Tour Builder Project is Over!

A month ago I set off on a journey in project-based learning. I chose Tour Builder as a starting point, as I see it now, quite on a whim. But I stuck to it and tried to get as much experience from it as possible.
In this post I'm going to describe the process of working on it , what I learnt and where I failed.
 I'm going to briefly describe the stages and draw some conclusions in the end.

To be honest, when I started with my own tour and a tutorial I didn't see where it was going. Ok, I had some ideas, which I posted here, but nothing was thought through (bad teacher!).  At first, I thought Ss will just make their own projects. But the logic of project based learning demanded some feedback and collaboration. That's how steps 5 and 6 were born. All the time I was curious to know what my students think of the project and, of course, I asked them for little feedback in the end (step 7)

Aim: To engage students in project work through digital storytelling
Level: Intermediate
What students need: access to Internet and personal computers
Time: class time was devoted to instructions and clarifications. Ss worked mostly at home. With reasonable deadlines for the assignments it took about a month.

Step 1. Introduction
On the first lesson this year I shared with my students that I would like them to be more autonomous learners this year. We discussed different ways to become one and I brought up project work. They seemed excited and experienced having done it in school work.

Step 2. Example
I created my own tour, shared it with them and asked simple comprehension questions such as

1.When did I go to Belgrade?

2.How did I get to Montenegro?

3.Who did I hang out with in Nurma?

This familiarized them with the tool and showed what kind of information it can include. Then we discussed answers in class and I explained that I would like them to do a similar project about their summer.


Step 3. Theory
I asked Ss to watch the video tutorial on how to make a tour and again asked them to answer some questions.

We discussed it the next lesson and I tried to ensure they understand the mechanics of the web tool.

Step 4. Creation of the tour.
I gave my students a week to create a tour about their summer. It had some formal requirements such as

1. There should be at least 10 slides
2. There should be at least 1 picture for a slide (doesn't have to be a personal picture)
3. There should be at least 4 sentences in English (don't forget to use Past Tenses)

example of student's tour

I wrote a detailed feedback to each work. That included both my impressions and language correction.

example of feedback

Step 5. Peer feedback.
Each student randomly got a project of their peer and had to write their feedback. I asked them to include a summary of the summer and also their personal impressions.

example of peer feedback

After I got the writings back, I checked them and located some common mistakes. I compiled a list of incorrect sentences (anonymous) and gave it to my Ss for correction.

Step 6. Creation of a collaborative map.

The final task came out quite spontaneously by me asking : What else can they do with it preferably together? Their task was to create the class' tour of the summer, put it together and present it to me. Again there were some formal requirements such as

• You tour should include 2 locations from every person in the class.
• Each slide should have at least one photo and 4 sentences of description.
• The places should be coordinated according to time scale.

To help my Ss with group work I devised four roles - two people for one role - and we assigned them in the class. The roles in the group were:

The web-designers. People who will put everything together using his/her gmail account.

The time-masters. People who will time-coordinate all of the locations.

The editors. People who will check and edit all of the sentences.

The gatherers. People who will gather information from everyone.

I mentioned that the preferred language of communication was English. However, I didn't intend to force it or control it in any way. In the end, 3 out of 8 students admitted using English in their written communication (which made me happy).
By this point I decided to let go of the control and make them take more responsibility of their work. It didn't turn out ideally but I think it was necessary at this point: group work implies collaboration between students not always through the teacher.

screenshot of the group project

Step 7. Reflection
In the end, I asked my students to answer couple of questions. I was dying to know what they think of it and whether they feel it helped their English. Everyone agreed that it was useful but couldn't really specify how. These are some examples:

