Group items tagged

20 ways to build classroom community and relationships

Ideas for creating community in your online class, even an asynchronous one.

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.

"More writing courses than ever are being taught online, and effective online writing instruction requires teachers to communicate deliberately and clearly in order to have productive relationships with their students. In The Online Writing Conference: A Guide for Teachers and Tutors, former chair of the CCCC Committee for Effective Practices in Online Writing Instruction Beth L. Hewett articulates the how and why of one-to-one online writing conference pedagogy. Complete with an instructor's study guide and informed by the principles set forth in the CCCC Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for OWI, her updated text provides examples and transcripts of synchronous and asynchronous instructor-student interaction, targeted lessons, and conferencing action plans that help instructors hone their pedagogical practice, from formatting comments to showing regard for students."

Little is known about the population of educators who teach online, especially with relationship to preparation from their teacher education programs. This article discusses the results of a national survey of K-12 online teachers from across the nation to ascertain how prepared they felt they were with regard to three key areas: technology, pedagogy, and content, including combinations of these domains, as described by the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Overall, K-12 online teachers indicated that they felt the most prepared in the areas of pedagogy, content, and pedagogical content. They felt least prepared in the areas of technology, including technological pedagogical knowledge, technological content knowledge, and technological pedagogical content knowledge. Implications for the field of teacher education are discussed, including the need to more fully integrate technology within the coursework and field experiences of teacher candidates, and the need to create courses, or specific modules within existing courses, to address topics of importance to virtual teaching.

Abstract: Since their emergence in 2005, Web 2.0 technologies have been advanced as potentially transformative in the area of education in general and foreign language learning in particular. Web 2.0 technologies are presenting new opportunities for developing diverse online learning environments and enhancing interactivity, participation and feedback between students, their peer groups and teachers. This article examines one of the most significant Web 2.0 tools, Social Networking Sites (SNS), and focuses on Livemocha, an example of an online community specifically aimed at encouraging collaboration between foreign language learners. Results from the ethnographic approach adopted in the paper indicate that: (a) SNSs can be used by language learners to explore new relationships rather than merely maintain existing ones and that (b) longitudinal studies are required to achieve a better understanding of the complex processes of mediation involved in online community formation and maintenance

Funny! I also found this article last week and even attached it to last week's blog post in the ning. I've noticed this morning, that reading and commenting on it is also one of this week's assignments. I guess I chose well :)

In this Journal that I follow, they have many different authors discuss topics ranging from technologies use for, by Deaf people, education for deaf children, parent-child relationships, to language development.

"they" would say no without even reading/listening to my reasons. Better to ask forgiveness than permission but it may not be worth your job and it's definitely not worth the safety of students.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Different countries and different education departments within those countries have social media policies which generally limit the ways in which teachers can use twitter and Facebook with their students.

This is a smart alternative to "friending" your students and keeping school and personal separate. It is very helpful that the author included screen shots in the article; makes it easier to follow the steps.

Thanks for the article. It was exactly what I've been looking for about how to keep my personal life and my students' separate but still be able to use Facebook. The set up steps are very easy to follow.

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

Another FB idea, but this is not connected to the real facebook. I'm not sure classmates can interact with these "fake" profiles. Still, might be fun.

I can imagine using this after reading a book with a class - I could assign a character to each student and give them a situation to respond to. It might turn out something like this: https://thehairpin.com/texts-from-pride-and-prejudice-9508de842826