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.

Emerging Technologies - Godwin-Jones

I read "Emerging Technologies: Messaging, Gaming, Peer-to-Peer Sharing: Language Learning Strategies & Tools for the Millennial Generation" by Bob Godwin-Jones, and thought it was full of creative suggestions for the incorporation of various technologies in the language classroom. He focused specifically on instant messaging and mobile communication, peer-to-peer networking, and gaming. Some of the suggestions for incorporation into language learning activities included:

• Instant Messaging: this can be used as a 21st century version of pen pals.
• Moblogging: blog entries made from mobile devices
• iPods in schools: the author cites Duke University's experiment with giving iPods to all incoming freshman, and notes some activities using the devices in the beginning Spanish classes: "...students are able to listen to audio versions of texts they read, play back instructors' comments on assignments and assessments, review new vocabulary and its pronunciation, and of course listen to Spanish language music. The iPods are equipped with microphones, thus allowing students to record conversations and keep audio diaries."

I do think that these options increase the opportunities for students to interact with one another and infuse their own creativity into class projects. I have to admit, though, that a part of me tenses up when I think about online activities replacing face-to-face discourse in the classroom. I consider myself to be fairly competent and "saavy" with many Web 2.0 applications, but I have yet to come across a program that can replace the instant energy of a classroom discussion or debate on a topic. Even our brief discussion at the beginning of class today I found to be much more engaging than reading others' opinions on our classroom pages or blogs - I think it's simply that human interaction - of looking each other in the eye (without the delay or jerkiness of online video chats), of reading body language and vocal inflection, of gesturing as we start to get worked up about something or other. I think these technologies have great potential for enhancing our curriculum, but I stop short of saying I think they can serve as a substitute for dialogue and discussion when it is facilitated well by a passionate teacher.

So, obviously, I don't think that any of these technologies would (for me personally) satisfy me as standalone learning tools. I do think, however, that there are plenty of ways to incorporate them into activities that supplement the in-person interactions of a classroom environment, and can do so with all of the advantages we have talked about in keeping our pedagogy current and relevant.

Teaching with Web 2.0

Web 2.0 became an important part of the World Wide Web because of its two-way communication abilities. In fact, it is any World Wide Web technology or website that allows interactive content. One example is a blog, which permits the writer to post commentary and visitors to leave responses. Another similar example is a wiki since it allows the continual updating and revision of posted content. Interactive. This is becoming popular in schools for several reasons. First, is its ability to combine technology with collaboration. Next, it is using technology with which many students are already familiar through their own explorations of the web and popular sites such as MySpace, Wikipedia and Flikr. Also, it provides an opportunity to communicate with professionals, subject experts and other students who have Internet access

One of the tools we can use in language classroom are blogs since they allow students to receive suggestions, advice and corrections from their peers. Wiki is another software that can enable students to add their section of research to a document being created by a group or class, while also permitting live edit documents. Both blogs and wikis gets students more involved in the writing process. It helps them to strengthen their writing, editing and communication skills.Videoconferencing is another way to bring the world into the classroom. Guest speakers from the target language can participate from anywhere there is an Internet connection. Students can ask him/her cultural as well as language questions and they can get authentic answers. In addition, Students from classes in different countries can ask each other questions about their society and culture.

Constructivism and Web 2.0

A constructivist approach to education sees knowledge and learning as developing through collaborative interaction. Learners work with each other under the guidance of and with the participation of an instructor within a community of learners to “construct” knowledge together. Learning is seen as an active process that takes place through interaction among learners in the give and take of ideas, insights and experience within the context of specific tasks. It is essentially a democratic process in which the teacher (the expert or authority) also takes an active part, but is not the “transmitter” of knowledge. Rather the teacher collaboratively contributes to the socially constructed knowledge. Ideas and understanding emerge from the interaction of the group, and learners have an attachment to this knowledge, as they have contributed to its development.

More and more we practice and encourage “collaborative learning” in our classes. Students work on group projects. They often form learning communities to work together to understand concepts and to solve problems. Many of the tasks students will be faced with in the workplace will involve collaboration, including problem solving, idea generation, collective brainstorming, creative thinking, and so on.

The Web 2.0 world fits nicely into the constructivist approach to education. It allows all participants in the process to have a voice and to contribute to a collaborative process which develops and refines understanding. Blog postings invite comment and criticism from readers, which has the potential to generate a back and forth discussion allowing many participants to refine or hone arguments and expression. YouTube provides an opportunity for anyone to express him- or herself in a visual/aural manner, and to invite the public to comment, positively and negatively on ideas expressed in the video. Commercial sites that allow for buyer feedback, ratings and reviews allow for a variety of opinions and viewpoints that enable a balanced understanding of the product under consideration. And Wikis directly encourage constructivist development of information/knowledge by allowing many writers to edit and contribute to the same text. The beauty of virtually all the above options is that no special computer knowledge is required to participate. If you can type, you can participate.

