Journal #14 CALL Class Synthesis

Embarking on this journey into CALL-land, I was excited but anxious. I would say that I now have a rudimentary knowledge of several CALL tools that would be useful in ES/FL learning, depending on the level of the students and access to technology of course. It is advantageous for intermediate to advanced learners, and is certainly helpful for ESP courses. Voice Thread (my favorite for Beginning High and on up) for community combined skills practice, Wikispaces for posting research or ideas throughout a semester or as a culminating event (Intermediate or Advanced), Blogspot for keeping up on topics and reading/writing practice and for teacher-student or student-to-student contact, Nicenet where Blackboard is not available, Lextutor and Word Champ for building vocabulary while reading online (my second favorite for intermediate or advanced levels), Survey Monkey for research projects when collecting data in the form of questionnaires, Photo Shop 3 for building Voice Thread or other viewing/listening practice, Podcasting for some dynamic listening activities, Youtube listening and viewing practice lists, Google Groups for collaborative team projects that would be great for writing practice, VoIP venues such as Google Chat or Skype or Meebo for conversation practice.

I am even more convinced now of the three keys to utilizing technology effectively and efficiently: 1) Instructor knowledge and ability to train students. 2) Time to train and use the tool in class must be built into the course syllabus. 3) The tool has to be an asset to the SLA process, and should be viewed as part of a task-based approach.

Going forward I am looking forward to using at least one or two CALL tools -in addition to Blackboard- in each of my FL classes, each semester, as enhancements, change of pace, and improved collaborative learning. I have benefitted greatly from the collaborative environment, the excellent instruction and support, and the great ideas from my colleagues. All around, it has been a great, encouraging learning experience. Thanks to all!

Journal #13 Second Life

Second Life is certainly inventive and is practice for eye-hand coordination. The occasional conversation that might occur is not going to be deep, thoughtful, inventive, or -in my extremely humble opinion- useful. I would never use this in class. I would only suggest this as an out of class practice, and have students report on a regular journal or blog if they made a good contact. I think that Voice thread is far more community oriented and beneficial for language practice if one requires visuals.

Journal #12 Video Conferencing

Depending on what the purpose of the meeting or teaching situation is, I would recommend the following:
MegaMeeting: Classes of up to 16 folks. It's adaptable on three browsers, Windows, Mac OSx, Linux; Integrated VoiP, screen sharing, Individual and SMBs versions.
Wengomeeting: Classes of smaller groups, audio & video conferencing both, 3 browsers, Flash technology.
Webex or PaiBee: Teacher with Learner, 1 to 1; online whiteboard; record a video conference (nice for a student to review a lesson.) Widget enables you to embed recorded conferences on blog or page, which would be handy for the teacher to do to archive lesson by lesson for the student on a special blog set up for this purpose.
Skype or Ichat: Learner to Learner; Use of familiar videoware might make it easier for the students to focus on the conversation.

Meebo and Tokbox appear to be very slick.

I envision using video conferencing on a bi-weekly basis to practice conversation, pronunciation, student skits/situations that can be recorded and embedded for a grade and for peer editing.

Journal #11 E-journaling, TBLT & Distance Learning

E-journaling can be a vehicle for 'practicing' what we 'think' as we write. It is a task that requires writing about what's in our heads, our "head voice". So as we think personal thoughts, we are actually hearing ourselves 'speak', to ourselves, in the language in which we are writing. For the ESL student, this will hopefully be in English, and as they write they can formulate their ideas. E-journaling ideas is comparable to conversational style, so it can conceivably assist the NNS 'practice' what they might say in a conversation. I think this is a process we all go through at times. Sometimes writing things down (in this case in a relaxed style) helps us to clarify what's in our heads, what we really think or feel about something, thereby preparing us for the moment when we are asked to speak on the same topic.

Task Based Language Teaching appears to be the newest frontier of research in SLA. The CARLA site is replete with teaching resources, professional and for the classroom. The 'teaching speech acts' project with its phased approach is seemingly well-planned, but data is missing on the content of the modules used. I would like to get feedback from a student as to the efficacy of the program. The bibliographies by speech act shows the level of dedication UMN has to the Carla project. http://dev-carla.umn.edu/speechacts/bibliography/index.html

Three of the most outstanding articles I have read in the SLA forum are on TBLT. J. Lee, (2000) McGraw-Hill provided tacit definitions of task, which amount to everything we do on a daily basis, through survival tasks. Lee updates the notion of 'communicative' exercises, which can often be masked drills and discrete-point activities, to being the purposeful performance of an activity/instruction/command. Language is not the object to be studied, as Doughty and Long state explicitly in their psycholinguistic analysis of distance learning and TBLT, but it is the 'vehicle' for communication. Lee, p. 35, states that discussions in academic classes have stated purposes, whereas language classes are missing this link. That depends. On the teacher, on the curriculum, on the student level. I think that languages lend themselves to studies in literature, current events, history, sociology, anthropology IN the target language, whereby the interest level is high, and the target language IS the vehicle for communication. Many gaps of knowledge are realized (Skehan and Doughty/Long), meaning is negotiated to complete tasks be they coming to a consensus, preparing details for a report, simulating authentic situations. I liked the definition of 'negotiating meaning' offered by Skehan, "the way learners encounter communicational difficulties while completing tasks, and how they do something about those difficulties." Having interned in a completely TBLT ESL listening/speaking class, I found that there is an inordinate amount of time spent in getting students organized and re-organized. My experience was definitely one where the role of the teacher was "to react to whatever language emerged, and then to help address the gap." I'm not convinced that much learning occurred except for a few students. I would use a combination approach, planning well, having specific knowledge-constructing and activating tasks in mind. Both Skehan's and Doughty/Long's papers were gave helpful parameters in giving teachers tools to set up pertinent, successful, task based activities in the classroom or online. For me, a priori one must accurately assess the needs of the students first. The difference between research on this topic done in segments of 5 to 20 minutes versus what really happens in the classroom is PARAMOUNT. There are two different realities.