Group items tagged

"Music is a wonderful tool to integrate into your teaching repertoire, especially if you are a foreign language teacher."

This sounds fun! I would love to try it next year!

"Stephen Hersh outlines six steps for how you can create a community of active learning online if you 'use the medium.' "

Yes,Greg, Agreed, great resource!!! Will use often.

Zoom! I'm pretty sure Stephen Hersch is my neighbor! Teaches at Northwestern. "Stop talking so much!" Yes. Great take away. I saw this video when I looked up to see what TEACHx is since he's involved. Started in 2016. But this linked video https://vimeo.com/249442007 is 4 Northwestern students and how they use technology. Evidently they use Canvas as well. I want to look up want one student said about his Spanish class. But what I liked is one of the students talks about when she doesn't use technology. After having said that all her life she had never used her laptop so much, but still in class the expectation is to arrive prepared and be ready to discuss. Hersch says the same for the what is one of the best uses of Zoom... time for students to discuss. Now! How to really get them all to prepare!?

An article written by the founder and CEO of ThingLink in which she discusses the main arguments for interactive visual media in online learning, examples and best practices for creating visual learning materials for students, and ways students can use interactive visual media (ThingLink) to document and share their learning. She shares numerous ways teachers and students could use ThingLink with examples.

An article written by the founder and CEO of ThingLink in which she discusses the main arguments for interactive visual media in online learning, examples and best practices for creating visual learning materials for students, and ways students can use interactive visual media (ThingLink) to document and share their learning. She shares numerous ways teachers and students could use ThingLink with examples.

A very complete article about the advantages of using images and learning. I really want to learn how to use thinglink now.

This is a great explanation. Thank you for posting it. Any idea about the legality of editing YouTube videos with eduCanon?

The article highlights the effectiveness of collaborative and cooperative language learning activities such as school exchanges and pairing students with counterparts abroad. It also bring up the issue of difficult assessment gets in the way and brings to the front solo performances and summative examinations.

I certainly agree with this as being an effective way to language learning. We in the military community use the group/pair work approach for many reasons. Pair work keeps them interested and motivated to learn. It also makes better use of class time. I also think that when the students are ready for the OPI, they generally do better than if they were in a traditional classroom. As for assessment, yes it is more difficult, but it is up to us as instructors to find ways to measure the students' performance based on the interaction. Once the student is in country, it will be up to him/her to communicate with others. That will be the true test.

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)

From the website:  (and there is a companion website, see below) In spite of the proliferation of online learning in higher education, creating online courses can still evoke a good deal of frustration, negativity, and wariness in those who need to create them. Essentials of Online Course Design takes a fresh, thoughtfully designed, step-by-step approach to online course development. At its core is a set of standards that are based on best practices in the field of online learning and teaching. Pedagogical, organizational and visual design principles are presented and modeled throughout the book and users will quickly learn from the guide's hands-on approach. The course design process begins with the elements of a classroom syllabus which, after a series of guided steps, easily evolve into an online course outline. The guide's key features include: a practical approach informed by theory clean interior design that offers straightforward guidance from page one clear and jargon-free language examples, screen shots, and illustrations to clarify and support the text a Companion Website with examples, adaptable templates, interactive learning features, and online resources a checklist of online course design standards that readers can use to self-evaluate. Essentials of Online Course Design serves as a best-practice model for designing online courses. After reading this book, readers will find that preparing for online teaching is, contrary to popular belief, a satisfying and engaging experience. The core issue is simply good design: pedagogical, organizational, and visual. Companion website:  http://www.marjorievai.com/WEBSITE-CONTENTS.html

Here is a guy who is doing presentations on "60 web tools in 60 minutes" (60 seconds each).  This is a page with the current 60 listed - do you know them all?   and there is a link to the recording of his presentation/webinar, too, so you can see the whole presentation.

A school district in Florida is advising teachers not to "friend" students on social networking sites, claiming that teacher-student communication through this medium is "inappropriate."

Interesting that these regulations are listed in the teachers' handbook. I live within walking distance from the school I work at, and often see neighborhood kids. One in particular is my student, in fact I was standing outside my home last night talking with two friends of mine and he walked by. He's a great kid and we always say hi and chat a little, but it's in the back of my mind that even that could be used against me by someone who is twisted. The weird thing about the inappropriate internet stuff is that there is always a paper trail, so it seems so obvious to not do certain things. I'm surprised FL advises teachers to not even use a "professional" user account with students, but apparently they feel the risks outweigh the advantages.

This article talks about many aspects of communication especially the benefits of synchronous distance language learning

I really like the phrase "instrumental empathy" -- I think it's something great to strive for in our classrooms and to integrate into our lessons.

How to do an interpretive listening activity called Movie Talk.

I'm new to movietalks, thank you for sharing this resource.

I like the way this list gives tools that are both digital and physical. Thanks for sharing! Also, I'm interested to try out FluentU.

The debate about teaching languages online continues - with Rosetta Stone at the center of this article.  With a teacher, without a teacher, with RS or without, the key is still how it is taught and that can differ widely from class to class!

I totally agree with you. I think that RS is a good tool to use in place of a textbook, but it doesn't change the fact that you need more than a textbook to learn something with great quality. Conversation is key and having someone there to converse with is what helps and increases the learning. If you don't use it, you loose it fast.

"The Foreign Language Teaching Forum is an integrated service for FL teachers, dedicated to encouraging communication, sharing, and collaboration at all levels. Our broad discussion topic is foreign language teaching methods for any level of instruction in all languages."

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.

Wow, just imagine how much calmer the world could be if classrooms were set up to allow for multiple temperaments as well as learning styles?! Also, the think-pair-share concept is fantastic; I've been using the "alone-paired-large group" sequence for language learners in groups since I got my CELTA certification and it's been hugely successful. Nobody wants to be wrong in public, and when learners have a chance to discuss it with a partner first, they are more likely to share their ideas.