Mod 12: Podcasts

I found a podcast on ESLpods called Ordering Soups and Salads.  It is the 639th installment of ESL minilessons.  Others include Planting Flowers, Firefighters, and Moving Out of a Home.  This episode includes a short vignette between a restaurant customer and a waiter.  There is some introduction, some dialogue, and then a breakdown of the exchange.  This site, and these podcasts, can be used in my teaching as a source for slow, well-enunciated English-language exchanges.  I would not use the podcasts as lessons, but the dialogue can be used to build a lesson around.

TED Talk: Global Voices

I'll frame this post around a personal example illustrating part of Zuckerman's main point.  I am a member of a community at reddit.com.  Reddit (read it...get it?) is a social news aggregator where users can post news stories from around the world.  Users can upvote or downvote articles, and the more recent and interesting articles make their way to the top.  The site can be browsed by sub-reddits.  These are arranged by interest: international news, technology, bicycling, crochet, and even funny pictures of cats with captions underneath.

reddit's mascot

When I discovered this site, I started reading the comment threads and I found that there were a lot of different types of users on the site.  Many were engineers, there were professors from around the world, fry cooks, all types.  When I get on the Internet without a particular focus and I want to find some new and interesting information, I start from reddit.

Over time, I found that a lot of the same links and themes were repeated.  I took another look at the user base and found that although there were some users in outlier demographics, most users were just like me: educated white males in their 20s, English-speaking, and mostly living in America.  My views were the same as most of the views I heard repeated over and over.  I realized that what I liked about reddit was that for the most part, the "hive mind" conformed with my views and I was continually receiving support for my biases.



tl;dr: I thought I was in a worldwide information sharing community and learning lots of new things, but it turned out I was just perpetuating my own biases.

ePals

The ePals website has four different features.

ePals Platform
--This is something like an operating system in that it provides the basis for the other ePals features.

ePals Learning Space
--This is a system that incorporates email, filesharing and browsing.  It would be used on a school-wide or district-wide level.  It has the advantage of allowing access and collaboration from teachers, students, administrators, and parents.

ePals School Mail
--This is a system for student email accounts.  It allows instant translation, spam filters and some other features.  The most useful feature for the classroom, especially if a teacher is conducting a pen pals project, is the monitoring option.

ePals Global Community
--This is a collaborative network that allows teachers to match their classrooms with other classrooms around the world for cooperative projects.  It is supplemented with graphics from National Geographic.

In2Reading
--This is a website that matches students in grades 3-5 with adults who read the same books they are reading.  The adults become mentors and pen pals, and interactions can be monitored by the teacher.  This would be useful to me as a teacher if I knew who the adults were.  For example, if I knew that they all came from a local community center or were parents of older students in the district.

What seems most immediately useful to me is the selection of unit projects provided toward the bottom of the main page.  I will be working with ESL students, so the Holidays and Celebrations project will be particularly applicable.  A complete package is provided, and I could focus any of the activities around whatever language feature I wanted to highlight.

Flickr Post #2 (Mod 9)

This was created using Bubblr.  Something like this could be used for ESL students learning different American gestures such as the thumbs up and thumbs down signals.  Students could fill in the speech bubbles, using vocabulary from their own level and/or vocabulary connected to class discussions.

Flickr Post #1 (Mod 9)

There are several types of creative commons licensing setups on Flickr.

Attribution means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give you credit.

Noncommercial means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work - and derivative works based upon it - but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike means:
You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

The different combinations of these parameters are

Attribution License 

Attribution-NoDerivs License

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Attribution-NonCommercial License

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License 

 Attribution-ShareAlike License

Photo by Stephane Mignon

Twitter

I could use Twitter in my teaching in several ways:

Using hashtags, I would be able to find other ESL teachers to communicate with and create a PLN during my lunch period, as per this article.

I could lurk on other educators' Twitter pages to keep up-to-date on their doings.

As per this article, I could develop "critical friends."  Even if I'm not in mutual communication with them, it would be just like following a smart person's blog or reading an insightful columnist's articles.

Response to Edu Blog on my Google Reader account

I'm responding to a blog entry by Susan Smith Nash, who speculates about whether mobile learning is a fad that will pass.  In her post, she lists some essentials for an effective podcast.  These are:

*the speakers tell a story and incorporate personal experience -- encourage listener engagement
*optimized for easy download
*variable length
*lively voice -- ideally with a conversation
*narrative and organization easy to follow, even with ambient distractions
*multiple locations / mirror servers / convenient and ubiquitous access

I read this list looking for "background music" but didn't find it in there.  To me, an ipod is something I use when I want instant access to media.  As someone who grew up in an age of multimedia, I can't stand the idea of listening to a lecture through earphones without some other media thrown in there to keep my interest.

Another thing that surprised me about this list was the inclusion of "variable length."  If I'm listening to a podcast for work I would like to know exactly how long it will take so I can plan my day around it.  This is easy if I can see how long the file is, but if I have a podcast to listen to every week, I'd like to know roughly how much time I have to devote to it.