I would like to explore Web 2.0 possibilities within the framework of collaborative learning. If we place any value on the constructivist approach to learning, what possibilities can we see in the applications and options that Web 2.0 technology offers?

How does Web 2.0 impact teachers and students?

Language acquisition, communicative competence, student-centered classrooms, cooperative learning, authentic materials, integrated skills. These are some of the buzzwords teachers have been hearing for years. The proficiency-oriented approach to language teaching, which began in the 1980's and continues today, is well served by the evolution which has brought us Web 2.0.

This is true since communication is, by definition, a negotiated act between people which involves collaboration and strives for mutual understanding. Web 2.0 gives both teachers and students new opportunities and challenges. Teachers can search, find and organize teaching resources like never before. This is especially true for authentic materials. The target culture can come alive in and outside the classroom through websites like youtube and google. Students can be immersed in the language and the culture to a greater degree than ever before.

As Web 2.0 assists the students as they work together to negotiate meaning in the target language, it also facilitates another kind of collaboration. Through wikis and blogs the classroom community of learners, guided by the teacher, shares ideas and learns about and from one another. Services like chat and skype now make possible interpersonal communication.
The challenge for the teacher is to choose and use the tools of Web 2.0 efficiently and effectively.

Meeting Students Where They're At

I completely agree with Valorie in her assessment of the language used in the O'Reilly article on Web 2.0. I found myself reading only in the sense that my eyes were moving across the page, but much of the article was so detailed that it was lost on me. Basically, I think the divide between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 rests on the interactive capability of 2.0, and the principle that information is collectively formed and discussed rather than published and consumed. The last part of the article that outlined 7 principles of Web 2.0 was somewhat helpful:

• Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
• Trusting users as co-developers
• Harnessing collective intelligence
• Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
• Software above the level of a single device
• Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

Based on my (limited) understanding of Web 2.0, it seems to me that incorporating technologies based on this new generation of the web is a key piece of any teacher's curriculum that strives to be student centered and relevant. It is difficult to find any middle or high school aged student who does not have at least basic familiarity with some of the major internet companies and/or programs of today (i.e., Google, Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, Amazon, etc.), and our incorporation of these programs demonstrates an interest on our part in keeping our content interesting, relevant, and accessible to the students we teach.

I recognize that some of our students (indeed, many of our immigrant students) may not share the common experience of daily usage of these internet programs, but I think given the dominance of these programs in our society, it is perhaps even more important that we incorporate Web 2.0 applications in our classroom curriculum to increase the opportunities for them to work with these programs. The interactive nature of 2.0 also means that teachers can design assignments and projects that require students to work together using technology that is at the forefront of innovation, and that can appeal to multiple learning styles represented in our classrooms. We can manipulate images and audio to form interactive content that students can then respond to, which increases the variety of approaches we use to teach content - always a positive thing when it comes to teaching!

Challenges for digital immigrants

I have heard many people use the phrase “digital immigrant” referring to the capabilities of technology and the Internet. Up until today I considered it to be a phrase to describe others and not myself, after all, besides the usual word processing and database management via Word and Excel, I can use e-mail, I can search for information through two university library systems and I can do desktop publishing using Quark Express. Today after reading Tim O’Reilly’s article, “What is Web 2.0” (2005) I have decided that I belong in the pre-immigrant group. I don’t understand the vocabulary and I can’t always make meaning from what I read.

For example, here is a sentence from the O’Reilly article containing English words, all of which I know in isolation, but do not comprehend when joined together to create meaning for some readers, “Every banner ad is served as a seamless cooperation between two websites, delivering an integrated page to a reader on yet another computer. Akamai also treats the network as the platform, and at a deeper level of the stack, building a transparent caching and content delivery network that eases bandwidth congestion.” What is a stack? What does it mean to build a transparent caching? What part of speech is a transparent caching? Will I understand the explanation when I find a knowledgeable person to guide me through the words?

As a visual artist I think that I could better understand the concepts in the article if I could see the relationships. The following sentence is an example of what I think I could understand if I could see it. “Much as synapses form in the brain, with associations becoming stronger through repetition or intensity, the web of connections grows organically as an output of the collective activity of all web users.” I would like to be able to look at a mind map and have someone point to one spot on the map that defines where a platform, application or program is located. It feels like I went to bed with the tape recorder playing a lecture and the information in that lecture is floating around inside my head, but I cannot gain access to it directly. I may find a bit of it as it passes behind my eyes or wisps across my brain from one ear to the other, but I cannot put my hands on it, touch it, feel it, really see it or hear it. It feels ethereal. Maybe this is what communication in the after-life will be like?

