Posts Tagged ‘learning’
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
The conference kicked off Friday evening with six workshops held in two computer labs in the very modern Building 8. For the first one, I choose Brian Teaman’s machine-aided spoken language evaluation (MASLE) presentation. The system is designed so that students can record their voices on their computers according to some predefined texts. Then the results can be evaluated in one or two ways: by hand by the teacher or other evaluator, or by machine. Brian has added a speech recognition engine to check student recordings. Evaluating with the group at the presentation, the sample of ten recordings took us just under 5 minutes to do ‘by hand.’ The machine evaluation took about 2 seconds! The output still needs to be massaged into a readable form, and the machine’s results should use more of the available range (most of these results came out either .01 or .97, with nothing in between). However, once these are taken care of, the time factor of evaluating hundreds of your students’ speaking tests could be reduced greatly.
We were then given a chance to try the system ourselves. There were some technical difficulties because of the university’s network/firewall/gremlins. We were able to record our voices using the system, but we were not able to upload the files for a machine evaluation.
Interesting work, Brian! Keep us posted.
Tags: CALL, conference, learning, online, Research, teaching
Posted in computers, English, Research, review, software, teaching and learning, technology | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
Well, I’m settling back in to the work groove after a solid weekend at Waseda University in Tokyo. The good folks there helped to put together a fantastic JALTCALL 2007 Conference. For those of you who don’t yet know, JALTCALL is JALT’s uber special interest group for CALL. Time permitting, I’ll be putting up some information on a few of the presentations I attended.
I have no idea what the measles situation was while I was there, but I’m hoping that the disease ran its course, and we all escaped spot/scot-free. I’ve just heard, however, that some schools in Kansai are shutting down; the outbreak just might makes its way down here.
Tags: CALL, conference, Japan, language, learning, teaching, Tokyo
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Friday, June 1st, 2007
Here we are at Waseda University in the middle of Tokyo. Several of us are now at our third workshop at JALTCALL 2007 looking into the world of Web 2.0 Tools for teaching and learning English. Some of us are blogging about the experience, and we’re going to link them together. The presenter is Marc Sheffner from Tezukayama University. We started with creating a Blogger account, moved on to changing the language, and customizing our templates for that cool look!
We then moved to Google Reader to sign up the blogs that we wrote. We were asked to get the feeds from our neighbors and add them as well. I now have a nice list of feeds to go nuts with. Students can then add each other’s RSS feeds to keep track of what everyone is writing. Bloglines is another reader that was mentioned.
We then moved on to another Web 2.0 tool: del.icio.us. This is the place to keep your bookmarks. At first it may seem like a lot of trouble, but if you use different browsers or move between different computers, you can access these bookmarks anytime anywhere (as long as the Internet is up where you are). Another bonus: tagging. You may have created many different folders to keep your bookmarks, but the sites you want to bookmark may fall under several categories. Tagging your bookmarks allows you to have multiple categories for your bookmarks. You can also share selected bookmarks with selected friends, colleagues, and students.
Thanks for the interesting presentation, Marc. I hope we weren’t too noisy over on the side. 
Tags: CALL, conference, e-learning, education, Japan, learning, online, preparation, Research, teaching, Tokyo, university, Web 2.0
Posted in computers, English, software, teaching and learning, technology | No Comments »
Monday, February 12th, 2007
I wrote before I left that I would write about my research while I was on sabbatical. I wrote one excuse below for not blogging in general. The other, bigger one is that as I dug into communities more and more, I realized that the topic has been researched to death. Who wants to go into a major research project knowing that there will be no significant difference? Most of the stuff I was looking at was on using discussion forums, but the same research results exists for blogs, and the same results will be found for wikis and whatever other community-based technologies are developed. Let’s move on…
I am looking into something fresher and more interesting for me (and I hope others, too). I cannot write about the topic yet, because it’s not yet ready for primetime, i.e., I’ll wait until I’m closer to being finished. Film at eleven.
