What it takes to do CALL

This is the title for the podcast we listened to this week (Dec. 3). I have listened to this same podcast before when we learned about podcasting. I was going around Itunes and happened to find this same place: The callspot. I downloaded to my ipod and listened to it at least three times while I was doing something else. I could not understand much in those those attempts, and now that we had to listen to it again, I have listened to it twice and still don't get to understand everything, and even worse to remember. So the last time I decided to not do anything else, and take notes. Guess what? it worked.

It is good to know that even TESOL recognizes the importance and possibility of including technology in class, in addition to try to design the standards for students and teachers to go by. Nevertheless it seems it is a huge task and the standards are not ready yet. They commented they may be ready by TESOL conference, but it was on April 2008 and now it is December. One reason may be what the interviewees mentioned in the podcast: their biggest achievement was to "plant the seed" that standards in CALL for ESL classes are needed. 

These standards seem to follow the layout the other standards have: goals made up of standards, which are evaluated by performance indicators and finally exemplified by vignettes. I can't imagine all they have to consider, all the discussions and revisions these people need to go through in order to come up with a good product. They described this same concern by saying "it was tough to write it at the appropriate at the level of generality required". It may be too ambitious to gather into one group all education scenarios, talking about k-12, as well as bear in mind all three possible settings (low, mid and high resource). It will be interesting to see what they come up with, meanwhile we have to make up our own standards, believe they are the best and stick to them. 

Software or Softwares?

Reading Ch 9 brought up an old question I have ... is it possible to say softwares? The dictionary shows it is not possible but what I have read in the internet says the contrary. How do you pluralize this word?

Anyway, going back to Ch 9 I love the tables this Ch presents, they are a great wrap up, but I think it would have been better to see this before even "learning" the many pieces of software in class. It could have been useful to create the web lesson and even the CMC activity knowing this tables, because it presents the kind of software and class activity, as well as the teaching difficulty level. With new software you never know how deep you can get or how difficult it would be, therefore having this summary before hand would have just eased the load in a meaningful way.

The list of Selected Authoring Software looks fancy, I didn't recognize many of them and those which I did are beyond my understanding. There are three programs we worked with in class: Audacity, Composer and Hot Potatoes and the latter is the one I like the most but sadly have spent less time on. It is tiring to collect pieces of software for diverse uses, this one for recording, this other for blogging, and this one for checking blogs ... I think too many products in the market will hinder people to play with many of them. Personally I like Google because it combines several features under a good umbrella.

Second Life and miscelaneous

Linda Jacoby's presentation was great! It was informative, interesting, paced, useful, clear, complete ... I learned that there is more about Social Networking than Facebook. I think I will not try to use it in class in a billion years, but also that professionals should not be that cautious about it, as Linda said you decide what you put on the web, and after it is there, there remains.

And Second life sounds like a video game to me, lots of time and energy are required, as well as some ability ... and I don't see myself using it in the near future, it is just time consuming. I may look around the page and if possible check a tutorial (a popular word in this class), but that is all. I have already created an avatar using other web page, so there is no much curiosity left.

When I was teaching adults in Colombia I was part of a project that was exactly about Social networking. We used Yahoo 360 and teachers and students were in touch through it. We taught students how to open e-mail accounts in English, build their avatars, make postings, use feeds and link their classwork to their site. I think it worked great, it was safe, educational and focused (students were not there to meet other people). 

The picture you see is the avatar I created long time ago. I chose to represent myself exactly the way I am, and I think I did it. It was fun to change my outfit and background according to the season, and obviously to be able to include my country in it with its flag. If you were to create an avatar, or already had, would you represent yourself the way you are in this one life?

Presentation and Hot Potatoes

Last week Dr. Evan Bibbee presented his way of working with wikies in a french as a foreign language class. It caught my attention that he has done this for three years now and that the project involved the cultural aspect of the language. He gave good tips on how to implement it and what he has learned by doing that project. I will definitely give it a try for my next Spanish class, one of the components of the course deals with culture, and a wiki will work great for online learners.

