Never Perfect

I was checking my website right before the class. I found one mistake that I really hate. Now I am in a hurry for fixing it, but I have to install Dreamweaver first… I decided to write the final blog while waiting.

Website creating is more than tough, while it is enjoyable, too. I am glad that I am done, but it seems like it will never satisfies me. It is like a learning process. The more you do, the more you desire.

I am really curious how my web-based genre-based writing project works to my students. I am planning on piloting this with some of my former students who already graduated from my high school so that I can receive feedback and revise toward actual use. Well, it is time to get ready the food for final exam party. See you!

Last blogging for CALL?

 

Well, excluding the final presentation potluck day, this session was the final session for this class. What happened to me in the last class is… I was late for class. Being punctual is my philosophy of life, and it is extremely important to being Japanese. Otherwise, I would be Japanese Monkey? Anyway, from 3:30 to 6:20, I was having APP meeting with my advisor. I have one more step toward the completion of Chapter 2, I was so excited and did not think about time. No, rather, I did not think it was possible to spend almost 3 hours for the meeting. Perhaps this is why I did not notice 6 pm was already passed. After I got of my advisor's office, I was going to the library. It was really really dark and quiet. "Wait a minute, something is wrong…(Jimi Hendrix)" The time was already 6:22… I was late… So, for those who thought I was taking a nap, I was NOT!! It is embarrassing for me to be late for class that much…

PodCast. What made me think was the comment of one of the interviewees. Some teachers are TOO confident, so when they use technology, they do not think. See? I had a hunch that it would be the most difficult part of CALL not to overuse technology once we become accustomed. It may be natural of human beings to be less careful about what we are familiar with. And I am glad that we have been thinking of justification of the use of technology. I think this is the most important thing we have learned in this course. We know the usefulness of technology in language teaching, but also we are critical about it.

However, 30-minute podcast made me think of use of podcast as we talked in class. I am not a multi-tasked person. When I drive, I enjoy driving, so it does not work to keep myself concentrating on podcast. If sitting in front of a computer, there are many things to distract my concentration, such as screen saver and anything coming in my eyesight. Personally, I think podcast is useful with a SHORT clip less than 3 minutes. If longer, I will have trouble to concentrate. It is definitely different from reading.

During Thanksgiving

This posting is just a self-thinking process. You might not be able to understand what I mean. But if you want, go ahead and read, please.

Happy Thanksgiving to people who are working on assignments during Thanksgiving!! Me? Yes, as you may have already guessed, I am one of them. Well, my Thanksgiving is basically spent on APP, but now it seems that I have to consider about Activity 5 since the library will be open on Sunday; there I can use Dreamweaver. I am thinking about writing activity for the final assignment, and now working on Hotpotato to make genre-based quizzes, such as claim and support matching, vocabulary exercise, and grammar based on the target genre. In order to make the grammar quiz, I have to conduct a small genre analysis. I anticipate that it will take a while, so I had better start now.

The most difficult part of my product will be Audacity part, since my activity is writing. It is not very difficult to integrate listening activity in a writing lesson; however, I am afraid that it will extremely difficult to justify that it has to be in the form of listening. If I use a video, perhaps the visualized information would help them to construct their argumentative essay, but if it is only listening itself (for the sake of using Audacity)… hmm, I am having a hard time. Maybe I should make up some conversation related to a writing prompt for them to listen to or should provide students with a simple and short model argumentative essay in the form of audio file so that they can recognize the rhetorical structure? I guess the latter must be too difficult for students and there must be better way…

Anyway, if you read this, I appreciate that you went through my chaotic thinking. I wish you luck on your assignment!

What I did on Nov. 19

Week 13: Start thinking about Activity #5 . Finished the basic frame of the website.

Week 14: Work on Activity #5, meeting with Solen and Diana. Put the contents in website.

Week 15: Activity #5 (Coming soon) and Polish the words which are already typed in my website. Add reference information.

Week 16: Activity #5 (Coming soon) and complete the website.

In class, I was working on the website to create more links. Frames and links are almost done (I learned how to link to a WORD file). However, I still need to put some contents in.

