Day 4: Online Conferencing

My Thoughts on Day 4

Today we all connected to a session in Elluminate Live and practiced using the various tools.  I had used it before as a participant in an online course, but Jean showed us some more interactive ways to use it as a moderator, such as opening a shared application (like a website or video) that everyone can use individually on their own computers.  He also opened up the whiteboard so that we could draw on it at the same time as a whole class or in smaller groups.... it definitely worked better in smaller groups.  My camera also seemed to work without any problems to connect.  I used Jing to capture an image of our session:

I am thrilled to know that CBE teachers can request elluminate sessions for their classes for free as well as inviting users from other locations, such as a class in another part of the world.  This would be a great way for two classes that were going to be in touch by email to meet face-to-face.  I also plan to investigate more about the virtual office option.  I definitely learn something new every day in this course! 

Day 3: Using Learning Management Systems

My Reflections on Day 3

Today we started the class with a fascinating video on the use of SOULs (Self Organized Learning Environments) using a variety of computer and Internet Technology to foment learning in children as a self-directed, collaborative activity.  I would definitely like to read more about Sugata's research and its relationship to collaborative learning and complexity theories in general.  We also looked at a few more interesting free tools.  One of them is a site (wordle) that lets you create word clouds by pasting in text, in which the most frequently used words show up in larger text.  I think this could be a useful tool to help students engage in discourse analysis, and also as a tool to show them the most frequent words in a language they are studying that they could focus on for reading comprehension.  Here is a worldle I created from a website that discusses Sugata's projects.

 We also used wikispaces to create our own websites, which could be a potential free LMS.  It is not as user friendly as some of the other technologies we have used regarding how to format text, etc.  I have used "pbworks" in the past and I think it was easier to use.  Click here to go to my wiki page.  I am looking forward to experimenting with moodles in the future as well!

Day 2: Collaborative Work Online

My Reflections on Day 2

Today in class we looked at TitanPad, and the shared document and presentation features in Googledocs.  I enjoyed working as a team online -- by getting input from others you end up with something much more complex than what you would have been able to create alone.  Today, Erin, Connie and I used googledocs to create a joint presentation we would use to help our students critique a TV commercial in English.

Before using any of these programs with your students it would be important to get very familiar with them and come up with clear instructions or guidelines for the students, to avoid confusion and make the best use of classtime when introducing the new projects.  All of these tools could allow our students to communicate synchronously or asynchronously with students in other countries, to work on projects together despite geographical and temporal distances.  It would be nice if they could include voice recording as well... for example, if in Titanpad or in the google document you could insert an mp3 or other file with a recording of something you had said.  This could be a valuable tool to help language students get oral practice as well.  The only way that this seems to be possible asynchronously would be by recording a video of yourself and inserting it into a presentation in googledocs.

Day 1 (Brandee's Reflections)

Language Teaching and Technology

My Reflections on Day 1

          Hello from Brandee!  I am currently a PhD student in Spanish and Second Language Acquisition at the University of Calgary.  Before coming to Calgary for my graduate work, I taught English at the Universidad de Concepcion in Chile for 4 years.  Through teaching Spanish in Canada and English in Chile, both times in university settings, I've seen how Internet technologies such as skype, when added to the typical coursework, can help motivate students of a language.  They get a sense of what it is like to use the language, learn more about the world by communicating with speakers in other countries, and start to see how they can participate in communities of speakers of the language.  In this course, I hope to learn more about how to incorporate other free uses of Internet technology into my class planning, always with the goal of helping my students use the language actively for communication and discovery.  I'm looking forward to the hands-on work of the course!

There are lots of opportunities to hear Spanish in Calgary.  Here's a song by The Latin Combo, a local salsa band.