Group items tagged

"The project studies the diagnosis of reading and writing abilities in a second or foreign language. It seeks to identify the cognitive features which predict a learner's strengths and weaknesses in those areas. The project brings together scholars from applied linguistics, psychology and assessment to engage in multidisciplinary work and to develop innovative ways of diagnosing the development of second and foreign language abilities. The main contribution of the project will be to offer novel, well-grounded theoretical insights and to develop a range of methodologies to study second and foreign language development and its diagnosis. We are exploring the causes underlying strengths and weaknesses in language development, and the relationship between literacy skills in one's first language and the development of second language abilities. The results of the project will also have practical implications by providing a sounder theoretical basis for the development of curricula, pedagogic materials and diagnostic tests."

The International Journal of ePortfolio (IJeP) is a double-blind, peer-reviewed, open access journal freely available online. Subscriptions and fees are not required to access this journal; however, readers desiring hardcopies of issues can order them via our Current Issue and Past Issues links above. The mission of the International Journal of ePortfolio (IJeP) is to encourage the study of practices and pedagogies associated with ePortfolio in educational settings. The journal's focus includes the explanation, interpretation, application, and dissemination of researchers', practitioners', and developers' experiences relevant to ePortfolio. It also serves to provide a multi-faceted, single source of information for those engaging in projects and practices associated with ePortfolio. A refereed (blind) peer-reviewed journal, IJeP embraces inquiry into ePortfolio in educational settings holistically; therefore, manuscripts considering the following areas of investigation are welcomed: instruction and principles of learning that utilize and inform practical, effective ePortfolio methodologies; evaluation and assessment methodologies and practices supported by ePortfolio; case studies and best practices regarding applications of ePortfolio for learning, assessment, and professional development supported by scholarship of teaching and learning practices and research methodologies; theoretically rich accounts of the principles grounding ePortfolio work and its relationship to larger social and cultural phenomena; and innovative development and applications of technologies that enable new ePortfolio practices. IJeP employs a rolling submission process; however, those wishing to be considered for the next issue of IJeP should plan to submit their manuscript by December 1, 2011. Those submitting manuscripts to IJeP can expect the review process to take approximately 90 days.

"EASI: EQUAL ACCESS TO SOFTWARE & INFORMATION. EASI is a non-profit organization, committed to the belief that students and professionals with disabilities have the same right to access information technology as everyone else. EASI's mission is to serve as a resource by providing information and guidance in the area of access-to-information technologies by individuals with disabilities. We stay informed about developments and advancements within the adaptive computer technology field and spread that information to colleges, universities, K-12 schools, libraries and into the workplace. EASI disseminates know-how about accessible information technology through online courses that can lead to the Certificate in Accessible Information Technology and through frequent both free and fee-based Webinars."

What Is Faculty Inquiry? Faculty inquiry is a form of professional development by which teachers identify and investigate questions about their students' learning. The inquiry process is ongoing, informed by evidence of student learning, and undertaken in a collaborative setting. Findings from the process come back in the form of new curricula, new assessments, and new pedagogies, which in turn become subjects for further inquiry. When faculty pursue such inquiry in the company of colleagues and students, they create a "teaching commons" on their campus-a set of interconnected forums where conversations about learning take place, where innovations in curriculum and pedagogy get tried out, and where questions and answers about education are exchanged, critiqued and built upon.

Free lesson plans, homework help and professional development for teachers, students and parents. This site is a search portal for materials collected/developed by 9 major educational organizations (National Council of Teachers of English, American Library Association, etc.) Although it seems primarily aimed at lower-ed educators, the search function does have a category for "higher ed" materials. There is also a parallel site in Spanish, which might be useful for beginning-level Spanish learners.

May 28 - 30, 2009 at The George Washington University, Washington, DC Designed for practitioners and researchers involved in the preparation and ongoing professional development of language teachers, LTE 2009 will address the education of teachers of all languages, at all instructional and institutional levels, and in many national and international contexts in which this takes place including: English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) instruction; foreign/modern/world language teaching; bilingual education; immersion education; indigenous and minority language education; and the teaching of less commonly taught languages.

The GLoCALL Conference aims to share knowledge, research and experience on how to use computer technology to make language learning more effective and pleasant; to explore how the technology can be adapted to better meet the local needs of students and teachers, while at the same time providing global perspectives on computer-assisted language learning (CALL); and to bring the technology within the reach of local teachers who wish to develop their professionalism in CALL. GLoCALL is jointly sponsored by APACALL and PacCALL.

