Posts Tagged ‘Research’
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
Posted in Research, teaching and learning, technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
The good folks at Lifehacker have put together a great list of resources to help us get a free online education (albeit without the paperwork annoiting us with an actual college degree). Reading the comments below the actual post, I see that our mileage may vary on the actual content. However, this blog provides us with a good starting point to see what is available online for free. There should be much more out there, so get those browsers and search engines working.
Tags: education, online, Research, university
Posted in teaching and learning, technology | No Comments »
Sunday, March 26th, 2006
Well, I locked up my office and said most of my goodbyes for the next year. Here starts the adventure of going on sabbatical for a full year. After living in Japan for 90% of the past 20 years, I am looking forward to jumping back in to American life.
Of course, the main event is writing the dissertation, and I will strive to share what I can when I can. The Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences at Nova Southeastern University has a great program that has been flexible enough for me to survive the courses from as far away as Japan. Now, I’m looking forward to digging into the box of books I just sent as well as those in the The Sherman Library.
That box also has some of the books I plan to read to retool my English language courses. I teach English to science students, so the focus will be on that population. Look for book reviews and ideas for teaching and learning.
Comments are welcome, but you are asked to register to do so.
Tags: Research, the U.S., Travel
Posted in Research, teaching and learning, technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006
getcited.org is an online system for keeping track of your publications, presentations, and all other things academic. It doesn’t take much time to get set up or even add your references I just updated mine for the first time in more than a year, and it took about 10 minutes to add the eight or nine things I have done in that time.
You can easily search for publications, people, institutions, and faculties. Just choose your category and add a keyword or two. A search for people in Japan, for example, got me this. Check it out…
Tags: career, PR, Research
Posted in Research | No Comments »
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
Posted in teaching and learning, technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
I’m excited to be able to write this up on my blog. There’s a new book on building computer interfaces for language learning coming out on the last day of this year. I’m extra excited because one of the chapters was written by yours truly. The only article I’ve read from it is mine; I hope to be able to comment on the book itself when I get a copy. In the meantime, you can order it here
or here. Here’s a look at the the Table of Contents. Happy reading!
Tags: books, language, LMS, moodle, Research
Posted in computers, Research, teaching and learning, technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
Well it’s been a long three long of doctoral coursework. I finished the courses for a Ph.D. in educational technology in June, and now it’s time for the dissertation. The topic today is that for three years I have been using the same version of the same bibliography tool: Endnote, version 6. I thought I would treat myself to an upgrade to take advantage of better Internet tools and other features. One thing that has changed since I started using Endnote is that the company now has an online store (I had to buy it from a vendor the first time). Apparently, since I live in Japan, I am required to order from the Japanese distributor of Endnote, USACO. The problem is USACO wants ¥20,790 for an upgrade, while the U.S. company is asking $89.95. At current exchange rates, that is double the price! After several email exchanges with “Customer Technical Support” (notice the section lacks the word ‘service’), I have learned that there is nothing to do but suck it up and pay the inflated price.
So guess what? I am no longer an Endnote customer. As of today, I am making the change to Bookends, a Mac-only package by the folks at sonnysoftware. I have played with version 7.7.5.5 for awhile. I mailed in the check for an upgrade (that’s another story itself), so we’ll see how this transition goes…
Tags: business, Research, software, technology, thumb down, thumb up, tool, writing
Posted in Research, technology | No Comments »
Monday, November 7th, 2005
Please excuse my tardiness in keeping up with posts. It’s been a busy time. Let me try to make up for it by posting a link to an article that came out while I was in the U.S. It’s about getting a degree while living and working in Japan.
Notice what a great finish it had!
There are no guarantees it will stay up. I understand links are removed as time goes by.
Tags: distance learning, doctorates, news, Research
Posted in Research, technology | No Comments »
