Week#3 (Social Learning)

EFL537 Computer Assisted Language Learning Sept. 21~ Dec. 8, 2011

Week#3  Agenda Hour#1 CALL in Practice - A demonstration I have always learned the most about teaching from watching other teacher 'do their thing'.  I believe this especially  applies to online teaching.   Robyn is an EFL teacher at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. She took part in Multilteracies Workshop as part of a TESOL Certificate program. During their final week, she needed to demonstrate how she has used some of the tools in her actual teaching. To see her web tour watch 9:50~29:30 of this video Click here to start watching the video at that point. Links Robyn's blog Her Class Webpage Tools Mentioned Titanpad.com Todaysmeet.com (I set up an expermental room at http://todaysmeet.com/efl537) PBWorks (wiki) We will be using PBWorks for some file storage (and possibly for site builing). Please take a look at the  EFL537 PBWorks Guide and register at https://plans.pbworks.com/signup/edubasic20 Once you've done so, feel free to fiddle around with page creation and file upload if you like. Other Hour#1 Tasks Make sure you have gone to  the EFL537 Diigo Group page and clicked 'Join this Group'. Read each other's Reflections (if posted).  You should see links in your Google Reader and in the side EFL537 Blogs block on the right. and if you still have time, Join the Twitterverse... You may or may not wind up being an active twitter user.  We are spending some time with it today as a way to get acquainted with the global community of English Language Teachers out there. Here are Barbara Sakamoto's thoughts on  'So, what's Twitter good for, anyway?' and  her introduction to ELTChat. Here is a screencast showing how to follow people as described below.  To get started, login to Twitter.com and sart finding people to follow. Please start with me twitter.com/jefflebow (you can unfollow me after the course if you like :) You can take a look at a couple of my Twitter lists. http://twitter.com/#!/jefflebow/efl/members and http://twitter.com/#!/jefflebow/edtech/members Click on anyone who grabs your attention.  Check out some of their tweets and if you think they might be interesting to follow, click the follow button. Following someone's tweets does not imply any kind of 'personal social connection' as it might on Facebook. You can also go to Twitter.com/search, enter terms of interest and see what you find.  Feel free to follow non-EFL related people or businesses. There's no shame in following Lady Gaga (the world's most popular Tweeter) or others like  Ben&Jerry's,  StephenColbert, or NPRNews. - Finally, to help us filter the potential firehose of twitter content, download Tweetdeck Hour#2 Reflection Discussions Diigo Update/Show & Tell Learning is Social: http://www.slideshare.net/janehart/the-future-of-elearning-is-social-learnng Twitterverse Orientation Play with TodaysMeet & TitanPad Readings - Find your own, let me know what you're looking for, I'll help Hour#3/Assignments Engage in social learning - Find readings of interest (journal articles, blogs posts, presentations,etc.)  Document your learning - bookmark and/or tweet what you consume.  Create at least one short blog post about someone else's work.  Link back to it when you post.  Comment on someone else's post or tweet if you can genuinely do so.  Audio Guide - Explore/bookmark sites.  Download Audacity. Record an audio file, upload to PBWorks. Try to post on your blog.

--------an extra credit geek assignment-----------------------
- Download Hot Pototoes - we may have some MAC issues.  If things aren't going well, we'll troubleshoot later.

Instructions (from the Hot Potatoes site)

• Download Java Hot Potatoes which will run on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux or any computer running a Java Virtual Machine. To install and run Java Hot Potatoes on Mac OS X:
  1. Download the file javahotpot61.zip from the link above.
  2. Unzip that file on your computer, you will have a folder called JavaHotPot6.
  3. Drag the JavaHotPot6 folder to the Applications directory on your computer.
  4. Open the folder and double-click the JavaHotPotatoes6 application icon.
  5. Trash the javahotpot61.zip file.

When you first start up Hot Potatoes, it will ask you for your user name. This name is stored on your computer, and not sent to anyone; it will be inserted into your exercises to identify you as the author. You must provide a user name before you can use all the features of Hot Potatoes.