In his article on Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), Steven Thorne provides a comprehensive and solid overview of CMC. He starts out by commenting on early developments in CMC beginning in 1969. He then looks at research on CMC conducted in the fields of linguistics and communication since the early 80s. Thorne continues his article by looking at major contributions of CMC research in SLA with a main focus on synchronous CMC, i.e. “chat”. Major findings include a higher frequency of turns and increased sentence complexity, increased amount of corrective feedback, oral proficiency gains, etc. Furthermore, Thorne also addresses CMC intercultural L2 education and reviews different approaches, such as telecollaboration and tandem learning. Thorne also covers current work in CMC such as wikis, blogs, podcasting and gaming and points out that there is still a lot of research to be conducted on the language learning potential of networking sites such as myspace.com and facebook.com. Before concluding with future directions, Thorne talks about problems and outstanding challenges in CMC, such as the cultural markedness of the internet and the conventional generation gap between the actual use and the pedagogies in formal learning environments.

Recently, I gave a low-stakes assessment—quiz—via Facebook. After the quiz, I posted a one question survey asking: What do you think of taking the quiz on Facebook? I gave them multiple choice answers of a. so so, I really don’t care; b. I prefer a paper and pencil quiz in class; c. I preferred taking the quiz on FB. 11 out of 12 students selected “I preferred taking the quiz on FB” 1 student did not take the survey. Students posted comments such as “I liked [it] cause it was fun”. Thoughts?

Some possible benefits to using Ning
Ning, like other SNSs, can provide several affordances for language learning. Ning could be leveraged as a space for language learners to develop self-expression and social interaction which are significant language acquisition contexts (McBride, 2009).   Ning can provide many opportunities for language learning including development of videos and other user-generated materials.

A number of challenges for using NIng
The obvious demands for using any SNS like Ning include the significant up-front time it would take for a teacher to become proficient using the Ning platform and to develop a network–given the various features and multi-media resources.

Overall, I found the Ning user interface to be mostly seamless and providing a number of opportunities for learners to develop their identities and language skills while creating a presence on the internet.

Rather than suggesting that learning is just taking place in classrooms, Thomas and Brown in chapter 1,  state that learning is happening everywhere within this new culture of learning. This new culture has two basic features; it is made up of a growing digital networked infrastructure with nearly unlimited resources and is “a bounded and structured environment that allows for unlimited agency to build and experiment with things within those boundaries”. (p.19) The authors use the metaphor of cultivation to describe the mixing of both features and the interaction between them. Yet instead of cultivating plants, the process that stems from this new culture cultivates minds. Thomas and Brown assert that the solution for how to cultivate the imagination is the focus for attempting to make the best use of this new culture of learning.  How do we cultivate the imagination? How do we “harness these new resources, which make play, questioning, and imagination the bedrocks of our new culture of learning” ?(p. 20)

In answer to these questions, the authors provide numerous  examples of this new culture of learning and what shape it is taking in our world. In one case, a man named Allen “mastered” the computer languages necessary to run his own programming business.  How did he do this?  He did not step into a classroom, instead he participated in the new culture of learning as a member of a “collective” in which he located the solutions to programming problems by “googling his errors”. (p. 26) Thomas and Brown define collective–one of the cornerstones to their idea of a new culture of learning–as “a community of similarly minded people who help others with a particular set of needs”. (p.21)

Along with those needs, play, questioning, and an emphasis on imagination are at the center of the authors’ idea of “arc of life learning” which is comprised of “the activities in our daily lives that keep us learning, growing, and exploring.” (p.18) Thomas and Brown define play as ”the tension between the rules of the game and the freedom to act within those rules” so when play “happens within a medium for learning–much like a culture in a petri dish–it creates a context in which information, ideas and passions grow.” (ibid) This is the central metaphor the authors refer to over and over to explain all the fundamental precepts in the illustration of this new culture of learning.

The authors follow with anecdotes that illustrate the connection(s) made between two spaces–“one that is largely public and information-based (a software program, a university, a search engine, a game, a website) and another that is intensely personal and structured (colleagues, a classroom, a business, family, the daily challenges of living with a chronic disease).” (p. 31) Through the interplay within and between these two spaces, people’s imaginations are cultivated, thus giving rise to innovative, spontaneous uses of the space.
Although this new culture of learning is occurring without books, teachers, or a classroom, Thomas and Brown do not argue that classrooms or teachers are no longer relevant, but instead suggest that this new culture of learning can augment current learning practices.

Thomas and Brown suggest that this new culture of learning is vastly different than the “old model of teaching” or “mechanistic view” as made clear through the discussion in the second chapter. (p.35) They state that the twentieth century educational system is based on the idea of “transferring” information from teacher to student.  Within this old model, learning is “treated as a series of steps to be mastered” whereby the goal of efficiency is to learn as much as possible in the shortest amount of time.(p. 35) Standardization, testing and results are emphasized over process. Thomas and Brown continue to contrast the two cultures: A teaching-based approach to culture is the environment and teaches us about the world while a learning-based culture emerges from the environment and “focuses on learning through engagement within the world.” (p. 38) The teaching-based approach  focuses on outcomes based on students’ understanding of the material while the learning-based approach is about embracing what they don’t know, developing better questions, and continuing to ask those questions while coming up with more. While the old, traditional or mechanistic model struggles to become more stable and adjusts to change only when necessary, the emerging new culture of learning “responds to its surroundings organically.” (p. 37) This new culture flourishes on change.

In chapter 3, Brown and Thomas make the case for embracing the change that stems from this new culture. Twentieth century education and technology were once influenced and defined by “stability, continuity, and maintaining the status quo” at the same time “progress was carefully controlled.” (p. 39) This is no longer the case. Within the mechanistic model of education the teacher “transfers” information that is “stable” or unchanging, while in the new culture of learning information is not static as technology provides a platform through which the information is regularly changed through participation. (p. 39) Current news aggregator websites provide a vivid exemplar of this changing model; as people show more interest in a given story, it is moved to a more advantageous position on the page.  Furthermore, technology is changing at a much more rapid pace.  While “it took 70 years to go from the first color signal to widespread adoption of color television”, in the last decade the Internet has changed profoundly.  (p. 41) For example, now many cell phones have “more computing power and Internet access than the average home computer did in 2000.” (p. 42) The authors advocate embracing change as a way of looking into the future and considering new possibilities instead of feeling forced to adapt to the pressures of change.

Thomas and Brown suggest that we consider and expand the type of learning environments that attracted numerous kids to learn about history, geography, philosophy, interpersonal communication and basic sociology through the Harry Potter books, websites, wikis, blogs, and fan fiction. They emphasize how the kids learned (through following their passion) more than what they learned.  The kids “anticipated, were energized by, and ultimately, looked forward to the changes that each new installment brought to the narrative”. (p. 45)  The authors make the point that while memorization may work for learning things that infrequently change, it is not as useful for learning things that are in constant flux.

