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This hypothetical scenario of a student's learning journey demonstrates: 1) how a learner might be
inducted into a blended learning programme; 2) how she would progress through the programme; 3)
the scaffolding and developmental nature built into the design of the programme; and 4) how she would
interact with peers and teachers, virtually and face-to-face. This scenario is designed to be read in
conjunction with a complementary mindmap, which can be accessed by clicking this link.

Zeenah – Learning in a social world (scenario)

Name: Zeenah

Year level: 11

Age: 16

Country of origin: Somalia

Zeenah is Somali and has been living for the last 6 months with her family in a medium-sized, rural
town in New Zealand. She is close to her family and shares a lot with them. Zeenah misses her county
and friends, is shy and feeling isolated, and finds school an unsettling blurr. Her language diagnostic
assessment shows that she requires support around language, literacy and numeracy. In addition,
Zeenah is worried about having to cope with a different way of learning and the expectations of her as
a learner. The school she attends has one ESOL teacher, and five other students requiring language
assistance.
During her first month at school, Zeenah is introduced to the ESOL teacher and given a welcome pack,
saved on a Flash memory stick, to a year-long blended learning ESOL and numeracy course. She takes
the memory stick to the local community centre, where she is beginning to make friends, and asks
someone to help translate the contents. The pack contains videos and images, as well as text (written in
graded language, with non-complex sentence structures). She finds the videos fun and easy to follow
and is able to understand a lot from the graphics without knowing the words. When she learns from the
welcome pack that she will be using the Internet in her studies she is curious, but apprehensive too. A
bilingual aide at the school tells her she is able to borrow a wireless Netbook laptop from the library,
and can also apply for a bursary to cover an Internet data plan.
The first thing the class does is explore the different aspects of the online programme. All the
programme parts are marked with icons, and, to help with aural as well as reading skills, students are
‘guided’ by a speaking avatar (Voki). The Voki also gives tips about online safety and etiquette.
Zeenah enjoys visiting the student lounge (hosted in a Ning), where she can see the videos uploaded by
her peers or eTutor/eTeacher, leave a comment on her peers’ wall, or do text chat. The ESOL teacher
shows them the “Our Cultural Village” area where they can find online bilingual dictionaries, eBooks
in their first language, videos, music and pictures from their country, as well as a range of other
resources.
After exploring the online spaces, the students join Ning and set up their profiles by answering a series
of (non-mandatory) questions. Zeenah doesn't want to upload a picture of herself, and instead a friend
with a mobile phone takes a picture of her favourite food and helps her upload it. She is really pleased
when looking at the other students’ profiles – many of whom are based all around New Zealand – to
find Moza, who is also from Somalia and shares Zeenah's taste in food. She leaves a comment on
Moza’s wall saying ‘hi’ and asks a couple of questions. When Moza replies almost immediately
Zeenah asks the eTutor if she can be her online ‘buddy’.

