Blogging

For my last blog, I thought I'd discuss the merits of assigning a blog to language learners. As was demonstrated by my cohorts in their e-portfolio presentation, blog writing provides students with an opportunity to write with a presumed L1 audience in the target language and to focus on accuracy. The medium naturally lends itself to this focus. Yes, it is possible to edit a blog once it has been released into the blogosphere, but it is usually advisable to measure twice and cut once if you want to be taken seriously by your readership. Showing students that they can target a niche audience and be part of a larger culture of writers is a valuable experience. This new medium is of increasing importance to people in general. Many seek news, opinion, and entertainment from blogs and learners should be able to find an area of focus that appeals to them. Being part of a blog roll helps frame the kinds of material a learner may address as well as the ways in which this is done by L1 writers. Instructors may want to work with students in defining topics to cover and helping to steer them to discover the conventions of the medium. Peer and instructor feedback can come in the form of comments.

I can imagine a scenario in which two FL classrooms could perform a language exchange through blogging. It may be helpful to situate the students writing in this kind of exchange and blogging might provide a format that focuses learner efforts. In this case, an instructor could help students set up a closed blog that would allow students to work on fluency rather than accuracy. Having the partnering class post comments to blog posts would create an authentic exchange that could be motivating to students.

Second Life

Second Life appears to have all the fundamentals of communicative learning built into the environment itself. The potential to interact with L1 English speakers provides students with authentic input and real needs to negotiate meaning. The potential for different learning environments is great. The whole place is designed to provide a sort of uber-realia. One can visit replicas of real historical sights and interact with L1 speakers from the target culture in these environments.

Given the potential for independent learning it would seem simple for students to get a little coaching on the interface and be free to explore. This might be the case. I am not sure that this is the way most environments are being used. Do avatars really respond to environments in an authentic way? Could I engage another avatar in a conversation about the color of the leaves on the trees? In a store, how would another player react if I asked how she liked the cut of the dress on the mannequin? I would have to pursue these questions before making any decisions about the real value of the resource. It may be that people are merely interested in socializing in a way that is actually external to the game. Not that that would be a bad thing, but that would be a very specific kind of language use.

Would it be possible to take a class to a soccer stadium, teach them the appropriate vocabulary for communicating during the game, take a tour of the facilities, and then play a game? If so, I can see the potential, but the instructor needs more knowledge of the tool than I can claim at this point. I'm not sure now is the appropriate time to gain that knowledge, but I've had my taste and will probably revisit Second Life in the future.

Telecollaboration - A journal of sorts

MegaMeeting.com seems super full featured, but I'm not going to even bother given the price tag.

So I'm most familiar with the Zoho environment. They make many full featured tools to create and edit things in the cloud. I was excited to check out their meeting function because it looked full featured because you can integrate it with their other products. For a free account you can only have a conference with one other member. The audio support seems great (skype, phone-in, and local Zoho). One problem, I set up a meeting with another email account of mine using two different browsers - had to download an executable file to get it to work. That may not be possible for all users - especially those that are working on lab computers that don't give them administrative privileges. By using the same computer I got a wicked feedback loop, but I'll give this a shot on two computers one day and get back to you. Looks pretty elegant, but who wants to pay for their students to have access? Looks like there is screenshare and a White Board type feature - I would think this would be a good option if you had the cash.

mebeam seems ridiculously easy to set up, but it only worked on Safari on my Mac. It did not work on either Chrome (actually I finally it to work but the pop-up seems buggy) or Firefox. The flash video settings window did not function. It hosed the entire process.

I was able to use my Google Login and set up a meeting page with relative ease. Posted a YouTube video using the embed code inside the chat. I don't really understand how to get the audio up and running. Would have to investigate TokBox to figure it out.

TokBox has a smooth interface. Looks like they charge for a lot of features. The option to use EtherPad for collaborative writing, SlideShare to watch slideshows (PPT), YouTube, Flickr, and Picasa makes it an easy way to respond to media within a conference. Looks like they are removing the EtherPad feature (bummer). Usable interface and appealing media features makes this a viable option.

No luck with confabio.com. Perhaps that ship has sunk.