From the readings for Nov. 19

The activities introduced in this part of the chapter do not seem to fit my students except for Activity 6. I am not saying Activity 6 fits my students perfectly, but perhaps I can do something like it for my students. It could be a two- or three-week project. The author provides several possible elements, and each of them could be suitable to a specific age group, I guess. For example, student biographies would be suitable for beginner students and if this project is conducted closed to the beginning of the course before students become familiar with each other, it will help establish rapport among them. If we focus on what kind of genre they create, it can be useful for genre-based writing, too. For instance, if the course chooses to work on reviews of local attractions, flyers will be effective models and we can also teach how the features of something can be described briefly and effectively.

Class on Nov. 12

I was mainly working on my webpage. I was creating links between my webpage and my favorite websites, my blog, and lesson plans that I made before.

Although I already have a lot of thing typed in, I am very anxious because it will be online. I do not want to make any statement which is wrong.

Currently, I am trying to come up with ideas for Activity 5 while thinking how to organize them around my website. It will be tough work, but I would like to make it very simple so that I can really use it for my students in Japan. I would like to create some activities where my students can go back anytime and learn with little of my help, if possible. Well, I haven't come up with anything yet.

From the reading for Nov. 12

Oh, I have just realized by typing the title above that the next session is going to be the middle of November… Well, deadline, deadline, and deadline…

Rather than reflection, I would like to share my interests what I found in Chapter 9, since this chapter is informative. Table 9.2 calls my attention because it has the column "Technical difficulty." Technical difficulty is what I have been always thinking in this class. As a language teacher (and Digital Immigrant), I would like to learn technology so that my class can benefit from it. Especially in my teaching context, students are definitely Digital Natives and they will feel more comfortable with technology than I am. However, technical difficulty should be one of the criteria for choosing the way of teaching.

Then what I have to think with this table is if the activity is worthy. Does it deserve my effort? To be honest, I would not use Class Website (Difficulty 4) since I do not see any advantage of this over the traditional ways. If there is a ready-made website for teachers like D2L, yes I will definitely use it because I do not have to make any effort to receive its convenience. My criterion is always if my effort on technology pays. In other words, does the effort make my teaching better that much?

What I learned on Nov. 5

Second Life! I bet my future students would never come back to reality... I do not know, but probably it would not work very well for high school students. They need to be more mature and responsible for their learning if I use it in my teaching. But I definitely admit that it is interesting to me, but I need more time to think as for utilization of Second Life for my language teaching.

According the discussion we had in class, probably our experience in "taking" online course is consistent with what Johnson-Curiskis said in the presentation via ADOBE a few weeks ago. How much we are engaged in the course totally depends on our motivation. In that sense, teaching online course could be demanding to teachers.

From the readings for Nov. 5

Since this week's reading is not very long, I did small research on copyright laws in Japan. There are, if not as many as in the U.S., a number of rules in my country, too. Discussions related to fair use of copyright materials for educational purpose exist online. I found a very helpful organization which runs a good website for people including teachers who are anxious about copyright rules. The name of the organization is Copyright Research and Information Center (CRIC). I found that this website had an English version as well. So if you are interested, you can go to http://www.cric.or.jp/cric_e/index.html. IF you click "3. Case studies 'Formal Education and Copyright' " in the left column, you will see basic or frequent questions from teachers and answers to them.

Also, this website has a good small workshop page for kids to understand Copyright. If teachers try some creative student project, it is possible to start with having students working on the workshop so that they can obtain the basic knowledge of violation of copyright (No English version).

What I learned on Oct. 29

Hot Potato seems kind of interesting to me. However, I still need to explore how we can collect students’ scores. Is it possible to set it up to automatically export the scores to EXCEL or something? If so, since I will have to teach large numbers of students, it will allow me to be lazy. Well, I mean it will allow me more time for other work. This software will be very useful for frequent small quizzes.

