Tim’s CALL Web Log

HotPotatoes is a “lesson construction” software suite that allows you to create Web-based activities.

Here is a quote from the HotPotatoes Homepage

“The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is not freeware, but it is free of charge for those working for publicly-funded non-profit-making educational institutions, who make their pages available on the web. Other users must pay for a licence. Check out the Hot Potatoes licencing terms and pricing on the Half-Baked Software Website.”

I created this tutorial using Wink, a free program that facilitates the creation of Flash-based tutorials.

Click here to view the HotPot tutorial

(Opens in a new window)

Here’s a long list of resources from the Online Education Database.

“Many Open Education Resources (OER) that have been introduced by governments, universities, and individuals within the past few years. OERs provide teaching and learning materials that are freely available and offered online for anyone to use. Whether you’re an instructor, student, or self-learner, you have access to full courses, modules, syllabi, lectures, assignments, quizzes, activities, games, simulations, and tools to create these components.”

Click here to read the article 

The Economist.com site has an article describing online language learning.

“It is early evening in Berkeley, California, and Chrissy Schwinn, a sinophile environmentalist, walks ten feet from her kitchen to her home office for her Chinese lesson. She has already listened to that day’s dialogue, which arrived as a free podcast, on her iPod. She has also printed out the day’s Chinese characters, which arrived along with the podcast. Now her computer’s Skype software—which makes possible free phone calls via the internet—rings and “Vera”, sitting in Shanghai where it is late morning, says Ni hao to begin the lesson.”

Read Mandarin 2.0

NPR calls them “driveway moments,” those times when whatever they are broadcasting is so compelling that you just can’t get out of the car until its finished. I’ve had plenty such moments, but I’ve also had many of another kind I would call “missed driveway moments” Times when I am made aware of compelling content that I either just missed, or which is coming up at a time that I won’t be able to listen.

A recent missed moment occurred just this week. I was driving home when I heard Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air announce an upcoming commentary from Geoff Nunberg, the official Fresh Air linguist. The topic was Wikipedia and I was anxious to hear it. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, I arrived at my destination before the commentary started and I just couldn’t hang out in my car another fifteen minutes waiting.

Thank the powers that be for the Internet! A few days later I was able to find a spare moment to listen to the commentary on the NPR Web site, and I’m glad I did; it was quite good and stirred up all kinds of thoughts about Wikipedia and other such Web 2.0 phenomena we are confronted with so much these days. This led me to look up Geoff Nunberg on…you guess it…Wikipedia, and, finally, to find the text of the Nunberg’s commentary on his own Web site.

OK, so I admit this is pretty geeky behavior, but it’s all for the sake of, um, research…right?

I’ve been a public radio fan for close to twenty years, but it has only been in the last few years that so much of the programming I love is easily available as a podcast or through streaming media. Now I can download all the programs I’m missing when I’m not in my car, then hope that some day I’ll find a few hundred spare hours to listen to it all. What’s more, I can add links to this content from my blog…as I’m doing now…and barrage my friends with links to stories and songs that they just gotta hear.

This is, for me, one of the most exciting ways in which the Web is evolving…as a true Web that strings together these various aspects of our lives and creates new connections, new threads. I can hear a small piece of something on the radio one day, go online soon after to find the complete commentary in various formats, then branch off on my own ruminations which eventually lead me to publish something of my own here.

Yes, I love the Internet, but I sometimes wish it wasn’t so…big. It’s just that there is so much of it, there’s no way to stay caught up with it all. You find a few sites you like and you bookmark them, then, when your bookmarks become so extensive that you can’t keep track of them, they come up with RSS so you can subscribe to the best sites and get regular updates. But then your RSS reader gets so over-subscribed that you find it hard to find anything there and all along, you keep telling yourself, oh yeah, I’ll read that blog later, or I’ll listen to that podcast, or I’ll watch that video…

Now I’m starting to think my whole life is a missed driveway moment. Maybe if I didn’t know what I was missing, I wouldn’t feel so bad about missing it. I could simply stop paying attention…I could only get the information I need when I need it and just let the rest of it flow over me. Perhaps I might achieve some kind of Zen-like tranquility…

You know, when I think about it, things weren’t all that bad when I missed those driveway moments. I remember being frustrated a few times, but somehow life went on. I managed to get by without hearing the end of David Sedaris’s Crumpet the Elf Christmas story. And the next Christmas came around and I heard it then. I think I may have even taped it on an audio cassette and played it for my brother.

I think its important to include the idea of Information Fluency in any discussion (or curriculum) addressing technology skills for students. Here is an excellent definition from the the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy’s 21st Century Information Fluency Project Web site, a resource I highly recommend for anyone working to address this issue in their classrooms:

“Digital Information Fluency (DIF) is the ability to find, evaluate and use digital information effectively, efficiently and ethically. DIF involves Internet search skills that start with understanding how digital information is different from print information, knowing how to use specialized tools for finding digital information and strengthening the dispositions needed in the digital information environment. As teachers and librarians develop these skills and teach them to students, students will become better equipped to achieve their information needs. “

In my ESL classes, I have used the resources from this site to teach effective search strategies and evaluation of online information. Although some of the language can be challenging for lower-intermediate students, I found most of my students were able to navigate the site and use the tutorials and “challenges” offered there without extensive “hand holding.”

