Card 4 – You go to the City Hall. You reach a large public area. There are many people around. There is a Jazz band playing in the center of the park. You look around. There is a fat man in sunglasses, reading a magazine and standing on a corner. You also see a woman sitting near a sign that says “TRAVEL INFORMATION.” You want to get to the movie theater fast.
What do you do?
9 – Go to the man in the sunglasses.
10 – Listen to the jazz band.
11 – Go to the woman under the sign.
Card 5 – You go in the direction of the bank, you are lost. You see a friendly young man on the corner, you pull your car over and walk up to him.
What do you say?
12 – Hi, how are you?
13 – Excuse me…
14 – Where is the theater?
Card 6 – You turn to the shopping mall. You drive a few more blocks and then see another sign:
What do you do?
5 – Turn left, to the bank.
15 – Go straight, to the shopping mall.
4 – Turn around, to city hall.
Card 7 – After awhile, you look around and notice a sign:
Which way do you go?
4 – Turn left.
3 – Straight ahead.
6 – Make a right.
Card 8 – You turn right. Soon you are on a highway. The wind blows through your hair. The sun warms your skin. You turn on the radio. You’re going 120 kilometers per hour. Great! What a beautiful day! Then, you hear a loud sound and look in your mirror. It’s a police car, and a voice is saying “Pull over NOW!!” You have to go to jail for driving too fast! And you will miss Rex! Oh well. Try again at the beginning.
Card 9 – You go to the fat man. He looks at you. “Excuse me,” you say to him. He doesn’t answer. He looks at you. You say hello again. He says nothing. “Excuse me,” you say, shaking his shoulder. He holds his chest, falls to the ground and rolls on his back. His tongue hangs from his mouth. His eyes bulge out of his face. Somewhere a woman screams. The Jazz band stops playing. People run to where you and the man are. Someone yells, “What happened, what happened?” This is bad…
(Go to card 16)
Card 10 – You get out of your car and listen to the band. Ahh! Isn’t that Jazz wonderful? Can you feel the music? Do you remember what you were doing before you started to listen to the Jazz? Please start again at the beginning.
Card 11 – You go to the woman under the sign. “May I help you?” she asks.
What do you do?
17 – Ask her for directions.
18 – Say “Where are you from?”
Card 12 – “Hi, how are you?” you say to the young man. “Fine.” he says, and he waves as he walks around the corner. You are very confused, perhaps you said the wrong thing to try to get his attention. ( to Card 7)
Card 13 – “Excuse me,” you say. The young man looks at you. He puts his hand up to his ear and cups it. “Eh?” he answers. He looks confused. You think for a moment and say:
19 – Excuse me.
20 – Hi, How are you?
Card 14 – “Where’s the movie theater?” you ask. The young man looks at you. “Lady!” he says, and laughs, “It’s not faaaar!…not at all…Just go that way for two blocks…twoooo blocks…and you’ll find the City hall…ya got that miss?…yeah, the City Hall!” He looks a bit tired. “Then…” he continues, “When you get to the City hall…yeah…just look for a sign that says highway 5. Then look around…look around…look for a fat man…a fat man who is holding a magazine about cigars… HAHAH…, he wipes his wet mouth, sniffs loudly, pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and blows his nose. He disappears around a corner mumbling “City Hall!” (Go to card 7)
Card 15 – You drive down the road toward the shopping mall. Soon, many men on motorcycles are following you. They all have smiles on their faces. When you stop at a red light, they surround your car. One man, a very large and ugly looking fellow, comes up to your window yelling “What do you want?”
What do you do now?
21 – Ask him for directions.
26 – Drive through the red light.
Card 16 – A large crowd of people is coming together. You can hear some people saying “Murderer!” A large policewoman comes from the middle of the crowd. “What have you done?” she asks. You decide you have two choices:
23 – Run for your car. Perhaps no one will see you.
24 – Explain what happened. The man had a heart attack. He was fat and not very nice. What can they do to you? Card 17 – You ask for directions. The woman says, “drive three blocks east and turn left at West 4th Street. Then, go two blocks north to South Street. Turn left on East 6th Street, because north South Street is one way going west. You’ll be on mid South Street, which is just before south North Street, which is where the movie theater is, between the south branch of the Western Corporation and the east branch of Northeast Industries. Have a nice day.” (Go to card 22)
Card 18 – “Where are you from?” you ask the woman. She looks at you, but says nothing. Again you ask, “Where are you from?” Again she is silent and looks confused. You don’t know what to do so you get back in your car and drive away. (Go to card 7)
Card 19 – “Excuse me,” you say again and ask for directions. The man looks at you, then says, “Sure. Go down this road for three blocks, and turn right. Then after two more blocks, it’s on your left. You thank him and… (Go to card 20) Card 20 – You drive for three blocks. Finally, the movie theater is a left turn and you’re there. REX! You begin to dream of the two of you dancing under the stars. Champagne, fine food, and the ocean. You begin to turn left, but then think that maybe you should turn right. Or maybe it’s another block straight ahead. Now you’re confused again, but you…
25 – Turn right!!
7 – No, no! It’s to the left?
Card 21 – You roll down your window. “Excuse me…” you say, “I’m lost. Can you tell me how to get to the movie theater?” The very very large and ugly man puts his mouth to your ear. “SAY THAT AGAIN,” he screams.
What do you do now?
19 – Ask him for directions.
26 – Run through the red light.
Card 22 – You drive around turning left, right and going straight, but you forgot the directions. You might miss Rex…
(Go to card 7)
Card 23 – You run, but you don’t get very far. The policewoman jumps on you from behind. Later, in court, your testimony is thrown out. You are charged with murder and sentenced to life in prison. You really have to be careful around these parts.
