It’s great to speak about social learning but it’s better to meet true people who doesn’t know that they dot it and are the best case studies. This first interview was realized in Phayao, Thailand.

Like you will read I have made a video of this interview and will post it soon.

Alejandro, could you present yourself and your job?

Sure. I’m Mr. Alejandro Cardeinte from the Philippines. I used to teach English in South Korea and have been teaching English here in Thailand for four years now. Presently, I’m teaching English at Phayao Pittayakhom School here in Northern Thailand. This is my third year now in this school.

Why have you decided to innovate your way to teach English?

This is a very good question. Now let me share something why innovating and integrating technology comes to my mind. At first, I had solely been using traditional approach of teaching. And it was very frustrating. Yeah, I had played fun English games and had designed very interesting English activities. But the impact was very minimal. It was sad.  Of course, I’m still designing good lesson plans for my classes in the classroom setting but I’m determined to go beyond that.

You know, I’m a kind of person that really wants to make a huge difference in the lives of my students. And so I asked myself what else can I do to really make an eternal difference?

So the thoughts of making short English movie-type drama where students would dramatized the conversations in their textbook came to my mind.  So the bottom line is to integrate technology in my classes. I believe this can result maximum impact in the entire learning of my students. The English conversation videos have helped to motivate and build up my students’ confidence not basically designed to show off their skills but to improve their English. But this also becomes an opportunity to show off what they have. This is what the young students want. You know kids want to show off. They have wild dream to become an actors and actress and so this is the start. Especially that I promise to put their videos on the website and on youtube.  So putting our work on the website is important since not everyone has a chance to make video with me. But the website gives all of my students an opportunity to learn through the videos, where they can enjoy watching their classmates.

Could you describe how you proceed with your students to prepare the material, how long times it takes, what are the different parts to have one video online on your platform?

I presented the project to them and I enlisted all willing students, because I’m aware that not everyone has acting talent. So the actors and actresses were not necessarily the best students in their class. Then after that I gave them assignment to study and understand and to learn how to pronounce the words correctly. It actually takes just a few hours to prepare. But I give them  a week. The reason why it takes that long is that we do this only in our free time. We have to map out all our free times so we can make videos. Making videos would only take at least 30 minutes. That is the maximum. And the videos can be uploaded right after editing them. Editing would at least takes 2 hours.

In my experience, this video recording changes the style of my class a lot. The kids are always excited and really enjoying. Technology makes a big difference in the lives of my students.  The thing is most of the students have internet at home where they can learn there in. And I chose multiply site http://multiply.com since this is the best site I’ve ever known. It’s totally free site where you can blog, upload unlimited videos and music, write reviews and ect. Then you can give comments below the videos. But only the multiply member can give comments or interact.

About this platform multiply, why you chose that site and not another like ning ?

Multiply site has everything! Most importantly it is free. I don’t have to spend money for business site that needs money to run. I don’t have that capability to maintain a paying site. All I need is free website that works the same.

Do you have already some feedbacks from your students or other teachers on this project ?

I’ve heard a lot of feedbacks verbally from my students. The most common feedbacks were “ we’ve learned many good things from what we did.” Anyway, I have a plan to encourage them to get this free multiply account themselves-I mean to sign up for a free multiply account so they can write comments below the videos. The teachers have lots of good comments about my work. In fact, our Foreign Language Department director was so amaze and said “ very good job” and she said that she is going to present my project to the school director. This is very encouraging to me. Anyway, we are still on the first phase of the project. I mean this is new and it always takes sometimes to get written feedbacks especially when you are in Thailand.

It’s already great but I have seen your passion so what will be the future steps?

The students like this project very much and they have a good laugh. And so I’m hoping I could find a cheap video camera that has a very quality outcome. I don’t need expensive video camera but just a video camera that really has satisfying results. As you can see most of my videos are blurred a little bit. I already talked to my wife about saving money to buy cheap but better quality camcorder.

I’ve read about the Kodak Zi8 and have watched some reviews on the youtube and I was speechless to see the testing. The Kodak Zi8 produces really amazing videos, it’s really cinematic! So I need that kind of camcorder.

So the next step is to produce another set of videos but this time I want to produce better and clearer videos.  I believe that this video project can be a very effective tool to give students feedback about themselves. After watching what they did, they can personally ask themselves such as, were you happy with your performance? Or what should you do differently next time? That way, they can learn by reflecting on their performance.

What do you need to go to these next steps, money, time, material, exchange with other social learning experts?

Obviously, I basically need budget for this next step. Since I want to have this Kodak Zi8.  That camcorder doesn’t need good lighting. Though my goal is not to produce professional videos but the students deserve something better.  And of course I also wanted to improve my videography work.  In fact, I’m also excited to get or exchange ideas from the social learning experts. The bottom line of this video recording project is to give my students a real learning experience. Cause, I don’t want my students to make the same mistakes they have in the past.

Here are the websites to see this innovative way to teach english in Thailand

If you are a company that has great products to register video for purpose like social learning,  it will be great to post your comment here and how you can help Phayao school and one of his teacher Alejandro to go on innovation in social learning.

We hope also that experts will give their feedback on this project and ideas to help Alejandro to realize all these great ideas.

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