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.