Palbee.com seems to have a nice interface and White Board feature. The Library List feature looks like it could be used to show media (PPT and JPG). Seems like it is similar to TokBox, but I am still waiting for the automatically generated email to hit my inbox so I can access the thing. The ability to record meetings would be a nice feature to have students self-correct or reflect on production. Perhaps instructors could annotate to bring learners' attention to certain features of the interaction.

I guess of all the meeting clients out there. I would have to recommend TokBox at the moment, but I should give it a shot after they remove EtherPad on tax day and update my review.

e-journaling

In Cohen & Ishihara 2005, e-journaling allowed both learner and researcher to reflect upon strategies and materials in order to fine-tune their practice. E-journaling also provided the researchers with a qualitative information that could be compared to the quantitative information they were collecting to assess in terms of convergent validity. They were able to investigate learner performance around themes identified by examining the e-journals themselves. They used content analysis designed to describe learner attitudes (reception of) the materials. In a classroom situation this would provide instructors with some access to learner affect.

The researchers were able to draw both from explicit statements about the materials as well as make inferences upon the same themes given less direct comments. The kinds of insights into strategic learning and the nature of Japanese pragmatics that one would hope to see in such e-journaling were not as pervasive as one might hope. There were only a few examples provided in the article of students wrote about "misconceptions about language and culture that were eliminated through studying the material" and "insights applied to other speech acts" (Cohen & Ishihara, p. 16).

One way that this kind of e-journaling could be expanded in a Second Language environment would be to ask students to attempt using the skills taught in the classroom or though internet modules in real world situations and writing about their experiences. To encourage attention to particular pragmatic features of the language, students could be asked to record in their e-journals interactions with or between native speakers that include these features. This could be done easily with speech acts. It would allow an environment in which students could raise issues and instructors would be able to identify trends and respond to the class as a whole.

Using speech acts that are appropriate to the target culture often requires that learners work against the instincts and intuitions that they have unconsciously developed in their L1 (or has been drilled into them in childhood). E-journaling provided a way of processing such disjunctions. One participant reflected upon his resistance to “telling a white-lie” presumably because the strategy is more frequently used in Japanese than English (Cohen & Ishihara, p.24).

If one is trying to teach students to be reflective about their own language learning strategies and performance in order for them to refine their practice, e-journaling seems to be a logical tool. How well it would work in most classrooms would probably depend upon the attitudes of the students towards the exercise of e-journaling, the classroom dynamic, and instructor’s ability to facilitate such an enterprise.

Unfortunately, this study does not include extensive information about the process of setting up the journals. It would be valuable to see what kind of prompts the students were responding to (did they differ from entry to entry?) and how they were introduced to the process.

Wikis - the tyranny of the blank page

One thing oft repeated in the LCLC is that the instructor needs to initiate the structure, format, and content of a wiki. It is important for us to get the ball rolling. Without directly teaching students how to use the technology, modeling the kind of content we hope to see, helping them to better understand and exploit the advantages of the medium, or helping them to structure the wiki in an intuitive way - we can expect a lot of blank pages or artificial display content. These blank pages wouldn't be so different from the kinds of blank stares we would get from students if our only instruction to them in listening/speaking were "OK, talk". The media we choose should be ideally suited to the activity itself, and this marriage of activity and medium is one that needs to be evident to the students. The structure we are able to provide makes their production possible. Jazz allows for improvisation around the chords of a pre-existent melody. Most tunes start and end with this melody itself. For real collaboration in which the sum is greater than the parts, we need to hand out the sheet music and run through the changes. The rest should be up to them. For examples of formats that are well suited for wikis in language classrooms, please see our wiki page at http://wikilanguagelogic.wikispaces.com/

Project Proposal

For my project I would like to use either a Wiki builder or perhaps just Google Docs to facilitate a collaborative writing project. This would be designed to familiarize advanced level students with a writing genre (probably news articles). After reading examples of this genre students would work together to build an outline and divide up responsibility for writing the various segments amongst themselves. They would then be assigned one of their peer's a sections to provide editing feedback using a protocol established in class. I would also consider doing a genre of fiction asking them to do an exquisite corpse story. The ease with which students can collaborate, the ability to track changes and comments, and the ease with which students can edit one another's work would make this CALL tool preferable to paper and pencil alternatives. The task would be designed to encourage process writing, help students learn the conventions of the genre including lexical items and collocations, and to practice editing conventions that bring their attention to target forms.