The International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments (official publication of Information Resource Management Association) provides readers with comprehensive coverage of developments in learning technologies for an international readership of educators, technologists and trainers. The journal is a primary source for academics, professionals, corporate trainers and policy makers in information and communication technologies. The journal publishes high quality contributions (papers, book reviews) on a range of fields associated with Course Management Systems (CMS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), Social Networking Sites (SNS), Personalized Learning Environments (PLE), and 3D virtual worlds, including for example Second Life (SL).

The Teaching Foreign Languages K-12 video library and professional development guide bring to life the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century. Illustrating effective instruction and assessment strategies, the series documents 27 teachers and their students in K-12 classrooms around the country as they study eight languages across a range of competency levels.

The ELISA corpus is being developed at the University of Tuebingen (Dept of Applied English Linguistics, AEL) and the University of Surrey (Dept of Languages and Translation Studies, LTS) as a resource for language learning and teaching, and interpreter training. It contains interviews with native speakers of English. They talk about their professional career (e.g. in tourism, politics, the media or environmental education). We are very grateful to all speakers for their kind contributions. You can use our Concordancer (written in PERL) on text versions of all corpus files. It can be utilized to extract KWIC concordances with variable context length, sentence concordances and word counts.

Transana is software for professional researchers who want to analyze digital video or audio data. Transana lets you analyze and manage your data in very sophisticated ways. Transcribe it, identify analytically interesting clips, assign keywords to clips, arrange and rearrange clips, create complex collections of interrelated clips, explore relationships between applied keywords, and share your analysis with colleagues. The result is a new way to focus on your data, and a new way to manage large collections of video and audio files and clips. Transana is inexpensive and Open Source. It was developed at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, where it continues to be maintained and enhanced. It is widely used in the education research community, where video is an integral part of most researchers' methods. Researchers in many other disciplines also find it useful in their work.

"The VAC is a series of web-based learning modules that provides teachers with background information, step-by-step guidance, and many practical resources on developing proficiency-based second language assessments for the classroom."

"Report from 2011 Conference on "The Elements of Proficiency: An Emerging Consensus for Language Assessment and Instruction." This year's goals were to help practitioners all over the world to understand the essential elements of proficiency and how it is assessed, to better understand both the ACTFL and CEFR systems and how they relate to proficiency and its assessment, and to understand their implications for teaching and learning, curriculum and materials development, and thereby to improve both systems and their assessment instruments."

ISTE's National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) have served as a roadmap since 1998 for improved teaching and learning by educators. ISTE standards for students, teachers, and administrators help to measure proficiency and set aspirational goals for the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to succeed in today's Digital Age. Our proven leadership in developing these benchmarks and providing guidance in implementing them has resulted in broad adoption of the ISTE standards in the U.S. and in several countries. In June 2008, ISTE released the next generation of NETS for Teachers, which focuses on "using technology to learn and teach."

The conference aims to bring researchers and practitioners across languages, levels and settings to discuss and share research, theory, and best practices and foster meaningful professional dialogue on issues related to Intercultural Competence teaching and learning.

This is a first announcement and invitation to participate in the International Conference on Language Policy, Planning and Support in Higher Education - Challenges of Multilingualism. As the title suggests, three main themes will be dealt with: * The development, implementation and management of language policies for a multicultural, multilingual higher education setting * Language planning (management, structures, services, etc.) needed to support language policies in a multicultural, multilingual higher education setting * The diversity of language support initiatives needed to guarantee successful language policy implementation in a multicultural, multilingual higher education setting The conference will be held at the Spier Estate outside Stellenbosch, South Africa, a magnificent rural setting that should stimulate fascinating discussion on a set of complex topics. Therefore the Language Centre of the Stellenbosch University invites you to make use of our hospitality - we are looking forward to welcoming you all!

AAUSC works to: promote, improve, and strengthen foreign language and second language instruction in the US; to strengthen development programs for teaching assistants, teaching fellows, associate instructors, or their equivalents; to promote research in second language acquisition and on the preparation and supervision of teaching assistants; and to establish a forum for exchanging ideas, experiences, and materials among those concerned with language program direction.

The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), founded in 1981, is an international, not-for-profit, educational organization with the mission of advancing Information Technology in Education and E-Learning research, development, learning, and its practical application.

The Breeze, the newsletter for The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles, will drift in with refreshing reports and facts of Japanese language education in North America. Publication of The Breeze is in part intended to help in developing strong regional and national networks in the teaching of Japanese.

The Linguistic Politeness Research Group was established in 1998 in order to bring together researchers who were working on the analysis of linguistic politeness and impoliteness. We felt that there had been a significant change in the way that politeness was analysed and that these theoretical changes made politeness a subject which was of wider interest to linguists as a whole, and had implications for research in many areas of linguistics. Working in a post-Brown and Levinson model of politeness, we are all attempting to develop new ways of theorising and analysing politeness and impoliteness.