UABC VII Encuentro Centros de Autoacceso in Mexicali

[Leigh Thelmadatter]

Greetings from Mexicali. Not liveblogging but Ill do the best I can. Im here in Mexicali, (remembering all I forgot about desert life - used to live in southern Arizona once upon a time) at the self access center conference here. Fair amount of technology focused workshops... sometimes they forget the self access center part! ja ja ja got nice idea about using wordpress for online, electronic portfolios. Need to include that in one of my upcoming workshops at my school. Im on break but Ill be back later on today with more.

[Leigh Thelmadatter]

one of the biggest surprises I learned at the conference was the SEP required the public unis to install SAC's as early as the early 90's As far as as the public prepas and lower... I dont know. You are right that UDLA-Puebla has a SAC, which I visited last year. They too have had it since the early 90's

I read with sadness but not surprise that Enciclomedia failed big time. It is such a common story... school put in tons of money on equipment because it is impressive (both to them and prospective students) but nothing in training, because that really is the hard and less-glamorous part. Much easier to believe the crap that vendors (and sometimes researchers) say.

SAC's can and SHOULD start small. The one I started at ITESM Campus Toluca is one room with CD players and some computers and paper-based materials. No specialized equipment. My focus as director was integrating its use into the curriculum. At Campus CCM, I am doing somethign similar.. but with a "virtual laboratory" (See the ITESM Group page for the outlines of our lastest workshops. Now available free online are resources you have to pay big bucks from from publishers. Just need to put in a little time finding and evaluating them. With these resources, our students dont need a specialized SAC but I am pushing for one anyway Much of task-based learning requires (short) compositions for proper evaluation so a support mechanism is really needed. Im hoping to integrate a SAC and the writing center someday.
ROSA EMILIA PINEDA VELASCO said:

Wow!!! This is such an interesting topic !!! I wonder if SEP in Mexico will allow to install at least one of these SAC´s. I guess it would be a great progress if they would. I understand that Enciclomedia is a kind of program that SEP has installed in some schools, however neither teachers nor materials involved are being used in the way they should. The reason is simple: not all of the teachers are prepared to use Enciclomedia. It´s a pity to have an "interactive" whiteboard installed in a school and neither teachers nor students (who are able to use it) could even turn it on. This happens in Morelia in one of the most prestigious universities. Other elementary schools have 1 or 2 interactive whiteboards but students have become so disenchanted because they have never seen how it works. Sometimes, these young students are not allowed to play football because "they are noisy".
I ´ve heard that a private University in Puebla has a SAC but I have not been able to know it. I wonder if the Politècnico or UNAM have one, I ´m sure they do, but I guess it must be like a "language laboratotry" a kind of place where you can listen to a kind of authentic material and repeat the best you can to acquire the language you´re learning.
I know that some other schools have a SAC (if the term can be used as it is) where students answer or do different activities related to listening, grammar, use of english, and some writing. Once they´ve finished their tasks, they cut and paste their results and send it by email to their teachers. These students have a personal number or code to access their group at their school web site.
Having a SAC would be a wonderful idea. I´ve read something about N. Negroponte and his OLPC program (one laptop per child program) and I wonder where those 50,000 laptops assigned to Mexico are !!! I invited two elementary students to find out if there was a program like that (one is 9 years old and the other is 7, respectively) The youngest shouted: Oh! We´re going to investigate in the computer !!! I love that homework!!! Technology arrived yesterday... When are we going to start as teachers??? It´s a pity that not only some interests but ignorance could be stronger than our compromise to get updated and be prepared to work with technology and avid students who want to learn.
I wonder what would be necessary to install a SAC?? even a small one ??

[Leticia]

Self access centers sound interesting, but even though Mexico is the only country that has a conference on self access I do not see that many schools are making use of them. The first time I visited a SAC in Mexico was 10 years ago in the university of Guanajuato and I found very interesting things .Unfortunatelly, many students, in Mexico do not like the idea of being more independent.

[Leigh Thelmadatter]

Leticia... you unfortunately have a point about students not wanting to be more independent. I think the educational culture here (and Ill be honest, in the States too to a large degree) fosters teacher dependence. Students grow up believing that the teacher will make sure that they learn. Being more autonomous means being responsible for your own learning. See the thread I have on Student Beliefs. It has a link to a research article (in Spanish) by UNAM's self access center. It pretty much backs up what we are saying here.