The authors posit Wikipedia as a system that not only embraces change, but thrives on it and provides a detailed record of those changes.  Comparing the accuracy between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, Jim Giles (2005) concludes they are more or less equally accurate.  Brown and Thomas suggest  that assessing both for stability, neither gets it right in terms of information that is factually wrong and outdated.  They declare tha “[m]aking knowledge stable in a changing world is unwinnable.” (p. 46) However, they suggest that what Wikipedia can do that  Encyclopedia Britannica can’t is provide a “record of the controversies” over certain pieces of information. (p. 46) They give the example of the Christopher Columbus entry and how one can “read across time” as one traces the debates over Columbus’ role in the history of the Americas. (p. 46) “The entry reflects, in myriad forms, the shifts in opinions about the cultural, social, and political aspects of colonization, exploration, and the writing of history.” (p. 46) In contrast, print resources, like Encyclopedia Britannica effort  “to create a permanent record of stable knowledge” must make editorial choices to “include or exclude similar material” thus making the information invisible. (p. 47) In contrast, within Wikipedia, one can see what editorial choices have been made and leave with a better understanding of this process.  This type of reading provides the reader a much richer understanding of the knowledge and perhaps insight into how much weight to give the ‘facts’ or how to interpret the information.

Thomas and Brown suggest three “principles” of the new culture of learning:

1. The old ways of learning are unable to keep up with our rapidly changing world.

2. New media forms are making peer-to-peer learning easier and more natural.

3. Peer-to-peer learning is amplified by emerging technologies that shape the collective nature of participation with those new media. (p. 50)
In chapter 3 the authors illustrated the first principle while in chapter 4 they discuss  the second and third principles of peer-to-peer learning and its implications in the new culture of learning. As Thomas and Brown mention, “[l]earning from others is neither new nor revolutionary; it has just been ignored by most of our educational institutions.” (p. 51) Within the new culture, learning happens with others who are your equals and have knowledge or experience on a specific subject–without teacher or student roles. The authors explain that in the life of a college student, learning happens through the whole college experience not just those hours in a classroom.  When a college student acts as part of the environment in which she is part of  a collective as defined in chapter 1. The idea of collectives are an essential part of Thomas and Brown’s new learning environment and so are referred to and clarified throughout the text of the book. In this chapter, collectives are further “defined by an active engagement  with the process of learning,” and are not communities, which can be passive. (p. 52) The authors make the distinction between communities where “people learn in order to belong” while in a collective “people belong in order to learn” and participate. (Ibid)

Principle three of the new culture of learning involves peer-to-peer interaction among group members who all have a passion, but various skills and talents. Once these members begin to interact constantly, the collective “functions as a kind of amplifier, providing numerous outlets, resources, and aids to further an individual’s learning.” (p.51)  Out of these collectives, the authors suggest that meaningful learning is produced since the “inquiry that arises comes from the collective itself” while in a classroom it is the teacher who is most often posing the questions. (p 54)  Not surprisingly, if a collective makes too much effort to direct or define itself, then innovation within the collective will wither and die.

In chapter 5, Thomas and Brown suggest collectives “unlike the larger notion of the public, are both contextual and situated, particularly with regard to engaging in specific actions.” (p. 57) The authors use the example of a person who sings a song at a karaoke bar. Within the environment of the karaoke bar, participation is prized and an essential part of the enterprise. Since these activities are designed around participation, those that are involved in them have a sense of investment.

Thomas and Brown suggest that the most challenging problems we currently encounter are collective more often than personal.  Through the collective, some of the largest problems we face have resulted locating solutions.  For example, Kiva is a nonprofit organization that uses micro-fiance to fund start-up businesses.  Kiva melds “the collective (450,000 loan officers) with the personal (highly motivated entrepreneurs who want to put their ideas into action).” (p. 59)  This type of exercise, Thomas and Brown state, is creating a learning environment where passion and imagination grow while providing “agency for the recipients of the loans.” (p. 59)

When discussing collectives and education, Thomas and Brown suggest that one need only look as far as a social networking environment to witness a group project constructed by a collective. The authors note how assessing group projects can be difficult for a teacher, but the product of a collective is easier to evaluate because it is based on how the participants  “personal sense of identity and agency matches with the various collectives” that make up various spaces. (p. 63)

Thomas and Brown suggest Social networking sites (SNSs), like Facebook, are a way to “harness the collective” and thus “through the new media, the collective serves not only as a kind of resource for learning but also as a kind of amplifier:  It intensifies and heightens the process of learning by continuously relating it back to the personal.”  SNSs are spaces that are both personal and collective where people are learing “with one another”, not just “from one another.” (p. 67)

The authors then discuss the case of a college student whose school accused him of a breach of academic integrity for developing an on-line study group of 147 students via Facebook. Thomas and Brown suggest that the study group was nothing more than a digital re-creation of a physical-world study group that have been part of our educational traditions for centuries. The authors then suggest that the students involved in the on-line study group were able to learn much more as a collective than if they worked alone.

In chapter 6, Thomas and Brown borrow the term tacit knowledge from Michael Polanyi to exemplify the idea that we know more than we can say. Typically, if a person knows the answer to a question, we say that person has explicit knowledge, while the idea that we know more than what we can say is suggested by Michael Polanyi (1966) as the “tacit dimension of knowledge, which is the component of knowing that is assumed, unsaid, and understood as a product of experience and interaction.” (p 74) Rather than the explicit knowledge prolific in twentieth century learning practices,  like the use of an encyclopedia “which has its roots in the ancient Greek conception of rounded and complete knowledge” (p. 76) and is an example of how many have tried to create knowledge in a fixed form, tacit learning is about embracing knowledge that changes. Tacit learning is when “we learn by doing, watching, and experiencing,” for example, when one learns how to use email, one learns by “doing it, learning by absorption and making tacit connections.” (p. 76) Explicit knowledge has been a foundation of the mechanistic model for “transferring knowledge from one person to another” while tacit knowledge is not transferable–it is absorbed into the body through the senses by participating in every day activities. Through these everyday activities we pick up knowledge rather than in formal education where learning takes place at a specific place and time. Can we measure the amount of our tacit knowledge?  Although Thomas and Brown suggest that since tacit knowledge does not fit the transfer model of learning, it is a challenge to measure it.  They do not provide an solution for the problem.

Thomas and Brown suggest that instead of the idea that people learn in different ways even when given the same information–people learn different things. We don’t make room for students arriving at different answers within our current education model and this leads to teaching that “tends to focus on eliminating the source of the problem: the student’s imagination.” (p.79) Rather than limit the student’s imagination, Thomas and Brown suggest that using the process of learning through inquiry, can expand the imagination. Instead of the focus being on finding the answer to say, a math problem, Thomas and Brown suggest that we reverse the order of things so that the goal is to ask questions. These questions are restricted by the subject of inquiry and our tacit knowledge. Since tacit knowledge is not, by definition, explicit, it is difficult to use the associations held by this deeply embedded knowledge. However, tacit knowledge can find expression through the formulation of questions and the process of inquiry. In turn, inquiry can serve as an instrument for leveraging the tacit knowledge that comes from indwelling. Thomas and Brown borrow this term indwelling from Polanyi (1966)  to mean “a familiarity with ideas, practices and processes that are so engrained they become second nature.” (p 84) Indwelling is also adaptive, and thus flexible by nature, while we use it to make connections among the tacit dimensions of things. A disposition will reveal how a student will make tacit connections. It does not provide answers about what someone is  apt to learn but how someone might learn. A person who plays a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) is referred to in this chapter as a gamer. Thomas and Brown describe a “gamer” disposition based on six characteristics of gamers:

1. they want to improve so seek to be evaluated

2. gamers understand the power of diversity through teamwork

3. they thrive on the change that is embedded in the game

4. they see learning as fun

5. they live on the edge and “push the boundaries of the environment” of the game (pp.87-88)
The authors then close the chapter by mentioning that students with a gamer disposition are becoming the common and by using inquiry a diverse set of dispositions can find expression in the collectives they participate in and create; this final expression of a collective process the authors call collective indwelling.

In chapter 7, Thomas and Brown suggest three frames–homo sapiens, homo faber, homo ludens–that can be utilized for redesigning our educational institutions in order to embrace the credo you live, you learn at the center of the new culture of learning. Both knowledge and belief have been explored through the use of “what” questions. With the term Homo sapiens, or humans who know, the authors suggest that in the new culture of learning the questions are more geared toward, “where is the information?” These “where” questions rely more on context. In this new culture of learning, expertise is about knowing “how to find and evaluate” information on a certain topic more than having a number of facts or pieces of information. (p.93) Homo faber, or humans who make (things), is not just learning through doing but finding meaning through “contextualization” rather than “interpretation”. (p.95) In a world where everything can be remade and remixed, it is not just about learning through doing, but learning through shaping context which requires a new kind of reading in order to be critical of, and evaluate, such remixes.

Homo ludens, or humans who play, is an idea that Thomas and Brown think is “probably most overlooked aspect in understanding how learning functions in culture” and reveals something that is more fundamental than playing a game but is more about disposition or approach to the game. (p.97) Play, according to Johan Huzinga “is not merely central to human experience, it is part of all that is meaningful in human culture.” (p. 97) Indeed, he adds, “[p]lay is not something we do; it is who we are.” (Ibid) Play can be the chance to experiment with finding the answer to the riddle which will contain an organizing principle, just as an epiphany creates awareness and makes sense of all the elements that came before that moment. For both riddle and epiphany, a requirement of locating a solution is to consider the problem from various perspectives.“In play…learning is not driven by a logical calculus but by a more lateral, imaginative of thinking and feeling instead.” (p. 99) This kind of lateral thinking is a necessity to locate progress in the new culture of learning.

In chapter 8, Thomas and Brown discuss hanging out, messing around, and geeking out: expressions for the “way young people participate with new media” according to an ethnographic study by Mizuko Ito. (p.100) Learning social practices that provide meaning or “hanging out” is the first step of indwelling, according to Polanyi. (p. 101) Ito’s term use of hanging out is “about learning how to be with others in spaces that are mediated by digital technology.” (p. 101)
The second step of indwelling is messing around; “[w]hen messing around, young people begin to take an interest in and focus on the workings and content of the technology and media themselves, tinkering, exploring, and extending their understanding.” They begin to transition from social agency, during hanging out, to personal agency during the messing around phase as they begin to pursue topics of interest.

The final step of indwelling includes two conditions. According to Ito, “The ability to engage with media and technology in an intense, autonomous, and interest-driven  way is a unique feature of today’s media environment.  The Internet can provide access to an immense amount of information related to their particular interests, and it can support various forms of ‘geeking out’…” The second condition of geeking out extends one’s social agency developed from hanging out and personal agency from messing around. As Ito states it, “[g]eeking out involves learning to navigate esoteric domains of knowledge and practice and participating in communities that traffic in these forms of expertise.” (p 104) Collective indwelling is a outgrowth of participating in these experiences and is explained in the next chapter.

In the final chapter of the text, Thomas and Brown suggest MMOs are almost perfect examples of a new learning environment.  The authors use the game World of Warcraft (WOW) to provide a full illustration of their new culture of learning;  WOW serves as a “large-scale social communit[y] that provide[s] a case study in how players absorb tacit knowledge, process it into a series of increasingly sophisticated questions, and engage collectives to make the experience more personally meaningful.” (p. 107) The authors continue to flesh out this illustration of their new culture of learning through WOW by explaining the general aspects of the game. As part of the experience of playing the game, the authors connect two of their terms–collective and indwelling.  They state that “the feeling and belief that group members share a tacit understanding of one another, their environment, and the practices necessary to complete their task could be described as the virtual space of collective indwelling.” (p. 113)

Built on Huizinga’s precepts of Homo Ludens that play is something we do and that “play precedes culture”.   (p.116) Thomas and Brown add to those ideas by proposing a fusion of play (as they define it) and “experimentation, growth, and evolution” that emerge from the play and increase drastically when performing within a collective . These elements will, in turn, transform imagination.  “And where imaginations play, learning happens.” (p. 118) Alas, if I had a deeper understanding of the World of Warcraft game I could provide criticism in terms of how well it illustrates the authors ideas and this new culture of learning.

This text provides me, as an educator, a possible new lens with which to view and discuss learning. Everything from the many neologisms to the ideas of disposition and culture are worth considering.  Although the text is terribly optimistic, I found inspiration in both the examples and the explainations. I
The authors suggest that change motivates and challenges and while that is sometimes true for some people, that is certainly not true for all people–change can be intimidating and scary for many, just take a look at politics where the status quo is king.

More than provoking criticism, this text brought up many questions for me.  Here are a few: In this new culture of learning, what would assessment look like?  Perhaps something like the feedback the the authors suggest is an intricate part of a game such as World of Warcarft; Can we duplicate this type of feedback?  If the nature of this learning does not have a goal per se, what understandings do the student, teacher and educational institution have to arrive at in order to participate in this new culture of learning?

More than advocating for a change in paradigm, Thomas and Brown suggest embracing a paradigm that already has put its roots down–already exists.  Through the use of metaphors from nature, rather than from the man-made or mechanistic, they  invoke the spirit of a new age of relatedness.  I found inspiration in both the examples and explanations. In particular, I appreciated the analogies of learning to ideas of biomimicry or taking inspiration or metaphors from biological systems, like swarm intelligence. Besides ecology, the text is one that is of such an interdisciplinary nature as it draws from education, anthropology, communication, business, computer sciences and  language learning.

Overall, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change is a concise, accessible book that will appeal to teachers, parents and researchers in addition to any stakeholders interested in the future of education or indeed anyone interested in ideas for addressing the world in which context is rapid and changing.  Above all, I found this book inspiring for many reasons, but suffice it to say that on a deep, embodied level it reinforced some of what I already tacitly know to be true yet cannot express explicitly.

References

Giles, Jim (2005). Nature. www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_response.pdf.

Huizinga, J. 1971. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play–Element in Culture. Boston:  Beacon Press.

Ito, M., S. Baumer, M. Bittanti, d. boyd, R. Cody, B. Herr-Stephenson, H. Horst, et al. (2009).  Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out:  Kids Living and Learning with New Media.  John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press.

Polanyi, M. (1966).The Tacit Dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, Ky: CreateSpace?.

