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

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.

Graham Davies and CALL

Having a look at your textbook in order to prepare the exams, I thought It could be a good idea to get in touch with some of the people mentioned in this book ... I met Graham Davies some time ago, and I asked him to take part in this blog.

He has been involved in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) since 1976. In 1982 he wrote one of the first introductory books on computers in language learning and teaching, which was followed by numerous other printed and software publications.

In 1989 he was conferred with the title of Professor of CALL. He retired from full-time teaching in 1993, but I continued to work as a Visiting Professor for Thames Valley University until 2001. I was the Founder President of EUROCALL, holding the post from 1993 to 2000: http://www.eurocall-languages.org

He is currently a partner in Camsoft, a CALL software development and consultancy business, which was founded in 1982: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk

He has lectured and run ICT training courses for language teachers in 22 different countries and I sit on a number of national and international advisory boards and committees.

He has been actively involved in WorldCALL since its beginning in 1998. WorldCALL is a worldwide umbrella organisation that aims to assist countries that are currently underserved in the area of ICT and the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages: http://www.worldcall.org

He still have the status of Emeritus Professor of Computer Assisted Language Learning and he does occasional external examining of MPhil and PhD students. He also keep himself busy by editing the ICT for Language Teachers website at:
http://www.ict4lt.org

He is currently investigating the possibilities of language learning and teaching in Second Life. I am the EUROCALL Executive Committee member who is responsible for maintaining EUROCALL's Headquarters in Second Life, which you can find at this SLURL:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/EduNation%20III/9/29/22/

Now, that you know more things about this so famous CALL expert, time for you to make some questions... As you could imagine he has achieved a never ending CV http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/cvgd.htm

I would like to ask him about his implication with "Storyboard"or any other project from that time. Also, I would like to ask him about the beginings of Eurocall. Tell us something about its origins.

TANDEM projects from the point of view of language experts

As you may have read in your book, International email TANDEM Network was created in 1993 by Helmut Brammarts using the CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) in order to practice the foreing language with native students.

However,TANDEM method is not anything obsolete and part of history of CALL. On the contrary, it is something very live and still attractive for many teachers like Margarita Vinagre, a professor from the University Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid (Spain). Have a look at some of the articles she has written on this topic and feel free to ask her anything you would like to know about TANDEM:

http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/extaut?codigo=1239394

(the link below has been taken from dialnet. If you are a UNED student, you could subscribe in order to visualize more options from this online datebase).

** We will give Margarita the possibility to discuss this topic with you here, in this blog, using the comments option. Anay questions for Margarita?

Una cronología de las Tecnologías para la educación

Here you are a very good chronology in Spanish of the history of technology in education to have a clear idea of the great advances of CALL in this field. Can you see PLATO project at the very beginning? Can you see that UNED is mentioned long time ago like a hit in the history of technology in education?

http://www.learningreview.es/images/stories/Pdfs/lineadetiempo.pdf