Tags: learning, online, Research, thumb down
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Monday, January 30th, 2006
I went to the presentation What can I do with an iPod in the classroom? in Fukuoka Saturday. It was one of the monthly presentations held for the Fukuoka JALT chapter. The speaker was Robert Chartrand, from the Institute of Foreign Language Education at Kurume University.
Robert began with an introduction to the iPod, its history and some of its features. I think the links to Apple’s iPod education site and some tips and tricks from the about.com site should be of use to anyone wanting to see what’s out there.
The second half of the presentation was on some classroom activities which Robert put together. Rather than take the steam out of his talk, I recommend going to see his talk or contacting him directly. He and his friend Bill Pellowe are putting together a podcast for learners of English. You can send your students to: http://www.eltpodcast.com. Check it out.
I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation and learned many things from it. If you can catch his talk somewhere, it’s worth the time. My only criticism would be to cut down the first part a bit and add some learning/teaching theory. I think a balance of the ‘Why?’ with the ‘What?’ can go a long way to ensure technology is being put to good use.
Nice job, Robert!
Tags: CALL, ipod, learning, listening, materials, Research, teaching, tool
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Friday, December 16th, 2005
The technology available to us just gets better and better. For those of you who are struggling with Japanese (or even if you’re on top of the language and just want to refine your knowledge), there’s an extension called Rikaichan available for Firefox which allows you to read Japanese in real time as you hover over text. My colleague, Rick Lavin, and I were passing around web pages on adding extensions to Firefox. You will also need EDICT and KANJIDIC in order for everything to work.
I like this setup so much, I save a template with html tags in which to copy and paste emailed memos. This allows me to have the same resources for reading email messages.
Enjoy!
Tags: browser, English, Japanese, language, learning, software, tool
Posted in computers, Japanese, open source, teaching and learning, technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 15th, 2005
Although there is no official announcement on the http://moodle.org homepage (it’s still linked as a beta version), the download page shows moodle 1.5 has reached stable status. I uploaded it last week, and I really like its feel. 1.5 has added a message feature which allows users to send an instant message to other members of courses. The message feature could be used in a number of ways. One is to alert learners who have not fulfilled a particular task that something needs to be done. For language teaching, it can also provide an opportunity for more spontaneous communication. Another feature is a more robust quiz module. The latest quiz module includes an adaptive function to allow users to try a missed question again or move to an easier question on the same item. Quiz-makers can choose a percentage for a penalty or allow learners to earn the same credit. I have not used the adaptive portion yet, but plans are in the works. Film at eleven…
On the downside, the wonderful Journal module is being phased out. For those of you who are not familiar with journals, they allow learners to respond in writing to a particular topic. Teachers can then evaluate all the learners as well as provide feedback, all from one page. Journals have been replaced by the Assignments module. Now teachers have to click on each student’s work and provide the feedback/evaluation on individual pages (in addition to the extra time for the loading of each page). Fortunately, Journals can be reactivated in the Modules page of the Administration area. This reactivation has saved me time and clicks in the past week.
As I learn more about the new version, I’ll try to bring my comments up to date.
Tags: e-learning, education, learning, LMS, moodle, online, Research, teaching
Posted in open source, teaching and learning, technology | No Comments »
Thursday, June 9th, 2005
Well another year, another JALTCALL conference, this time at Ritsumeikan University in Kusatsu, Shiga, Japan. I thought it was one of the better of the JALTCALLs, although the attendance numbers seemed to be smaller than in the past. Besides the opening and closing ceremonies, there were five types of presentations: keynotes/plenaries, papers, workshops, posters, and “show & tell.” As usual, there were a wide variety of presentations to see. The biggest problem, in my opinion, was the fact that at any one time there may have been as many as 15 presentations to choose from!
