October 9
Go to
http://www.ni.gl/Greenland/ to see four very different guides to the various parts of Greenland produced by our Greenlandic team. Be warned though that you need quite a fast connection to see all the pictures and powerpoint presentations. They are still teasing the Danish group I notice!
Meanwhile those who were brave enough in the Danish group gave us their advice in the form of short talks. I think that those talks we heard would not have been out of place in a public forum since they spoke well and fluently, just sometimes a little too quietly.
Then there was time to write thank you messages to our guests from last week, take a look at the Greenlandic webpages and have a chat with me about what could be included in their portfolio. I hope that they were not disappointed that they only had examples for two or three of the portfolio aspects. For example, it was difficult to find examples of having changed perspective but I put this down to the short duration of the project. By contrast everyone was able to point to examples of communicating effectively with someone from another culture.
As usual we ran out of time and on the last day of the project this is a rather disappointing way to end without the opportunity to round things off properly. Fortunately there is a bit of flexibility in the system and we have arranged for a very short last meeting after the half term break in a week and a half's time.
But I want to take this opportunity to thank everybody who helped to make this project a success despite technical difficulties of the most basic nature. First and foremost thank you to the students who took part in Greenland and here in Denmark. If they had taken no interest in the activities there would have been no project. Thanks also to Tove, with whom I discussed each lesson and whose presence in the classroom was enormously helpful especially when things went wrong technically. Thanks to Kathleen who had the faith to take on the project in Greenland. Thanks also to our international guests who made such a positive impression on our students with their willingness to spend time with them, overcome technical difficulties and answer their questions. Thanks to Michael Marzio for allowing me to use his Real English videos (the real kernel and starting point for this project). Thanks to Jens Christensen in Greenland for taking the photographs and to Stephen Houfe for sending me photographs of Peru which in the end were not used.
Thursday 2nd October
Well the Greenlandic group did not have a lesson at the same time as us this week so the interviews with guests from around the world were carried out solely by the Danish students. This went really well. Of course there were technical hitches but these were pretty minor by comparison to what has happened in previous weeks. All our guests turned up, most of them were able to speak rather than write and many of the Danish group also spoke rather than wrote which was a major step forward. Aiden from Taiwan despite having the worst technical problems of the whole group had a great website of pictures of
streetlife in Taiwan which she was able to share with her partners - a great idea. Everyone enjoyed the conversations and all parties learned a great deal about Denmark and the other countries represented.
What a pity that just as things are going so well that the project has to end next week. Nuuk seems to have survived the hurricane they were expecting on Wednesday and the Greenlandic group are all busy making webpages for their final project which I hope we will be able to view by next Wednesday. The Danish group are presenting their final project as presentations and handouts next Thursday when we are also scheduled to evaluate what we have learned from this project.
Thursday 24 September
There used to be a popular comedy series in the seventies in the UK 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin' in which the main character always arrived at work late and told his secretary why the train had been delayed that day. (
The excuses). This is a little how I feel in writing these entries as every week there is a new excuse. So this week we had a massive email server failure which meant that I did not receive a lot of the work which the Danish group had sent me. So, no, they had not lost interest!
We talked a little about this afternoon's exercise and how to tackle it. The challenge today was to carry out a joint exercise with the Greenlanders using the Real English videos. I had allocated an hour this time and still that was not long enough to get through all aspects but most groups at least got to discuss the exercise even if they didn't get as far as agreeing joint answers. There was a great reluctance to use the Voice option and most people stuck to text which of course makes things slower. But one very positive outcome was that effective partnerships are emerging.
We had a very short time available for debriefing and catching our breath before the end of the lesson. To make up for the absence of our third intended partner from Peru I have decided to try to organise a multinational chat with 3-5 guests next Thursday. I don't yet know if the Greenlanders will be able to join in as their lessons are scheduled for a different time next week. So far I have had firm commitments from guests from Taiwan and Portugal. It would be wonderful to be able to include someone from the African continent and from South America but we shall just have to wait and see who is able to make it.
Thursday 18 September
In today's class we started by noting down what we knew for sure now about Greenland and what we had assumed. Already a few assumptions have been revised and a few confirmed but there were one or two others which we might find out more about in the course of the next couple of weeks.
Since we have already had two more chats than were originally scheduled we agreed that we would drop this weeks chat. Instead we examined the chat logs and talked about how to communicate more effectively. We then looked at the results of last week's survey and found some interesting differences and similarities between the two groups. Of course this wasn't a very scientific survey so we couldn't read too much into the results but it did lead to discussions about smacking children and drinking beer. A closer look at last week's text gave us a third viewpoint in some ways, for example, about men and women kissing on the street.
