MacMillan Webinars

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

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

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 ;) 

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

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.

A very good PPT to introduce CALL and its history

Hi everybody!

How are you? Just a few lines to suggest you a very good presentation on this topic. Though it is more related to the second unit of the subject I have uploaded it to the "contents" section of the virtual course:

http://www.eurocall-languages.org/resources/history_of_call.pdf

Any comments? Dis you like it?

Did we achive this ten years later?

Read the following quotation from the Introduction chapter of your book and comment the questions below...

The software then has to reach the students and be used on a regular basis. Here there is a twofold problem: on the one hand the equipment might not be able to get access to the material because the cost of the equipment is prohibitive (Levy, 1997:2).

Do you think that language teaching has get to integrate technology in its curriculum completely in the 21st century? Are we exactly in the same situation than ten year before? Do you think that the first sentence of this quote is an utopia? Do you think the cost of the software and hardware to be used nowadays is prohibitive?

** Reply to all these questions using "comments"

Welcome!

Bienvenidos a este blog creado para completar los conocimientos que vayáis adquiriendo en este curso. En principio utilizaremos este blog para comentar citas del libro que utilizaremos como manual del curso: Computer-Assisted Language Teaching, de Mike Levy (1997). Luego iremos enlazando todo lo que aprendamos a la situación del CALL actual, de tal forma que este magnífico libro escrito en 1997 nos sirva de enlace con la situación altual del uso de las nuevas tecnologías aplicadas a la enseñanza-aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras.