Effects of technology on SLA

I'm using this video as an experiment, but the question it poses is for real--I'm preparing for a presentation at the CALL-IS Academic Session in NYC.

Second Life Video Gallery

This set of videos, Second Life Video Gallery, gives a very good picture of many facets of activity in SL. Makes for fascinating watching, whether you are interested in education, politics, or aspects of personal interaction. I found the making of a guitar prim (Suzanne's Guitar) absolutely absorbing.

SitePal for free!

Received a notice from Bravenet that members can get a SitePal avatar on their site for free during the month of June (2007), so I hopped over and got one. You should be able to hear/see the result in my sidebar. Hope this is not too annoying. Leave me a comment if you think I should take it down.



PS: The "free part turned out to be a trial, so I took it down. It got annoying anyway.

Moving to a wiki?

I am seriously considering moving this blog to a wiki where I can categorize and organize better. I am afraid the blog is just not orderly enough for the kind of archiving I feel is needed. The work I've put into EVO video is an example of how to get the kind of organization that is most useful, I think.

When will I ever have time to do the move? Good question...

Larry Ferlazzo's pages

I am totally hooked on Larry Ferlazzo's Websites Of The Day For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL blog and his Teacher Page. This guy is a non-stop search engine and comes up with 2-3 new English teaching sites per day.

As always, caveat emptor: you will need to check each site that sounds promising to see if it really matches your English learners' abilities and interests. Many, many sites on the Web look good for learning/teaching, but often are of simply too high a language level to be of much use to learners. Those that Larry recommends are no different. With over 7,000 sites noted, however, you will probably find many of use.

JumpCut

Wow!--This online video editor works almost exactly like iMovie or Windows movie maker. You upload the photos or video, and then add titles, captions, various transition effects, timing, etc. You can also add a separate audio track. I don't have quite all the features down yet, but it is fun to play with.

JumpCut movies can be private (friends only), and require registration to view, so this might be a good classroom solution.

Five Flashcard makers online

This from Larry Ferlazzo, via the Webheads e-list:

Having students make flash cards in the classroom out of pen and paper is always a good learning experience — both in their creation and in their use.

Now there are countless sites on the web that allow students to make and use them online. As in quite a few of the activities on my site, I don’t necessarily see any major advantage to doing it online as opposed to doing it “old school.” It’s just a nice change of pace sometimes.

I’ve found five sites that are free and easy enough for English Language Learners of all levels to use. Students can create the permanent flash cards online and then they, or any other student, can access them.

You’ll find these five sites under the Student Flash Cards category on my Examples of Student Work. [This page has some great student work!--E.]

Four sites that have been on my site for awhile are
Flashcard Machine [requires registration and login]
Flashcard Exchange [printable, several languages, many ready-made to share]
Study Cards Online [create, study, share]
Study Stack [once logged in, you can add data to others' stacks]

I think they all function well, and it’s hard to say any one is better than the other. I just learned about the fifth one, Memorizable, and haven’t had the opportunity to check it out fully yet.

Memorizable creates tables in a wiki where the user can click to answer and flip through the table as if with a deck of flashcards. Does not appear to be a useful way to study, but one might find other uses for this way to manipulate tables in a wiki.

MakeInternetTV.org

MakeInternetTV.org is looking for 1-2 minute videos
from experienced video bloggers on various aspects of filming and editing. MakeInternetTV. org is a free resource for people to learn the basics of making videos.

Erik Beck, of Indy Mogul on Vimeo, made a video that is a great example of what the group is looking for in Bringing-the-site-to- life

The videos must be CC licensed, as they will be included on a free DVD to distribute to high schools and middle schools.

Contact person: Dean Jansen
Participatory Culture Foundation

Leafletter

Leafletter is a cute application, similar to Tabblo, but somewhat easier to use. Students could create a multi-page online newsletter fairly quickly by adding text and images to one of 35 template "blocks." I don't know what the limitations are, but archive/storage of pictures doesn't seem to be a problem.



My Leafletter is here.

UseAMap.com

Marian Thatcher turned me on to this nifty application of Google Maps. You go to the site, find your location, and UseAMap will create a map with a short address that can be emailed, embedded in a Website (as here), and edited/updated when you like. You can also use it as a starting point to get directions to other places. The map link will pop up to a full screen size, and can be used with Yahoo Maps and Virtual Earth Maps as well. The interface is very fast and efficient.

You can find me here.

Graham Stanley on Web 2.0

Graham, with his usual aplomb, has made a very nice instructional video about Web 2.0 at Teacher Tube.

He covers blogs, wikis, podcasting, and Second Life (as seen in this screen shot).

A Periodic table of Visualization

This chart is an incredibly cool bit of visualization about various ways to visualize concepts. Run your cursor over each "element" to see a visual example. Where but on the Web?!?!

ZamZar.com

Convert files from your desktop or a URL, free. ZamZar sends the converted file to your email. Very convenient.

Mrs Brown's Galaxy

This Eric Idle ditty happens to also contain some amazing factoids.

http://dingo.care2.com/cards/flash/5409/galaxy.swf

This is just for fun!

--Elizabeth

TeacherTube

Live Action English Interactive at TeacherTube

TeacherTube is a very safe-looking site where you can upload instructional video for students and/or fellow teachers. This is a sample from the Live Action English Interactive CD.

You can limit your audience to a group you create. You can also use tags to help sort your videos to the correct audience. Teachers can report any video that appears to be inappropriate for the educational audeince. There are currently many fine, almost-professional quality instructional videos at the site on a wide variety of topics, e.g., raps for teaching geometry and fractions, a discussion of pbwiki, how to use templates to create a newsletter, etc. Most videos go way beyond desktop recordings. You can also upload supporting documents/files--nice.

An interesting feature of home-made video instruction by teachers: it's spot on. (And a big thanks to Jacqui Cyrus in Guam, who tipped me off on this one!)

ChangeDetection.com

I had been looking for some equivalent to RSS for Web pages that were not set up with an XML feed, and finally came across

ChangeDetection.com

After registering, you can enter any number of Web page addresses and
ChangeDectection will send you an email when changes are made to them.
(Like Feedblitz does for RSS-capable pages.) Nice little bot.

Excuse me...Getting Directions

Mike Marzio has a clip on Google Video that is super! The American version will be coming out soon (we hope!)


ESL/EFL - Giving Directions - "Lost in England" - Closed Captioned version

Creating a (e)Learning Environment

Recent podcast by Michael Coughlan contains a number of ideas for supporting teachers who want to use technology. My personal favorite: forget the closed circuit stuff and get it all out on the Web.

Making a feed connection

While browsing through Vance Steven's ESL-Home pages (an excellent list of links), I discovered that Bob Palmer (in Japan, I believe) had used Virtual=Real (this blog), as an example for his instructional video on creating an RSS feed connection with Bloglines and with other methods. Talk about "Old Dutch Cleanser" cans*!

Thanks, Vance and Bob.


*For those unfamiliar with that reference: in the old days, a cleanser can had a picture of a Dutch girl holding the same cleanser can in her hand, ad infinitum. (You had to be there...)

Weblog portfolios in an intensive English program

This is a nice article with great links to a number of resources on electronic portfolios.

http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/wp.html

Written in preparation for TESOL 2007 in Seattle: eFairs Classics, Electronic Village, by Thomas Leverett, CESL, Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale IL USA.