Introduction
In this article, McBride focuses on how social-networking sites (SNSs) are not just a way for language learners to socialize and express themselves but that SNSs can also serve to fully engage the learner in an activity (Egbert, 2005) with pedagogically useful FL tasks. McBride provides a review of related literature to SNS use in the FL classroom and discusses some related difficulties, suggestions and implemented projects.
Literature Review
Definition
McBride defines the cornerstone of general use SNSs, like Facebook, as profiles–representing “groups, events, causes, products and other phenomena” that include demographic information and descriptions of interests, photos or other media. These profiles are linked in numerous ways but they are primarily used to articulate already existing social networks and are dominated by younger people. Profiles are linked like a ‘friends list’ through Facebook whereby one person “friends” another to create a link between profiles. These ‘friendships’ do not connotate a specified level of intimacy. Users may link through common interests, causes or event and these play an essential role in the creation of one’s online identity. (Hinduja & Patchin, 2008; Vie, 2007)
The Net Generation
McBride is particularly focused on the Net generation or neomillennials who she states not only communicate differently but have different learning styles and “qualitatively different thought patterns” (Thorne & Payne, 2005; Baird & Fisher, 2005-2006; Prensky, 2001) with 80%-90% of this generation having profiles on SNSs (Lampe et al., 2007; Tufekci, 2008) Such differences in ‘lifestyle’, and familiarity with SNSs provides educators the rationale to include SNSs in class activities.
Writing of the Self and Self-authorship
McBride refers to a principal activity on SNSs as users “write themselves into being” (boyd, 2007) through their profiles by way of words, photos and other media. While acquiring an L2, learners can develop new and multiple identities using SMSs that can serve as expressions of the learner in the various online contexts. McBride employs the metaphor of a fractal to describe the array, but self-similarity, of expressions an identity may have. The fractal is a shape in which the smaller parts are reflections of, and close duplications of, the larger shape and have been used as a metaphor for L2 acquisition. (de Bot, 2008; Larsen Freeman, 1997; Larsen Freeman & Cameron, 2008).
Users can more than “write themselves” as they can participate in the act of “writing/remixing the self through manipulation of text and media” which McBride names self-authorship and states that within CALL this idea is used to exemplify when students author their own materials that are then used as groundwork for learning and lessons.(McBride, 2009)
Are SNSs meaningful? According to McBride, making symbolic gestures are more prevalent than exchanging information. These gestures act to “maintain social bonds” (boyd & Ellison, 2007) and serve “a ritual purpose” (Lam, 200). The nature of SNS communications usually “quite brief and may use simplified language and spelling” (Vie, 2007). SNS writing is more geared toward “publishing thoughts or ideas as soon as they are written” typically “in public view” more than focusing on writing as a process. (Joes & Bissoonauth-Bedford, 2008) In terms of reading, users tend to skim while reading online rather than read a website more thoroughly like a book. (Boardman, 2004; Burbles, 1998; McBride, 2008a; Morkes & Nielson, 1998) McBride asserts that students engaged in SNS-based FL activities would be “learning pragmatics” as opposed to other “pedagogical goals of extended reading and writing”. (McBride, 2009) In order to use their L2 correctly and be critical in their use of web 2.0 communications, specifically SNSs, McBride suggests
students “would be well served to work with such technologies under the guidance of teachers” (boyd, 2007; De Pew, 2004; McKee, 2002; Vie, 2007).
McBride continues to address the needs of the neomillennial students and states that many are “uncritical of media” (Elam et al., 2007; Roberts & Foehr, 2005) and often, when using SNSs, and other forms of CNC, “fail to distingish properly between what is public and what is private or understand the consequences of this distinction” (Tapscott, 2009; Vie, 2007) One more result of uncritical usage of 2.0 technologies is the result of increased narcissism. This “self-obsessed, uncritical” way of using technology stands in opposition to what we mean to achieve in second language and second culture classes. (Thorne & Payne, 2005, p. 382; Sykes et al., 2008, p. 32) The need for teaching students to develop critical thinking skills and netiquette clearly remains.
McBride returns to ideas of self-authorship and offers a second understanding of the terms that is characterized as a phase of “intellectual development” whereby learners have developed an ability to “critically integrate new knowledge and other people’s perspectives in their own personal experiences.” (Baxter Magolda, 2007; Meszaros, 2007)
McBride illustrates these two meanings of self-authorship as being “intertwined” and possibly providing “great academic potential” if used to spur critical thought.(McBride, 2009)

Difficulties for Implementation
McBride suggests that integrating SNS usage into the FL classroom may be challenging due to several factors including the time it takes the teacher and students to learn the new technology, time it takes teacher to design activities and other institutional restraints. Students interest in the SNS activity “can range from very high to very low, creating the potential for pedagogical intentions to backfire” (Ware, 2005; Thorne, 2006) Another possible negative effect can be the formation of in- and out-groups and result in students feeling estranged and leaving behind their L2 study. In addition, if some students don’t want to be “friends” with one another, this can result in an SNS activity feeling stilted and hollow.
The teacher’s role in the SNS activity can be problematic as well since they might “feel their authority decrease if students view their personal information on a SNS” (Vie, 2007). McBride adds that a teacher might feel an “infringement on their privacy” while a student may feel that they are required to communicate with their teacher in a way they would not normally.
McBride brings up a few questions she thinks teachers ought to ask themselves before integrating SNS activities into their coursework. Should SNS activities be required by those students who do not participate in such activities outside the class or for those who are not tech savvy? What about possible technical problems or technology failure?
McBride briefly mentions implementation challenges posed by resistance from teachers, both more traditional teachers (De Pew, 2004) and new teachers. Newer teachers may not know how to use the applications “unless they experienced a similar application when they were students” (Dieu & Stevens, 2007; Winke & Goertler, 2008). Notably, if newer teachers have to master more traditional methods of teaching they may hesitate employing SNS-based activities.
Using SNSs in FL Classes
General Considerations
McBride advises that SNSs can best be used when all aspects are integrated into the course and “serve to further learning goals” (Richards, 2005) while students should understand the connection of the CALL activities to the goals of the course (Murray, Hourigan, & Jeanneau, 2007). What is the role of the teacher? While McBride states that the “guide on the side” role is often necessary, more guidance may be required to provide students “meaningful exchanges with others that heighten their intercultural understanding and critical-thinking skills”. (Muller-Hartmann, 200; Lomicka, 2006; O’Dowd, 2004; Ware & Kramsch, 2005)
When considering which SNS to adopt, McBride suggests that teachers consider such things as “features, appropriateness, and redundancy”. Can the participants easily accomplish what is needed for the class project? Issues such as the ability to set the SNS interface in the L2 and the type and amount of advertising on the site are relevant too. The question of customizing the SNS brings up the dilemma of what limits should be set in terms of the students’ interactions with speakers of the L2. Lastly, McBride addresses redundancy and recommends that teachers consider the number of sites the students are required to use and possibly using an aggregator if planning to use several sites.
Examples of Implemented Projects
University of Florida: A professor used Ning sites as a sort of course management websites. Each student had a profile and could access class documents as well as communicate with each other and the professor about the course. Students could collaborate, blog and post podcasts to comply with course assignments.
Australia: A Ning sight was adopted as a way for 20 Australian middle school students to communicate with others while spending 6 weeks in China. The educators, parents and hosts all had access and the sight effectively served as a way for all to stay in contact and exchange photos and videos.
Others: Numerous other Ning SNSs represent language clubs and the like. They connect users with others and create spaces in which to share and house language tools, like vocabulary lists and videos.
Potential Projects Centered around Profiles
● beginner profiles: Students would create an on-line profile with the task tied to in-class topics. Students might be required to visit each other’s profiles and interact.
● alternative identity profiles: Students could create characters who are members of the L2 culture.
● group profiles: Students would collaborate with one or two classmates to invent a group profile based on a character who is a member of the L2. The t could provide specific demographic information and let students chose the character they want to work on.
Global simulations
This type of project could range from profile creation and “occasional online exchanges” to a more developed global simulation. Providing the opportunity for non-native speakers to view SNS profiles of native speakers “could provide students with a wealth of information about language use, much like watching movies has been promoted as a rich source of cultural knowledge (Herron, Dubreil, Cole, & Corrie, 2000).
Projects Centered around Media
● Image Searches: Students could search Flickr to see what images come up for certain words or phrases in the L2. As well, the students could explore images connected with countries/areas where their language of study is spoken.
● Posting Photos: Students could search for, create, post and label photos which symbolize course related L2 vocabulary. Students might be required to comment on each other’s images.
● Video Sharing: Students could use Youtube like Flickr (videos are posted, favorited, and shared) but offers more language practice opportunities since the videos probably contain samples of the L2.
● Projects Centered around Themes: Rather than structured around an assumed personality like activities mentioned under profiles, projects could be created around themes.
Conclusion
McBride suggests that a central challenge for the teacher using SNSs, is assigning a grade to SNS use/participation. Expectations would need to be clarified and possibly delineated with use of rubrics. As a result of the “unpredictable nature of truly authentic, open-ended language and culture projects, it may be impossible to create the best rubric for a project ahead of time” (Bednar, Cunningham, Duffy, & Perry, 1992; McBride, 2008b; Petraglia, 1998). McBride suggests co-constructing “the basis for grading” with the students so it will “allow the students to feel that they have some control over their learning environment”. Students could also be graded on “what they did in the SNS” and “their ability to critically reflect on these activities” (Vie, 2007)
Reaction
In terms of the literature review, I found a couple ideas remarkable. First, the idea that “neomillennial students not only have different learning styles from other generations but qualitatively different thought patterns” (Thorne & Payne, 2005; Baird & Fisher, 2005-2006; Prensky, 2001) made me curious about this assertion. How was this difference measured and over what period of time was it measured? This seems like a huge assertion and worthy of my reading time in the future. Second, the idea that these 80%-90% of neomillennials have profiles on SNSs (Lampe et al., 207; Tufekci, 2008) seems surprising unless this number is only measuring those in “developed” countries with internet access.
Overall, this article provided a good introduction for using SNSs in the FL classroom and certainly intrigued me enough to consider trying an SNSs in an ESL classroom. I’m grateful for McBride’s general considerations section which has provided numerous questions to answer before attempting to integrate an SNS into a course.