More technical problems too boring to mention meant that we couldn't see the video of life in downtown Grenaa I'd filmed a couple of weeks earlier so all we managed was to look at the first Real English video which to my relief played without a hitch for everybody. However the Greenlandic group had much better luck with the exercise in that they had gone as low tech as you could get and used their eyes. Once the class in Denmark was over, I received a flood of accounts about everyday happenings on the streets of Nuuk which I have decided to upload to a link from
Week 2 as soon as I get permission and they are corrected a little. I think these accounts may dispel one or two more assumptions we have about Greenland.
Thursday September 11
Today was a bit of a rush as we had a lot of work to get through. We started by correcting the texts we had written about the pictures from last week's exercise. Most people could correct most of the mistakes that they'd made which is a really useful skill for language students. We also discussed the idea of looking back at completed work to make a portfolio of your best work and started to identify what could go into such a portfolio from work on this project.
Then it was onto this week's activity of filling in the questionnaire. We are very lucky to be working with the Greenlanders who know about some of the dangers of the Internet. They discovered that you had to register by giving a huge amount of personal information so we decided to collate the results on paper instead (though having just tried to complete the survey myself twice I didn't experience such a problem). Again I discovered some useful information about Denmark, that it is illegal to urinate in public! We will discuss the results next week.
I have received several Powerpoint presentations from Greenland so I took the opportunity to show them to the Danish group who were impressed by the amount of work that had gone into them. We then had a chance to put some questions about the Greenlandic pictures from last week's exercise in a live chat with the Greenlandic team.
Our group have had huge problems in getting the Voiceboard to work so since a dialogue is very important to this project we have worked hard to get a solution. So from today onwards it should be possible for the Danish group to use the Voiceboard even though they are away from my classroom.
Thursday September 4th
Today I received lots of introductions to the Greenlandic students. Several were in the form of Powerpoint presentations which I can't really put up on the web page but we'll see them in next week's class. It's great to find out about who we're working with and we also had a chance of a short chat using Voice Direct which was good practice for the scheduled chats which are due in two weeks time.
Here in Denmark we had a go at the picture exercise during which I learned about aspects of Denmark which had hitherto escaped me in ten years of living here. One was that the sport of handball originated in Denmark and the other was my dismal ignorance of Easter traditions. I hope we will soon find out what the Greenlandic team made of their pictures. It would be great if they succeeded in using the voiceboard to post their ideas.
Thursday August 28th
The first real session of the project. We were lucky enough to have a visit from Kathleen, the teacher in Greenland, through the chatroom. Although this didn't fit exactly with the planned timetable it was really welcome to have live contact with our partners during the first class session of the project and the Danish students had a chance to find out what the weather was like in Nuuk and also discovered that the city is celebrating its 275th anniversary on August 29. Everyone managed to produce a profile of themselves while I took photographs of those who were happy to have their profile illustrated. Then most succeeded in posting a voice message about themselves on the Voiceboard.
The longest task was to have a go at the inter-cultural test which everybody tried on their own at first and then discussed with a partner. After a while I revealed that hints for the questions could be accessed by clicking on the magnifying glass at the bottom of the test. Everybody is sending me a summary of their responses before next week's session.
This time we couldn't access schoolblogs so getting up to date with these was delayed until after the session was over. So we still had technological problems but I think most had fun trying out the chat tool, Voice Direct which worked exactly as it should.
Monday August 25th
The Peruvians have withdrawn from the project due to Internet problems which is a shame but today is day 1 of the project proper and I am confident that we can make contact despite connection problems.
Thursday August 21st
The school has suffered badly from the 3 internet worms so we decided not to do any online work today. I am working things out with the Greenlanders so that I hope we can start the module proper next week. Still no word from Peru but we have to start anyway.
Thursday August 14th
Today the temperature was more bearable. The idea was to record part of a chat discussing a second dialogue. Once again there were huge technical difficulties as the school was being attacked by three worms at once and so our Internet access was not easy. But everybody managed to post at least a snippet of their conversation so next week we can look more closely at how that went.
Finally everybody was supposed to go to their weblog and write up their learning diary but there were big problems in posting what had been written, presumably because of the attacks we were experiencing. What a patient and tolerant group they are! And their English seems quite good too.
Thursday August 7
Today I am introducing the project to the Danish class.
It was a hot afternoon and some of the software didn't work as it should but eventually everyone was able to create their own weblog so that is at least one positive result! Let's hope that they all remember their passwords next time.
We started with a little exercise trying to understand a short dialogue between an American and a Greek which left both very upset. Next time we will look at a dialogue between a German and an American where again not all goes according to plan. This shows that it is not enough to understand the words, we also have to understand the thinking behind the words.