Presentation helped me visualize how I would be able to use WIKI for my teaching; however, while doing so, it told me that it is not very easy to use. It might cause a "DISASTER." Foreign language itself already gives students pressure, so we need to be super careful when we introduce technology. As the presenter said, it needed to be as simple as possible. Personally, I feel interacting with many people via WIKI is very demanding. It tells me all the time via email that there is a new posting. Even when I do not want to think about it, WIKI tells me as if one of my friends were telling me "Hey, one of your classmates posted something. So check it out!" I am not complaining either about the function that WIKI lets me know the new postings or the use of WIKI in this class, but I just think WIKI with small groups might work better for younger students.

From the readings for Oct. 29

Well, I have to admit that I was and still am not very familiar with copy right issues even though I had better be sensitive to them in Japan. It seems to be time teaching-licensure programs required pre-service teachers to take a course which deals with copy right issues, since it is almost inevitable to utilize those multimedia things to implement better education.

Chapter 4 of Szendeffy… If we can add more interactive, communicative purposes to writing by utilizing technology, I am very interested in it. And I have been interested in it because I have believed so. However, this chapter made me rethink about technology utilization for writing. Probably what I am expecting technology to do is to provide students with chances to communicate via written texts. I should clarify my interest. Perhaps I am interested in CMC as a means of communicative literacy development rather than general technology use for language teaching. This reconsideration led me to further consideration on the effectiveness of collaborative writing (e.g., Activity 5, p. 44). Maybe I am just against this activity. What can collaborative writing with technology do for my students? I might have to do a small research on this topic in order to familiarize myself with what collaboration in writing does to learners.

    Finally, I really like the idea of having students use corpus. As an L2 learner, I also use this as my strategy to figure out collocations.

What I learned on Oct. 22

This week was honestly a little bit hard to keep up with. The software "Elluminate" (?) has so much potential, but I was trying to figure out the difference between this software and Acrobat Connect, which Solen and I did for show-and-tell. The biggest difference I found was that Elluminate requires installing. I was wondering what kind of difference (function wise) this difference makes. I did not find what they were. I am also wondering if there is other software like them. I will look for Japanese one, too. I know some Japanese companies make conference software, so hopefully they have some free software, too. Thinking about using such software for teaching Japanese students, it would be useful to use Japanese version at first, where they would learn what kind of functions the software has. Afterward, when they use English version, they will learn some technical terms in the software.

From the readings for Oct. 22

What is interesting to me in Johnson’s chapter is Table 3 (p. 137), which reminds me that I once tried to conduct keypal project with the help of my friend in Minnesota. My friend was working at a middle school as a social worker. She asked me if my students are interested in exchange messages about culture via e-mail in English since her students were not Japanese language learners (As I mentioned in one of the previous postings, we ended up with not conducting this project.). I realized that this project would have been very unique because according to Table 3 in this chapter, English (send)-English (receive) would not give any advantage to my friends students. However, they wanted to learn culture rather than language. They would take some advantage of it if we tried. This thought makes me think if it is possible to find some non-language classes in English-speaking country which are interested in foreign cultures. If we can conduct keypal project with these classes, my students can fully utilize the opportunities.

Furthermore, of the four choices of Table 3, I prefer to use the first one (Spanish-Spanish) and the fourth one (English-English) while taking turns. In that way, they will be able to understand both places (feeling of talking to novice speaker as a native Japanese speaker and feeling of talking to native speaker as a novice English speaker.), which really helps them to learn the attitude toward foreign language communication.

What I learned on Oct. 15

It was interesting to know about virtual schooling and online language learning. Lily was saying that it was crucial that we as language teachers learn technology in order to utilize it for language teaching rather than technology itself. This reminded me of "teacher's hat." Lily was also suggesting that appropriate teacher preparation be conducted. By referring to the figure 1 and 2 provided in her PowerPoint, we can recognize how much we are prepared. However, I am afraid it is a bit subjective. I am still wondering when we can judge we are ready for online teaching. Furthermore, Lily stated that we have to know enough to support students rather than be an expert. Again, how can we decide if we know enough to support students? If I were not confident enough, should I not try and learn more to be confident, or still should I try any to become confident?

