Emerging Technologies

The computer can be a great tutor as this article affirms. We have seen great examples this week of tools such as Hot Potatoes which allow teachers to create a variety of exercises. Most of these, however, are quite basic in nature. There is a need for a more systematic program to teach and practice language online. The article mentions several initiatives along these lines. Clearly, language is a complex and sophisticated subject and it will take time to create more effective online materials. That said, current technology does an impressive job of providing students with ample opportunities to develop language skills.

All Quiet on the Discussion Front

"All Quiet on the Discussion Front" focuses on the fact that many ESL students are more likely to respond to blogs than to orally participate in class. This is not surprising since they may be timid.
Teachers need to make special efforts to understand the context of the individual student and to encourage him or her to participate both online and in class.

How To Use Picasa for Student Creativity By Amber Price

It looks like Picasa is a software that does the exact thing that we learned about Picnick except that Picasa has a lot more features. It is exciting to learn that there are out there various options for us as teachers. In fact, going through the article, I found out that we can do a lot more with the pictues we take than just insert them in a PowerPoint slides. At least, on my side because that what I used to use in my classes and it was of a great success.

Reading about the different features of Picasa I thought of using it as another tool for digital story telling, or probably in the virtual projections. In fact, Playing with photos is a tool in itself.

Reading articles about how to implement different technological tools seems very enlightening. However, the challenge that arises here is which one of the tools we can use and how can we use it to fit a particular curriculum. If there is a software that can help us in faciliatating our teaching how can we modify it to different scripts (ex Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, etc).

Being exposed to different kind of technology this week, I found out myself starting from square one: What tool do I really want to use? How can I use it? How can I implement it to fit the five C's of ACTFL ? Do I have to use technology for each lesson? If yes, how can I do it if I have to see five classes a day each with a differnent level? All those are questions that I start asking myself.

To sum up, technlogy is facinating but it is hard to be used on daily basis. It needs a lot of time, work and collaborations to be part of our daily lesson plan.

How to Use Picasa for Student Creativity - Amber Price

This article caught my attention because I absolutely LOVE the Picasa photo program from Google, and was curious as to what ways the author had found to incorporate this program into the classroom. Picasa is sort of like Picnik, but you download it to your computer (for free) and it finds all of the pictures on your hard drive and organizes them into folders. The editing tools are amazing: you can sharpen and soften images, crop photos, create slideshows, add effects, and do countless other things to enhance your pictures.

Price pointed out the capability of the program to create a webpage with your photos, which is something I hadn't realized was possible. I normally upload my albums so that my family and friends can view them through Picasa online, but this article says that it is possible to create a separate webpage with these pictures. I think given what we have learned this week about editing photos and videos and embedding files in web pages, we can easily imagine the potential this feature would have for our language classrooms. Students could create pages that could be viewed and critiqued by their peers, or could collaborate to create a class page together. Price concludes her article with "Warning: if you are at all creative you will find yourself absolutely addicted to this great free program, the sort of ‘tech toy’ that can cause people to stay at their computer for hours, usually with big grins on their faces." I totally agree.

One side note - newer Blu-Ray players have a Picasa application that lets you view any photo albums you have stored on Picasa on your television, which I have used to show larger groups of people my photos. This could come in really handy in a classroom as well, especially if you don't always have access to a projector and need to use the (old-fashioned) television! :)

Do you need to design a web site for ELLs?

Comments on "Guidelines for Designing a Good Web Site for ESL Students" by Charles Kelly www.aitech.ac.jp/~ckelly. Accessed 7/14/10



This article is written in a format, using every day language that makes all of the advice very clear. One does not need to be especially tech savvy to read and understand the content.

In the section called "Quick Overview" the author says, "Should I really worry about the minority who use less powerful computers, use older browsers and have slow Internet access?" The answer to the question in the article is "yes." I feel completely in accord with that, as I am one of those people. Some of our English language learners may also be in a similar position.


Dial up Internet, while an innovation some 15 to 20 years ago, now feels like taking a walk with a snail. I usually have a book to read beside my computer to pass the time, or like this morning, I put my oatmeal on the stove to cook, turned on the computer, got the programs started, and then returned to preparing breakfast. While I ate, documents, web pages, or e-mail messages loaded and I then returned to the computer screen without high blood pressure, due to the frustrations and impatience that I generally experience in the waiting. I wonder if there should be a movement to develop meditation procedures that last for as long as it takes for some web pages to download? Perhaps this is a niche and a new field in meditation arts.