However, there is a problem with this belief... its wrong. Learing a foreign language is not like learning history. It is a skill, much like learnig to play a guitar. The best music teacher cannot creat a good guitar player. The student must put in time practicing that guitar and be responsible for that practice. Unfortunately, because we are in a traditional academic environment, we treat foreign language much like any other subject. But it doesnt work. ITESM is now making it mandatory that students get 550 on the institutional TOEFL to graduate. With only 3-5 hours a week in a given English class (assuming that students are paying attention the whole time ja ja ja ) there is just simply no way a student can reach an advanced level like that. Surveys of sucessful language students show the same thing... these students worked on their own to get to the level they were at. This was true even in so-called immersion programs (French/English) in Canada.

If a self access center is implemented and supported correctly, it can serve as a bridge between what students (and unfortunately many teachers/administrators) believe (teacher-centered presentations) and what really works (practice, practice practice with the language in as real a context as possible). It will happen. The question only is when.

[Mariana Macouzet Ramírez]

Hello!
There is a SAC at the Universidad Latina de América, here in Morelia, Michoacán. When I studied high-school there, we used to dedicate like two hours a week to practice our English in the SAC. This was apart from our regular hours of English class. The SAC was small and, like the one in UABC, no to fancy, but it was quite useful, practical and fun! I used to enjoy having conversations in English (or any other language, of course) with exchange students, playing board or computer games, watching movies I liked, reading books and magazines, etc. The difference between the SACs you are describing and this one is that, although we did love going, we also had to fill in some forms to report what we had been doing there. I would love to have a SAC in every mexican university! That would be a great honour!

Leigh Thelmadatter said:

Heres some fotos of UABC's self access facilities. Nothing fancy, but quite functional.

[Mariana Macouzet Ramírez]

I agree with you Frank, not only the way we teach should be changing, but also WHAT we teach.

Frank said:

This is all very interesting. I am also interested in understanding more about publishers in the front lines addressing technology... as many inquiry- and project- based school programs that cater to developing 21st century skills have pretty much canned using structured course books ... which is a huge revenue stream for publishers. Francisco Lozano works for Heinle/Tompson and am not sure how to read their stand on all this. If they want to really be behind technology, they need to modernized their programs as well. With so much authentic material available to 21st century learning already on the Web, I don't clearly see a traditional publisher's role in emerging school programs. I really didn't think that Lozano's keynote at MEXTESOL addressed technology and immersive learning environments ... even though the plenary was about technology. These publishers do have a wealth of resources, including research, authors, editorial staffs that could reinvent themselves to help lead in the area .. more than just interactive whiteboards. I find a lot of the stuff that publishers have on the Web as too schooly and still tied to traditional teaching and learning. We shouldn't use new tools in old ways. But rather we should use them in 21st century ways.

Since you are talking about Wordpress, perhaps your mind has shifted about the death of the blog? People use blogs as a personal reflection tool, which is perfect for portfolios as well. Blogs aren't meant to be collaborative tools, but more a network of connected journals that create a networked "node" identity, sort of cross fertilization rather than collaboration. For that we have wikis and social networks and such.

Self-access needs to be address more here in Mexico .. and I am happy to see that Mexico in stepping up to the plate by hosting peer gatherings to further the cause.

Remember from my MEXTESOL preso, that the NCTE guidelines for 21st century skills look like this:

Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

There isn't much above that ties to sitting at desks in straight rows cracking a coursebook with a teacher-fronted class. And the NCTE are English teachers, not content-based subjects such as History or Math (although the NCTE guidelines would fit there too).

[Patricia Alvarado Portillo]

First of all, thanks Leigh for the great job describing the "Encuentro".
I had a close experience with a SAC at Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo. It was like 4 years ago. I was trying to learn French and in order to pass the course it was mandatory for the students of the 1st semester to spend like 4 hours a week in the SAC. The place is really nice, but unfortunately you have to pay (and it is expensive) if you want to use it. So, I passed the first course. In the second one it wasn´t mandatory to use the SAC, but anyway if you would like to, you must pay another amount for that service. Of course, as a poor student I quit it.