From the readings for Oct. 15

Of the assigned readings for this week, I was best impressed by CultureQuest, especially the example of Ghana. This teacher is dedicated to teaching and students' real experience in interacting with people from different cultures. She typed in letters of 150 people... This is extraordinary amount. When I was working at a Japanese high school, I actually had a chance to do such interaction with school from America (thanks to my friend from Minnesota). However, my friend did not have enough students for my 200 students (I could have divided students into groups of 4 or 5 or taken turn 40 students at a time etc., but such ways could cause issues on fair grading, which is one of the most important things in my teaching context [high school GPA could be a high-stakes issue in Japan]). Additionally, I did not know how to assess students' message, their engagement, and I was also worried about how frequently I would be able to have contact with the teacher in America to run this project effectively. Therefore, we could not try…

One of my friends said before, if you think something impossible, it will never be possible. This is true. I know it. But there is a risk to be too idealistic. Once you experience the real teaching job, it is very important for you to know what is possible and what is not. If you do something impossible, it would do harm to your coworkers or students. I recently have a strong dislike about idealistic thoughts. Even so, CulrueQuest is interesting to me. They have a guide (a more than 40-page long PDF file) which provides framework of conducting cultural interaction projects. I saw possibility for my students to do something that is real cultural exchange through adapting this program or participating in this program.

What I learned on Oct. 8

What I learned this session is of course how to use software to create a website. Honestly, I had an experience to help a small organization create its website by using FrontPage, and I was hoping that this session would remind me of something. But it didn’t. This is why I am always trying to relate technology to something that I must do, so that I can keep using it. I will not forget it unless I stop using it. Actually, I am really worried if I remember how to use Excel (using formulae, etc.) when I go back to high school next year.

It was interesting that people may have their learning style particuly for techology. I think visual learners tend to need someone familiar with technology to show how it works. I need to see how it will look like when I effectively use it before reading tutorial, manual, whatsoever. This thought applies to all of my learning. I cannot start with "0" or "1." I need to see "10" before getting things started.

From the readings for Oct. 8

-From Czendeffy Chapter 7-

 

I strongly disagree with his idea that "Everyone wants to make a web page." (p. 118).

 

NO, I DON'T.

 

At least at this moment.

 

It depends on what individuals have in mind. I once wanted to make a web site, but I realized that I had nothing to present in public. Additionally, I do not like saying something without my name because it allows me to be irresponsible for what I am saying in the website. If I am to make my website possible for visitors to trace the information about me, I do have to make something worth visiting. If I do not have anything worthy to present in public, why do I want to make a website? We can find tons of incredible or wrong information in cyber space. Making website requires that a teacher teach ethics beforehand. That is the Author's wrong, biased impression.

 

Purpose and audience analysis (Activity 2) sounds like it is a very useful activity for students to become effective users of websites. However, as for Activity 1 (Evaluating Web Sites) and 3 (Web Page Anatomy), in terms of language teaching, I am not certain if these are appropriate ways of teaching language. I feel that I would spend too much time for this preparation rather than the project coming afterward. In this regard, I do not think I would choose this project. Yet, I could utilize this activity if I am teaching an ESP course with students in the field of computer science or something.

 

 

-From the article of Smith and Lewrey-

The sample lesson plan which is provided in this article gives me many clues to give scaffoldings to learners when I use not only commercials but also TV shows or films. Even when I use a 5-minute video clip for my class (which King mentions as Short Sequence Approach), such questions as "Who are the people you see?"; "How do these people feel?"; How does the boy get well?" are helpful for guiding questions as well as checking their comprehensions. Since I am reconsidering proficiency level of the target students for my web-lesson (Activity #2), this article makes me think how I should provide scaffoldings for my students to tackle authentic spoken English in the short clip.

