Reading Prompt V

Do you have an iPod or another type of .mp3 player? If so, have you used it or anything other than listening to your own music, such as downloading and listening to podcasts? Note some of the points McQuillan made about how podcasting can support second language learning. Which of the ideas from the readings would you be interested in trying out in your own classroom?

I don't own an iPod, maybe I am the only person left that doesn't. Of course, I was also one of the last people I knew to buy a cell phone. Anyways, I do have an mp3 player, and have owned it for about seven years. It's about the size of a flashdrive, and I love the thing. I bought it while working in Japan, it cost me about fifty bucks, and I used it daily on my bus or train ride to work. At that time, there was no podcasting, so I just listened to music. I started to hear about podcasting over the past few years, but didn't think much about it until this semester. My classmates Scott and Josh told me that you could download language lessons, and being the Japanophile that I am, of course I have started to use it. It's great! Just like a lot of other things in this class, I kick myself for not finding out about them earlier. I guess I was too busy. So now I have two podcast that I look at regularly, Japanese podcast 101, and learn Japanese podcast. One is professionally done, the other is some guy in an apartment in Tokyo. I like them both.

The McMillan article provided a ton of ideas for using the ipod in language learning. Being able to download audio files, slow them down, adding images to that audio are all basic ideas. The article went on to point out more inventive ways of using it, interviewing native speakers, creating your own original lessons, adding script to your audio files, and finally near the end of the article it even mentioned a web site that I really like for ESL students, Voice of America, which apparently has podcast.

Really though, the McMillan article was informative, because it covered all the basics of what I have missed by not having an ipod. That is, that it can deliver large quantities of data, both audio and visual in a quick and easy to use format. Out of all the bells and whistles that he described, what stood out most for me was that both teachers and students can create materials specifically suited for them and then publish and use it on the ipod. Keeping this in mind and then creating language exchange with students from other countries, you could have some very high-tech learing going on. It isn't hard to do. This idea is especially interesting to me. Having taught in both the US and Japan, I have often looked for ways to create language exchange between those two worlds. Ipod seems to be at least one solution.

Quick Share

It was nice to teach a bit on Thursday, I haven't taugth a group of students since leaving SISD in May.

I used a microsoft powerpoint slideshow, and it went smoothly. The only trouble I had was moving that slideshow onto my blog. In case anybody else has similar trouble: you need to upload your slideshow to google docs and then hyperlink that to your blog. The problem is, if you use the new version of powerpoint you need to change it over to the older version in order for google docs to allow the upload. Dont ask me why, but thank you Diana and Josh for helping me figure that out.

Reading Prompt IV

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.

Japanese and CALL technology

Cell phone novels

Students in Wakayama, Japan using i-pod touch for English lessons

Gaming company joins CALL ranks

Tags and links

A youtube video that explains how to make a blog using google applications.

The official voice of the United States federal government, this site provides current news with complete audio and text transcripts for English language learners, Voice of America. Free and easy to use. Give it a try.

The UTSA MA TESL's new ning site, technology rules!

UTSA IEP study list, this is from UTSA's own Englsih for International Students site. Here, is a page that contains a list of English language learning activities and their web links.

The conversation partner program is something I administrate as graduate assistant at UTSA. Check out the link. If you email me directly at christopher.pope@utsa.edu, I will gladly pair you up with an international or L1 English speaking student for conversation and culture exchange. If you need some experience teaching, or are looking for someone to practice your Chinese/Turkish/Arabic/English with over coffee and biscuits this might be a something to do.

Reading Prompt III

What challenges did Soares face when using blogs with her ESL students, and what lessons did she learn? How does she feel about using blogs with students in the future? Levy describes several types of technologies. Choose one of them and describe how you might want to use it (or have used it), also discuss some of considerations that need to be taken when using this technology with ESL students.

The first challenge Soares had was deciding what type of blog to create: tutor, learner, or class style blog. After that, there were a lot of issues with her students lack of computer skills, and a lack of desire to use the blog. When Soares posted questions to the class there were usually no responses (she noticed this trend in other education blogs from around the world as she started to do research). Other challenges: blogs work better with older learners, students were not consistent about responding, the students responses were too short.