One instruction in the article resonated with me from my general awareness of searching web sites. The author says, “Don’t waste your visitors’ time with a cover page that says, “Click here to enter.” I have always wondered about this as well. Why not send me, the visitor, directly to what you want me to see. On a dial-up system, loading each new page takes time. Why add more of that kind of waiting time to a task?

Personally I still like a hard copy, and so I appreciated the author’s advice to “Make your pages printable.”

I also liked the recommendation to let viewers know how to contact you and when the site last had attention. The author does include a note about spiders or spammers, suggesting that e-mail addresses, if they are listed, should be written with spaces between the letters or between words and the “at” sign.

To sum up, I will paraphrase the author’s main points regarding how to design good web sites for English language learners:

Make your site usable by everyone.
May your site as fast as possible.
Make your site easy to use.
Make your site useful.
Be professional.
Make your site friendly
Use the newest technology effectively.
Not everything you believe is true is true.
Be considerate of those with slower and older Internet connections.

Understanding "The other side": intercultural learning in a Spanish-English Email messages by Robert O'Dowd

I choose this research because it tackle a very important piece in teaching foreign language which is culture. In this research, the author (researcher) gave his students in Spain an opportunity to exchange emails with other students from England. The purpose of this long term activity is to understand the other through various emails. For example, the students who tend to explain why they speak loud in Spain. It is a cultural practice that has a different perspective. For Spanish people it is the willingness to express feelings and ideas. The other example of the student who explained the difference between the Spanish culture and the Llión one 9Llion is situated within an area of the North-West of Spain). Through her email, you can sense the depth of her ideas. Furthermore, the student who replied to the english student's the reluctance to toros. The more I read emails,the more I get impressed on how the students were involved in clarifying misunderstandings and presenting authentic facts about their homecountry and culture.

As a language teacher, I would love to use the same tool to expose my student to authentic situation. Being able to exchange emails with native speakers will not only widen their view about the Arab speaking countries but also improve their linguistic skills. Learning the language through the teacher is not enough. Students need to hear other native speakers to construct a better sense of how the language is sopken by different people.

The only thing I am not sure about in this research is how to monitor the emails? How can the teacher be sure that some of the students won't cross the line and talk about forbidden subjects?

ELLS and communication with Web 2.0 options

Comments on All quiet on the discussion front by Marina Sapozhnikov, January 1, 2005.

www.techlearning.com/article/3314 Accessed 7/14/10

The author talks about having to encourage ESL students to participate in on-line discussion boards or other interactive forums. She says that these kinds of assignments provide students with time to “carefully weigh, correct and polish each word.” In my opinion I think there are reasons why ELLs are not in a position to weigh, correct or polish.

I have found that often schools that use a “pull-out” model to provide service to ELLs, arrange the time for them to meet with the ESL teacher during computer time, so that they rarely have the same amount of keyboarding experience as their native speaking (NS) peers. I have watched so many students hunt and peck to type a document to meet the teacher’s requirement. This slows down the thinking and composing process.

Many ELLs, when faced with an assignment like a discussion board will need to do this work in school, as often there is no technology available at home. Going to the pubic library is also not an option for all.

Composing in a second language provides an extra challenge to a learner. How many NS students do we know who struggle to put words together to compose a comprehensive sentence, paragraph and opinion for pubic view? Personally, I have been a newspaper reporter, editor and journalist since 1962 and I still want time to review what I write to be sure that it sounds right and makes sense. While I am competent in my second language, my writing and composing skills in Swedish are not nearly as good as they are in English. I have to figure out word order, spelling, idioms, sentence structure and generally accepted forms, which are different in writing than they are in social conversations. All of these factors are like adding molasses to the fluidity of words that have to move from my brain to the paper, or in this case the computer screen. Writing is a difficult task for many. Writing in a second language provides even another bottle of treacle or even maple syrup.

In the second paragraph of the article I think the author is misguided in saying that an online forum will ease the ELLs feeling of being “overpowered” by their NS peers. This is going to depend on the student and his or her character and personality. How s/he feels about the level and competence in English usage will also depend on how long that student has been in the country using the target language.

Sapozhnikov seems to reverse her thinking in the third paragraph and lists a number of reasons why ELLS may not feel comfortable posting on a public communication forum. She takes more of a role of advocacy, in which she encourages the reader to help mainstream or classroom teachers understand some of the challenges faced by ELLs and help them to adapt assignments to make them more accessible for the best possible participation.

I think communication tasks in the language classroom via Web 2.0 options should be viewed in the same way that teachers approach multi-level classrooms. The lesson planner should consider multiple approaches to the task, giving varying levels of support so that each ELL can have access from varying entry points. I agree that locating articles and tasks that relate to the students’ lives and interests is a good starting point.