(original article « Amplificateurs d’écritures » in French here) The fourth and fifth editions of the training “Social media and skills of teaching French as a foreign language” (Français langue étrangère, FLE) took place in Pune and Ahmedabad for their respective Alliances Françaises. Co-organized by the network of Alliances Françaises in India (here Bombay, Pune, and Ahmedabad), this training brought together the teaching teams from the two cities.
Under the guidance of their trainer, David Cordina, Director of studies, Alliance Française de Bombay, the groups discovered and took charge of their two new social networks dedicated to French learners (with tools like Ning and Twitter (hashtags #msFLE) for the most motivated and advanced teachers). These sites offer a rich space of collaborative writing to the Indian students, designed by the administrator with a team of teachers. All the latest features of Internet, such as chat, smartphone version, personal pages, blogs, eportfolios and forums, are available on these social networks.
For the Alliances Françaises, this is about showing the educational vitality of the French courses and thereby promoting the activity of francophone (french-speaking) student groups with the assistance of their teachers. Thousands of Indian learners across the country have already joined such networks (see the overview of trainings #msFLE and networks for learners). The results of this training can be seen on the websites Punécoeurs et French in Ahmedabad
« L’agir social » : the social movement / a social behavior in learning situations
The training facilitated the creation of various activities that illustrate the technique of social-constructivist principles (pédagogie du projet) and action-oriented approach (perspective actionnelle), which is not yet completely known to the Indian French language teachers.
The prime objective of this technique is to enhance the students’ skills by encouraging them to write as much as possible. As this website takes the process of learning outside the classroom, it promotes learners’ interaction with the French-speaking internet users while socialising with other learners. The teachers propose various activities as webquests (creative social-learning situations) and other complex learning scenarios, formal argumentative discussions, or simple comments in threads. At the same time, the teachers also correct the texts written online by the students. Such activities promote the interaction among the learners and their peers; the processes of writing as well as teaching are made visible.
From the theoretical point of view this approach is a reflection of, in the technical jargon of FLE, the action-oriented approach, “la perspective actionnelle” This approach develops the social performance of learners through situation-based learning activities. In such a dedicatedly learner-oriented environment, social performances are even more useful in the writing activities designed for encouraging expression.
A game of signifiance–the poietic generator / the générateur poïétique
In the middle of the session, the participants were asked to do an activity as suggested by Florence Meichel, a trainer specialized in learning networks. This activity was dedicated to the game of poietic generator, created by Olivier Auber, independent researcher, associated with the interdisciplinary research group “Evolution, Complexity and Cognition” (ECCO) and with the Global Brain Institute of free/open university at Bruxelles. This network game is a metaphor for the constant and collective evolution of learning networks. In poietic generator, a large number of users co-create the graphic elements of a global design in real time, as individual graphic units. All the actions of the players are visible in their individual performances. The objective of this game is to collectively bring out the recognizable forms performed by everyone and to observe their creations.
« The poietic performance,” as written by Marie Jammet-Reynal of Fribourg University to Olivier Auber, “is when the sense of action is inbuilt, according to the extricating possibilities and not according to the preliminary objectives or prior plans. It’s an action taking place in the less regulated context where the doer of the action cannot be aware of the rules. While performing, the objectives and the sense are built in itself and the context regulates itself. The poietic generator facilitates the comprehension that this little-regulated context is actually very constraining (like the image of 20 x 20 pixels only). Without the possibilities given by the activities of others, the possibilities of available field are extremely reduced. These possibilities are solicited and caught in the action of giving color to these simple pixels.”
The poietic generator reveals the complexity of human co-creation in an apparent simplicity. After very simple questions on their practice, the Indian teachers understood the logic and the link with the French-learning networks, which they will use now to catalyze the communities of their students.
To know more :
Site : http://poietic-generator.net
Blog : http://poietic-generator.net/blog/
Wikipedia : article sur le générateur poïétique
Blog de Florence Meichel : http://florencemeichel.blogspot.in/ et http://www.apprendre2point0.org/
Marie Jammet-Reynal http://ch.linkedin.com/pub/marie-jammet-reynal/54/b46/907