Group items tagged

Group bookmarking and setting up a teacher account in Diigo

from teaching culture to intercultural communication competence

oh, well, highlight somehow did not stay when submitted... ;-(

Abstract This study contributes to the body of research that aims to understand the relationship between online communication and foreign language (FL) learning, in particular when teachers seek to provide authentic opportunities for interaction for their learners. The study was motivated by efforts made in the New Zealand context to overcome the geographic limitations of interaction between FL learners and native speakers. We report on the findings of an exploratory study into an online reciprocal peer tutoring program established to enhance the FL learning of a group of beginner eleven-year old students of Spanish, with particular focus on the benefits of written corrective feedback. The project aimed to examine the processes by which students tutored each other in the online environment as they responded to each other's texts. The analysis of the students' messages focused on (1) the aspects of language corrected by the tutors, (2) the frequency with which tutors accurately identified and provided input on errors, (3) the types of feedback provided by the tutors, and (4) what the learners did with the corrections and feedback. The findings indicate that the students were willing to contribute to peer correction and used different strategies and correction techniques to foster attention to linguistic form, although they were not always capable of providing accurate feedback or metalinguistic explanations.

Sign-up for the 30-day, but a year - free! Here's info I got in an email notification: We are glad to announce a free WizIQ individual membership for K-12 and College teachers. To be eligible for this offer, teachers need email addresses associated with their educational institutes (e.g., aprofessor@college.edu or ateacher@adistrict.k12.ma.us.) If you are a teacher from K12 or a College, apply and claim your free membership by following the steps below: Steps to get free WizIQ membership: 1.Sign up for a 30-day trial by clicking on the 'Apply now' button below 2. Verify your email address from your email inbox 3. You'll receive a confirmation email from us once your free membership is approved Apply now  WizIQ's free teacher accounts give educators at accredited institutions access to a range of teaching tools. To many educators, the virtual classroom for which WizIQ is best known only means live classes, which they might not need considering they see their students in person every day. But with the WizIQ Virtual Classroom teachers can also: Offer online courses for their school Run virtual office hours and homework help Run summer school online to address transportation and facilities issues Give AP students a jumpstart with virtual summer class sessions Let athletes or homebound students work with their classes, live, even if they can't be there Easily set up classes - without IT help Bring subject matter experts into their classrooms virtually Support group and project-based learning Engage hard-to-reach parents with: Virtual parents' nights Virtual conferences Adult education and community outreach Virtual math and literacy nights Broadcast live school committee meetings on the web Record lectures or flip their classrooms Conduct virtual field trips Run professional development when and where staff are available Share teaching resources among schools Teachers can take full advantage of every WizIQ feature, including screen-sharing, polling, video-confe

This doesn't really apply to language level exams, but for those of you who are interested in the MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) and how to get beyond Bloom's level 1 in testing, this article has an interesting idea for multiple choice tests.

thanks for the article link, Marlene. I am collecting articles/info about assessment and testing for a board I have going on Pinterest and for a Diigo group I have set up for my students here at my school in Chicago. It's a private group, but I am happy to invite you in if you are interested.

Abstract: "In academic settings where digital badges are taking over conventional task formats, educators are faced with the challenge of how to deliver and assess content and skills within badges. Imposing a mastery learning approach, where feedback is key, to a digital badge system may be a potential solution to using digital badges within higher education. As a way to support student learning, Guskey, Journal of Advanced Academics, 19(1), 8-31 (2007) emphasizes the importance of not only frequent feedback but specific feedback. In order to examine how students are using feedback to inform their coursework within a digital badge context, an online survey was designed consisting of open-ended questions about the nature and value of instructional feedback within a digital badge system. Results from the questionnaire indicated three major thematic groups illustrating feedback from the students' perspective: Importance and Nature of Feedback, Authority over Knowledge and Learning, and Learning for Mastery."

