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.

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

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?

CALL Associations

I imagine you have read something related to something called EUROCALL or CALICO in the introductory chapter from your book. These are two of the most important CALL associations in the world. They have their own publications, annual conferences, SIG (Special Interest Groups), newsletters, etc, in the same way other professional associations do.

The first one, EUROCALL stands for European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning and it is the main authority of CALL in this continent. There is also another one called Learning Technologies (an IATEFL Sig) named in the past "Comp IATEFL SIG, since for this association the concept of CALL has now changed. EUROCALL has also a relevant publication, called ReCall.

CALICO is the equivalent in the American continent.

Here you are other CALL associations:

http://www.mariajordano.com/call/call_home.htm#associations

Language teachers vs software developers?

According to the following quote from Mike Levy (1997:1):

Developers in user-friendly human-computers interfaces and higher-level languages and authoring systems insulate the developer from the lower level workings of the computer, allowing comparatively complex applications to be written with relative ease.

Do you actually think that applications to create quizzes like "Hotpotatoes" are perfectly easy and intuitive to use stuff for language teachers or they need some special training and knowledge to use them?

Use the comments button to answer to this question either in English or Spanish.

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?