Pronunciation of Compound Nouns

Research:
Open your ears for this week and write down at least five compound nouns and a definition for them. Do you hear the stress falling on the first part of the compound?

Further practice:

Click on the button below and use your cell phone to record these sentences using good stress. Remember to start your recording by saying your name.

The president lives in the white house.
You should erase the blackboard.
My neighbor Barry lives in the white house.
Do you have a pencil sharpener?
I lost my notebook.

Reading Response - Writing to Mean

Unfortunately, this article is an opinion piece with research done that was very limited in scope. With only two participants, it would be difficult to extend any conclusions beyond the bounds of this study. It does seem intuitive that writers would respond by expanding upon their thoughts given content-based feedback than when given form-based feedback. It is nice to see this hypothesis operationalized and tested. It doesn't seem to really get at whether question forms are more valuable for processing and revision than declarative feedback. It would be interesting to see the work expanded, and the researcher design research that would be more demonstrative of the efficacy of different types of feedback.

Blog # 6-Jeffrey and Jessina's Google Reader in the classroom

Blog # 6-Jeffrey and Jessina's Google Reader in the classroom

RSS Readers for Extensive Listening-Google Reader

Google reader is a tool that can be used to post anything and share with anyone. So a teacher can post a reading, podcast, audio, photo, really any media, and then share with the students in the class. The students can access this from any computer, anywhere and then can also write comments and share the comments with the teacher and the classmates, what ever the teacher prefers.

You can subscribe to a number of RSS feeders online. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, it is basically a live feed of any new information. Here is a picture of what the RSS icon looks like;



You can also use the "bookmarklet" tool to book mark any internet page that doesn't have an RSS option, and you can include a note with what has been book marked.

The benefit of using Google reader in the classroom is the realia of the media used, interaction between the students, practice writing, discussion in the classroom, convenience, etc. One of the drawbacks might be whether or not students have access to a computer, but assuming that they do this is a great tool.

Below is the podcast of a dialogue between two teachers. One has experience using the Google Reader tool and is explaining the benefits and showing how to use this online tool to the other teacher.

Now that you've listened to the podcast, here are a couple of bookmarklets to get you started-> just drag them to the toolbar of your browser and you are good to go!

This one allows you to subscribe to feeds on a given page.

Subscribe...

This one allows you to share any page on the web with a note.

Note in Reader

Google's introduction to Google Reader can be found at http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?answer=113517

Share

Podcast - Using Google Reader for Extensive Listening

Here is Jessina's and my podcast in which we discuss the use of an Google Reader for extensive listening. It is more about the pedagogical and practical merits of the tool than about its technical aspects. Check back in the future for a screencast demonstrating how to set things up. In the meantime, here are a few terms that will probably be useful.

RSS - Really Simple Syndication

RSS feed - a source for updates on a given website

RSS reader - a tool that aggregates feeds

Now that you've listened to the podcast, here are a couple of bookmarklets to get you started-> just drag them to the toolbar of your browser and you are good to go!

This one allows you to subscribe to feeds on a given page.

Subscribe...

This one allows you to share any page on the web with a note.

Note in Reader

Google's introduction to Google Reader can be found at http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?answer=113517
Share

VoiceThread

Robinson's article does not seem to relate directly to the concept of VoiceThread. Given his focus on interpreting the psychological states of others in managing communication, article seems to relate most directly to synchronous activities. While VoiceThread could be used synchronously, it doesn't seem particularly suited for that purpose. There are tools out there that might allow for asynchronous communication that would require learners to negotiate meaning and perhaps be suited for the kinds of tasks that Robinson discusses. I can imagine uses of Blackboard's Voice Presentation that could promote these kinds of interactions, but I'm not sure doing so would allow for the need for fluency that Robinson's concepts seem to entail. Am I missing something?

