Thursday, February 25, 2010
Prompt 5
Reading Prompt #5
•RICHARDSON Ch. 8. Podcasting, Video and Screencasting, Live Streaming: Multimedia Publishing for the Masses
•BLACKBOARD - McQuillan, J. (2006). iPods in Education: The Potential for Language Acquisition
•BLACKBOARD – Stansbury, M. (2009). iPods help ESL Students Achieve Success. eSchool News (May 11).
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 have iPod as well as mp3, besides listening to the music; I also use them as “flash drive”, such as saving my pictures and documents. Unfortunately, I have never used them to download and listen to podcasts. I was not familiar with podcast until I read Richardson’s introduction, I really think this technology can be used to teach ESL students.
McQuillan mentions that iPods’ “audio recording” function allows students to record and publish “audio diary”, or record audio part of a slideshow, etc., these ideas are great. Students have opportunities to demonstrate their oral proficiency to the teacher who can download their published “speech samples”, or can listen to teacher or classmates’ speech samples. Also students can podcast their presentations with audio on the iPod; not only teachers but also parents can also view student’s progress. All these will stimulate students’ interests of learning language(s), provide them with more practice opportunities, and achieve academic success.
I really like the idea of “podcasting”, I remember when I was learning English, I tried to find all kinds of listening materials, such as VOA, or BBC, unfortunately, podcasting was not existed at that time, I have to spent a lot of money to buy these tapes or CDs. But now we have podcast, and lots of them are free, I will definitely use it in my classroom!
•RICHARDSON Ch. 8. Podcasting, Video and Screencasting, Live Streaming: Multimedia Publishing for the Masses
•BLACKBOARD - McQuillan, J. (2006). iPods in Education: The Potential for Language Acquisition
•BLACKBOARD – Stansbury, M. (2009). iPods help ESL Students Achieve Success. eSchool News (May 11).
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 have iPod as well as mp3, besides listening to the music; I also use them as “flash drive”, such as saving my pictures and documents. Unfortunately, I have never used them to download and listen to podcasts. I was not familiar with podcast until I read Richardson’s introduction, I really think this technology can be used to teach ESL students.
McQuillan mentions that iPods’ “audio recording” function allows students to record and publish “audio diary”, or record audio part of a slideshow, etc., these ideas are great. Students have opportunities to demonstrate their oral proficiency to the teacher who can download their published “speech samples”, or can listen to teacher or classmates’ speech samples. Also students can podcast their presentations with audio on the iPod; not only teachers but also parents can also view student’s progress. All these will stimulate students’ interests of learning language(s), provide them with more practice opportunities, and achieve academic success.
I really like the idea of “podcasting”, I remember when I was learning English, I tried to find all kinds of listening materials, such as VOA, or BBC, unfortunately, podcasting was not existed at that time, I have to spent a lot of money to buy these tapes or CDs. But now we have podcast, and lots of them are free, I will definitely use it in my classroom!
Friday, February 19, 2010
Prompt 4
Reading Prompt #4
* LEVY – Ch. 2. Design
* RICHARDSON Ch. 5. RSS: The New Killer App for Educators
Comment one one or two issues raised by Levy and Stockwell CALL educators must think about when it comes to the design of CALL products. Then, comment on what types of RSS feeds you might be interested in using with students or following yourself.
Prompt 4
As Levy said, in many respects, the language teachers may be considered designers (p10), because they need to design materials, develop tasks, teaching goals, class time, class management, etc. while in contemporary CALL class design, many issues need to be taken into consideration, for example, know the strengths and limitations of CALL materials; be aware of technical support; be creative; test, retest, and evaluate with users, etc., and I think “be aware of the technical support” is extremely important. Because now we are talking about “computer based learning”, especially “distance learning courses” are more and more popular, technical issue involves in CALL design. I really like Strambi and Bouvet’s idea of “chose a CD format and WebCT to create the language-learning materials and the environment for their use” (p19). Some areas may have internet access problem, so CD is a good choice to facilitate the distribution of such media rich content, and overcome the access issue. On the other hand, CD format cannot allow student-student and student-teacher interactivity, so WebCT will be a good way to solve this problem (p18). In a word, technical support is the key issue of CALL class design, only when this issue is solved can students access to CALL class.
RSS is an interesting stuff, before I always met RSS logos on all kinds of website, but I didn’t know what it is! Now I realize that it is such a useful tool that we can read the subscribed feeds, which are from many sites, at one place. We can read more content from more sources in less time, and also, we can immediately get updated new information that we are interested. I will definitely use the RSS feeds for current news, my CALL class study, and graphic design information.