What I want to stress is that, most of the students in Mexico don´t like to study by themselves because all the things mentioned here, but those that want to (like me) and do not have the money to pay for that service have to quit it, and for me that is unfair.
T

[Leigh Thelmadatter]

I hope to avoid having my school charge students who are already matriculated to use the SAC. At first, I dont think that will be a problem as our focus now is getting TOEFL scores up and getting students using the facility. Eventually, I would like to see something that could generate money... such as "classes" that are partially or fully based on working in the SAC. For example, a TOEFL prep course could be done this way. Students must spend X hours in the SAC working with X materials. For those who want some traditional classroom interaction, a certain number of these could be arrainged. Between those, you still have me for immediate help.

For students who have already made the target score of 550 but still need an English class (these tend to be good students anyway) a SAC option might be to their liking, as these students tend to be bored in traditional F2F environments as upper level classes tend to be mostly review. We would still charge for the class but class time would be spent in the SAC working through a set of assignments and projects.

I worked for a short time at Pima Community College in Tucson and they had an interesting setup for teaching writing. It was self access in the sense that student has a set course of assignments to complete more-or-less at their own pace. There were few to no traditional lecture classes. There was a teacher at the front of the room for the big questions and a panel of tutors on the side for the more routine questions, like grammar and punctuation. With or without technology, I dont see why something like that could not work. You have at least a certain amount of student autonomy but at the same time, students are entirely by themselves either.

[Melissa]

Leigh Thelmadatter said:

I worked for a short time at Pima Community College in Tucson and they had an interesting setup for teaching writing. It was self access in the sense that student has a set course of assignments to complete more-or-less at their own pace. There were few to no traditional lecture classes. There was a teacher at the front of the room for the big questions and a panel of tutors on the side for the more routine questions, like grammar and punctuation. With or without technology, I dont see why something like that could not work. You have at least a certain amount of student autonomy but at the same time, students are entirely by themselves either.


Leigh, the University of Iowa had/has a writting lab like that. But it was by referal. I aparently could write as no professor ever refered me to the lab. I had forgotten about that system, but I think that might be a good idea for leading Mexican students to self access. Students with an exam result of less than a certain mark are reffered to the SAC? Even lower scores might get a "required" SAC time or some sort of probation system, you if your mark is below X you have to do so many hours in the SAC. The key would be them getting a higher mark on the next evaluation and seeing how the SAC time contributed to their improved performance.

[Leigh Thelmadatter]

Even better was that Pima's system wasnt necesarily remedial, for-credit classes were taught this way. No reason why such a model couldnt be applied to general ESL classes and would allow for more intensive reading and listening. It just wouldnt work well for speaking, not that students get a lot of this anyways.

[Karen Alí Otero Martínez]

Hi, everybody!!!

Well nowadays it´s important use technology inside the classroom, I think Mexico wants to achieve a new step talking about education. As teachers or students we need to promote and share new tools in order to get more participation inside the classroom. Internet it´s cool now because if you are talking about Russia you can go to the NET and get information, pictures and videos. In this case they´re are talking about workshops but for me it´s better mencionated education and try to show how to combine school, technology and electronic portfolios, that help any student to develop the 4 Skills.

Also it´s interesting and very valuable that miss Leight share with us this topic because she has lots of experience working and can see that she is always trying to have the latest in education that´s good.

[javier cervantes perez]

To tell you the truth all this about SAC is really new to me, I have never heard about it before. But guess what? I found it very interested since these are centers created to develop independent learning, which I heard the majority of the students don't like, but that is obviously understanding. Here in Mexico we always have difficulties to adapt to changes and more when it comes to money and to more technology and that is understanding as well, as we all know this economic recession had hit globaly, but anyway in Mexico this inadaptation has been here since I can remember. I congratulate those folks out there that are working on this, so one day in Mexico not only private schools take advantage of this but also public schools where it is really needed. It is very sad what happenned to this girl studying French at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo, that she had to pay for the service. I suppose we all should (students and teachers) urge our mexican government to really work on this because it is the future and it is in our own behalf.

[Semiramís Soto Rico]

As Rosa Emilia & Leigh….said is very sad to realize that our Mexican culture…is not quite ready to this kind of learning. I think that the idea of Leigh is great, because is an “interdependent or semiautonomous” learning….I wish him success with his SAC!
Also is incredible to know that here in México we have so many SACs!!! Again the misinformation… I really would like to visit the one that is in Universidad del Caribe in Cancun..Seems very well equipped. …Well I would like to visit one.
I also agree with Frank we need to use new tools in 21st century ways…but I also think that is little by little…we have a all background behind, but we have to open our minds to the fast Global changes…Every second the technology is giving huge steps in our lives.