Here’s an example of a Search Challenge

“Digital Natives,” “Net Generation,” “Millenials” …or maybe just “students.”
I keep seeing references to the “Net Generation” and other labels for students who are growing up in the new age of information (see for example: Learning Independence: New Approaches For Educating The Net Generation). And in each new article, the claim is made that these students are examples of a totally new creature that can’t learn in traditional ways and for which dramatically new teaching methods must be developed.

Here’s is an interesting quote from the article cited above:

“Although they value education highly, Net Geners learn differently from their predecessors. This generation is unique in that it is the first to grow up with digital and cyber technologies.“

I’m all for innovation in education, and likewise, I’m completely in favor of taking advantage of new technologies to engage students in learning. Heck, I advocate for it all the time, this blog being just one place I do so…but every time I see one of these articles I have the feeling you get when you’re in the passenger seat and you see a danger up ahead, and you still thrust out your right foot for the brake you know is not there…I want to try to slow things down and ask some questions like, “How do you know these students learn differently?” “Have you done extensive research on this question?” “Has the research been replicated?”

I may be wrong, and please correct me if that is the case, but from what I’ve seen so far, the answer to these questions is no. I haven’t seen any convincing research that shows students today are fundamentally different from students of past generations, and yet we are continually told that we should fundamentally change the way we teach because of these apparent changes in our students.

For example in the Net Generation article referenced above, the authors state:

“Not only are Net Geners acculturated to the use of technology, they are saturated with it. By the time he or she has reached 21 years of age, the average NetGener will have spent:

• 10,000 hours playing video games,
• 200,000 e-mails,
• 20,000 hours watching TV,
• 10,000 hours on cell phones, and
• under 5,000 hours reading (Bonamici et al. 2005).

Having been raised in an age of media saturation and convenient access to digital technologies, Net Geners have distinctive ways of thinking, communicating, and learning (Oblinger and Oblinger 2005; Prensky 2006; Tapscott 1998).” (emphasis added)

I’ve seen these statistics before, and I accept them as true; however, the conclusions drawn from them are usually not based on research, but rather on conjecture: students are exposed to X hours of media Y, therefore they learn differently. I’m inclined to agree that the amount of time spent using electronic media is probably having an effect on these learners, but I don’t know what that effect is, and until I do, I’m going to use different criteria for determining how I teach.

One encouraging quote I came across recently was from Naomi Baron, a linguistics professor at American University.

“It is very common to hear people say, Here’s the Millennial or the digital generation, and we have to figure out how they learn. Poppycock. We get to mold how they learn.”

That is more to my way of thinking. Sure, we use digital media and all that to enhance our teaching, but we do it in ways that coax deeper levels of thinking and communicating from out students.

My first attempt to hit the brakes was in 2003 in an article I wrote for the online journal “Technology Source,”

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Some Thoughts from the Generation Gap

I think some of the points I made there are still relevant. We do need to continually adapt our teaching to our students’ needs, but it is the teacher who is best suited to determine the needs of our students, because, despite what we keep hearing, there is no homogeneous group out there with a dramatically new learning style. Rather, our student are more diverse than ever.

I use technology every day in my teaching. I promote the use of technology to other teachers. I do it, however, for very different reasons. I think technology provides useful tools that are increasingly part of everyone’s lives, not because I think my students cannot learn without them.

This is interesting…not sure how it applies to CALL yet, I guess I may need a new category…something like “new and emerging technologies.”

The most recent issue of Language Learning and Technology includes an article describing new technologies for CALL:

Emerging technologies Tools and trends in self-paced language instruction
http://llt.msu.edu/vol11num2/emerging/default.html

It has a great list of resources and includes interesting information about developing trends in computer assisted language instruction, with an especially interesting focus on Intelligent Tutoring Systems.

I discoverd a new Web 2.0 “MashUP” today and I’m already hooked. It’s called TerraClue.

Here is how it is described on its homepage:

TerraClues is a brand new style of online puzzle game that makes use of the popular Google Maps technology. The goal is to find hidden markers placed on the world map by solving a series of clues.

I was already enamored with Google maps and have spent time showing my students practical things like how to look up addresses and driving directions, and less practical things like checking out the volcano, Mt. St. Helens, or the Eifel Tower.

This adds multiple new dimensions to using Google maps in the classroom. In fact, TerraClues even has a special classroom section for teachers.

Creating a “Hunt” is pretty easy. You locate a point on a Google map and click there to set the target. Then you fill in form fields to enter clues.

Teachers can create their own private classrooms in which they add hunts appropriate for their students. Students login and the software keeps track of student progress.

Try my first TerraHunt: “My Favorite Parks“

I’ve started a new category called “Tutorials and How-to’s” where I will share tutorials I’ve written as well as others that I find in my many wanderings about the Net.

Here are my first three:

Audacity is an open-source (free) digital audio recorder and editor you can use to create audio files for your classes. This tutorial will help you download, setup and begin using the basic features of Audacity.

You can find the tutorial on my open CALL course page: Audacity Tutorial

Nvu is described as a “Complete Web Authoring system.” An apt description as it can create and edit Web pages, author Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and manage Web sites. Nvu is open source and free.

You can find my tutorial on my CALL course page: Nvu Tutorial

HTML tutorial

This basic HTML tutorial is an introduction to how Web pages are coded. It is by no means comprehensive, but rather is intended to familiarize new Web page developers to basic HTML concepts. HTML Tutorial