 

 

-From King's Article-

I have to disagree with one of the ideas on a whole film approach. He says "Fragment audio recordings accompanying with textbooks designed for EFL learners hardly prepare learners for full-length listening in advanced studies." Then, if we do not have time to let students listen or watch a whole story, does that mean we should not use it? Do we have to give up and use commercial, news, or something else? I do not think so. A story consists of the segments of sub-theme which are sequenced (like paragraphs in a given text). Unless we, as teachers, misinterpret the sub-theme segment, I believe there still is value to utilize in language classrooms. Therefore, I still like using short clip from a film or TV show. However, I strongly agree with Doye's idea that "using the wrong film in the wrong way can lead to utter frustration. Student may end up confused, depressed and convinced they will never understand 'real' English" (as cited in King, 1998).

What I learned on Oct. 1

I was amazed to know the free sound editor "Audacity."  Even though my personal aim with the software was oriented to music, it was great to know such free software. 

As for the implication for teaching, I remember I was thinking how we could create opportunities for students to practice for speech contest, which was annually held at my previous high school.  If we let students download this software, they can practice their speech by themselves at home and listen to their own speech.  After practicing as much as they want, they can send some of the works to teachers if their time does not permits face-to-face meeting (too many things are usually going on at the same time).   The teacher can comment through the same way (as somebody was mentioning in the discussion; sorry, I do not remember who said) or written massage via email.

I am still struggling to come up with using podcast…. Before using, I think I need to be familiar with it.

But I am really glad that I know Audacity very much. It allowed me to edit my recording. So, whenever I forget what I was going to say and made a long silence, I cut and shortened the silence. I'm loving it!

From the readings for Oct. 1

This week's chapter reminds me of the lesson with an American instructor which I took when I was an undergrad freshman. He had us call to his phone and record a message on his answering machine. Although we did not do as far as the example in p.106, he still asked to make a real message or a message which sound real. So, I left this message "Hey Chris, I am wondering if you are going to give my money back. In short… WHERE IS MY MONEY?!! Call me back as soon as you get this message. OK?" He told me that he had been laughing when he listened the message. And he also suggested me that I should not scare people when I want somebody call back. Very true…

Anyways, the above …I was just playing with blogging. One of the things that inspired me was the section "summarize lectures or programs" (pp.106). What this made me come up with was using a type of English lesson programs which appeared recently in Japan. One example is a program showing the beginners and intermediate level ESL course at the University of Columbia. The name of this program is "Real English from New York." Until recently, English lesson TV programs are always performed by one native English speaker and a few Japanese (one of them is usually very good at English: English teacher, university professor, simultaneous translator, and other Japanese are very very beginners and they seem to be made to make many embarrassing mistakes…). Although some of the programs are helpful, explanation is always given both in English and Japanese. However, the new type of programs only shows the ESL lessons which are really taken place and recorded in a given school (U of C in the previous example). Those programs go only in English.

Getting back to what I was talking, the section (p. 106) reminds me of this TV program and I thought if I could find an appropriate lesson for my students, I could have students watch a real ESL lesson, take notes, and summarize what they leaned there. Chances are that students will like the program and they keep watching the program at home afterward.

This is rather long, but let me say one more thing. I stopped somewhere for a while during my reading. In p. 109, the author lists the pedagogical rationale for "Scenes from TV or Film activity." The last one of the list says "a scene taken from an obscure work might expose students to something that they normally wouldn't see, such as a classic, art house, or independent film." I am wondering if something that is rarely going to happen to learners' real life is worth while teaching…

What I learned this week

The discussion about the web evaluation gave me a new perspective of considering a lesson. When we consider the quality of a lesson, do you think it is always ideal to integrate all the four skills? Or do you think it depends on the objectives of the lesson? I am for the latter. I do not believe that a lesson has to integrate all of them. I know it is good if we have them effectively, but if we construct or modify the lesson for the sake of including all the four skills, I suspect it is the wrong way to think about the lesson. My philosophy is "do not look away from your target although something looks tempting." There is always something attractive which could distract you from focusing on goals, especially when you are in technology world.