Card 24 – You explain what has just happened. The fat man stands up. “JUST JOKING!!” he says and the crowd goes away. You don’t think it’s very funny. You get in your car. Where is that movie theater? You stop at a stop sign. (Go to card 7)
Card 25 – You turn right and go two blocks. THERE IT IS ON YOUR LEFT! THERE’S REX. ISN’T HE HANDSOME! WOW! WHAT FUN, WHAT EXCITEMENT, WHAT A WONDERFUL WAY TO SPEND THE DAY, REX SEES YOU AND YOU EVEN TALK TO HIM! CONGRATULATIONS! YOU DID IT! Card 26 – You go through the red light. The men follow you. You go through different parts of town. The men are getting closer. Look! On your left! It’s the THEATER!! THERE’S REX!! But, you can’t stop. The motorcycles are right behind you. You continue to drive. The gang catches you and breaks your windows. You drive into a lamp post. You miss Rex and spend a long time in the hospital recovering from your bad experience. Better luck next time. Try again at the start.
Appendix B
Installing and Using
the “Lost Memories” software
If you do not know how to use a Macintosh, please ask for assistance from a knowledgable user. In perusing the following section, I would advise you to find a Macintosh computer with at least 10 megabytes of hard disk space free. In order to view the program “Lost Memories” you will need any model Macintosh that supports QuickTimeÅ, and HyperCardÅ version 2.x (that is, any version of HyperCardÅ after 2.0). I would recommend that you find a Macintosh better than an LCIII for best results, as the video in “Lost Memories” can be painfully slow to watch on anything lower than an LCIII. Check to make sure that the system extension QuickTimeÅ has been loaded by opening the extensions folder located in the system folder on the hard disc of the machine you are using. If QuickTimeÅ is not in the extensions folder, ask for help in obtaining a copy.
Installing the software
The program, as of this writing, is contained on six HD floppy discs. It is a compacted version of the software and therefore needs to be reassembled and decompacted before you can use it. You must, therefore, copy all the discs onto a hard drive to properly use the software. Again, I would recommend getting someone to help you set up if you are not familiar with the Macintosh. Please also refer to the glossary for the definition of any unfamiliar terms here.
Do the following in order to properly set up the program.
1. Insert Disc #6 first. It contains a program called “Compact Pro 1.50.” Copy the program onto the hard drive if the hard drive does not already contain it.
2. Make a new empty folder on the desktop of the Macintosh you are using. Name the folder “Lost Memories.”
3. Insert each of the six discs into the disc drive. Double click on the disc icons as they come up. Choose all the files in each disc and drag them into the folder “Lost Memories” on the desktop. The computer will automatically copy the files for you from the floppy disc onto the hard drive.
4. When all six files have been copied onto the hard disk and are in the folder, double click on archive 1. The program, “Compract Pro” will do the rest. It will assemble the six files into one file and ask you where you want to put it. Make sure that it goes into the “Lost Memories” folder.
5. If done correctly, you will have two HyperCard files named “Lost Memories” and “Soundz” and a folder called “Movies.” This folder is necessary to display all of the movies that are contained in the software. Do not delete it. There is also a possibility that some of the movies may not show on your screen. I have not been able to fix this as of this writing and I apologize.
6. You may delete all of the unjoined files that you copied from the floppy discs by clicking and dragging them to the trash icon, and then choosing “Empty Trash” from the “Special” menu on the desktop.
7. Start the program by double clicking on the “Lost Memories” icon. After a couple of minutes, you will see the first screen entitled LAND Communications Presents and having a red background. Click the mouse and wait. You will hear my voice saying “Lost Memories.” You will be presented with two more screens with red backgrounds. BE PATIENT! Click until you come to the pre-title card which has four buttons and two pictures on a light blue background and the following text: Click on any of the above buttons to use this stack. The help button will give you a detailed description of how to use this stack. The Main Story button will take you to the main part of the story “Lost Memories.” The Vocabulary button will take you to some vocabulary exercises. The credits button will tell you more about the people involved in this project. By the way, that’s you, Trixie, on the left and Rex Darling, the big movie star, on the right.
Using the software
Once you are on the pre-title card, please remember that HyperCard is actually a very slow program. With HyperCard 2.2, it has become a bit frustratingly slow. You need only click on the buttons in “Lost Memories” one time (not two!) and then wait a few seconds for something to happen. The same applies especially with the movies that are contained and some sounds, that may sound scratchy. Again, this is due more to a hardware limitation of the machine you are using than anything else. If your wait is more than 10 seconds, click the same button and wait. If nothing happens, it is probably better to start the program over again.
Final Disclaimer
The software is merely a prototype. Therefore, you will find many faults and technical problems that I have not yet fixed and I apologize for the inconvenience. I will also update the software from time to time, therefore these instructions will have been superceded and you should check the floppy discs for more information.
Appendix C
some sample vocabulary screens
The following are just a few sample graphics from the street sign vocabulary part of the maze. This part can be accessed through the pre-title card by pressing the Vocabulary button and then the Signs button on the subequent dialog box.
I have altered the examples here for technical reasons, but they are still true to their originals as found in the program. As mentioned above, this is still a prototype and these examples are not fully functional. I have presented below some sample sentences that might be heard by a student in the browsing mode of the program.
(l.) “Be prepared to stop when you see this sign.”
(r.) “We measure speed by miles per hour, so this is fast.”
(l.) “This sign means train tracks are ahead. Be ready to stop.”
(r.) “Get ready, because there is an airport ahead.”
Also, as above, when students click on either of the above, they will hear a sentence and see a spelling of what it represents as illustrated below. The left picture has been clicked.
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