PhotoFunia reviewed by TeachersFirst, (review last updated: 1/14/15) : Use your pictures and PhotoFunia to create photo collages, flyers, family trees, holiday albums, and more. No registration is needed! PhotoFunia has hundreds of effects and filters. More are added weekly. To add shadows, age your photo, or rende

PhotoFunia reviewed by TeachersFirst, (review last updated: 1/14/15) : Use your pictures and PhotoFunia to create photo collages, flyers, family trees, holiday albums, and more. No registration is needed! PhotoFunia has hundreds of effects and filters. More are added weekly. To add shadows, age your photo, or rende

I played with this web app; it's a lot of fun.

I have no annotation because I exceeded my limit :-( But here is the gist: This is a report from a design experiment using synchronous online communication for learning French. The problem: Canada' Core Language program for learning French as a second language resulted in a great number of students with "minimal abilities" to communicate in French. In search of a solution: to use synchronous online communication. Quoting White 2003:"the benefits of using web‐based, real‐time (synchronous) interaction and communication as follows: it is spontaneous; it motivates learners who develop a sense of community and gain energy from the group; it offers opportunities for peer feedback; and it supports the development of interactive competence. "

Finding videos

Great ideas for using Voicethread in a Language Arts class

The most valuable part of this article is the ppt at the end (25 interesting ways to use VoiceThread in the Classroom) Check it out! Great ideas that can be applied to the WL classroom.

I really liked the suggestions to do collaborative play scripts and to perform a poem!

This is awesome- I really like how they give some samples too! Thanks for posting it.

Here's a video version of many articles out there describing possible synchronous activities.  I enjoy how she shows you the different platforms.

Thank you for sharing this video with us, Have you used a conference call with your students? Elluminate seems to be a fun tool. Have you ever used it?

I like this Youtube video. "very viable" solution to the interpersonal mode in synchronous sessions. I need to chorus what Mexicans say: "si se puede"

Original illustrations with no words

Discussion on how technology is being used and why we're still struggling to give more control of learning to students. A good read!

"A 2014 paper by researchers at Michigan State University, in East Lansing, provides a tangible example: Teachers and students in the small-scale study were found to be making extensive use of the online word-processing tool Google Docs. The application's power to support collaborative writing and in-depth feedback, however, was not being realized. Teachers were not encouraging group-writing assignments and their feedback focused overwhelmingly on issues such as spelling and grammar, rather than content and organization." This really gets to the heart of the idea of combining education and technology: the technology has to serve the goal and it doesn't sound like the teachers' goals were the same as the stated goals of the assignment. So obviously Google Docs is a fantastic tool, but it has to be utilized appropriately for it to be effective.

I must say I have sat through many workshops in my tenure at my university that included the modification of some practices and even included, to my frustration, the basic structure of a lesson from stating outcomes to assessment. The problem with our particular situation is that usually it is directed to a "one-size-fits-all" use of a given technology that may not apply to many disciplines. I have found them somewhat useful for upper-level courses at times, but the language classes often pose the need for a kind of collaboration and interpersonal technology that isn't presented. Hence my desire to take this course. Another difficulty is the overwhelming number of technological applications presented--I can't tell you how many--and the students really become overwhelmed, since they often have to learn new technologies in almost many courses. Some work and some don't, and since they are the guinea pigs and there are no guarantees that everything will work as planned, and given the astounding changes in tech, the newness never seems to end, neither for the student nor the teacher. So focusing on just 1 or 2 to begin with seems like the only way to deal with it. Finally, I think that, at least in our university, the huge courses found often in the sciences reflect the slowness to adopt meaningful change. Many in these disciplines have simply used the tech to deliver more lectures on topics students must memorize, perhaps adding clickers for comprehension checks. There seems to be a great disconnect between what happens in the classroom and the amazing advances in tech they have made for their hands-on work--labs, collaborative work, etc.

The expert interviews are something I need to do more of. Love the idea of a virtual Career day. Would be a good way to keep alums connected.