Mod 4 Post #2

I found a .ning site designed for helping English educators connect with each other.  It's titled English Ideas: The English Teacher's Network.  Its URL is http://englishideas.ning.comhttp://englishideas.ning.com.

I would mainly use this site for grabbing lesson plan ideas.  I will be teaching ESL, so the lessons would have to be modified, but the site could provide good jumping-off points.  In addition, I might use this site to post open questions or concerns, or to establish collaborative relationships with other English/ESL teachers.  One thing that is missing that might make this site more helpful is an .rss feed option.

Mod 4 Post #1

A learner is in one way like a baseball batter.  (Throughout this example, I will use male pronouns for consistency.)  A batter must make decisions about the ball that is being pitched to him.  Is it something that will be useful to him?  If it isn't, he should let it go without acting on it.  If it is something that will be useful, he should act on it.  Similarly, a learner today is presented with so much information that part of the learner's job is to decide what information is useful and what is not.

Before a person can go about deciding which pitches are useful for him, he must find a pitcher or a pitching machine.  How can he find one?  He may have a few different places in mind, and some are more reliable in throwing usable pitches than others, but batting cages sometimes go out of business, and human pitchers are highly mobile entities.  Similarly, before a learner can decide which information is useful for him, he must have a way to find sources of information of the type that is potentially useful.  He may have experience with certain sources (i.e., websites), but even the information on some of the more reliable sites is probably in a constant state of change.  He can also go to different sources, looking for more specific and up-to-date information, but those sources may be fleeting.  To find these, a knowledge of how to search is important.

Siemens writes that "the connections that enable us to learn are more important than our current state of knowing."  In other words, being able to find information is more important than possessing a repertoire of specific knowledge.  Further, he states in his video, "The Changing Nature of Knowledge" (deep embed) that "...it's not just what we know today that's important, it's our ability to continue to stay current as knowledge changes."  To paraphrase, being prepared to find the most current information is more important than possessing a wide range of facts.

Reaction to Social Media Video

This is a reaction to the Social Media Video listed on the UB Learns website.

The numbers are huge but I'm not surprised.  I was surprised that AOL Instant Messenger wasn't mentioned.  When I was an undergrad, I was constantly logged into this program and so were most of my peers.  I think I've been on twice in the past 3 years, and the number of people I know who are on this program is lower than it was a few years ago.  To me, AIM was the biggest thing on the Internet, and I assumed that everyone knew about it and used it.  When an Asian student mentioned she had never heard of it, and that she and her friends often used the Microsoft Network for the same purpose, it dawned on me that America Online might not be popular worldwide.  Nowadays I hardly hear it mentioned.


Tangential:

One fun thing to do is to use the Google Trends site to see what words pop up in internet traffic at certain times.  Within this site, you can compare to different internet traffic keywords and see if there is any correlation.  If you compare "christmas" and "ipod," you'll see that both topics spike around the end of January every year ("christmas" and "ipod").  Interestingly, "ipod" traffic spikes just after "christmas."

Post #2

List of Internet safety tips for students:

1. Don't include personal information such as phone numbers, addresses, etc.
2. Depending on the type of assignment, blog, etc., it may be inappropriate to use your first name.
3. Before clicking on a link, mouse-over to see what the website address is.  This may give you a clue about what type of site it is before you visit.
4. Similarly, if a web address ends in .exe, it is a program and is potentially something that could damage your computer.  If the file extension is one with which you are unfamiliar, do a quick search (Google, etc.) to find out what type of file it is before opening it.
5. If you happen upon something that is inappropriate, simply click the "back" button on your browser.
6. Never post pictures of yourself that you wouldn't want your mother to see.

Post #1

from NYS TESOL standards for grades 9-12:

Standard 1: Students  will speak, read, listen and write for information and understanding:

If students are using blogs as a space to analyze websites and respond to them, then reading those sites for information and understanding is entailed.

Standard 2: SW SRLW for literary response, enjoyment, and expression:

If students are using blogs to respond to prompts related to classroom literature or if they are allowed freedom to post on their daily lives, this standard will be addressed.

Standard 3: SW SRLW for critical analysis and evaluation:

Part of understanding the world of blogging is understanding which bloggers are credible.  By examining the blogs of other writers, students can develop the skills necessary to analyze information available to them.

Standard 4: SW SRLW for classroom and social interaction:

If students are permitted to comment on each other's blogs, this standard will be addressed.  In addition, students can use blogs and comments to communicate with students in other classrooms in the school and beyone, as well as with subject area experts worldwide.

Standard 5: SW demonstrate cross-cultural knowledge and understanding:

One of the greatest cross-cultural communication tools is the Internet.  This is not a uniquely American forum.  Students who come from other countries may have experiences using Internet tools that are similar to the experiences of American students.