It’s time for a change…

In 2000, the DOGME ELT manifesto was published [ read the article here ], adapting the work of the Dogme 95 film collective and their ‘vow of chastity’. I re-post part of that here:

“Along with the quantity (I hesitate to use the word variety) of coursebooks in print, there is an embarrassment of complementary riches in the form of videos, CD-ROMs, photocopiable resource packs, pull-out word lists, and even web-sites, not to mention the standard workbook, teacher’s book, and classroom and home study cassettes. (…) But where is the story? Where is the inner life of the student in all this? Where is real communication? “

Now, we here at DOGME ICT are in full agreement with the sentiments expressed above – there are too many resources being blindly applied in the classroom (for varying reasons globally, obviously). Invariably (as we have noted elsewhere) these materials are outdated, one-track, exclusive (of lifsetyles, sexual preference, …) and of little interest or relevance to our learners. And we find much in common with the following:

“We laid down some rules: if the language lesson didn’t include real language use, then we questioned its usefulness. Photocopies were proscribed; the OHP was banished. Grammar presentations had to be squeezed into 5 minutes. Real talk, usually relegated to the bookends of the lesson proper, had to form the lesson core“

Though we might perhaps quibble with the notion of talk between ‘teacher’ and ’students’ being real much of the time. But in essence we see the good and the realistic in the original and today we propose taking the best of the old-fangled DOGME ELT idea and bringing it up to date for the modern world in which we live.

And so today we’re delighted to launch a new ’school of teaching’ – DOGME ICT, which shares many of the interests of DOGME ELT:

the ’story’, the ‘inner life of the student’, the ‘real communication’. However, whereas the DOGME ELT group seeks to reduce the classroom to ‘a room with a few chairs, a blackboard, a teacher and some students’ (though there are rumblings in the group of DOGME 2.0, of technology being ‘alright I suppose, sometimes’ – though this must be contrasted with other more extreme views of teachers using technology to teach English as ’self-delusional’) we seek to open the classroom up to a more real world of talk, where learners talk to their peers, globally, where they learn of other cultures, of other countries and have meaningful conversations with people they really want to talk to, where they contribute to the global knowledge, where they produce, share and create.

In short, where they take part in a society that is not constructed between a small group thrown together by chance surrounded by four walls and a blackboard: a society that knows no bounds a society of people ‘out there’.

Because we believe that students can only learn a certain amount from the teacher, that classroom talk is perforce artificial, that the hierarchy of the class (however softened) will always be there, implicit or explicit. We further believe that the classroom is a construct, that (at least in monolingual classes) the act of talking to your fellow learners in English is false and arrant nonsense, that the teacher is ‘in charge’, in short – that the hierarchy inhibits ‘real talk’.

Today we propose to liberate the learner from the restrictions of the classroom, with its ‘chairs’ and ‘blackboards’ to let the learner take advantage of the opportunities for real ‘talk’ afforded by technology, to set them free to tell their ’story’ and to engage in ‘real communication’. We propose (where practical) giving them access to the real world through the use of blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos, live chat, text chat, Messenger, Skype, Second Life, Twitter, Wetpaint, Ning, to name but a few. Our job will not be to teach them how to use the technology, but to guide them in their use of the technology to experience opportunities for ‘real communication’ with people worldwide.

Unlike the DOGME ELT group, and Lars von Trier before them, we propose a vow of wantonness, of abandon, nay licentiousness, since chastity is dull. Like books, chastity was popular a while back, but there’s no place for it in the modern world. So we encourage you to skip merrily (always with purpose, consideration and reflection, mind…) around this new movement. Here we set out our Vow of Flirtiness for you to follow:

  • Teaching should be done wherever possible, taking advantage of the affordances ICT offer – props and tools should be brought into the class when they encourage learners to engage in meaningful conversation with people they actually want to talk to.
  • Teaching should be done using any resources that the learners find interesting and useful, and using any technologies to hand. If a particular piece of equipment is needed, ask the learners – they probably have it in their bag or coat pocket.
  • Recorded listening or viewing material (podcasts, vodcasts, YouTube, etc.) should be used when the learners find the material interesting and where it has some relevance to their lives. Learners should be encouraged to produce as much as they consume.
  • Temporal and geographic alienation are what you make of them. Don’t be afraid to take your learners in to Second Life to a fantasy island, or to Curitiba using Google Maps. Look for the good and useful in each location rather than writing them off piecemeal.

We shall no doubt expand upon our Vow over the coming days, and look forward to your contributions. Come and join us – cast off your chastity belt and run free among the bits and bytes. You know it makes sense…