What I would  change

• I would try to make the final presentation on a digital device during class time. I think it will make the end of the project more accentuated. As well as being an excellent opportunity for Ss to practice public speaking, it automatically makes their personal stories more interactive as they can engage in genuine discussion.
• Grading. This aspect is definitely not a strong point of this project. I tried to avoid rigid 2 to 5 system and introduced rubrics. For every stage of the project students could get 10 points and overall there were 4 stages. In the end I converted the final score into percent. Still I questioned whether the grades were appropriate.
• The group work didn't go as smoothly as I hoped. There were definitely some problems in communication during step 6. Some people got more done than others, there were some mistakes and bugs and it wasn't clear who was responsible for them. I'm still asking myself if I could have foreseen and prevented those, but I also understand that sometimes group dynamics is difficult to predict and you have to lay some responsibility on students' shoulders. I made sure to discuss the specifics of group work with my students and some of them seem to agree with me.
• Grammar activities. I was surprised to see quite a few grammar mistakes in my students' projects. Most of them had to do with past tenses which could have been avoided for they are strong Intermediate students. If I did it again, I would include short preparatory activity that focuses on Past Tenses and their use. At this point, it would also made sense to revise the idea of proofreading.
• Couple of weeks in the project I started feeling that my Ss are doing something completely useless, something that will not be of any relevance to their lives. I still think it is partly true. In the future, I will try to carefully select the tasks to match Ss reality. Nonetheless, a week after the end of the project I see it differently. I see that students shared their stories through the medium of digital web tools, they tried working in groups and hopefully understood something about collaborative work.

Despite these concerns, I'm happy I stuck to it. It taught me the whole lot about projects, teaching, google maps and my students.

I would be glad to hear any feedback and suggestions from experienced PBL educators!

Ideas for using Tour Builder

This summer I got lots of free time and I finally caught up with my "teaching english" blogroll. Having found, no doubt, plenty of useful tips, I moved on to my "technology" roll. And here I discovered a brand new world :) The most relevant blog was Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers that reviews and publishes updates on many useful class apps, gadgets and programmes. Now that I have time before school, I'm spending hours exploring websites, creating projects and generally playing around with different web-tools.
Here is one that caught my attention: Google Maps Tour Builder. First of all, Richard has written two very useful posts here and here with educational how-to video, and I recommend everyone to read it and watch it. On my part, I've been thinking how I can use it in an esl classroom and came up with couple of ideas.

Why can it work:

• it's relatively easy to create
• it incorporates pictures, text and maps
• it can take a form of a lenghty project or light homework

Uses for the classroom:

Here are couple of ideas I sketched out.

1) How I spent my summer.
Instead of asking questions on the first lesson after summer break, ask your ss to prepare a presentation of their summer that can include pictures and comments from them.
Here is the example I have created about my summer.
2) How I spent my year.
A variation of the previous idea. Ss need to create a map of all the places they visited during the year. Good as end-of-the-year activity.
3) Story of my life. The logical continuation of  the previous two. Ss need to show all of the places they have visited starting from the place they were born in. Good for teenagers as they don't usually travel as much during the year.
4) Tour of your street. If you have a lesson on home, streets or local sights, you can incorporate this project in the lesson.  Ss need to tell the story of their streets, the building, places they like going to etc. The good thing about this idea is that it allows ss to work in groups.
5) Tour of your city. An obvious idea but variations can make it  more exciting. For example, ss can choose their favourite places in the city or hidden, non-touristic sights.  It also can take a form of a group project.
6) Book travels. Ss will need to create a map of the travels of the main character. Good if you're using graded readers and books in the classroom.
7) My future travels. Ss need to imagine where they want to go, research the information about these places and put it on their maps.

Some stuff to think about:

• with technology you have to make sure that everyone understands how to use it. So before assigning the project,  I would first give them a how-to video and my example to study as a homework. 
• how to present finished project. Will they show it only to the teacher (boring) or share with classmates? Now it seems ideal to make a presentation in class for everyone, but my class is not equipped well enough for that.
• how to grade it. It seems reasonable to introduce rubrics to make it easier to assess project like this.

I'm currently thinking about the first project and how to implement it smoothly in my class. So I'll keep you updated on my work. Have you used this tool before or have you got any ideas on how else to use it? :)