Group items tagged

Although this article is about British language education and it's two years old, my interest was piqued when I read it: ""Languages cannot be taught, they can only be learnt. The best way is to tell students right away that they are responsible for their own learning process, and the teacher is just a guide who has to motivate them."" Made me think about relevancy and how Tech is only one part of that.

Really interesting. I wonder if we changed the setting to the U.S. if the same difficulties would apply. I never really thought about grammar being discarded simply because students don't know it well enough. While I've found that most students we teach don't understand their mother tongue, I still think that the shift to task-based work had as much to do with the lack of real communication skills. Just teaching them grammar and relying on them to go abroad to learn to speak wasn't doing it. That being said, I think the mixture of methods is best, and by mixture I mean the integration of many methods into accomplishing a task. And I agree that the meta-learning is key.

I remember getting a comment from a student once, many years ago, that she had learned more about English grammar in my Spanish class than anywhere else... (sigh)

This is a listing of ways to use social media in the classroom.  

I like what srafuller says about not expecting students to be like we were when we were students. I struggle with that in all the classes I teach, not just the foreign language. I work to be conscious of reaching students "where they are" every day. Not only that, but we need to be conscious (at least older teachers like me) of not teaching the way we were taught!

I really like this article! Simple, to-the-point, useful suggestions for several on-line applications. I tried out Duolingo but was chagrined to find out they don't offer Russian (Ukrainian and Esperanto but not Russian?!). I could, however, study English from Russian, which has several activities (especially translation) that my students can use. Thanks for posting this article!

article w/ 9 reasons for educators to used twitter.

I don't think that the facebook craze has effected us THAT much, goodness!!! I am 22 and am part of this generation, and I can say that most of my friends and I have grown out of the facebook phase, we aren't obsessed like we were at the end of high school and start of college.

An amusing article ... and perhaps with some degree of truth to it ... but I am unsure why the opinion professor of pharmacology who has done no research on the topic warrants an article.

Alyssa, could you please tell me how did you manage to bookmark a PDF ? I've been trying to figure it out, but without success.

This was that article from this week and I just book marked it with the browser tool. I was not, however able to highlight on it. I didn't try sticky notes...

While this article is three years old, it still has some ideas that pertain to our group's discussion. The "Many Voices" story is worth looking at.

Hi Jan, Good article--it definitely addresses the common concerns and potential problems of using Twitter with students. I liked the part about the kids building a story with students from China! I also thought it was a good idea that the teacher created one account and then shared the password. I wonder how he achieved this on an international level? Thanks for sharing!

I checked out the "Youth Twitter" website - unfortunately it looks like it has disappeared, but there must be others out there?? Anyone know of others?

An article about how some of the academics manage both personal and professional accounts on Twitter, FB etc.

Ms. Johnson's survey findings has made me think on my own personal rule of keeping school and personal separate in cyberspace. Question still remains is: at what age is it appropriate for teachers to mix school and personal...middle school, high school, college?

interesting article -just read it myself!

An article about using Twitter in an English class to train communicative and cultural competence at a Distant College in China.

The cons of using Twitter as a backchannel discussion. The article debates the benefits of a backchannel discussion and negative effects it may have to the overall understanding of the presentation when the listener's attention is split between two activities.

Interesting article. I think I would lose a fair amount of what speaker was saying if I were tweeting as well.

An article about virtual exchanges in WL instruction

An article about virtual exchanges in WL instruction

This article summarizes various types of useful technological tools for foreign language teaching.

Thanks for sharing, Carmen-- I am also considering students who do not have Twitter, or parent concerns, and I wonder if small group work might be a solution- Using the twitter account of one student, another student or group of students help to compose responses, stay hidden from their online contributions.

Thanks for this suggestions, Carmen-- will use it!

Especially middle/high school parents/students may feel more comfortable using a platform provided by the district. I am also planning to use the discussion board in the district's platform. I can definitely use the tips in this article.

A great article by Lara Lomicka which discusses the role of Twitter in an intermediate French class, in which students tweeted weekly with each other and with native French speakers. I think adding collaboration with native French speakers brings new potential uses to Twitter.

and microstorytelling like we're giving a try!

"This article presents some ideas and suggestions to work towards being a more informed digital parent." There is also a list of apps to watch out for on a child's device.

There are notes that should be investigated here, too - government quality indicator proposal (#3), students disappearing (#5). I think you will find the article very interesting - even if the study was done on a required course for students in "College of Hospitality, Retail, and Sport Management"

An article by Julie Meloni, published on the Chronicle of Higher Education's (now defunct) "ProfHacker" blog. Meloni offers a quick overview of the distinction between synchronous and asynchronous communication, and suggests ways to make use of both in the classroom.

Unfortunately, this article has been removed. But I like Jennifer's comment: "Just because a tool is new and shiny doesn't mean it will help your students. Careful planning and a sound pedagogical rationale will, though."

This looks like a good resource for new classroom activities for any language.

I really like the idea of doing an email activity with my students! Thank you for posting this article! Great ideas!

Now I have another question: what role does a textbook play in our instruction? Do we need to get rid of materials written for language learners?

I don't think I can annotate this article because it is a Google book and has access limitations. I have worked with Dr. Christine Appel, one of the authors of the article "Synchronous tandem language learning in a MOOC context: A study on task design and learner performance". My main interest here is: "How can we best design online synchronous tasks to achieve the optimal outcome?". Sometimes we focus too much on the tool and not so much on how we can make the most of it. The article studies real tasks to find the effects task design have in student performance.

You can download the whole book or just individual articles

OK, this is going to be really useful if you've got a smart phone or tablet with a camera!!   Snap and you've got a PDF - of a multi-page article, a receipt, a sketch on a napkin, business cards, etc. Better yet - register for the full app with a .edu email - and it's free!