ESL SUPERBLOG / live-blogging

The Changing Role of the Teacher-Technologist: How connected learning, meaningful collaborations and reciprocal apprenticeships are changing the FL teaching/learning experience (Barbara Sawhill, Oberlin College) Tensions Social software / collaborative technologies are now safe to use for teaching / learning / exploring without worrying about their expiration. These tools (blogs, wikis, Twitter, etc) allow many voices to [...]

Teaching Language and Culture with Computer Games (Felix Kronenberg, Pomona College) Why game? to motivate, to provide immersion, they result in choices/decisions and active participation, repetition without being boring (Civilization I - Felix learned the term ‘irrigation ditch’ that he never would have otherwise), have great narrations, good examples of language use to introduce new cultural aspects, [...]

(Subtitled: who will remember to put the tape in the VCR when they’re all watching Youtube?) Harold H. Hendricks, BYU There are lots of ways to get capure television and put it online. But there are a bunch of problems. For example: what about daily broadcasts? You don’t want to watch them a week late. So [...]

Breathing a Second Life into the L2 Curriculum: Google, Gaming, and Language Learning for the GNUbie (Douglas W. Canfield, UT-Knoxville) A disconnect exists between the academy and what students are doing. How do we reach millenials? By age 21, students will have spent tens of thousands of hours playing video games, sending emails, watching TV, and on [...]

Wikis, iPods, and Cervantes (Read Gilgen, UWisc) Flashback: Hawaii 5-0, dubbed in French. HOT Technology isn’t relegated to the geeks. Everyone can (and should) take advantage of them. Technology Enhanced Learning: emphasis on shift away from teacher-centric, to student-centric. Homework & Tutorials: ~ online/electronic activities that replicate paper workbook. The most effective exercises, though, allow for interaction and immediate [...]

This afternoon’s presentation is (drum roll please) The Language Lab That Never Closes: Accessing Specialized Lab Software Virtually (Harold Hendricks, BYU). The problem: students want 24-hour access to specialized language software so they can, for example, write their Chinese papers whenever they want. Is there a way to do that without hiring more employees and staying [...]

Hi folks! I finally found a wireless connection here and will be liveblogging Claire Braden Siskin’s presentation on Runtime Revolution. Joining the presentation in progress …. RR is not contained within a browser but you can run a browser within it. You don’t –have– to depend on the intartubes [woo-hoo!] but you can integrate the two. [...]

UPDATED! I just figured out how to add [annoying] music to the slideshow! Turn down your sound! With thanks to my (now former) student Ariana, I learned about this nifty little slide show program called, appropriately enough, Slide. I am playing with it here to show some the pictures of my drive [...]

Barbara Lafford, Peter Lafford and Michelle Petersen, Arizona State University Wow…this presentation was chock-a-block with information about types of eportfolios, definitions, purposes, types of “artifacts” to be collected and selected, assessment….thankfully they had an extensive handout. I will fill in the blanks this evening over a refreshing beverage Great quote: “We do [...]

(updated June 3) Sharon Scinicariello (University of Richmond) did a wonderful presentation on things we don’t often hear about at conferences: No matter how much you plan, there are projects that sometimes just don’t work. And sometimes saving those projects from the brink of disaster is more work than originally creating them The tools being [...]

(updated, or at least made a valiant attempt to do so, on June 3) J. Scott Payne (Amherst College) Michael Lipschultz, (Penn State) Note: Congrats to Michael who was just accepted to a PhD program in Computer Science at Pitt… Issues: Scott talked about the need for longitudinal (Second Language Acquisition) SLA research- We are at the [...]

John Vitaglione (LARC - San Diego) Dennie Hoopingardner (CLEAR - Michigan State) A Title VI NLRC Collaboration: CLEAR and NFLRC Dennie started us off…. a tour of YouTube (starting with the famous Numa Numa video)…a classic, but as Dennie said, not something you would want for your Chair or Principal would want you to use in class… Search for [...]

Catherine Caws, Dept.of French, University of Victoria Research question: how does the internet mediate an transform our practices as language teachers, practitioners and pedagogues? What implications do these resources have on the curriculum outcomes, learning designs, educational outcomes? The technologies highlighted in her talk (all created at the University of Victoria): FLORE: (French Learning Object Repository for Education) [...]

Updated often! Cindy Evans from Skidmore is giving a presentation on using Languages across the Curriculum at Skidmore… she uses Moodle to accomplish this task and to support the students who choose the LAC option Goals: Improve reading proficiency, enhance vocab in target discipline, addresswriting proficiency in advanced LAC, provide ongoing L2 learning Pedagogical challenges: Accommodating the diversity of [...]

Greetings from humid and overcast San Marcos, Texas, home of Texas State University and host of the 2007 CALICO Symposium: The Many (Inter)Faces of CALL. (Also home of Aquarena Springs and, when I was in graduate school in that university up the road a billion years ago, Aquarena Springs was also the home of [...]

Following the auspicious footsteps of Read Gilgen I am here at the 60th annual University of Kentucky Foreign Language Conferencewhere I gave a keynote on the use of social software for teaching languages and culture. Kudos to Mark Laudersdorf of UK for organizing the Language & Technology “track” in this conference 2 years [...]

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