Works Cited

Baird, D.E., & Fisher, M. (2005-2006). Neomillennial user experience design strategies: Utilizing social networking media to support “always on” learning styles. Journal of Education Technology Systems, 34, 5-32.

Baxter Magolda, M.B. (2007). Self-authorship: The foundation for twenty-first-century education. In P.S. Meszaros (Ed.), Self-authorship: Advancing students’ intellectual growth (pp. 69-84). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bednar, A.K., Cunningham, D.J., Duffy, T.M., & Perry, J.D. (1992). Theory into practice: How do we link? In T.M. Duffy & D.H. Jonassen (Eds.), Constructivism and the technology of instruction: A conversation (pp. 17-34). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Boardman, M. (2004). The language of websites. London: Routledge.

boyd, d. (2007), Why youth (heart) social network site: The role of networked publics in teenage social life. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), MacArthur Foundation Series on digital learning—Youth, identity, and digital media volume. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

boyd, d.m., & Ellison, N.B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11. Retrieved November 25, 2008 from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

Burbles, N.C. (1998). Rhetorics of the Web: Hyperreading and critical literacy. In I. Snyder (Ed.), Page to screen: Taking literacy into the electronic era (pp.102-122). New York: Routledge.

de Bot, K. (2008). Introductions: Second language development as a dynamic process. Modern Language Journal, 92, 166-178.

De Pew, K. E. (2004). The body of Charlie Brown’s teacher: What instructors should know about constructing digital subjectivities. Computers and Composition, 21, 103-118.

Egbert, J. (2005). Flow as a model for CALL research. In J. Egbert & G.M. Petrie (Eds.), CALL research perspectives (pp.129-140). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Elam, C., Stratton, T., & Gibson, D.D. (2007). Welcoming a new generation to college: The millennial students. The Journal of College Admissions, 195, 20-25.

Herron, C., Dubreil, S., Cole, S.P., & Corrie, C.(2000). Using instructional video to teach culture to beginning foreign language students. CALICO Journal, 17, 395-429. Retrieved December 26, 2008, from https://calico.org/page.php?id=5

Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J.W. (2008). Personal information of adolescents on the internet: Quantitative content analysis of MySpace. Journal of Adolescence, 31, 125-146.

Jauregi, K., Canto, S., & Ros, C.(2006). La interculturalidad a traves de la videoconferencia. In Actas del XVI Congreso Internacional ASELE: La competencia pragmatic y la ensenanza del espanol como lengua extranjera (pp. 749-760). Retrieved November 28, 2008, from http://www.let.uu.nl/users/Kristi.Jauregi/personal/jauregi%20Canto%20Ros.pdf

Jones, H., & Bissoonauth-Bedford, A. (2008). Developing a bilingual blog as a platform for language learning in French: A pilot study. In Proceedings of the Second Emerging Technologies Conference (pp. 112-119) Retrieved November 28, 2008, from http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=etc08

Lam, W.S.E. (2000). L2 literacy and the design of the self: A case study of a teenager writing on the internet. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 457-482

Lampe, C., Ellison, N., & Steinfield, C. (2007, April). A familiar face(book): Profile elements as signals in an online social network. Paper presented at the CHI—On-line Representation of Self, San Jose, CA. Retrieved November 28, 2008, from https://www.msu.edu/~steinfie/CHI_manuscript.pdf

Larsen Freeman, D. (1997). Chaos/complexity science and second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 18, 141-165

Larsen Freeman, D., & Cameron, 2008. Research methodology on language development from a complex systems perspective. Modern Language Journal, 92, 200-213.

Lomicka, L.(2006). Understanding the other: Intercultural exchange and CMC. In L. Ducate & N. Arnold (Eds.), Calling on CALL: From theory and research to new directions in foreign language teaching (pp.211-236). San Marcos, TX: CALICO

McBride, K. (2008a). English web page use in an EFL setting: A contrastive rhetoric view of the development of information literacy. In U. Conner, E. Nagelhout & W. Rozycki (Eds.), Contrastive literature (pp. 21-240): Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

McBride, K. (2008b, March). Self-authoring projects: Structure, implementation and evaluation. Paper presented at the annual CALICO conference, San Francisco, Ca.

McBride, (2009) Social-Networking Sites in foreign Language Classes: Opportunities for Re-creation. The Next Generation: Social Networking and Online Collaboration in Foreign Language Learning, Editors, Lara Lomicka and Gillian Lord, CALICO Journal

McKee, H. (2002). “YOUR VIEWS SHOWED TRUE IGNOANCE!!!”: (Mis)communication in an online interracial discussion forum. Computers and Composition, 19, 411-434.

Meszaros, P.S. (2007). The journey of self-authorship: Why is it necessary? In P.S. Meszaros (Ed.), Self-authorship: Advancing students’ intellectual growth (pp.5-14). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Morkes, J., & Nielson, J. (1998). Applying writing guidelines to web pages. Retrieved November 28, 2008, from http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/rewriting.html

Muller-Hartmann, A. (2000). The role of tasks in promoting intercultural learning in electronic learning networks. Language Learning 7 Technology, 4(2), 129-147. Retrieved December 3, 2008, from http:1lt.msu.edu/vol6num1/nikolova/default.html

Murray, L., Hourigan, T., & Jeanneau, C. (2007). Blog writing integration for academic language learning purposes: Towards an assessment framework. Iberica, 14, 9-32.