A simple breakdown of those I saw (more information coming as time permits):
Saturday
—The keynote on using video, voice, and text for for (a)synchronous communication…
—A networked project between Thai and Japanese learners of English, using a social constructivist model…
—Creating your own audio files for disseminating to learners (or anyone for that matter)…
—A workshop on putting your web page design and construction into your own hands…
—A new computer game targeted at 15-18 years olds for Japanese study…
—The latest in creating mobile CALL (think cell phones and/or PDAs)…
Sunday
—The plenary on keeping track of students’ learning in self-study mode…
—A talk on helping to make learners’ presentations more communicative…
—The latest multimedia solution from the folks at Longman’s…
—A workshop and paper on wikis…
—And, of course, mine on developing online learning communities…
Tags: e-learning, education, learning, online, preparation, Research, teaching, university
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Sunday, May 8th, 2005
You may have noticed that I have been reviewing many books dealing with education and course development. I am always trying to improve my own courses, so I have been using my DCTE 760 doctoral course as an opportunity to work in that area. Fink (2003) is the last of the books I aimed to read during my spring break from classes. Unfortunately, I read this one last and could not finish it before classes started up last week. I would like to use Fink’s model, as well as others, to revamp my own courses as soon as I can get a chance.
First off, Fink (2003) is another excellent book on designing college courses from start to finish. Fink (chap. 2) begins by outlining some of the elements of a ‘good’ course. He observes that good courses:
—challenge students to significant kinds of learning.
—use active forms of learning.
—have teachers who care about the subject, their students, and about teaching and learning.
—have teachers who interact well with students.
—have a good system of feedback, assessment, and grading (p 28).
Fink mentions Bloom’s work (see my post #111 for a chapter review of the updated version) on creating a taxonomy for learning. Fink has created his own taxonomy which he claims can increase opportunities for significant learning to take place in college courses:
—foundational knowledge
—application
—integration
—human dimension
—caring
—learning how to learn (pp. 31-32).
Fink provides examples in several academic disciplines where his taxonomy can be used to create courses of all types. The first two chapters lay out Fink’s philosophy and the foundation for the taxonomy, and the rest of the book is a step-by-step guide on putting his ideas into practice. I can recommend this book to anyone looking to improve one’s courses and teaching.
Reference
Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Tags: education, learning, preparation, Research, teaching, university
Posted in book, Research, review, teaching and learning | No Comments »
Friday, March 18th, 2005
Leamnson (1999) was recommended to me by a former colleague and good friend. We both work with first-year university students, and I have never read a book aimed specifically at this unique population. Overall, the book is very well written, and the arguments are presented carefully. Let me start off by writing that if you work with such students, this book is a must-read!
I chose this chapter (Leamnson, 1999, chap. 5) because I have had several Aha! moments in reading it. Leamnson starts off the chapter with an unorthodox definition of teaching: “any activity that has the conscious intention of, and potential for, facilitating learning in another” (p. 51). He wants to separate teaching from learning because this chapter is about the behavior of teaching itself.
Critical concepts from this chapter (Leamnson, 1999, chap. 5) include the fact that we should be persuading our young college students to have the motivation to learn. We should be exposing and inspiring (he also uses the word seduction for lack of a better term) our students because learning is internal. We also should be encouraging our students to make notes (as opposed to take notes, like it is something we give our students) and organize the material they are working with. He stresses language is a key for our students; they should be talking and writing about their work.
Leamnson (1999, chap. 5) summarizes the chapter with five of the techniques he discussed:
1. Use ten minutes of class time to talk with different students about course material (for example, material from the previous class).
2. Give the concept first, then the term which defines it (we usually do it the other way around). This way the students will listen better.
3. Have the students do the cognitive work. Do not give them pre-packaged notes, outlines or organized material!
4. Teachers should be “inspiring and persuasive” (p. 81).
5. Cooperative learning is important. Students should work in groups to check their knowledge and share ideas.
Reference
Leamnson, R. (1999). Thinking about teaching and learning: Developing habits of learning with first year college and university students. Sterling, VA: Stylus.
Tags: book, education, learning, preparation, Research, review, teaching, university
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