Hope and Fears - Thoughts on connectivity and separation

As all of you know, I am very committed to the idea of improving language proficiency through the use of technology. However, that does not mean that I am not worried about the possible "dark side" of things.

I have a lot of thoughts, but you might not be interested or have the time to read pages and pages of what's on my mind, so here is a start in the form of lists:

Hopes:
- engage learners in meaningful communicative events through CMC
- bring authentic and up to date information into the classroom
- read/write/listen to/talk about topics that really matter (incuding investigating issues from multiple perspectives)
- get students motivated to learn a language by building on the pull of technology (the "cool" factor)
- have students create meaningful information for others (this to me engages students in both critical thinking, service learning, and authentic uses of language)
- give students opportunities to learn at their one pace and even in their own space
- connect learners to each other and to fluent/native speakers

Questions/Possible Concerns:
- make I am not wasting my time just because something seems "cool"
- make sure I lessening not deepening the digital divide
- are the tasks I ask students to do meaningful to them?
- what happens when technology does not work?
- am I spending my time in the best possible way?
- am I still responding to each student as an inidividual?
- am I staying focused on what I want to achieve in terms of language teaching?
- Make sure I push the technology to fit my learning objectives and not the other way around


I think if we keep these goals and concerns in mind and not get caught up in using the newest and greatest technology just because we have it, we CAN use technology to connect with each other, with the materials and with native speakers.

Are you a Digital Native or a Digital Immigrant?

Check out this presentation by Joel Hartman

http://hosted.mediasite.com/hosted5/Viewer/?peid=60677deadab34c44afd11e0088b4d237

If you buy into this distinction, I am an immigrant (yet again ;-)), but a willing one. Seems like I am willing to move beyond both my native country and my native technology.

Great talk on Social Networking by Intellagirl

Even though this session was targeted at Higher Education I related it back to some of the comments of the teachers in my classes who work in K-12 and most actually in elementary education.
When we talk about using technology, invariably comments about the school or school distric restrict access to social networking sites such as Facebook or mySpace. Here are soe of the connections and "messages" I constructed from the points she made:
1) We cannot turn our back to these tools because students will find way to use them and because they are an important part of our reality and construction of knowledge
2) We need to focus on media, knowledge and critical literacies in order to help our students navigate, assess and use the information available
3) Don't fight it, but also don't just uncritically join it = know about it and use it for what it's good for - connecting individuals interested in the same thing, or trying to find out information about the same thing.
4) Maybe a role I can play as a university faculty is to talk to site administrators about these issues by compiling some information about it...and bring to the schools... something to think about - I should at least post a short presentation on my Website and offer to share my thoughts and those of others in the field.

As a start, here is her presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/intellagirl/educause08-social-media-and-education-presentation/

Educause in Orlando

Attending Educause is showing me, why technology in language learning is so much fun. There is always something new to learn about and this innovation helps us get ever more students excited about language learning.

Some highlights for me today were:
-demonstration of the new versio of E-Live with up to 6 video screens - I can't wait to try this out with my Curriculum and Materials Development class.
-I need to find out more about Flex 3, Buzzword and and ConnectNow.
-Techsmith has a new tool designed specifically for research with the ability to record the screen and also two Webcams - and researchers can add tags for user behavior (automatically based on mouse clicks and program accessed - or entered manually by the researcher) - I wish I had had this when I was analyzing my dissertation data. This is called Morae - it's really too expensive right now for an individual researcher to purchase, but things might change in the future.
-also, I found Jings their free screen capture program for the Mac - now I can easily create video tutorials for Garageband and i-movie :-)

Schedule Changes

Because our group work sessions and whole group discussions have been so engaging, we are a bit behind schedule so Kathy and I have sat down to suggest some schedule changes.

Here is what we came up with:

Day 3 - Monday:
Morning:
Ø Finish Chapter 5 (Goals)
Ø Discuss Chapter 6 (Course Planning)
Afternoon:
Ø Chapter 9 (Evaluation)
Ø Time permitting we will start talking about Chapter 8 (Materials)

Day 4 – Tuesday
Morning:
Ø Erben and Sarieva Ch. 1, 2 and pp. 13 – 20
Ø CALL PowerPoint
Afternoon:
Ø E&S Ch 4+5
Ø PowerPoint, Word, Images
Ø Scanning, digital photographs
Please bring to class:
Ø Materials to be scanned
Ø Your own digital cameras (I will also check some out from the library)

Day 5 – Saturday (Project Day)
Ø Audio recording (if you have a microphone, please bring it to class)
Ø Voice over internet (Skype)
Ø Webpage creation (Google sites)

Day 6 - Monday
Morning:
Ø Thorne (2006). New Technologies and Additional Language Learning (moved from Tuesday)
Ø Puzzlemaker
Afternoon:
Ø HotPotatoes

Homework for Monday - Day 3

Post your aim and objectives on the class Wiki
Do part 1 on chapter 6 task sheet
Read Chapters 8 and 9 und Richards (post to you blog - remember to include full citation)
Read chapter 1, 2 and pp. 13 - 20 in Erben and Sarieva (post to your blog - remember to include full citation)

LING611: Day 1 Reflection

Thank you for sharing all of your experience with us. I am really impressed with the amoung of thought everyone in this class has already invested into thinking about the curriculum and materials they are using.

What stayed with me the most in reading about the history or curriculum development is that we have not really moved passed the "beliefs" listed in the book. In looking at the curricula that are being pushed down to the schools, there still seems to be an assumption that all learners have the same needs. I know that this is not the case for all the teachers in this class, but we do have to think of ways in which we are positioned by the system and how me might position ourself in response to the outside pressures.

I look forward to our discussion about situation and needs analysis as well as considering the goals we have for our students on Day 2.