O’Dowd, R. (2004). Guides on the side? Tasks and challenges for teachers in telecollaborative projects. ReCALL, 16, 5-20

Petraglia, J.(1998). The read world on a short leash: The (mis)application of constructivism to the design of educational technology. Educational Technology Research and Development, 46, 53-65.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

Richards, C. (2005). The design of effective ICT-supported learning activities: Exemplar models, changing requirements, and new possibilities. Language Learning of Technology, 9(1), 60-79. Retrieved December 13, 2008, from http://1lt.msu.edu.vol9num1/richards/default.html

Roberts, D.F., & Foehr, U.G. (2005). Generation M: Media in the lives of 8-18 years olds. Retrieved November 25, 2008, from http://www.kff.org/entmedia/7251.cfm

Sykes, J.M., Oskoz, A., Thorne, S.L. (2008). Web 2.0 synthetic immersive environments, and mobile resources for language education. CALICO Journal, 25, 528-546. Retrieved December 26, 2008, from https://calico.org/page.php?id=5

Tapscott, D.(2009). Grown up digital: How the net generation is changing your world. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Thorne, S.L. (2006). Pedagogical and praxiological lessons from internet-mediated intercultural foreign language education research. In J.A. Belz & S.L. Thorne (Eds.), Internet-mediated intercultural foreign language education (pp. 2-30). Boston: Heinle & Heinle

Thorne, S.L., & Payne, J.S. (2005). Evolutionary trajectories, internet mediated expression, and language education. CALICO Journal, 22, 371-397. Retrieved December 26, 2008, from https://calico.org/page/php?id=5
Tufekci, Z. (2008). Grooming, gossip, Facebook and MySpace. Information, Communication, and Society, 11, 544-564.

Vie, S. (2007). Engaging others in online social networking sites: Rhetorical practices in MySpace and Facebook. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Ware, 2005

Ware, P.D., & Kramsch, C. (2005). Toward an intercultural stance: Teaching German and English through telecollaboration. Modern Language Journal, 89, 190-205.

  Researcher/instructors used both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze data gathered in this case study including weblog entries, pre and post test questionnaires, and summative student projects.

Setting/participants
   The research was conducted as part of a full-scholarship, 5-week information sciences and technology enrichment camp program in Pennsylvania during the summer of 2005.  The 14 high school student participants (11 boys, 3 girls) were from various regions across Pennsylvania.

   The outline of the of the program was geared toward seeing how teenagers explore possible selves in MMOGs and what they might learn about identity, culture, stereotypes and prejudice in and from these virtual worlds. The learning goals, as part of the design of the course, were to expand understanding and definitions of diversity as well as give the participants an opportunity to develop user interface design skills that reflect expanded awareness.
Tasks
   Participants utilized MMOGs as identity exploration “virtual playgrounds” and the results of gameplay as touchstones for related topics. In-game tasks involved two virtual environments researchers refer to as MMOGs: There from Makena Technologies and Second Life from Linden Labs. These games were chosen for low cost, a shallow learning curve, flexibility in avatar customization and a high degree of socialization.
   Participants met for three hours per session of daily researcher/instructor facilitated in-game activities as well as for face-to-face discussions, to fill out questionnaires, write weblog entries and complete final projects. Student participants were given pre and post open-ended questionnaires with a five-point Likert scale to measure the participant’s awareness of cultural diversity issues. In weblog entries, students were asked to identify three key words to describe their current view of themselves, give a description of their cultural backgrounds, and describe what their high schools were like and current understanding of culture.

   Finally, student participants were asked to design a technology (website, video and/or game) to address a particular need of an audience member that was different from the student in age, national origin or another respect. Students demonstrated what they had learned through these final projects whose primary goal was to synthesize what students had learned.  

Outcomes  
 Awareness of Diversity
   When student participants started the program they had a limited notion of diversity based only on racial demographics which, by the end of the course, grew to encompass less essentialist and more complex, nuanced definitions. Several students changed their opinions on the perceived lack of diversity in their own high schools including notions of diversity other than referring only to racial demographics.
Experiential Learning in MMOGs
   The results of an in-game gender bending activity, whereby the students were asked to interact with others using an avatar of a different gender from their real-life gender, included the results from participant boys who observed more, “incidences of courtesy, flirtation, and in some cases, sexism.”  (p.3)  Students learned to “think beyond themselves in an experiential way” and understand that “discrimination and preferential treatment” and emphasizing social perceptions over merit, happens in virtual worlds. (p.4)  While figuring out how to negotiate gender, cultural, and digital divide issues so that they can build technologies for others, students learned not only about diversity, but also about user-centered design principles demonstrated in their final projects.

Assessments of Student Learning and Student Motivation
   The researchers found, through the results of the post test, that learning took place while the students showed significant pre-post gains on using a repeated measures two-tailed t-test.  All but one student had an increased score.
   In terms of motivation, the researchers report that students were “highly enthusiastic about using MMOGs in general” saying they were “fun, engaging…amazing learning tools” with “the potential to teach many things.”
    The following results were noted from a post-course evaluation on a Likert-type scale: The mean student rating for “MMOGs are fun” was 4.1 (SD=0.73) while “useful for educational purposes” was 3.71 (SD=0.579) and “useful for exploring culture” was 3.79 (SD=0.469).
   Open-ended questionnaires signified student participants found MMOGs captivating and made comments about enjoying “exploration”, “discovery” and learning things in a “firsthand” way in an interactive environment.
Implications
   The authors then suggest that their findings, involving exploration of possible selves, fit with those found by Shaffer (2005) who suggests that games can be created to help people think like doctors, lawyers, etc.  and identity formation happens when individuals participate in a community of practice (Wenger 1998; Lave and Wenger 1991).
In conclusion, MMOGs provide safe, fruitful spaces for learners to explore identities while permitting them to design an identity as an essential part of maintaining student engagement.
Reaction
  I found I was curious and wanted to know more about the following:
1. What were the items on the Likert scale?  2. Did the ratio of boys to girls (11:3) reflect any noteworthy challenges when generalizing the results of the gender bending activity?  3. If this research were replicated in an ESL/EFL environment, would the outcomes be similar/the same?  4. Why do the researchers implicitly categorize Second Life as an MMOG?  
   Overall, this piece made me consider, not just possibly trying  MMOGs in my ESL classroom, but how tabletop RPGs might be useful for discussing prejudices, stereotypes and diversity.

Article adapted in part from Joey J. Lee and Christopher Hoadley’s presentation “Online identity as a leverage point for learning in massively multiplayer online games (MMORPGs),” delivered at the 6th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT06).]

Schneider and von der Emde discuss the value and opportunity for FL students to attain more developed intercultural competence out of communicating with NSs of the language they are studying. Furthermore, the authors suggest that communicative language teaching (CLT) does not provide an expansive enough paradigm within which to develop intercultural competence and thus propose expanding the European model of intercultural learning into a dialogic model based on Russian literary theorist and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. 

