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.

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.