Podcasts

Podcasting is one of the key features of web 2.0 that can be used by language teachers and students.

I found this podcast on betteratenglish.com. The podcast tells ESL /EFL students how to find English idioms that cannot be located in the dictionary. The webpage where it is featured also gives a transcription of the podcast for students to use as a read-along, or a pre-or post- listening aid.

The topic addressed in this podcast would be especially useful to students who are at the intermediate level or higher who are beginning to wonder about idioms, which are notoriously difficult for language learners.

In my future classroom, I would love to have my students listen to this, as it gives them the tools that they need to discover the meaning of idioms for themselves. This is a theoretically sound idea, as learners retain information better when they have put in the mental effort to obtain it. Rather than simply list off the meanings of various idioms, the podcast gives the students the ability and motivation that they need to find out the meaning of any idiom on their own. Wonderful!

Global Collaboration

Tokbox.com, Yackpack.com, Skype.com

I was most interested in the global collaborative activities that include the exploration of how our various classrooms and societies resemble and differ from one another.
I think that it would be a very motivating and informational activity if, in our class study of society, government, civilization or history, the students brainstormed a list of relevant topics that they would like to learn about from their e-pals.

For example, if we were studying the US government, the students might be interested to know about the governmental system in their e-pals country, including system, elections (or lack thereof!) representation, or citizen involvement.
Since my students would most likely be from a country other than the US, we could incorporate a research section to the project where they would research these topics based on their home country.
We could give our e-pals the list of topics, so that they could prepare answers, and then we could conduct real-time voice interviews using any of the programs above: tokbox.com, yackpack.com or skype.com.
This project would allow the students to form their own conclusions about the benefits and drawback of up to three different governmental systems, while they practice theri research and communication skills.

Epals

I was enchanted when I was looking through the epals.com site.

There are so many useful and innovative ideas and projects all available in one place, for free! I love the easy interface, and I found it a breeze to navigate. It is rather difficult for me to pick a favorite feature, as I haven't actually had the opportunity to use any of them yet, but during my exploration, I found a few things I am excited to explore further.

The projects section is great. It gives you great ideas on how to incorporate global collaboration and communication into your lessons. This is especially helpful for teachers who are new to this type of thing! My two special favorite projects are "Habitats" and "The Way We Are."
The "Habitats" project would be an awesome way for a science teacher to incorporate more language , communication and global knowledge into their curriculum. It would also be wonderful for an ESL teacher teaching through content based instruction to incorporate some of the science curricula into her language teaching.
"The Way We Are" is a super way for classes to explore and discover how the global community can be different and similar to the way "we" are. It also encourages students to think about the "we" as a member of the global community. I think t is especially important for students to learn that "their" way is not necessarily the global norm, that there are people in the world who think that they are the different ones!

I am also thrilled that epals is so focused on internet safety. I remember that I and many of my peers expressed concerns with keeping our students safe in the online community. Epals may be a great starting point for introducing your students to the safe use of the internet.

In my own (hypothetical) classroom, I think I would be most likely to use epals for the projects aspect. I need help thinking of ways to use some of these great technological tools for instruction, and the projects are like lesson plans that really help me to visualize 1) how my students could benefit form such global communication and 2) how I could actually implement it in my classroom.
The digital storytelling and the way we are projects would be great additions to my content based ESL instruction in the content area of social studies. In addition to my local curriculum, I could expose my students to a more global point of view.
The habitats, natural disasters, global warming, water, and weather projects would benefit my science content instruction. Again, in addition to a more localized curriculum, my students would be able to listen to the viewpoints of their world-wide peers.
In both cases, the projects inherently combine content development with communication. My students, as English language learners, need English communication skills, and this would be a great motivating tool!

Videos

I linked to a video to teach you how to knit a simple scarf in case you were interested in that.

The other video I added to my link list is one that deals with "wh" question words in English as a Second Language. These are words like who, what, where, when, why, and how. My adults students are having not a little difficulty distinguishing these words in speech and meaning. This video might be a good introduction to a lesson focusing on these words. It is very useful that the video has the words appear in text at the bottom of the screen when they are used in the dialogue.

:: PIMPAMPUM :: Bubblr! .:.

:: PIMPAMPUM :: Bubblr! .:.

I used the Bubblr Application to create a one panel comic with a photo that was posted with creative commons license.

Bubblr lets you search for photos on Flikr by either tags or usernames. You can then add speech and thought bubbles to the photos and type in text. You can merge a few photos together to create a comic strip.

This is a really cool application for use with English language learners. It would be really fun to have the students role play short skits and take four or five pictures of the skit. The students could then work together or individually to create dialogue and text for the characters. The language uses are endless, in my example, I modeled giving directions.

My knitting company!!

ChickpeaKnits.etsy.com



My new knitting company finally had its first sale!! I was excited like a little kid until I shipped the item, and now I'm nervous that the buyer will think it is a piece of junk.

I'm still excited though!!

If you know any environmentally-friendly fashionistas, please let them know about the site!
thanks!

I feel like a twit.

If it weren't for this class, I would have never even considered opening a twitter account. I thought that it was all mindless chatter about celebrity gossip and the like.
Even when I began this mod, I was thinking "there is really no good way to ensure our students privacy and safety if we have them use twitter."
I hadn't thought of using it for professional development purposes!
And professional development is exactly what Russell Stanndard says we should be using twitter for in his article for Times Higher Education. He suggests "piggybacking" on the followers of some well-known 'tweeters' in your field, and thereby expanding your professional network on the site.

I have already found a boatload of people in the TEFL/ESL/TESOL field who post tweets containing links to interesting activity and lessons ideas, and it is really wondrous how simply clicking "follow" can give you access to so many ideas that you would otherwise have never encountered.

