So here we are in the 21st Century and still stuck with 18th century schoolrooms and 19th century desks.
I've been exploring different seating arrangements for groups, and still like the easy mobility of wheeled chairs, central gathering places, and ways to quickly create breakouts of small groups that can still see the teacher/board and report back without too much furniture noise.
This younger children's class (described by Amy Spies at TeachingChannel shows a nice option using the furniture at hand:
The groups of four are open-ended at the side facing the teacher/board, and the space between the desks holds a 3-drawer cabinet with supplies like paper, pencils and crayons:
SteelCase offers a much higher tech option, adopted at the U of Oregon's Yamada Language Lab, that is sleek and classy. Three boards/projection screens allow students sitting in any direction to see what is happening. The teacher is no longer fronting the class--at least in theory--though the computer/projector now seems to be the center:
With the flipped classroom, the projection multiplication may be a bit of overkill, but at least there is a strong move to put students' heads together.
I've been exploring several drawing tools, particularly those for making graphs and diagrams. I'm trying to stick to free and online in this discussion, though a few for-pay tools have some nice advantages, mainly storage space and collaboration.
Among other advantages, drawing tools can help students mind-map and brainstorm; collect and display numerical data in charts and graphs; demonstrate reflective learning in storyboards or networked images; and so on. Graphing skills become increasingly important as an academic tool as students progress through school, but charts and graphs can be a fun motivation even for younger students.
Gliffy is one of my old favorites, but it limits you to just 5 drawings, unless you go for the somewhat pricey paid account (5 users for up to 200 drawings, for about $10, as of this writing). It does very nice Venn diagrams from templates, has loads of pre-formed objects, such as arrows and rectangles, and supports HTML5.
Cacoo is entirely free and looks like a very friendly interface, and one appropriate for middle school kids. You can create:
wire frames, mind maps, network
charts, and site maps . . . simply pick
and "drag and drop" elements from a large library of stencils.
Cacoo is one of the free programs with a free-hand drawing option, too.
Creately is another free program with great features, and like Gliffy, allows up to 5 drawings with limited collaborative possibilities. It gives you only diagrams, but offers nice Venn templates, and a large selection of templates for K-12, including:
...Storyboards, Fishbone Diagrams, T Charts, Y Charts, Venn Diagrams, and much more..
Google Drawings has only a very basic toolkit, so don't expect a great deal, but it is quick and easy and the interface will be familiar from Google docs.
If you want a very professional look, but have only a limited project, try Microsoft's Visio or SmartDraw. Both of these have a free trial period and many features.
Recently I tried to organize and curate my YouTube channel to better effect. My first problem was that as an inveterate Mac user, most of the videos on my desktop were in .MOV format, and even though this was purportedly a YouTube-supported format, I could not seem to upload some of my videos.
Some of the most popular video formats supported by YouTube (directly from their Help site:
• WebM files--Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codecs
• .MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files--Typically supporting h264, mpeg4 video codecs, and AAC audio codec
• .AVI--Many cameras output this format--typically the video codec is MJPEG and audio is PCM
• .MPEGPS--Typically supporting MPEG2 video codec and MP2 audio
• .WMV
• .FLV--Adobe-FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio
The only error message on the YouTube upload page was something to the effect that "There is a problem with your file." After much trial and error, here are some things I learned about video file formats and YouTube.
Believing the .MOV file format might be the problem, I tried about half a dozen free video converter software apps on my long video. None of them would convert a video of any length for free, despite plastering the word "free" all over their download sites. 100 MB is about the limit without paying extra, including online converters.
I finally came across QTAmateur.app at the Mac Update site. Despite the dopey name, this little software is very powerful and converts to many different video formats quite easily, including those usable by PCs and mobile devices. And it is an absolutely free download. Use ("Export" to make the conversion.)
This was a fortunate find, as I want my videos to eventually be playable on mobile devices as well as on desktops.
I still had a problem, in that YouTube kept saying something was wrong with one particular file, even though it was quite small when converted to mpeg4. It turns out that YouTube goes by time, not file size, and allows only 15-minutes maximum play time. However, when you verify your account using a mobile phone number, Google will send you a text code that gives you up to 2-hour lengths.
YouTube is very non-informative about this fact, and it probably relates to an improvement resulting from Google taking over YT. Maybe the help pages and links will be improved in the coming months.
I found the information about how to get the extra size files (the link didn't just jump out at me) by searching videos in YouTube (of course). I found several, the best and simplest of which, I think, is How to Increase Your Upload Limit on YouTube.
With an officially "verified" account and armed with the increased upload limit, I got my video up. See The Effects of Technology on SLA, a talk I gave at TESOL New York, 2008, in either .avi format (a little clearer, below) or .mpeg4 at my YouTube channel. Just FYI, this was originally a Powerpoint slideshow saved as a Powerpoint movie.
I may yet get around to putting the .mov version up, but you can play it with most video players on most platforms anyway.
