carlatech

What do you think of these 15 characteristics? Do you agree? Add a note to the ones you question - and tell us why. Don't forget to look at the responses after the article!

They're fine...but huge to implement on a consistent basis: by 'huge' I mean both in terms of time, and space - to get one's head around them all conceptually. And it can also be a challenge for students to buy into the responsibility for their own leaning. HTML...yes, sometimes, in designing activities writhing my LMS. Blogging...no! Takes too much thought and self- confidence! Tweeting...yes! I love passing on items that have been helpful to me. And yes...II guess tweeting is providing glimpses of great PD resources. Now all I have to do is to go back to them in more depth.

Wonderful go-to summary. Thanks for sharing,

A conversation on Twitter a week or so ago got me thinking about using the TV show El Internado: Laguna Negra to teach the culture of Spain.

There are many, many blogs dedicated to the use of the English language. Some are fairly comprehensive; others are tightly focused on one aspect of language usage that should be corrected, protected, or mocked. Here is a sampling of those blogs for your enjoyment.

Definitely for me.

Sasha Long of The Autism Helper discusses the importance of educating children about disability diversity and offers actionable tips for fostering this awareness in children. Sasha currently teaches in a junior high autism classroom. Disability Diversity, Awareness, and Acceptance When we think about diversity education, our first thoughts are diversity of race, religion, and gender.

Emily Landau, " Why Person-First Language Doesn't Always Put the Person First", Think Inclusive 7/20/2015: There are two main types of language used to refer disability: person-first language and what is known as identity-first language (IFL). PFL as a concept originated among people who wanted to fight back against stigma.

I found this site on Feedly and started following it; this guy travels around the world learning foreign languages; this article in particular discusses how to learn minority and endangered languages, however I find the innovation and his motivation to be the greatest factors in his success. He's not following someone else's path and as the actual process of learning a FL is such a personal thing, I think he's really on to something! From the site: "There are almost too many sites and resources for big languages like French, Spanish and German. When you're learning a language like these, the problem is usually deciding which resource to use rather than not being able to find one. But what about those of us who want to learn a less popular language (minority or endangered)?"

If you are seeing this with the Chrome Extension - I'm discovering that there is no way to share your highlights and post-it notes with the group. Go back and install the Diigolet - instructions in Week 2!

"Five Two Zero So Much"

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)

A subset of blogs on Edutopia dealing solely with issues/activities/debates about the world languages classroom. This site provides thoughtful blogs on everything from technology, to methodological debates, to specific activities, all centered on world languages.

Relevant comments, ideas and even strategies.  Very useful. 

Ellen is learning 19 languages and Arabic is to start in September.

Usie Piktochart to create an interactive graphic syllabus. Laura Sexton has wonderful ideas, is a genius with Tech, and is a super, enthusiastic NC teacher. I recommend her website and blogs - PBL in the TL.

Thanks for the reference! This is really cool--not sure if our syllabus policy would allow it, but it really looks like fun and is much more attention-grabbing. I imagine, though, that it takes a while to get to the level of organization she has attained with the images and layout.

Love it!

I like Edutopia because it provides great information and ideas about teaching in the 21st century.

A good reminder to allow time for processing during PD presentations -

Of all the blogs I've seen, Edutopia consistently has the most useful advice to give. I may not be in total agreement with all of it, but it is reliable and grounded.

Anant Agarwal runs EdX.org, the Harvard-MIT open-education site, and he's here to talk MOOCs, those "massively open online courses" that have generated both excitement and skepticism throughout the chattering world of the digital classes. Agarwal shows a picture of a lecture hall in MIT from 50 years ago.

From Transparent Language, offering projects to do in Russian

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.