Soraes learned things that are important for any educators that is considering the use of a blog (but keep in mind, she worked with younger students) : apply explatory practices as a teacher (look around the internet at the competition and have students help), make trial blogs, teach students how to use a blog before starting, consider that students have very different levels of computer skills, remember it is classwork, so students like to work on it in class and not at home, and finally it is best to start out working in groups but students should later work independently. Admittedly, it is a lot of things for the teacher to consider and I can understand why some might balk at the idea of using a blog in class.

Levy gives an excellent summary of current CALL technology. It is worth mentioning the core 5, before focusing finally on the most interesting CALL of all, mobile technology. 1 Learning Managment Systems (LMS) are the teacher-centered techs like WebCT and Blackboard, these are very useful but typical of what often scares off educators. A somewhat complicated piece of technology. 2 Audio-video conferencing is summed up best by looking at Sype technology or perhaps Star Trek That is, talking to educators and students via video conferences. 3 Aritificial Intelligence is something I discussed before on this blog, it is great. 4 Speech/Pronunciation recognition is something I have often heard students complain about, native speakers (me) have even had trouble getting "recognized" on some of this CALL. Finally, 5 Mobile technology is surely the most exciting. The mobile phone Thorton research in Japan sounded especially interesting. With the popularity cell-phone internet technology combined with i-pod and MP3 this area of CALL stands out. If motivation and and audio-visual learners are your concerns, which K-12 would be, this technology could help ELLs or main streamed student alike. For higher level ELLs pod-casting is still a great resource, and should be used by the instructor for things like audio quizzes, and pronunciation practice.

Howard Zinn 1922-2010

LA Times Obituary

Eddie Vedder's note on Zinn

Magnus Opus

Reading Prompt II

*Egbert describes the optimal conditions for classroom language learning. Discuss how blogs and blogging can be a tool for achieving these conditions with ELL students. Finally, describe your own experience creating your blog this week. What topic or topics do you plan to blog about?

Instead of discussing all parts of the optimal conditions list, let me just say that the entire list meets CALL (computer assisted language learning) conditions for blogs to be used with ELLs (English language learners). Here for brevity, I focus on only one part of the list, condition 7, the principle that a blog gives the ELL a working atomosphere with an ideal stress/anxiety level. This principal is met when students publish on the internet via a blog. ELLs (like any students) can be unmotivated at times, and the stress/anxiety to publish on a blog is a great way to keep students working at the skill. Good old peer pressure works here for the good of education, and additionally, the types of discussions that are held can be adjusted to the level of students involved so that not too much or too little stress/anxiety is applied. It really makes a lot of sense to use one with your class.

Working on this blog has been useful for me. I have seen a lot of blogs in the past, but needed some sort of motivation to create one for myself. This assingment is doing that. My focus these past two weeks has been creating a simple interface, that looks cool, and I continue to make sure all my links are up. The links are a good, simple part of the html skills I have been learning recently, so it is a good way to check my skills.

When I think of things to post here, of course professional work comes to mind, publishing work and having my students post their work and writings. Also, as a historian and family man, I would like to see the living history of my own flesh and blood kept on a blog. Embarrassingly, I have also started to think about how to make money using this technology. Not everyone does (or can do) blogs, I am glad to be part of the group that is in the know.

Reading Prompt I

Blogs are useful for English language learners or ELLs. When ELLs use a blog it is a great way to enhance their learning experience, futhermore it is definitely valued added. Simply having students publish their work on to a blog is a good way to utilize it. Classmates, friends, family, and the instructor can all view their work and even comment on it.

Taking this blog further, let me quickly discuss computer assisted language learning, or CALL for short. I was recently asked to decide on the best way to evaluate CALL software. For what it's worth, here are my two cents...I consider the role of technology to be most important in this CALL software evaluation. How much technology? or what kind of technology? are questions that must be asked in evaluation. In particular, software must have aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) or it isn't worth the time in my opinion. AI a "combination of video and natural language processing technology" became a focus of CALL software projects in the 1980s (Chapelle,2001,14), I can't imagine language software without it. Programs like Rosetta Stone and Tell Me More are full of AI technology and some of the best examples of what type is available to ELLs. I include a blog link, that shows Rosetta Stone is integrating Web 2.0 technology with present AI technology to create the CALL software of the future. http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=10299. It sounds awesome! Technology is such a great value added component of CALL that it should definitely be considered when evaluating software.