     The authors find fault with the limitations of CLT as proponents Savignon and Sysoyev (2002, p.513) have defined its use for intercultural communication, including “redirecting a discussion to a more neutral topic” and concealment of personal opinions to circumvent potential disagreement. The authors state that in such cases whereby a student must censor his/her ideas would undermine the whole project of intercultural competence and instead be teaching the students how to view conflict as unwanted and socially unsuitable. The authors even go so far as to suggest that a result of the use of such socio-cultural  strategies would decrease the number of communicative styles and be reduced to what David Block calls, “McCommunication”. (Block, 2002, p.120)

     Rather than decreasing the number of communicative styles to “McCommunication”, Schnieder and von der Emde suggest utilizing the European IC model since it provides improvements, such as helping students to tolerate more conflict, over the CLT model suggested by Savignon and Sysoyev. The European IC model is focused on students cultivating “intercultural attitudes,” like “curiosity and openness” with regard to the views of others and the capacity to stand back from “one’s own values, beliefs, and behaviors” (Byram, Nicols, and Stevens 2001, p.5) This version of IC requires that  intercultural speakers depend on abilities–encompassing the know-how to glean “knowledge about the other culture and interpret documents, utterances and events”–rather than just the skills for encoding and decoding messages. (Schnieder, von der Emde, p.5)

     The authors suggest that their particular project is an expansion of the European IC model whereby they are, “making more explicit what [they] see as its dialogic foundation.” (Schnieder, von der Emde, p.5) Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue puts forth the idea that language is not “unitary, conflict and struggle are inevitable features of dialogue” (Schnieder, von der Emde, page 6)

 This idea of dialogue requires at least two interlocutors who both shape, and are shaped by utterances that are open to interpretation.  The authors suggest that the most important aspect of dialogue is that it allows for contrast and diversity in opinion and does not necessarily seek common ground, synthesize, or arrive at a final understanding.

Purpose/Overarching Efforts  

     Through the Schnieder and von der Emde project of expanding the intercultural competence model he authors discuss their intention to continue the interdisciplinary MLA-SLA dialogue as they see it. As such, their first point is to discuss some conceptual differences between dialogic and communicative approaches to online interactions and explain to what extent conflict is a valuable feature.  Secondly, the authors express the desire to expand the conceptual tools that researchers and teachers in the United States have for conducting and assessing intercultural communication by engaging with the important work on intercultural learning being conducted in Europe.

Proposal

     Schneider and von der Emde take on the [challenge]  put forth by Kramsch for foreign language (FL) education to embrace conflict instead of trying to reach consensus by creating space(s) where FL students could explore conflicts(s) as they arise follwed by analysis and reflection afterword. (1995)  The authors suggest that when conflict arises in online collaborations between NS and language learners, rather than avoiding these conflicts, the conflict can serve as a source for intercultural learning through a dialogic model rather than an obstacle inhibiting communication. 

Participants

     The online student exchange was an integral part of two different courses. At the University of Münster in Germany, the advanced students of applied linguistics and English were enrolled in a proseminar online language learning class. One the other side of the Atlantic, students studying fifth semester German were enrolled in a German Culture and Media class. As part of the first course mentioned was a course to explore a particular understandings of technology in FL teaching while the second was primarily focused on media.

     During the fall semester of 2003, the participants, fourteen from Vassar College in New York (eight women and six men) ranged from freshman to seniors whereas the eleven students from the University of Münster in Germany, the advanced students of applied linguistics and English (eight women and three men). The Münster students were a little older and had a slightly higher proficiency level in their L2 than the Vassar students.

Technology Tools/Methods

     According to Schnieder and von der Emde, the exchange took place in Vassar’s bilingual German-English MOO named MOOssiggang which is an open-source, web-based learning environment that includes chat functions and asynchronous forms of writing in a multimedia setting. (page 8)  The researchers used qualitative analysis of online discussion transcripts, F2F class discussions and student postings gathered during the  MOO collaboration.

     The topic of the exchange was an intercultural analysis of two school shootings:  Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado in April 1999 and the second at Johannes Gutenberg Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany, in April 2002. 

Phase 1

     Students in groups of two to three from each university met two times a week for an hour. In these working groups the students discussed news reports, documentary films and their own research.  Students were asked to alternate between their native and target languages with each discussion. 

     Despite the similarity in terms of acts of violence of the two shootings, the exchange caused students to sometimes fix on significant contrasts that characterized the two events in terms of types of victims, agenda of attackers, kinds of media coverage and documentaries of the events.

     Schnieder and von der Emde suggest that the materials influenced the students to reply just as robustly to the events in their own culture as much as in the culture they were studying since the results of both shootings brought up essential questions about culturally particular ingredients possibly leading up to the events.

Conflict #1

     As a response to Michael Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine, impassioned discourse unfolded in every group focused on the proposition that gun laws in the United States might originate or feed into violence. One notable outcome from this part of the exchange was best put by one student expressing the idea that discovering the underlying “reasons for the focus of their discussion rather than expecting conclusions from it may be more valuable for understanding…”

Conflict #2

     Following a number of conversations about gun laws, the groups watched  the German TV report about Erfort.  In the discussion that followed, the Vassar students, while bypassing opportunities to rationalize or show support for American culture, challenged the Munster students’ literal reading of Bowling for Columbine. The Vassar students distanced themselves from being associated with heroic cowboy motifs and the “manifest destiny” myth, thus providing their German counterparts with a cultural understanding that certainly the U.S. contains some self-discerning, even self-disparaging, discourses.

     The authors note that even while students, “need to especially know how to ask people from other cultures about their beliefs, values and behaviors; these can be difficult to explain because they are often unconscious” (Byram, 2001) The students in these exchanges demonstrates a willingness to persist in the search for new understanding and sit with tensions while avoiding a breakdown in communication.

Phase 2: Project work/Student project Rooms

     After extensive discussion of these texts, and four weeks, students then participated in project groups consisting of the members from their own university.  The five intercultural groups were divided into ten subgroups consisting only of members from each university. The students were asked to document the results of their dialogues, analyze the outcomes and arranged the dialogues into linked rooms in the MOO.  Rather than the students finding “common ground” in dialogues, they primarily organized the information into rooms describing all the contrasting views on the different topics. These project rooms were interactive and provided spaces where the students demonstrated what they had learned about the target culture or used it to focus a severe eye on their own culture.

Phase 3/ Self reflection

     The five intercultural groups from phase 1 reformed at the end of the exchange to discuss their projects and assess their intercultural learning.

     Students were asked to summarize their discussions and phases of the projects and then, during class time, students reported and focused together on “insights they were gaining as well as obstacles and disagreements they confronted.  In other words, all the Vassar and Münster students met as groups and observed contrasts among themselves which delineated

ideas of culture that could have been constructed along a German/American lines.

     The students were assigned two texts on intercultural learning, one at the beginning and one at the end. Two of the texts assigned were Developing the Intercultural Dimension in Language (Byram, Gribkova, and Starkey 2002) and Foreign Language Learning as Global Communicative Practice (Kramsch and Thorne 2002) By assigning these readings, the students were provided, “conceptual tools and vocabulary for analyzing the intricacies of communicating with their partners and thus completing the reflecting assignments.” (Schnieder, von der Emde, p.22)

Conclusions and implications 

     While this approach to online exchanges demand substantial risks it also may provide the opportunities for students to glean intercultural competence rewards in helping them engage and appreciate conflicts opportunities for learning. To be successful, these online exchanges must utilize coherent, focused content with the capacity bring up aspects of cultural contrast.

