Welcome to new academic course 2012-13

First of all, I would like to apologise by the fact of not having opened the blog entried for this academic year yet. We are living the Era of social networking and mobile apps. I would like you to think about these two topics while you read the textbook and feel free to ask me to invite you as a contributor to compose entries in relation to these two topics. Although this book may seem obsolete 20 years after being witten, it state the base of these two basic elements nowadays.

Bad news for CALL studies...

I have just received this message from EuroCALL list:

Dear colleagues and friends,

I have just heard the sad news that Graham Davies, the founder President of EUROCALL, passed away yesterday, after a courageous battle against cancer. Graham has touched so many lives, was a dear friend to so many of us, and he will be terribly missed by the CALL community.

EUROCALL will honour him in due course, but for now, our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Sally, his daughters, and family.

Françoise Blin

President EUROCALL

 

Remember that he had very kind words for the launching of this blog...

 

 

Teacher Training on CALL for free

I will always thank to EVO sessions most of the things that I have learnt referring to CALL and e-learning in general. I encourage you to try to enroll one of the free courses offered for this academic year:

http://evosessions.pbworks.com/w/page/48510148/Call_for_Participation2012

Feel free to visit the page, have a look and do the course that you would like to follow ;)

CALL and Language acquisition

Nowadays the use of ICT in our lives is rather common. Read chapter two from your textbook and try to explain the evolution experienced in this area of knowledge.

After that, have a look at this recollection of links:

http://delicious.com/stacks/view/RjgSan

and try to relate it to the advantages of using CALL material created for language learning purposes vs general teaching material used to teach / learn languages.

Please, use the comments option to reply.

Welcome mesage for year 2011-12

First of all, I would like to apologize for not having written before in this blog. I would like to give you my warmest welcome to this course and invite you to read not only the entries that I am submitting through this way, but also all the links coming from the rss displayer on the right column of this blog.   To know more about rss and other kind of feeds, please, have a look at this brief seminar that I delivered some time ago. I will try to show you others more in relation with languages acquisition and teaching.

http://www.mariajordano.com/itc_tpd/taller_rss_juni_2009.html

Please, subscribe to this blog in order to receive updates from this blog.

Regards,

María Jordano

MacMillan Webinars

Have a look at the new MacMillan Webinars for this year...

http://www.macmillanenglish.com/BlankTemplate.aspx?id=43108

E-mail and the Internet

What now is perceived as something obvious, some years ago could seem science fiction. Read pages 95 to 100 from your textbook and try to describe here the changes you have perceive nowadays in language learning thanks to the emergence of Internet and the use of email. Think of the think you couldn't do before. Think about the use of VoIP nowadays. Did it exist during the time when the textbook was written?

Have a look, to these reference to find more information about this:

Emmerson, P. (2003). Email english Macmillan Education.

Stickler, U., & Lewis, T. (2008). Collaborative lenguage learning strategies in an email tandem exchange. En S. Hurd, & T. Lewis (Eds.), Language learning strategies in independent settings (1st ed., pp. 237-261). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Vinagre, M. (2005). Fostering language learning via email: An english – spanish exchange. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 18(5), 369.

Email writing http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/lesson-plans/email-writing

Good luck with your exams!

FLiT conference recordings

Would you like to see and listen to the author of your textbook? Yes? Then, click here and it's on the first link. You could also watch the rest of the talks, all of them plenary delivered by very important people related to CALL. 

Concept Map tools

On of the secrets to pass this subject is having a clear general idea about the whole book and every single unit of the course, so that once in the exam, you could be able to know what are you being asked in every moment. A rather good method to bring things clear to the exam is by elaborating your own concept maps. You can find now lots of tools to do this without effort. The most important ones are: cmap tool, freemind, xmind, visualmind, or smartdraw among others.You could also use these applications to teach and learn new words by means of semantic fields, similar to this famous online dictionary (Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus).

You have some of them in the virtual course (one per unit) created by a student from last academic year. Have a look and tell us your opinion ;)

Machine translation & CALL

As you could read from your textbook, machine translation (MT) has been linked to language learning and CALL in general from its beginnings. Nowadays, you could find multiple applications in the web, to elaborate dictionaries o even to produce software for grammar checking.

To know more about this, visit this article from the Wikipedia, read something more about its history, professional software and many other external links.

Try to visit any of the sites suggested here and leave us your own oppinion about the use of MT in language learning. Do you think it is actually effective? Is is worthwhile using a web-based translator to present your academic papers? Do you think that MT has evolved enough from the publication of your textbook?