Podcasts

The Learn Hindi from Bollywood Movies podcast provides a way of learning vocabulary while having a few laughs. The podcast includes audio snippets of dialogues from Bollywood films with a translation into English provided by the podcast host. One would think such a technique would be most useful at the beginning levels, but I believe that, for the intermediate to advanced learner, the podcasts serves as a way of refreshing words that may be fading from the learner's receptive vocabulary. The beginner would probably only benefit if he or she were a fan of Bollywood films to the point of seeing the film after the podcast or recognizing the film from which the snippet was taken. The use of humor does keep listeners going back - whether it is beneficial to their Hindi skills or not.

http://www.cuttingchai.com/HouseFull/

In terms of an English language podcast, the podcast I am most drawn to is the StoryCorps Podcast from NPR. The podcast provides authentic dialogues between people on a variety of topics. The podcasts are all recordings of pair of real people in which one person acts as interviewer and the other interviewee. The site offers a great variety of interviews. Most of these interviews deal with topics that are accessible to English language learners from a variety of cultures. There is enough background information written about each podcast for the learner to get his or her bearings before diving in. For those learners who need extra support, the transcript is available just a click away. This is not a podcast catered specifically to English language learners, but I believe it is well suited to their needs and provides a snapshot into the lives of real people that would be a wonderful springboard for discussion.

http://www.storycorps.org/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4516989

Compleat Lexical Tutor

When I first arrived at the Compleat Lexical Tutor at http://www.lextutor.ca/the aesthetic of the site put me off a bit, but after revisiting the site after hearing Professor Harrington's talk about lexical processing I started to get it. The interface is a bit clunky and the tool is not for the language student but for the language instructor. I would think you would need a reasonable background in SLA theory to make full use of the site. Items like the Reaction Time Instrument Builder don't make sense to your average teacher unless you've heard Harrington talk about the correlation between response times and global language ability. Given the limited information on the site, would you even know to use non-words when you are setting up your test? I won't go into details at this point. I invite you to check it out. It does include tools like a concordancer, a page that allows you to locate collocations in any input text, and a page that will search any text for the number and kinds of word families used. This is not for those who are looking for a quick activity or exercise, but for those who want tools to look at the underbelly of the texts they use it is an interesting resource.

Reading with CALL

In comparison to the number of English Language Learner resources available, there is a dearth of resources dedicated to Less Commonly Taught languages like Hindi. In an attempt to make up for the disparity of resources dedicated to Hindi, the US has started what it calls a "flagship" program at the University of Texas at Austin. Part of this effort has been dedicated to providing online student resources that employ techniques based upon recent pedagogical thought that are designed to enhance learning. One of these resources was created by Jishnu Shankar and can be found by clicking here.

Professor Shankar has created a series of slideshow presentations that use realia and enhanced text to teach vocabulary and grammar in context. He provides pre-reading questions, glossaries, comprehension questions, practice exercises, and enhanced text that helps bring learner attention to particular grammatical forms. The site features authentic texts like political cartoons, health posters, advertisements, and magazine articles. It offers materials for a variety of reading levels covering a good variety of topics. The choice to produce the materials in a PowerPoint format allows students or instructors to download particular items for future use.

Using this as a model, one could create slideshows that include audio and video portions. These could be provided within the document or by making hyperlinks to materials on the web. This kind of nonlinear PowerPoint allows learners to seek support when they feel they need it. This kind of interaction with the material should help reinforce the language addressed.

My Experience with CALL

I have used some form of computer for as long as I can remember. In 1981 my dad brought home an Apple II+, and since then I have lived as a digital native. I have always had some form of computer at my disposal (with one significant exception that I will go into later). In terms of my own relationship to technology, I quite often find myself feeling ambivalent. It is likely that this ambivalence will influence my understanding of CALL and its usefulness in a language classroom. The ambivalence stems from a recognition that the digital route is not always the one that is best suited to particular tasks, but that gauging whether it is more effective than conventional routes is not necessarily an easy task either. The question I am faced with is how to determine when the usually front loaded effort of setting up digital media will result in greater dividends in the long run. This in terms of teacher speak would be phrased as when does taking the CALL route result in better learning outcomes.

I work at the Language and Culture Learning Center and have helped develop how-to documents for instructors to use CALL techniques in their classrooms. As teacher, I have yet to use most these techniques in my own classroom. I recognize that using these methods often entails not only providing an example of the kinds of work I would like to see my students produce but also teaching the technology required to produce it. In many cases I can see how this will pay dividends in the long-term, but I feel that in other cases it is less clear.

Does anyone else struggle with this kind of ambivalence? Has anyone established some kind of litmus test to determine whether using CALL techniques will be more likely to result in better learning incomes than more conventional approaches?