You may have noticed increasing uses of QR (Quick Response) codes, for example, to make a trail of ecology facts in a national park, or to provide a self-guided tour of a museum exhibition. I've returned to this YouTube video, from the American TESOL Institute channel, several times, as it has some great ideas for using QR (Quick Response) codes with students:
The video describes what QR is, how you can make your own, and how you can teach students to make their own for content-based projects, to link to podcasts, to make electronic portfolios, etc. For example, as seen in this image, students can scan the QR with their mobiles to get more information about skeletal structure.
If students construct the content they create reusable learning objects for subsequent classes to read, listen to, and improve.
Thanks to Webheads for finding this great video originally. There are a number of other videos on QR with more ideas in the YouTube sidebar.
This video from the TED (Technology, Education, and Design)conference in February (Long Beach, CA) has some astonishing new ways to look at user wetware-computer connections.
It's amazing to see Tom Cruise's Minority Report interface now displayed with many different ramifications. The new interfaces use computations that are "space-soluable and network-soluable," allowing a user to drag/send their visual information from one "monitor" to another,both co-located and in space, with a hand gesture. In five years' time will this be the computer we get??
WolframAlpha is an amazing third-generation search engine that can tell you almost anything about anything: math, chemistry, socioeconomics, geography, etc. You can input a formula, or just a few words as a question, and Wolfram will make the appropriate assumptions about what you want to know. Especially good with relational data, e.g., what's the ratio of France's GDP to Italy's?
This should be an excellent classroom tool, both in content-based projects and math work, and for general English, writing research papers, making predictions, etc.
This might be a good activity for your students. They need to create a long, narrow photo for the top and the bottom of the browser, and then upload it to the site. All the step-by-step directions and specifications are at the site (a good reading activity, and/or watch the tutorial video), and they can try it out before uploading. After the photo is accepted, they can share their personal favorites and/or make their theme public for others to use.
You will need to be able to download an add-on to Firefox before starting the process, so this may require the OK from your school administration or tech support. However, the download itself takes only a few seconds.
It gets increasingly interesting as you watch: should the semantic Web have pre-defined ontologies? Of course, Vance Stevens and most Webheads would answer a resounding "no!" If contemporary Web is increasingly about social networking, it is left to developers to help us find and explore new ways of interconnecting.
I was directed to 280 slides by Nik Peachey's Ten Teacher Development Tasks for Web2.0 Tools (yes, I am still slogging on with them...) The presentation tool is really fun to use, and here is my exercise task completed. It's for intermediate students, who watch the two videos and make notes using an online dictionary, thesaurus, and/or translator, then write up a description of "My Favorite House."
You can also send the embedded video to Slideshare, or email it to friends.
My writing activity is very similar to Nik's, but I gave it different twist by using pairs at the computer, some online vocabulary resources, and a writing process with note-taking and discussion built-in.
Wetoku is a nifty little Internet app that sets up two talking heads--the interviewer and the interviewee. This is perfect for many classroom activities. The introductory video below (5 min. +) gives some tips on doing a good interview, so it's a nice way to get students started using the program.
These wearable technologies were seen about 10 yrs ago at the MIT Media Lab, but this goes even farther (and smaller). Clever, and Mistry wants them to be open source. (About 13 min., but a must-see.)
I've been trying to get a newer, better look for my blog, but wound up back with the old style, but the new interface. Alas, my old blog is gone.
But this looks a little newer and crisper, I've got a new photo up, and I finally found a new text-to-speech reader in iSpeech. Et voilá! it is also a podcaster, so I'm feeling up to date. You click on the little icon to hear the text read, or go to the Podcast in the sidebar to start the feed.
The interface at the iSpeech site was simplicity itself to use: I didn't even have to get a registration key. Interestingly, it is a dot org.
Let's hope it is as good as it looks--it does try to read a little too fast, but that may just be my processor speed or the server speed today.
A nice holiday student project where cultural concepts of Christmas and personal greetings and wishes are recorded. A nice use for VoiceThread, which can also be downloaded to a desktop as an archive for listening practice.
WallWisher is not as useful pedagogically as other social networking tools I can think of.
You can add a picture (from a URL), or video, or audio file, but it doesn't have a way to put a URL into the text (without using up the tiny letter count), so that users can easily go visit the site. If you want to illustrate your sticky, you need another place/server/or knowledge of how to get an image location to stick it in. You can post to Facebook, et al., and link to pictures in Flickr.
The limited number of words/letters on a sticky means you can't say much--this is probably an advantage for young learners, but not necessarily for their education. A blog or wiki would give them the opportunity to be more expansive.
You could have a main sticky and then ask students to respond to it. But there is no way to organize the stickies besides moving them around physically. So this means the teacher/owner of the wall must do the work of organization, or let things happen at random. (See Nik Peachey's wall of teacher tools for social networking.)
So on the whole, I like the idea of a communal blog or wiki better: more opportunity to write expansively, ways to comment, RSS feed, easy ways to include URLs and lots of pictures, and esp. with a wiki, ways to organize pages.