 

From the readings for Sep. 24

The national standard, provided by LeLoup and Ponterio as Appendix A, was discussed in the summer of Topic in TESL (EFL) as well. I believe it supplies us with better guides for EFL teaching than ESL standards. However, although we can attempt to meet them, I see the limitation of "Cultures" taking into account the EFL unique contexts. As you know, knowing or having experience does not necessarily mean being able to teach. I have no idea how we can teach culture even after we had some discussion about this in summer. If I am to teach culture as a non-NEST, I will have to overcome tons of difficulties… Additionally, what aspect of culture do we need to teach? I guess something that might interfere with the communication with people from different culture (especially from target cultures). But what interferes with communication? Is it possible to define what aspect of culture should be taught through foreign language teaching?

I associate the articles of Bandle's with LeLop & Ponterio's in terms of preparation. Bandle introduces the danger of hyperlinks in the Internet authentic texts for students to drown in too much amount of information. On the other hand, LeLop and Ponterio recommend that teachers prepare students well for exposure to authentic texts in order not to overwhelm, frustrate, and let them develop irreversible negative attitude toward working with authentic materials. This connection makes me think that we have to consider not only how to make the best use of technology but also how to let them have positive attitude toward authentic language activity. It is teachers' responsibility, I believe, for providing students joyful experience in interacting with authentic materials.

What I learned on Sep. 17.

Thanks to Chris, I learned how to use Picasa for editing photographs. However, to be honest, I learned Spanish more than the software this time. Bien bien. Just kidding.

I was glad to have a discussion and being away from the computer for a while because I felt like I was in a face-to-face class by seeing everyone's faces and even smiles.

One thing I came up with during class is:

Someone told me before that computer is not the thing to learn by reading a manual from the beginning to the end. He continued that it was time for you to learn computer when you need to use it.

He basically meant that you would learn how to use software while using it and exploring it. So, for either Picasa or Trackstar, I realized how important "teacher's hat" is; to connect what I learned about CALL to my own context or my interests is the key to enhancing my ability in this field which will help me survive in this course! Otherwise, whenever I am introduced a good technology, I would forget what I learned.

Adios!

first try

!!

Music and Writing

I just came up with one more thing to write on the article about music. As Karina mentioned in her own blog, it is important to figure out students' taste in music. Then I thought there might be some people who did not like music. Furthermore, as a guitarist, I am fond of instrumental music mainly played with the guitar. How can we deal with students with the same taste as mine? I obtain some feeling even though the music does not have lyrics; some cheer me up, others make me think or remind me of something. I consider this natural because there are a number of famous genres of music that do not have lyrics, and people who like such music DO gain some emotions out of it. Therefore, since this type of music causes an emotional change, I suppose it is possible to have students write what they feel after they listen to instrumental music. Is it difficult?

From the readings for Sep. 17

The article by Oishi is very interesting to me. As for the utilization of online video, NBC.com or ABC.com has links to full episodes of TV shows. Although I do not know many, I am certain that there are much more web sites where we can watch TV show. If we use several minutes of a TV show, we can provide students with authentic English very easily (but my concern is if these links are available in outside of US; I tried to watch the second season of "Heroes" this summer from Japan, just for fun, it did not work there.). Additionally, when you watch some TV show via the Internet, there is commercial advertisements. Even though this is annoying for watching TV shows, these advertisements can be a excellent materials; there are many funny ones!!

As for the chapter of Kanel, I really like the activity with music. I will tell you a good tool (web site) where you can obtain any kind of rhythm. But not now, I have to hold it until the week I have to give one website.

What I learned on Sep. 10

I have to confess that I had been stressed out to finish all the assignments for this day. It took me 4 days to finish the readings, answer the questions from the articles, write a letter, and make comments for group members. Another thing that I have to confess is that I had already forgotten most things I obtained from the readings when we had the class. This is why I had no "up" to share with my classmates. The HD of my brain was overloaded.

It was a bit hard to have a conversation through Skype with 2 people on one laptop because the speakers in my laptop are not loud enough. I thought that it is important to have a good set of hardware.

During the group discussion for the articles, the only thing I could remember was case study #3. However, this is the idea which I am really fond of. Giving students the model of oral presentation is excellent idea because showing the goal / what their product should look like matches my teaching style. I found this case applicable to my teaching context.

