The project allowed me—as teacher-researcher—to be more reflective about a topic that I particularly feel passion of. In general it was encouraging despite some school problems that I faced on. Students were motivated to participate, and parents were somehow involved, especially at the beginning.
It was possible to observe in students an awareness that they really needed and—because of their age—is not easy recognized. Age was one of the factors that influenced in the accomplishment of the project. They followed a model of radio that they liked listening to in their productions. In so doing, they recognized strengths in themselves and their peers and worked on self and peer weaknesses. The sense of commitment in the students that finished the study (12, because of external reasons) was general. Consequently, the participation of new members in the group was immediate and motivated. The change in the group (in term of population) was another factor that influenced the achievement of the project goals.
Being autonomous in editing and deciding about including chunks or pieces of scripts, repeating, using music and other effects let students recognize their abilities and how to use them in a need that they have. In this aspect, using technology—despite technological constrains at school—was attractive and motivating for the participants.
LIMITATIONS
During the development of the study I had to face on some unexpected situation that influenced the results:
1. Changes in the groups: At the beginning of the project, thirty-eight students were the number of participants; given that many students were moved to another school, I finished the project with twelve. It implied a new re-distribution of the groups, a forced-inclusion of new members (without using their material for the project because of consent issues). This situation made students more tolerant because they had to start again getting to know each other, and they practically had to start again with the process of cooperative learning. On the other hand, a sense of commitment arose and the former students were in charge of immersing the new ones.
2. Time: Some school activities impeded conducting the implementation in the time that I have planned. At the beginning of the school year, I expected to continue with this stage, but I was assigned to a different group. Consequently I had to wait until the group was re-assigned. As a result of this, I reduced the activities, and the technical workshops were not done as I planned. I encouraged students to work at home on this issue, but unfortunately not all of them have computers or internet services.
3. Technical: At the beginning of the project I have included “Shoutcast” as the tool to display the participants’ final product. During the implementation, my students and I found that this tool does not run with Windows Vista and Windows 7. As mentioned above, students did some technical activities at home, and most of them have computers with one of these operative systems. This fact demanded me to look for other online tools. Another limitation in this aspect is that students edited using different applications and in the moment of keeping the recordings some of them did not follow instructions to save files as mp3. When uploading, they were not able to listen to, so by now, there are only two recordings online, but students are working on re-editing .
FURTHER RESEARCH
I will continue this study with the target group and finish with what I have planned. I would like also to join a specific group of students from different levels that share the taste for radio participation and also the interest to improve their speaking confidence. Both aspects usually come together. I will focus on three aspects: radio production, speaking confidence activities and technical issues. In so doing, I will present my proposal to IDEP (Instituto para la Investigación Educativa y Desarrollo pedagógico), not only to present the proposal for the current study but also to ask for support and financing.
I found that such project could be useful for some La Sabana University students since most of them have to deal with speaking confidence and that impede them have a good performance in their sessions and the partials. I would like to present my proposal to the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures and the Unisabana radio.
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