We also saw the so famous Hot Potatoes ... I had no idea it was that easy and most importantly free. I didn't get to actually do my own exercise due to time, but I can ambition this feature in the lessons' section in my web page. I bet with time I can turn old worksheets into catchy exercises using Hot Potatoes ... all I need is time and patience, sadly I have the latter but not the former.

Readings week 10

Chapter 4 presented eight writing activities integrating CALL. I found new the idea of creating and using templates, as well as all the technical explanations about editing texts. I had used Manual Track before knowing the Track Changes feature from Microsoft Word, it took me for ever to work on each one of the documents from my students. When I switched to Track Changes it made grading easier but students didn't know how to modify the changes, so at the end I ended up teaching that feature in the language class. I'm not complaining, it simply took me by surprise.

Chaper 8, pp. 170-171 explained basic concepts related to concordance. I remembered we talked about this in Methods class, and my impression was, (and is) that they are kind of messy and overwhelming. I rather teach my students to use online dictionaries now, but I must confess I haven't even tried to use a concordance web site yet.

Copyright and fare use was the title for the online article of this week. The most interesting part was the quiz, most of the situations presented are likely to happen and were on the "fare use" side. But I didn't notice any situation including commercial songs as I think may be the most common source of piracy. Copyright is a delicate topic in the United States, in Colombia there are laws about it, but most of us don't respect them (yes I'm including myself here). I just have to say that respecting copyright, in my case, depends on my goal.

Presentation about Online teaching

The presentation Dr. Nan gave last week was really comforting. It was good to know that online teaching is being practiced in several US universities for a decade. Knowing that number actually made me feel out of shape because I just experienced online learning last summer. Nevertheless it was great to actually see a professor say "I've been there and done that", rather than just read or hyphothesize about it. And as she said, it is very probable teachers will be required to conduct online classes, so why not getting a good idea of how they work?

I agreed with her about the feeling of throwing the computer through the windows in the first couple of online classes. That was exactly what I wanted to do when I was teaching in summer, I felt my world was my computer and the only people I knew my students. Everything went wrong and of course I didn't have the answers. On top of it, I began with 34 students and ended up with 24, still too many. Dr. Nan also mentioned her classes are successfull because there is a consistent routine or structure in them. That was a great piece of advise I think, but I wonder how to keep it in a language class. I personally like variety, besides learning a language means to work on its four skills, therefore variety is a must.

Finally, I have a comment about the software "Elluminate", I found its purpose valid but its application way difficult and somehow archaic. I'm comparing it to Adobe connect and though I have used the latter software only as a guest, I believe it is a perfect fit to people working with this kind of technology first time ever. I will store "Ellumiate" in the pile of 'things to use only if you are desparate', it's a new list I developed through the experiences I have had in this class, and personal ones as well.

Readings week 9

Online learning, key pal connection and intercultural learning were the topics for this week. The later ones were more interesting than the former, and the key pal topic didn't provide much new information, and didn't convince me of incorporating key pal projects in my classes.

Online learning seems to be growing fast in America, nevertheless it is not the same in other countries, or at least in South America. People still don't trust technology (besides not having easy access to it), and are used to the old ways of teaching.

The key pal connection article confirmed it is easier to find classrooms inside the same territory, in order to exchange letters. It also proved that its success depends on how close the teacher is looking at the activity, which does not encourage me to add to my load. Therefore I don't think I can use those projects in my classes, I rather have students write blogs or journals, and I would answer back, or have them write back among themselves.

Finally, the long article about intercultural learning through e-mail exchange brought the importance for teachers to develop intercultural communicative competence, as well as for students to look at their culture, and sub cultures, to reinforce, confirm or negate stereotypes, bias, etc. I don't necessarily see the use of e-mail in doing so (as I explained before), instead the teacher could use a video, a movie, a tv program or even a song to teach students about their and other cultures.