From the readings for Sep. 10

The Chapter by Chapelle is so interesting to me that I would like write about it. Of the three researches introduced there, the second one conducted by Comton strikes me because the relationship between writing and speaking is one of the things I am eager to know. Not only did the feature of ICQ surprise me, but also her idea that combines text-chat and oral presentation impressed me. Even though she did not reach the significant conclusion, I saw potentials of text-chat in connecting writing and speaking. However, since the number of participants is limited and this research is mainly normative approach, I was interested in reading interpretative research on this topic if available (e.g., interviewing a number of participants and ask what they think of the use of text-chat for improving their writing and also "speaking" proficiency, etc.).

Additionally, the parameter used in this research "willingness to communicate" seems very important in my teaching context (high school in Japan), for they are usually reluctant to speak up because as Comton mentions "[t]heir reluctance was due to anxiety and lack of confidence as they were afraid that their attempts to speak in English would be seen as stupid or dumb" (p.198).

What I learned on Sep. 3

In this session we discussed digital native/immigrant, Network-based language teaching, and the article about when to use technology. In our group, we could not come up with any excellent idea on any of this topic, but we realized that the style the article affects our reading, especially attitude or motivation for the reading. If an article is written in a magazine style with some pictures, it will help us to relax and feel less stress to keep up with the content. When the discussion was shared with the whole class, we found some of the classmates preferred to read articles on screen. It was so interesting a fact to me since I always printed out whatever the materials are. For the articles of Activity #1, I tried to read on screen, and it was very tiring and I felt like the screen damaged my eyes…

Getting back to the topics in class, we also worked on GoogleDoc which was not familiar to me at all. Although I haven't seen how it will help my language teaching yet, it seems useful if I try to utilize it for writing courses (e.g., peer-reviewing/editing, collaborative writing, project related to writing, etc.). It seems that GoogleDoc is easier to utilize for these writing activities than Wiki, but I should consider those potentials further.

From the readings for Sep 3

Here I would like to consider the intercom function in the lab (see Szendeffy, 2005, p.21). A high school for which I used to work had this device in its language lab. Four years ago, I was interested in using this function just because it looked fun. When I used this in my class, I realized it can be hazardous if it is used without considerations. They became excited as I had expected, but they started talking in Japanese. Even worse, in order to enhance the excitement, I had connected students at random so that they could start with guessing and asking whom they were talking to. I had 36 students in the class, so it was exhausting to calm them down. I am still wondering how we can effectively use this device in EFL settings where students tend to use their native language when teachers look away from them.

I used to think technology could be used just because technology itself was exciting enough to raise students' motivation. However, I realized that I was wrong at this point.

Szendeffy (2005) posits a question about the intercom device "[Teachers who like to use this device] want students, even those sitting next to each other, to be able to communicate verbally through headphones attached to the computers. … How would this ability enable to richer language experience than having these students talk face-to-face?" (p.21). I will provide here an example for this question. For ESOL, telephone conversation is one of the challenges which they are likely to encounter. Since this type of conversation does not allow interlocutors to read gestures, communication requires accurate pronunciation and listening proficiency. Intercom device allows a lesson to practice this situation without using (and even paying for) real phones.

Reference

Szendeffy, J. D. (2005). A practical guide to using computers in language teaching. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

What I learned on Aug 27

I was amazed about TPCK because I have never thought about teaching in this way. This gives a direction to utilize technology in my teaching; what I should focus on when I try to use technology is what is in my TPCK. What is in there is probably what I can do effectively in my teaching with technology. In order to broaden the possibility of technology use in my language teaching, I need to develop my TPCK area, which seems quite narrow right now.

The norm of RAT was also impressive. When we try to teach something by using technology, we might tend to focus on technology itself rather what the goal of the lesson because of the difficulties (?) of technology. Assessing a lesson from the perspective of RAT keeps language teachers on track and will be helpful to improve the lessons to follow. I feel like I obtained a guideline for considering technology use.

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