This year’s annual JALT 2008 conference will coincide with the 7th joint conference of the Pan Asian Consortium (PCA) and the 6th Asian Youth Forum (AYF), which should lend a greater international feel to the event. It’s being held at National Olympics Youth Memorial Center in Tokyo - the same venue as last year’s gathering - from the 31st of October through the 3rd of November.
Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend, but the schedule looks chock full of a variety of stimulating workshops and presentations by educators from all over Asia and beyond. If you want to save some money by pre-registering, the deadline is today (October 6th), so register now.
Ever since Stephen linked to Seeqpod earlier in the week, I’ve been going crazy with this fun and very useful tool. Essentially, you do searches on your favorite music, artist, or band, and then browse the resulting list of full mp3 files or music videos - all flash based for experiencing in the browser, not for download. Then, you can create a playlist, name it, save it, and embed it in your own website, complete with the audio player.
I’ve already used this in one of my EFL classes this week: I embedded a popular song into our Moodle course, did a quick search for the lyrics online and then used them to create an on-the-fly cloze exercise for the students to complete. It took a grand total of 15 minutes to do and was ready to go when the bell rang. This is a major improvement for educators looking to incorporate music into their curriculum, since songs no longer need to be hunted down and purchased, but rather borrowed for convenient use. It opens up a huge variety of music previously out of range on short notice.
So in the spirit of sharing, have a listen to one my favorite groups ever, Thievery Corporation, based out of Washington D.C. And hey, if you like their music, buy it.
Japan’s second symposium on CALL, Web 2.0 technologies, and wireless learning environments is set to take place at the Nagoya University of Commerce and Business on March 29th. Entitled Wireless Ready: Interactivity, Collaboration, and Feedback in Language Learning Technologies, the conference will simultaneously be held virtually at Gavin Dudeney’s Edunation in Second Life. Keynote speakers include Russell Stannard, John Collick of Promethean, and Michael Coghlan, who also happens to be a Webhead. And my boss, Tom Robb, will be on a panel discussion related to Japanese student preferences when it comes to vocab study on cell phones and computers - interesting stuff.
I enjoyed last year’s event: good crowd, nice atmosphere, lots to discuss. The lineup of presentations and panels looks just as intriguing this year, particularly of interest to me are the ones on mobile technologies and interactive whiteboards. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make the trip over to Nagoya due to finances, but I’ll certainly be firing up my avatar and checking out a few of the talks in Second Life. Registration is now open for the event in SL, but it’s limited to 50 participants, so if you want to attend, it might be better to register soon.
Another interesting English language training application I came across at JALT 2007 was Lexxica, a free Web-based service out of Tokyo. Based on frequency analysis of international corpora, Lexxica’s main purpose is to quickly identify how many English language words a learner knows, and then through digital flash cards, reading exercises, games, etc., build that learner’s vocab to the essential 2000 and 5000 levels.
Research has shown that of the approximately 375,000 words in the English language, knowing the most common 2,000 of them will provide a learner with 80% coverage of words needed for basic communication, while knowing the most common 5,000 is necessary for reading general English without a dictionary. One problem with many language programs is that they teach too many words outside of the most common. Lexxica hones in on the words learners are missing from this essential corpus and trains them systematically to reach those magic levels.
What interests me most about Lexxica is that teachers can form their own groups of students and track their progress. Furthermore, the application is formatted to work with mobile technology, so students without desktops or laptops can participate - I saw it work nicely on the iPod touch, too. I believe Lexxica would make an ideal vocab building component for any EFL/ESL program. And it’s free!
At JALT2007 this weekend I came across a new website called iKnow: a free English learning application with social networking features, designed exclusively for Japanese learners. Once logged in, learners can use a variety of applications designed to build their English skills, including vocab and phrase lessons, dictation, podcasts, games, etc. iKnow keeps track of individual learner progress and will create customized lessons each time the application is launched.
Here’s the good part: teachers can create groups of their students and track student progress throughout the semester, allowing iKnow to become an integral part of the curriculum.
And here’s the best part: iKnow is accessible via mobile phones, so users can study on the go, and teachers don’t need to have access to a computer lab, meaning that iKnow can be incorporated into the activities of a normal face-to-face classroom.
According to its creators, iKnow has gained about 10,000 registered members since its September 2007 launch. If you teach in Japan, this is definitely an application you want to check out.
The merger of social networking technologies with internet telephony has spawned a new movement of teachers and students looking to supplement and, in some cases, bypass traditional language educational institutions for more personalized and direct tutor-learner relationships. Myngle, is one such upstart, which their founders describe as:
…the global language elearning marketplace, where teachers and students from all over the world myngle, understand each other better and have fun – as they learn new languages and cultures” Myngle offers a solution by providing both students and teachers in different locations with a complete online language instruction platform, containing all resources needed for synchronous e-learning.
So in other words, Myngle plays matchmaker in the midst of a free market exchange of language teaching services and products. Synchronous lessons are carried out via Skype and feedback mechanisms are structured into the site, including public ratings for teachers, freely available on their profiles. Institutions can also get a piece of the action by establishing a presence on Myngle and promoting their own teachers and educational products.
I’ve already seen instances of other sites attempting a similar model, such as xLingo and Osnavi - or even individuals starting up their own marketing sites, like A.J. Hoge and Steve Kaufmann - so I’m curious to see how Myngle will fare. They’re looking for beta testers at the moment.
I’ve argued before that Flickr is an ideal social network for beginning and lower intermediate EFL learners, due to the abundance of short, ‘one-liner’ comments on photos, not to mention the fun factor involved. So to build on this, I went ahead and fleshed out the handout I created for my presentation at JALTCALL last month. Entitled Motivating Language Learners with Flickr, the document essentially lists practical and enjoyable activities that teachers can carry out with their students using Flickr. My intention is to give teachers some ideas on how they might use a social network like Flickr in their language classes.
I’ve argued before that Flickr is an ideal social network for beginning and lower intermediate EFL learners, due to the abundance of short, ‘one-liner’ comments on photos, not to mention the fun factor involved. So to build on this, I went ahead and fleshed out the handout I created for my presentation at JALTCALL last month. Entitled Motivating Language Learners with Flickr, the document essentially lists practical and enjoyable activities that teachers can carry out with their students using Flickr. My intention is to give teachers some ideas on how they might use a social network like Flickr in their language classes.
In response to several recent requests, I am re-posting a paper I wrote back in the spring of 2003 as part of my M.Ed. work. With the recent surge of interest in Second Life for language learning, perhaps someone doing research will find it useful in some way:
In response to several recent requests, I am re-posting a paper I wrote back in the spring of 2003 as part of my M.Ed. work. With the recent surge of interest in Second Life for language learning, perhaps someone doing research will find it useful in some way:
This year’s annual JALT 2008 conference will coincide with the 7th joint conference of the Pan Asian Consortium (PCA) and the 6th Asian Youth Forum (AYF), which should lend a greater international feel to the event. It’s being held at National Olympics Youth Memorial Center in Tokyo - the same venue as last year’s gathering - from the 31st of October through the 3rd of November.