* LEVY – Ch. 2. Design
* RICHARDSON Ch. 5. RSS: The New Killer App for Educators
Comment one one or two issues raised by Levy and Stockwell CALL educators must think about when it comes to the design of CALL products. Then, comment on what types of RSS feeds you might be interested in using with students or following yourself.
Prompt 4
As Levy said, in many respects, the language teachers may be considered designers (p10), because they need to design materials, develop tasks, teaching goals, class time, class management, etc. while in contemporary CALL class design, many issues need to be taken into consideration, for example, know the strengths and limitations of CALL materials; be aware of technical support; be creative; test, retest, and evaluate with users, etc., and I think “be aware of the technical support” is extremely important. Because now we are talking about “computer based learning”, especially “distance learning courses” are more and more popular, technical issue involves in CALL design. I really like Strambi and Bouvet’s idea of “chose a CD format and WebCT to create the language-learning materials and the environment for their use” (p19). Some areas may have internet access problem, so CD is a good choice to facilitate the distribution of such media rich content, and overcome the access issue. On the other hand, CD format cannot allow student-student and student-teacher interactivity, so WebCT will be a good way to solve this problem (p18). In a word, technical support is the key issue of CALL class design, only when this issue is solved can students access to CALL class.
RSS is an interesting stuff, before I always met RSS logos on all kinds of website, but I didn’t know what it is! Now I realize that it is such a useful tool that we can read the subscribed feeds, which are from many sites, at one place. We can read more content from more sources in less time, and also, we can immediately get updated new information that we are interested. I will definitely use the RSS feeds for current news, my CALL class study, and graphic design information.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Reading Prompt 3
*LEVY – Ch. 8. Technology
*BLACKBOARD - Soares, D. d.A. (2008). Understanding class blogs as a tool for language development. Language Teaching Research, 12(4), 517–533.
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), and discuss some of considerations that need to be taken when using this technology with ESL students
Soares came across some issues when using blogs with her ESL students, such as students liked to open class blogs in class, but they didn’t like to leave or reply comment; students were not highly motivated or active; and students tended to copy information from web instead of creating their own writings. By carrying out Exploratory Practice, as well as online surveys, she noticed that the technical problems and time limitation were the main reasons which account for these challenges. She felt that in using blogs, teachers need to give students a tutorial on the basic operation, and choose the right platform to fit their needs. Teachers also need to spend more time to do blog activities in class. She also felt that blogging is well used in all classrooms worldwide, teachers should be ready to use blogs in their educational contexts.
Levy introduced several new technologies for language learning, and I am pretty interested in “Mobile Learning”. Almost everyone has mobile phone, and right now we have smart phones, 3G phones, they have multiple functions to allow you to upload, download, listen to music, watch videos, surf internet, etc., they just like a small “notebook computers”. This technology should be used in language learning, so that students can exchange E-mails with teachers, have small “phone conference”, receive “mini-lessons”, search information, etc. And they are so small and can be carried easily, and can be used freely, no matter when or when learners want to study, they can use it. But it has some limitations need to be taken into consideration, such as the screen is small, the keyboard is inconvenient, and also the cost of downloading from internet.
*BLACKBOARD - Soares, D. d.A. (2008). Understanding class blogs as a tool for language development. Language Teaching Research, 12(4), 517–533.
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), and discuss some of considerations that need to be taken when using this technology with ESL students
Soares came across some issues when using blogs with her ESL students, such as students liked to open class blogs in class, but they didn’t like to leave or reply comment; students were not highly motivated or active; and students tended to copy information from web instead of creating their own writings. By carrying out Exploratory Practice, as well as online surveys, she noticed that the technical problems and time limitation were the main reasons which account for these challenges. She felt that in using blogs, teachers need to give students a tutorial on the basic operation, and choose the right platform to fit their needs. Teachers also need to spend more time to do blog activities in class. She also felt that blogging is well used in all classrooms worldwide, teachers should be ready to use blogs in their educational contexts.
Levy introduced several new technologies for language learning, and I am pretty interested in “Mobile Learning”. Almost everyone has mobile phone, and right now we have smart phones, 3G phones, they have multiple functions to allow you to upload, download, listen to music, watch videos, surf internet, etc., they just like a small “notebook computers”. This technology should be used in language learning, so that students can exchange E-mails with teachers, have small “phone conference”, receive “mini-lessons”, search information, etc. And they are so small and can be carried easily, and can be used freely, no matter when or when learners want to study, they can use it. But it has some limitations need to be taken into consideration, such as the screen is small, the keyboard is inconvenient, and also the cost of downloading from internet.
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