Glog

Video Podcast (on Youtube)

CALL article

Japanese CALL
If you didn't already know, I am interested in Japan and aspects of SLA education happening in Japan. This latest article talks about the trend of cell phones being a device for studying foreign languages.

The blog has been a pleasure, but this will be my final posting. Graduate school awaits, so until another day, good luck.

Inspiration for our Video Story

Software Evaluation-Rosetta Stone

1. General Description
Rosetta Stone
-All levels language proficiency
-All ages
-includes variety of activities: multiple choice, dialog, vocabulary, etc...
2. Evaluation
-The program works very quickly, is easy to use and is quite reliable I had a few classes that used the program over an entire school year and there were never technical issues, crashes or stalls with the software
-The program is very technological sophisticated, and functions through a central web site.
-Activities inlude drills, and games, with rumored collaborative peer work coming soon. [link to my other call page]
-The most important feature is that it is facilitative. There are databases, spell/grammar check and authoring systems.
-The linguistic and language focused activities are vast. They include discourse, morphology, pronunciation, reading, listening, writing, and speaking.
-Rosetta Stone describes itself as including "dynamic immersion, adaptive recall, and speech recognition" among the best features and activities.
-As for teacher fit, the program if purchased as part of a liscence group it includes teacher accounts where you have access to endless amounts of data on individual L2s.

-By the same sense, a liscence allows a student to continue to log-in and use the computer from anywhere with a specalized http:// address and password and gives the software the added bonus of being easy to use and thus, learner fit.

3. Summary

I make no secret about my love of the Rosetta Stone software, and I have backed it up by investing in the company, which has so far been a success. The software is very easy to manange, I have taught L2s in a public school using this software and I believe it can help learning a second language. There are many options with the software; they sell the individual packaged software like you see at mall kiosks, you can purchase a liscence for an entire class, or the new option called TotalE (which I discussed in lenght a few weeks ago on this very blog) lets you log in again from anywhere with personal http:// address but with the added benefit of actual live on-line lessons with a real tutor via chat technology. You are limited to how many lessons, but the possibilities are growing for what CALL software can do.

The naturalist approach Rosetta Stone believes so strongly in makes managing and using the product natural as well. From the looks of the success this year on Wall Street, as well as being the product of choice for the State department (that's what they advertise), they are getting others to believe it is the right approach to CALL software as well.

Last post on any topic #5

electronic books and japan

I have been considering buying a Kindel reader. Of course, down the road I would like to use it for Japanese language study, but not so sure that it would be useful at this point after reading the above article/link. Does anybody out there know if the Kindel reader can display script in languages other than one based on the roman alphabet? I am thinking if you have the html code then you might be alright...

A YouTube video

It is baseball season, so I wanted to include this as my youtube video portion.
It is video of professional baseball player Chan Ho Park discussing problems on the mound this year. Park is from South Korea and pitches for the New York Yankees, here local reporters from New York are interviewing him in English. I think the video demonstrates a situation that comes up in our line of work as we work with international people, settings, and especially it demonstrates how cultural differences can make for strange and funny moments.

Reading Prompt 12

Ockey argues that Computer based testing has failed to realize its anticipated potential. Describe and discuss on his reasons for his view, and tell why you either agree or disagree with him.

Cummins & Davesne offer an alternative to CBT with electronic portfolios. Comment on some of the ideas from this article that you'd be interested in trying out in your own classroom.

From the Ockey article, I have to sadly agree that computer based testing (CBT) has failed to realize it's potential, so far. Problems listed are numerous: psychometric assumptions, local independence, controversy over appropiate scoring algorithm, agreement on test administration, practical use of test bank, availablitly of human resources, and test security are among some listed. After reading the artice and reflecting on those issues, communication between institutions and security seem to be the biggest obstacles. The problem that each school has a unique system of rating CBT make it impossible to make grades and results salient. Test security is an even bigger issue for CBT. Trying to keep symetry across the world, verfying results and actual test takers on CBT also appears to be impossible.

This second article, thankfully, is more optomistic and offers lots of useful assessment for use with Electronic Portfolios (EP). For me personally, the information on American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) was espeically insightful. This organization and it's opinion are important in our line of work and when I read information about them, I pay extra attention. There work with other similar organizations in Europe and the rest of the world offer hope that there will be more universal assessment, especially on alternative forms of assessment like EPs. The Language Passport is an especially exciting idea, and allows blokes like me who live somewhere and don't learn the language fluently enough to pass high level standardized test at least some credit for our language knowledge.

A flickr picture

budgirl
Originally uploaded by chris pope

Here is a picture of my grandmother from around WWII.

Reading Prompt 11

Share an idea of two about how you could use the ideas from Richardson with ESL students.

What is the "digital divide?' And why do Warschauer et al argue that this term may longer be applicable. What are the issues they found regarding differences in technology use with ELLs and other low socioeconomic students. What are some ways you could address this in your own schools or programs?

From the Richardson text, I really like the idea of using twitter with ESL learners. More specifically, I like the idea of ESL students writing haiku poetry using twitter, whether on their personl phones or school computers. I have already taught English syllabry using haiku in the past, the twitter ideas for classes that Richardson described can make that lesson modern and exciting. It also seems to be the perfect venue for bringing back an underrated form of poetry. Also, it can incorporate the student's cell phone into the lesson (as a former high school teacher, I can't believe I just wrote that) and is a big step towards the type of environment we talk about in our class.

The digital divide described in Warschauer's is made up of more than one factor (p.548. Of course social economics are the central focus of his research, and on the surface it looked like poor schools are at a disadvantge when it comes to technology. This isn't the only factor though, teacher training and teacher competence in dealing with technology are also mentioned among other things. There is a digital divide in technology instruction, management, and those who deliver it to the students. So again, an article with a wake up call to educators that change is coming, and we must prepare. I saw it written recently somewhere that indeed, "technology will not replace teachers, but teachers who know how to use technology will replace those who don't". The divide between those who can teach with technology and those who can't seemed to me to be the biggest divide, not just how poor someone was. Warschauer points out those who suffer the most because of this type of divide may very well be the students we care most about, those with limited English ability. The article talked about teachers not willing to use technology with ESL students (p.583) for many reasons, but maybe the bottom line is that those teachers could not handle it. As the article points out on page 585, society and technology are intertwined, society (including school) is changing and everyone (including teachers) will need to adapt and incorporate new technology into their lives (curriculum) or be left on the other side of the digital divide.
As a teacher of ESL learners we must advocate for our students to have equal oppurtunity to computers and technology in US schools, amd provide them that instruction.