Knowing more on CALL

Thee are lots of seminars and confererences organized every year to discuss and be updated about varied CALL topics. Here you are the list of the ones broadcasted via Internet this week:

Even if you are unable to make it the Foreign Language Instructional
Technology conference, you will still be able to catch the plenary talks via
Internet broadcast. Here's the schedule local time (GT +2):

Friday, December 3, 19:00-20:00
Mike Levy "Revising the teachers' role in CALL: Designing materials for the
independent language learner"

Saturday, December 4, 09:30-10:30
Françoise Blin "Bologna and the 21st century language learner: Integrating
technology for learner autonomy"

Saturday, December 4, 14:30-15:30
François Mangenot " Former les futures enseignants aux TICE à travers les
échanges en ligne"

Sunday, December 5, 09:30-10:30
Phi Hubbard "Exploring the impact of technology implementation on theories
and models of language learning"

Sunday, December 5, 12:00-13:00
Sophie Ioannou-Georgiou "Language learning, learner autonomy and the
ever-evolving world of technology"

To access these broadcasts, connect to the FLiT website:
http://lcweb.ucy.ac.cy/Flit/index.htm

All of the presenter are very well-known colleages and even you could see the author of our text book. So, you know, it could be good to listen to his voice ;) 

Linking our subject to the present-future

First of all, I would like to receive you with a very kind welcome to this course. As many of you have already realized and commented in the forum, the contents of our main handbook seems to be rather "old-fashioned". What I will try to do with this blog is letting you related all the things read there with new applications of CALL to learn EFL. I know that some of you are studying and working in the areas completly different from methodology and ICT, but, gradually, and thanks to this blog you will understand better your handbook. You will also learn to find worthwhile everything written there, since it has been written by one of the pioneers teachers in the field of CALL, Mike Levy.

I would like to introduce in this first entry of this academic year a seminar, hold by MacMillan Education and delivered in this case, by Pete Sharma:

These kind of seminars are called webinars, since they are delivered in the web. You can either downloading them in your computer or ipod using itunes, or attend live depending on your time zone.

In order to know about the use of ipods in EFL, visit this entry elaborated by student from NT last year. Please, use the comments option to express your opion about this topic.

CALL courses

Maybe this information could be suitable for you:

Dear colleague,

The European Commission offers grants for courses listed in their Comenius/Grundtvig course database, covering course fee, travel & subsistence. With the application deadline of 15 January approaching rapidly, we would like to draw your attention to some courses the non-profit organization Let's Learn IT has to offer.

Course overview

1. Moodle at School: Installing & Deploying a Course Management System for Language Teachers (BE-2010-128-003)
   
   This one week course, which takes place in Athens, Greece, from 11 - 18 July 2010, will give you everything you need to know in order to not only install but also configure and manage your own Moodle Course Management System. Additionally, you will also learn how to effectively implement all of its features in your daily teaching practice.
   
   
2. Tools for teachers: New Media & Web 2.0 Applications (BE-2010-130-003)
   This one week course, which takes place in Ghent, Belgium, from 25 July – 1 August 2010, will give you an overview of many New Media applications (such as Blogs, Wikis, social networks, etc), and will show you how you can effectively implement all of their features in your daily teaching practice. Having completed this course, you will be able to create improved learning materials that will appeal to young & IT-savvy students.
   
   
3. Training for the Future - Improving Education with Blogs & Wikis (BE-2010-131-003)
   This course takes place in Ghent, Belgium, from 22 – 29 August 2010, and will focus on blogs and wikis, which (whether combined with audio, photo or video environments or not) allow students to put peer teaching and reviewing into practice in a relatively simple way. Some blogs and wikis can be set up for free in a matter of minutes, allowing you to focus on content rather than technicalities. Of course the focus does not have to be on writing activities or writing skills - listening and speaking skills can be practiced, too.
   
   

If you think these courses might interest any of your colleagues, then please do not hesitate to forward it to them. For more specific information, please contact us via info@letslearnit.org or check the Let's Learn IT website.

Preregistration & information

People who are interested should preregister for our courses as soon as possible via our Preregistration Form. Full details regarding the courses are also available via the Let's Learn IT website.

Application Deadline

The application deadline for Comenius - Grundtvig courses comes very early this year (15 January 2010) . It is therefore very important that you submit your application for funding before 14 January 2010. For country-specific deadlines, please inquire with your own National Agency.



With kind regards,
Bart Bonamie

Autonomous Learning and CALL

One of the most relevant kinds of learning related to CALL is perhaps Autonomous learning. Thanks to the evolution and improvement of technology, autonomous learning is acquiring more and more quality. The IATEFL- SIG devoted to Autonomous leaning, LASIG has recentry organised, in collaboration with the Open University, a single day seminar on this topic. Most of talks and other papers presented there involved CALL in their content.

The blond woman standing on the scenario is called Stella Hurd, a professor from the Open University Languages Department. She has just retired from work this year and had devoted all her life to do research on CALL and Distance Language Learning.