For me, however, this may be a curse rather than a blessing. It is overwhelming for me to have so many links and posts, that honestly I either get lost clicking on every link and losing track of what I am doing, or else I simply do not bother to look at all due to the sheer amount of information to sift through.

I suppose only time will tell if I can get over my trepidation and begin to use twitter in a productive way.

(RSS) Feeding my imagination

On Will Richardson's blog, weblogg-ed.com, his most recent post (as of oct 9, 2009,) is a musing on the rather extensive list of "don't"s in a certain school district's computer / internet use policy.
Will says that he was struck by the amount of guidelines that the district provided to their faculty and students regarding the use of the internet for school purposes. I agree with Will's general feeling, that if faced with this list, I would not be too enthusiastic to use the internet in my classroom. I would be terrified that I would unintentionally disregard one of the ultra-specific rules.
I agree with Will's assessment of the situation-- that if we make it a point to consistently teach our students how to appropriately use the internet in school, giving them a strong understanding of ethical and appropriate use, the need for extensive "don't" lists will disappear. We would be able to assume that our students can judge for themselves if they are about to commit an inappropriate action. This calls for a lot of trust, but I believe that given a proper foundation, students are usually willing and able to take the reins in appropriateness judgment.

social networking - professional groups

This group EFL Classroom 2.0 on ning.com has a bunch of resources for both teachers and students of ESL. They have lots of useful lesson ideas, discussion boards for member collaboration, games, video and audio lessons and tons more that I haven't looked at so far.

Not only would this group be useful for me as a teacher to collaborate and meet with other teachers, but it seems like it would also be a good site for students to meet up with others who are studying ESL. How cool would it be to link up your class with another one around the world and have the students practice their language skills with others far away?

Connectivism - The Theory of the Future?

Te learner of today is like a good librarian
They don't know all of the latest info, but they can tell you where to find it.

In his article, George Siemens explains the relatively new learning theory of connectivism, in which knowledge is created through external connections between learners, or groups of learners.
Siemens lists some recent trends in learning, one of which is that "Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed)"
This reminded me of a good librarian. If you ask him a question about Russian history, he may or may not have that information internalized, but he will certainly be able to tell you where to find an external source of the required information.

In this video entitled "The conflict of learning theories with human nature," Siemens argues that "as human beings, we desire the ability to externalize what is in our heads" but that the older learning theories of behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism are "substantially in conflict with many of the learning theories which we have based our educational system on." He argues that in the learning environment that is growing ever-more technological, teachers should "focus less on bringing knowledge into the mind of the person, and more on developing skills of our learners so they are able to go out into fairly complex environments and function in a distributed manner." Just like the good librarian, he says that learners need not have a vast amount of knowledge internalized, but must be connected to the knowledge networks in a way that allows them to access what they deem to be relevant and important.

Reaction to video "The The Machine is Us/ing Us"

What an interesting take on how we transform the web, and indeed how the web is transforming us.
Although the main point of the video was how human interaction with the web morphs it into an ever more interconnected "space," I really think that the most interesting aspect of it was sort of the "big picture" - how human interaction is becoming ever more web-related.
As i said on our discussion board, I am not a huge fan of this (in my opinion,) invasive inter-connectedness. It is evident even today (especially for youngsters,) how central our "web presence" is to our ideas of self. How many blogs do you have? How many social networking sites do you belong to? How many "friends" do you have? It would seem as though how deeply you are inter-connected with other web users is directly related to how much worth you have as a person.
Another thing that I found to be very interesting is how the video said that the more we link webpages to each other, the more pictures we tag, the more that we are teaching the machine. This reminded me of theories of learning presented in one of my cognitive science classes, the theory of learning as the strengthening of neurological pathways through repeated use. I have this notion of links as "synapses" between the "neurons" of webpages.

What I want to know is, while we are so busy "teaching the machine," how much is it learning?
When will it surpass us in cognitive abilities?

Safety concerns

The safety of their students is obviously a huge concern for educators, and i think that this concern increases tremendously when you add an internet element to the classroom. My ideas regarding keeping our students safe online are:

1. Assigning pseudonyms to my students, (perhaps the names of cartoon characters or literary characters?) so that there is no chance of their identities being compromised in any way. In our classroom, we could have a poster/s showing who is who, so that the students in our class can identify their classmates online.

2. Creating a closed class blog, thus limiting access to only those students, parents and educators who are a part of our community. This obviously closes off any opportunity for an outside audience, thus limiting the possible readers and responses that or work can have.

3. If I do decide to have an open blog for my students or class, setting strict guidelines for appropriate content. Anything that you wouldn't say in class probably shouldn't be said on the class blog. Educating the students on what to do if they believe that something is inappropriate will allow and empower them to self-monitor the blog.

Hello!

Hello!

This is Anne Montgomery's blog for LAI 684, Fall 2009.
I guess I can start right out with the Mod 2 assignment, so here goes...

My top three ways to use blogging in my own teaching and learning:
1. Create a storehouse of online information, including links to sites and other blogs that are relevant to the topic at hand. (this would be useful for me personally to keep all of my online knitting patterns at hand and organized!)

2. Invite my students to create their own blogs to have a digital portfolio of their best work, their reflections and their thoughts on assignments. I think this would be rewarding for them to have a forum for outsiders to read their ideas, and it would be useful for me to gain insight into how the students view the assignments and topics.

3.Create a journal-type blog to connect with other educators (and perhaps students also?) to share lesson ideas, technology ideas, best practices, etc. I guess this kind of fits in with my number 1, but it would be really useful (and community-building) to be able to share a relate to others. Everyone out there has some idea that I would never have thought of!