Over the first 3 months, the students are helped by their eTeacher and eTutor to add to their profiles
and to work on their language, literacy and numeracy skills in embedded, authentic contexts. The
students in Zeenah's ESOL class have all used computers before and enjoy helping her when they see
she is stuck with something. For Zeenah, the weekly online Webinar session with her classmates from
around New Zealand and her eTeacher (using Adobe Connect), provides a real reason to ask about
what someone did over a weekend, or what a peer’s family is like, because they only ‘see’ the other
students once a week, and have never actually met them. Zeenah becomes familiar and comfortable
with the online environment. She is keen to do as much work as possible, and accesses a lot of the
extension activities, in particular those with with a visual aspect where she can hear and read the text
and record herself repeating the word(s). For instance, she enjoys watching online videos followed by
interactive matching or ordering tasks, and likes recording her own simple sentences in the online
environment and then writing them. These word and sound files are stored electronically in her e-
portfolio. (She scans handwritten files and uploads them.) Zeenah is now able to independently text
chat with other students on a social and increasingly academic (foundation) level. She accesses online
bilingual dictionaries and can search for images and music on the Internet. She is increasingly eager to
access the resources in the online library (especially those in Arabic; for example, Bakkar the Little
Bird) and is practising her typing skills.
For homework, Zeenah has several choices of what she would like to do, and uses a Ta da list (to which
her eTeacher also has access) to work out a learning plan. She realises she is quite confident at
speaking, but struggles to write. Her eTeacher suggests she do as much reading as possible. With her
Netbook, Zeenah is able to access online reading texts, as well as a collection of graded readers that
have been collated in her school library, and even better, another site has a huge collection of readers.
She downloads the .pdf files and reads for gist and detail, highlighting vocabulary she doesn’t
understand. She includes this vocabulary in her vocabulary wiki page with a translation of the word, a
picture (if she has time and can find a suitable one), and an example of the word in context. She posts
an outline of the text into her blog along with what she did/didn’t like about it. She tries to read the
same books as Moza so they can help each other and compare their responses to the book. Other
students often leave short comments on her reader blog posts, and it surprises her how many people in
her class like the same sorts of stories.

The students have started working on their own “Our Cultural Village” using the existing ones as
models. A grading rubric and set of instructions have been discussed with the eTeacher and eTutor, and
students have access to videos (with audio) which illustrate and demonstrate the key skills they will be
using as well as guidelines around what they might like to include. The students are hosting their
Cultural Village in their ePortfolio space. Zeenah has already found some Creative Commons pictures
she likes from Flickr, a video of a local Farmer’s Market from Blip TV, and a traditional Somali dance
from You Tube. She is going to include what she has already written about her family as well as her
likes and dislikes in her Cultural Village, but she is only sharing that with the eTeacher and two peers
at the moment because she is in the middle of an editing cycle. Zeenah is really looking forward to
sharing her ePortfolio with her friends in Somalia, and already her family love seeing her work, and
often have helpful suggestions and feedback.

In her ePortfolio Zeenah also keeps a weekly blog. She has been able to choose between recording an
oral blog or writing one (although once a month all students have to complete at least one written and
one oral blog), and finds it much easier to speak than to write. She has been able to capture her
concerns and anxieties, as well as her triumphs, successes and pleasures. She only shares her blog posts
with her eTeacher and Moza, although some of the other students share theirs with all the students in
the group.

After six months learning in the blended programme Zeenah's eTeacher and eTutor ask students to
form a group of four (with at least two being from a different town), and introduce a new project
around the environment. The collaborative output from the project is hosted in a class wiki, and each
group has their own page. Scaffolding in the form of videos and audio helps students with concepts
around inquiry based learning, such as Internet search skills and staying safe online. Zeenah and her
group discuss possible topics. When they find they all have creeks in their towns they settle on 'the
creek environment' as their topic. They plan who will do each task. Some students take pictures of the
creek, while two students in the group, whose parents know the local Department of Conservation
ranger, conduct an interview with him about the local creek. One of the girls takes video footage on her
mobile phone of a local volunteer group working to clean up the creek. The group discover back issues
of the town newspaper at the local library and while some of the language is much too difficult to
understand, they are able to take a couple of photocopies and translate some of the sentences with the
help of their eTeacher. The project takes 3 months to complete overall, during which time the students
cover the listening, reading, target vocabulary and language structures, as well as the associated
learning outcomes, required by the syllabus. At the end of 3 months the students open the wiki to a
global audience, and a reporter from the local paper interviews them about the project. Pictures of the
wiki, and all of the students online appear in the next issue of the paper, much to the delight of
Zeenah's parents.

Over the school year, Zeenah completes another two projects (four projects altogether), all of which are
linked to the learning outcomes of the programme and to the national curriculum. She is feeling far less
isolated than at the beginning of the year; her ability to use the language of her new country has
improved considerably and she is now enjoying school life .

Zeenah – Learning in a social world by Hazel Owen is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License. Based on a work at
docs.google.com.