Reactions

     While I almost always find student exchanges focused on “dealing with” conflict fascinating, I was not too surprised by the findings of Schneider and von der Emde.  Although obviously not all aspects of this project are applicable to the ESL classroom, I discovered an interest in better understanding Bakhtin’s ideas and so began reading his text, The Dialogic Imagination.

     I have observed in my ESL classroom, that some students seem to certainly conceal opinions in an effort to avoid conflict, so perhaps one answer would be to experiment with Bakhtin’s idea of dialogue.   One type of dialogue I do use in the classroom is similar to Bakhtin’s dialogue in the sense that the expectations or purpose of the seminar is not based on arriving at  to mutual understanding. Students are asked to read or regard a text and then come to class with questions about the text. The focus is on exploring and/or investigating. Students are encouraged to both “sit with” opposing or differing viewpoints.

Works Cited

Block, David. 2002. “McCommunication”: A Problem in the Frame for SLA. In Globalization and Language teaching, edited by David Block and Deborah Cameron, 117-133. London/New York:  Routledge

Byram, Michael, Adam Nichols, and David Stevens, eds. 2001 Developing The Intercultural Dimensions in Language Teaching. Strasbourg:  Council of Europe.

Byram Michael, Bella Gribkova, and Hugh Starkey. 2002. Developing the Intercultural Dimension in Language Teaching. Strasbourg:  Council of Europe

Kramsch, Claire.1995. Embracing Conflict versus Achieving Consensus in Foreign Language Education. ADFL Bulletin 26(3): 6-12.

Kramsch, Claire, and Steven L.Thorne. 2002. Foreign Language Learning as Global Communicative Practice. In Language Learning and Teaching in the Age of Globalization,  edited by David Block and Deborah Cameron, 83-100. London/New York:  Routledge

Savignon Sandra J., and Pavel V.Sysoyev. 2002. Sociocultural Strategies for a Dialogue of Cultures. Modern Language Journal 86(4):  508-524

In his first article of two, in which he coined the buzzword “digital natives,” Prensky talks about a radical change in the learning styles of today’s students. As they grew up using digital technology, he states that they think and process information in a fundamentally different way. He argues that the brains (presumably) even changed physically. While he, unfortunately, does not provide evidence for this in the first of the two articles, he still manages to raise interesting questions. He claims that students, growing up using digital media, are “fluent native speakers” of this language. He also argues that this could account for the poor performance of many students on school nowadays, as the curriculum and the teaching methods are created and classes are taught by “digital immigrants”, i.e. people who are not as “fluent” in the digital language. He continues his article by making an argument for the use of video games in the classroom. Even though he does he provide evidence for his claims his article is quoted by several scholars in the field of computer-mediated learning.

Bennett, S., Maton, K., & Kevin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5), 775-786.

After Prensky proclaimed the fundamental need for pedagogical changes in his often cited article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” without providing much scientific evidence, Bennett et al. decided to review the digital natives debate from a critical point of view. Their main argument is that Prensky, as well as other authors tend to over generalize. In addition, the proponents of the digital natives debate also spark an “academic moral panic”. Bennett et al. provide various evidence, including studies that prove not all members of the “net generation” are equally tech savvy. Moreover, the authors also provide arguments against a fundamental change in education as there is not enough scientific proof yet which justifies those drastic changes. Finally, in their conclusion, the authors ask for more research, as well as they warn against overgeneralization. Perhaps not all students are as tech-savvy as we sometimes assume them to be…

Johnson reminds us that a primary use for using complexity theory as a metaphor is to get away from the “idea of learning as a simple cause and effect process”. (73) Johnson explains principles of dynamic systems theory while first referring to the significance of the theory and popular works that introduced the theory from Gleick (1997)  and Waldrop (1992) as well as how the it was first related to applied linguistics (Larson-Freeman 1997a, 2002). Johnson couches his own argument in a framework borrowed from Larson-Freeman (1997a) that relates interactions and learning in a CMC environment to the basic features of dynamic systems theory in order to answer his primary question, when looking at the data, “[w]hat restructuring of interaction patterns and outcomes emerge in the posting of a group of learners as they come together and interact in a specific context?” (80) The author adds a reference to van Lier’s idea of affordances and how CMC might provide various affordances for the learner.

Johnson spends significant, and necessary, time in his paper explaining the features of dynamic systems theory with such as descriptors as: dynamic, complex, nonlinear, chaotic, unpredictable, sensitive to initial conditions, open, self-organizing, feedback-sensitive, adaptive, containing strange attractors and fractal shapes. 

Through the lens of dynamic systems theory Johnson presents the data at micro and macro levels.  At the micro level, he looks at details of how interactions are operating to create new knowledge or understandings whereas at the macro level the focus is on general ways the system organizes itself over time. Johnson considers the number of contributions, from participates, over time while then looking at micro level interactions at different points to analyze and gauge activity.

In the first set of data from class one, a single post triggers a series of postings in which students share personal anecdotes and co-create a notion of the term tacit. Johnson notes that the pattern of these postings compose the nature of this interaction, and that the interaction happens in a “specifically nonlinear and unpredictable way.” (83) Here, Johnson suggests the notions of nonlinearity and unpredictability are both characteristics of the class discourse and dynamic systems theory where “there are sudden changes in the interaction” both in breadth and extent. (83)  An affordance is derived from the various “perspectives, experiences, and understandings” that the participant brings to the learning environment. The nature of these sudden changes reflect unpredictability like that described by the dynamic systems theory and I agree with Johnson’s premise that through online spaces, learners can  interact and explore differences that could become opportunities for learning. As the author notes, these differences can become opportunities and potential teaching moments similar to the “resistance and turbulence” of a dynamic system. (84

 Looking at the data from the class 2 postings, Johnson notes that prior to week 12, postings had severely dropped off.  When this cycle is broken, the student’s posts reflect disappointment with the “lack of activity and progress within the group”.  Even the instructor expresses frustration.  More postings show a possible “breakdown in communication and collaboration.” Johnson interprets this “confusion” as a move “toward the turbulent edge of chaos” where the system may “breakdown.” Yet instead of breakdown, the author suggests, and I agree, the system “self-corrects” and “re-organizes” itself just as dynamic systems theory might suggest. (86)

Despite the fact I’m certainly no scholar of physics, as a former literature and creative writing student I can appreciate Johnson’s use of dynamic systems theory as an extended metaphor for the activities supported by the use of a CM learning environment.  Although others from the field have employed dynamic systems theory as a metaphor, perhaps more fully, I’m uneasy with at least one tenuous aspect of Johnson’s analogy.

Johnson compares his line graphs with “attractors or paths” that do not fully portray a fractal in a dynamic system. (78-79) As I understand complexity theory, there are no simple lines in nature.  Where are the twists and turns of infinite fractal detail?  Where is the fractal similarity?  Perhaps if the simple line were extended through time, it might create a pattern we could recognize as a fractal and a reflection of complexity theory.  Johnson suggests that, “the notions of stability, instability, open-system, and chaos match to a great degree the fluctuations of creativity and interaction within a classroom and CMC environment,” yet as I see most of his areas of analogy clearly, I’m unconvinced that these characteristics create a full coherent analogy to dynamic systems theory. (79)