Getting connected

I often see posts to email discussion lists asking for information about how to make contact with classes that would be willing to engage in a cultural exchange for language learning purposes. Where I have heard successful stories of collaboration over the internet, they have often come about through the personal connections that teachers forge at international conferences. Of course, these connections can be made entirely online too.

One site that was originally set up entirely to support information exchange between teachers and learners in different cultures is ePals, reviewed recently in the New York Times (mostly this article reviews the business model but there are some interesting quotes about the pedagogical approach adopted as well). Not that I have tried this service, but it has been around for a while now, and looks like it might be worth checking out.

According to the article the idea of exchanging information over the internet with students from other cultures is inherently motivating to a lot of the students participating. One teacher comments:

If they were just writing for me, they wouldn’t be as careful. But they’re writing for a student in another country. It’s not drudgery for them. They buy in and they enjoy it.

Teachers are using the site to send their students on virtual field trips, where they can learn about the family life and political systems of up to 120 different participating countries (that's a lot!). The site now has 13 million registered participants so it is getting to the point where it could have an impact.

I know that teachers in Hong Kong are always looking for ways to engage their students, and give them opportunities. I'm not aware of many exchanges of this nature though. I wonder how well this kind of collaboration could work in the local scene, or what kind of work would be necessary to make it a success.

The machine is Us/ing Us

An intriguing look at the way that literacy has evolved with technology. And how modes of representation have evolved with technology and new media. And the impact this might have on our ways of understanding.





Any thoughts?

Online resources and tools for Language Teaching

Excellent, critical reviews of online language teaching and learning resources from this class are available below:

Internet resources for English Language Teaching
Internet tools for English Language Teaching

[Update: I've reorganized the wiki so that these are now all available from an entry page called Reviews and projects]

Let us know what you think...

Evaluating online resources

Last night we had a very productive session evaluating online resources in ELT. I was pleased with the obvious effort that you had put in. Here (again) are my general comments on that session and I would be very happy if you would give me your impressions of the session by responding here:

On the whole the presentations were well done. As a general comment (with notable exceptions), you evaluated the functional aspects of the web sites very well and were able to point out their strengths and weaknesses in design. I would have liked to see a clearer awareness of the underlying pedagogical assumptions and how these matched with your own contexts. If we are going to use computers in classrooms we should be clear about why we are doing that, and what difference technology can make to the learning process, as opposed to say, using a book or a whiteboard. One obvious possibility of technology in language teaching these days is to bring communities together across the internet, and provide opportunities for students to engage in authentic communication (as with integrative CALL). Obviously there are many many ways to use computers in classrooms, but a key challenge to language teachers now is to understand how technology can be used in a less transmissive way, and allow students to take control of the learning process.

What did you think about the session? Do you have any thoughts about how teachers might use technology in a less instructivist, more constructionist way? Or perhaps there are limitations that I can't see?

ESL/EFL Carnival

After I linked to his lists, we received the following comment from Larry Ferlazzo:

Glad you like the lists!

Please consider submitting a post from your blog to the next ESL/EFL Carnival, hosted at my blog.

Larry

I have chased down the link to this carnival at his blog, and you might be interested in submitting a post there yourselves, in case you want to discuss CALL and language teaching with a wider audience.

Some examples of link and resource sharing

Here are a couple of link-sharing and resource sharing sites, which might give you some ideas about how you would like to share your own evaluations of educational websites. The first of these, by Larry Ferlazzo, provides long lists of links and gives basic descriptions of what each website affords. The second, by Nik Peachey, goes into greater depth and less breadth, usually focusing on how a single web resource could be used by teachers and learners for language learning purposes. I hope you find these useful: if you know of any other blogs or resources like these that you would like to share, let us know!

CMC and institutional factors

At the moment, I am reading a book called Online Communication in Language Learning and Teaching, by Lamy and Hampel. I've come across an interesting quote about institutional support for the use of CMC in language learning:

Institutions may be more or less supportive of CMCL [Computer mediated communication for language learning] users... Among the institutional factors liable to inhibit the creativity that we have said is necessary from teachers are the managerial and the cultural.

First, decisions based on economics and security may determine that an institution will restrict online activity to one platform and will prohibit the use of some software....

Second, cultural factors play a role. Warschauer observes that in written CMCL, 'the decentered, multimedia character of new electronic media facilitates reading and writing processs that are more democratic, learner-centered, holistic and natural' ... Yet many institutions still follow a teacher-led agenda and countless students are more familiar with hierarchical and instructivist learning contexts...

I'd like to know if you think that this is true here in techno-savvy Hong Kong. Has the introduction of technology been sufficient to promote a paradigm shift in pedagogy?

Cell phone users create a new literary genre

Cell phone users in Japan have been successful in creating a new literary genre, called the cell phone novel. According to this article, last year five out of ten of Japan's best-selling novels were originally cell phone novels republished in hard copy form. The novels are composed on cell phones, then uploaded to a web site as a work in progress, where readers can access and comment on the regular instalments. A number of factors seem to be contributing to the success of these novels:

1. A high penetration rate of cell phones, combined with unlimited data plans since 2004
2. A reading culture (for the younger generation that is) that prefers simple stories like those in the Japanese manga comic books
3. A number of urbanized areas where long commutes (for example 2 hours one way) are fairly common

If the novels are compared with more traditional forms of literature then, predictably, they incorporate a lot of the features of instant messaging/chat:

[The writers] used expressions and emoticons, like smilies and musical notes, whose nuances were lost on anyone over the age of 25.

According to their critics they also seem to draw on the features of the comic book genre:

In cellphone novels, characters tend to be undeveloped and descriptions thin, while paragraphs are often fragments and consist of dialogue.

No doubt these textual features are in part due to the peculiarities of writing on a cell phone (small screen size, limited space to convey the message) and in part due to the fact that most of the writers tend to be young women (familiar with chat conventions). I particularly liked the question raised at the end of this article: is it possible to write a cell phone novel on a computer? Established cell phone novelists have now turned to the keyboard, and some claim to be able to discern the results:

“Since she’s switched to a computer,” he added, “her vocabulary’s gotten richer and her sentences have also grown longer.”

For me, the story provides some interesting evidence of how genres can emerge given the right blend of technology, social and cultural factors. It also invites some questions about language standards, and language use in different contexts. Let me know if you see anything else like this out there.