But I can see Wallwisher as a way to make comments on an event or single Web page. You might have students visit a page or view a video (or put one into a head sticky), and then make a short comment on a Wallwisher page. If you have only 15-30 students, they could all read each other's comments (but if they then make more comments, you've quickly got a huge, disorganized mess...) If you use WallWisher the way it was intended, perhaps to wish a class member happy birthday, or to congratulate someone on getting citizenship, or to make a wish list, or to put up reminders for a project, then it's a nifty application.
Google Wave (see The Complete Guide) looks like the re-invention of email, kind of a combination of bulletin board, screencast, and mail. It will definitely be a pleasure to use. This is a nice illustration of the Wave:
There are a number of other things it can do, like embed "attachments," and I imagine it will have some audio/voice capability. You need an invitation to try it, however.
There was some discussion of using mobile technologies (cell phones, iPods, Blackberries, etc.) at TESOL Denver this year, but the following is the most succinct list I have seen:
Forwarding an edited mail from the Wikieducator list (Randy Fischer)
Randy found this 2008 University of Nottingham study on Mobile Phones and secondary education, and thought it might be of interest. http://emergingtech nologies. becta.org. uk/upload- dir/downloads/ page_documents/ research/ lsri_report. pdf
Several interesting things caught his eye:
1. the fact that in many schools, students 'own' their mobile phones, not necessarily the computers. (Physical ownership and use feels good);
2. the list of 15 Useful Things Students Do with Mobile Phones (below)
Could we use some of the 15 or more useful things to design appropriate and culturallly- relevant learning activities?
What role could WikiEducator play in learning that uses mobile phones?
Fifteen useful things students did with mobile phones 1 Timing experiments with stopwatch 2 Photographing apparatus and results of experiments for reports 3 Photographing development of design models for eportfolios 4 Photographing texts/whiteboards for future review 5 Bluetoothing project material between group members 6 Receiving SMS & email reminders from teachers 7 Synchronising calendar/timetable and setting reminders 8 Connecting remotely to school learning platform 9 Recording a teacher reading a poem for revision 10 Accessing revision sites on the Internet 11 Creating short narrative movies 12 Downloading and listening to foreign language podcasts 13 Logging into the school email system 14 Using GPS to identify locations 15 Transferring files between school and home
--Thanks to Bee Dieu on the Webheads' list for this report
...is really something of a misnomer, since it is more a blog where students can practice various grammar and syntax items using questions and exercises set by the teacher, Claudio Azevedo (Casa Thomas Jefferson, Brasilia), with the prompt being video clips (professional), rather than a textbook.
The video at Movie Segments is a really nice motivator, and the questions and exercises have a good deal of subtlety, deploying a cognitive approach that engages the student and goes beyond sheer grammar. It is also a nice expression of how a blog can be used instructionally. Frequent updates are promised.
--Thanks to Ronaldo Lima, Jr., on the Webheads' list for the referral
Webheads have been collecting ideas for creating e-zines. Here is the list of potential Internet sites and software that might be used for free or cheaply:
To create a magazine online http://www.formatpi xel.com/go/ en/index. php http://www.presspub lisher.com/
To publish in the form of magazine (first you need to create the contents and export to pdf) http://issuu. com/ http://www.yudu. com/ http://www.mixbook. com/
To export to pdf (an example): pdfcreator: http://sourceforge. net/project/ downloading. php?group_ id=57796& use_mirror= switch&filename= PDFCreator- 0_9_7_setup. exe&a=75987836
For desktop publishing Scribus (locally in your computer) http://sourceforge. net/project/ downloading. php?group_ id=125235& use_mirror= dfn&filename= scribus-1. 3.3.12-win32- install.exe& a=17416234
to draw a poster inkscape (Vector Graphics Editor) http://sourceforge. net/project/ downloading. php?groupname= inkscape& filename= Inkscape- 0.46.win32. exe&use_mirror= garr
We are back from travels in South America and were absolutely delighted with the mini-laptop. It connected flawlessly to wireless in all the various hotels (and ship) where we stayed, unlike our older PC, which tried to get back to our home network, no matter where we set up. And being under 2 lbs, it was a cinch to carry around. It also worked perfectly with Skype--one of the real pleasures of the trip was being able to call home from anywhere with crystal clear sound quality.
The lack of a CD ROM drive is occasionally a pain. For instance, I can't upload pictures and burn a CD, so we may eventually have to buy a CD burner--however, it has a Flash card port, so pix can be uploaded directly to, say, Kodak Gallery, without first loading them into the computer. Very convenient. I'm thinking of getting it out and setting it up at home (with fibre optic cable) in order to upload stuff while I work on one of the other computers.
So, size, convenience, and speed--what more could be asked for? Oh, it's free if you buy a cell/satellite mobile connection through AT&T, which requires a 2-yr contract. Otherwise, it's $350, which is what I paid for it at Office Depot.
I was very pleased to be interviewed by Anne Fox for Absolutely intercultural. It's a great podcast for learners, carefully planned and executed, and Anne has a terrific speaking voice.
Our interview topic was language learning websites, and I spoke about my experiences with using Babbel (see my earlier blog on that). Unfortunately, I have been unable to find the time to keep up with it, but I notice I am getting a lot better at following conversations on TV programs in Spanish, so I guess it was of some use.
