Comment on issues raised by Levy and Stockwell,
CALL educators and the design of CALL products.
Comment on types of RSS feeds .
The part of the Levy text (ch 2) that stuck out for me was task design. If the task included in a paticular piece of CALL is boring and simple, the learner is not going to have much interest. On the other hand, a learner could also complain that tasks are too complex and difficult, and give up on it. Good CALL design is going to keep these perspectives in mind and produce something in between. As educators we need to look for CALL that is desiged with easily accessible task, but also task design that is challenging enough to keep the learner engaged and interested.
As far as RSS, there has got to be hundreds of ways to use this with students. One easy example of how it might be used with a class of L2s is setting up a "feed" to a class blog. Choose a traditional, non-controversial news group (VOANEWS.com) and ask students to write responses to the stories that roll through. The point is that the students are following the news, discussing it, and responding. They practice skills like reading and writing, plus decesion making task can additionally be completed in groups.
As for me personally, and I would recommend this to any teacher, use the RSS to keep up with buisness and financial news, take control of your investments. Follow different companies and play the stock market! Normally, a teacher is far too busy during the day to follow changes that take place every hour in the world of fortune 500 companies. During working hours, a school teacher is literally shut out from the world (most schools in Texas don't even have windows!). By using RSS technology, the playing field is evened up somewhat, and teachers can keep up with everybody else in the financial world. Teachers become day traders, and don't need to spend very much time to do it (only during breaks, and never while giving test). That is to say, you do not have to spend your day wathcing the ticker and cable tv to get rich on wall street. The RSS reader quickly brings tailored news and information directly to you. Set up your RSS to follow news about companies that you have stocks in, open the reader once in the morning and then at lunch, if circumstances are happening in the financial world, quickly make adjustments to your financial portfolio and get rich.
Nobody says teachers have to be poor chumps and live shackled to promises of state retirement money (all of that is based on wall street investments any way). Build your own future with the RSS google reader.
Wow! This is awesome advice. Use RSS to become rich! Sounds like a good plan. Have you really had a lot of personal success at this? Gives us all some stock tips Chris!
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree about the focus on balancing the difficulty level of tasks. It's really easy to underestimate or overshoot the level of your students if you're not careful, and you can only really do this if you get to know your students' levels. Again, arguments for assessing the levels of your students' English early in the year so you can begin to plan your lessons. It would probably ideal to have a basket of tasks and games that can be adjusted to different levels, that way you don't have to redo your whole lesson repertoire every year.
Nice job Chris!