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.

How to use your iPod for language learning:

As I mentioned some time ago in another blog note, there is a whole world of features for your iPod out there. I recently purchased an iPod Touch and I just can’t believe the things you can do with such as small device.

I am sure that most of you have heard about podcasts. For those who haven’t…where have you been for the past 5 years? To make a long story short, a podcast could be defined as the RSS for iPods. There are millions of types of podcasts, from cooking to travelling, but the one that caught my attention, and the reason why I am writing this today, is the language learning podcast.

There are different ways to find the podcasts that are most appealing to you. One of them is through iTunes; you can just perform a search with the language you’re interested in, and within seconds you’ll get a list of ten thousand podcasts you can subscribe yourself to. Remember there’s an opinion section, where people that have used it can tell you how they liked it, that might be helpful.

Another way to find your podcast is through the Internet. If there is any company or Institution that you might find attractive or interesting for whatever reason, you may want to check their website first to find out if they have a podcast service available. Be aware though that some of them are for free, but some others may not be. Here’s an example of finding podcasts through the web:

http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-podcasts

Now that the iPod Touch and iPhone have gotten so popular, the growth of the applications that have been created for them have been growing proportionally. The easiest way to find an iPod app is through iTunes. As long as you have your iTunes Store account set up, you’re ready to go. There is a section called App Store where you can find anything you can imagine, but to make things easier you can just filter your search by selecting, in this case “Education”, and then “English” for instance.

What’s good about these apps? They’re a lot more fun to interact with. You can replay the lessons, take your quizzes, keep track of your scores, and find out what you did wrong and why.

Some of the stuff is for free, but with apps, I must say that the real good ones are not for free, but it is not as bad as you may think. You can find apps, which are worth having for $10.

For those of you tired of the University old styles, here’s iTunes U. This new feature in iTunes called my attention about 2 years ago and I wasn’t that sure that it was going to take off, but to my surprise, you’d better believe it did. So, what’s iTunes U? It could actually be considered as Podcasts, but these ones are real University lectures.

The number of Universities that have joined this program is massive. The best way to find the things that you’re looking for would be by filtering by your University or even by whatever you degree is in. The good news is that almost everything I found was for free and that I have never been disappointed by any of the things I checked up…go check it for yourself, here’s video that will show you how:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPNQGmCMv1E

2nd mail generation?

I suppose that some of you may have heard of Google Wave these days. Watch the following video and try to compare the concept of email given in the chapter 4 of your books with the new means of internet communication emerging thanks to this tool. What do you think about Google Wave? Do you think that it will phenomenon similar to the one experienced by email or Internet in Education? What kind of activities could be done with your students in the future thanks to this technology?

You can read something here related:

http://www.johnbreslin.com/blog/2009/10/28/some-of-my-very-preliminary-opinions-on-google-wave/

http://markcbain.com/?p=318

http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/the-google-wave-will-change

By the way, did you get any Google Wave account?

The Oral Language Archive (OLA)

All you may have read in your books, OLA is a rather relevant project in the 90ies dealing with spoken discourse. Could you find any differences or similarities with new projects like these: language exchanges , audiopal, englishaddicts, subdub, europodians project, etc

HyperCard, Apple, Hypertex...?

With the information given in Mike Levy's book and this data coming from the Wikipedia, to try find a relation between the three words written in the tittle of this entry (HyperCard, Apple, Hypertex) and why the creation of HyperCard has been so important for educational computing.

Please, use the comments section below to add your answers.

CALL Projects, associations & key ICT professionals

As you may know, CALL and technology in general develop very quicky. Here you are some of the recorded presentations that took place during an event organized by the European NIFLAR Project:

Ton Koenraad's NIFLAR Presentation, 12 November 2009:
https://admin.emea.acrobat.com/_a789908106/p73683230/

Panel discussion, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to
repeat it", 13 November 2009: Duane Sider (President of Rosetta Stone),
Vance Stevens, Graham Davies and Ton Koenraad:
https://admin.emea.acrobat.com/_a789908106/p63251182/

And there were many other excellent sessions:
http://virtual-round-table.ning.com

** Information sent by Graham Davies to EUROCALL's list.

Ways to follow this blog...

Internet is already a big jungle. The best way to get updated via Internet of everything you may consider interesting is by subscribing to blogs and other websites using feeds aggregators. Watch the following video and try to think if this kind of web 2.0 would have been useful in the time of writing of the book by Levy.

Welcome to this new academic course!

Are you ready to begin? Do you all have your books? If it is so, try to read the introduction and compare it with your own conclusions generated from the following video (taken from the CNN):



Read also the text taken from the same site: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/24/language.training.online/index.html

Did you know all you have just listened and read? Do you agree with all that? Do you think the way of learning languages with a computer has changed? In which way?

Experts experiences...The role of the teacher (as author)

In this occasion, I would like to introduce one of the most experienced teachers in the role of CALL materials creators. I am sure that many of you will know of her existence, at least in the web... Her name is Isabel Pérez. She is from Granada and you can find most of her work in her very famous website:
www.isabelperez.com

As you may have read in the chapter 4 of your book, the possible teacher roles described by Herz (1987) comprise 4 different levels. Which level do you think Isabel has acquired after having a look at her materials?

A rather interesting article dealing with software to learn languages

I have jest received this article posted in Papyrus which could be of interest for you... What do you think? Any comments?

Tutor-Tool Framework

According to Levy (1997:178), a tutor-tool framework is offered as a mechanism for addressing a number of concerns in CALL, the most far-reaching being the belief that all CALL is of the computer evaluates the student input and the presents the new material accordingly.

What do you think about this model already invented by that time? Do you think that now in the 21 century, this CALL can be seen easily in a CALL context? Could you give any example? Could find any information on the Internet to know more about this topic?

EXAM practice 3

This time, we will do something different...We will make use of a webquest and the wiki created for our course to practice this question:

CALL Materials

Click here and follow the instructions given in the webquest.

You could do it in groups or individually. You choose...