Did our forebears feel this way about either radio, telephone or television? You cannot touch the waves that convey the visual or aural messages, yet somehow we manage to believe in them and use them.

The author states that the Web 2.0 service gets better the more people use it and that there is cooperation built into the workings of it. He says, “Multiple uses enhances connectivity.” He equates blogs to bulletin boards, something that I understand well, since I am an avid reader of those because I like to share information that I find and pass it on to others who might like to know about an upcoming event or opportunity. So, I should be pre-disposed to like blogs if I can figure out how to use them with a little more ease.

What are in the dreams of today’s visionaries? The author says that many of the ideas in use today have been around for a long time. Could I even speak to them and understand the vocabulary and concepts? For example, the writer talks about “the long tail,” referring to how the new concepts work. He says, “to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.” So here is a visual, and I should be able to paint it but even if I did, I still don’t think I can understand what the image represents.

How can Web 2.0 be useful to me as a second language educator?

This week I am learning how to use the tools of the Web 2.0 visionaries and finding my brain spilling over with so many options. Perhaps those designers think that I am like someone who needs a drink of water, who will benefit from drinking from the glass of the Web 2.0 water. The glass can hold only so much before you have to drink some, to make more room in the glass. If you keep filling the it to overflowing, no matter how long you let the tap run, the water will do nothing to satisfy you and slake our thirst until there is room to hold more water.

Despite my flooded brain, I believe that some of the input will remain inside my head once I leave the CARLA technology workshop. I believe that just like in learning a new language, the input can be overwhelming at the beginning, but gradually as I make meaning in specific situations here and there, I can build on that knowledge, feel more comfortable about it and apply it in other settings.

Mainly I have addressed my feeling of being on the edge of something new, of not knowing how to grasp the information in my usual visual methods. Perhaps I can better understand how an immigrant feels surrounded by a new language and a new culture, and will find more ways to have empathy. Perhaps I will find ways to share the second languages that I teach using offerings from Web 2.0, ways that will be reception to multiple learning styles and intelligences.

Welcome to the CARLATech Blog

Welcome to the CARLATech Blog!

This first post will illustrate some of the features of Blogging and raise issues regarding blogging for educational purposes.

Simply put, a Blog is a form of interactive Web-based technology that allows users to post information and comment on such posts. It is a part of Web 2.0 technology, or what can be termed the Read/Write Web. Web 1.0 technology is primarily presentational: web pages are static and are maintained by a webmaster who supplies and formats the information. On the Read/Write web anyone can provide and respond or react to information, thoughts, ideas, videos, sounds and images.

Web 2.0 technologies involve such things as online catalogs, particularly those like amazon that allow users to post reviews, video posting sites such as YouTube, where users can post videos and can comment textually or in video form on other videos, podcasting sites and services, online photo storage sites, online photo editing sites, wikis, and blogs.

Characteristic of blogs is the regular posting of content relating to a particular topic. The blog author posts a message (textual, visual, aural), and the blog allows for readers of this message to comment on the message and on one another's comments. Generally, blog posts are displayed in reverse chronological order -- most recent posts appear first on the blog page. Often a blog will present links to earlier posts and discussions, it may link to other blogs or other web sites, and may present several different options for reader interaction. Finally, the beauty of blogs is that they can be syndicated, or automatically distributed to subscribers. Every time there is a new post on a blog that I subscribe to, I can know about that post without having to navigate to the blog site. I can keep a list of blogs that I want to monitor and access this list of all these blogs in one central place.

One general conception of a blog is as an online journal. Individuals set up a blog to tell the world what they have been doing and what they are thinking. Blogs have been used to post photographs and narratives of one's experiences. I have two former students who spend a year in Germany who regularly wrote about their experiences and posted photos for all their friends and acquaintances to see. It is a form of letter writing with a wide audience.

Yet blogs can and are used for more purposes. Most news organizations now publish their articles in the form of blogs. Organizations that present news relating to particular issues organize their essays in blog form, allowing for and encouraging reader responses. YouTube is in essence a loosely organized video blog site. I use a blog to keep my 8-10 language lab assistants current with what transpires in the lab on a daily basis.

Most effective blogs, however, share certain characteristics. They are not simply a loose stream of consciousness, but rather organized thoughts and ideas. Like research papers, blog authors make use of resources and work with these resources to express themselves. Such blog posts are often means of digesting these resources and developing and supporting a thesis. As such, they lead beyond themselves, pointing directly to primary sources on the web by means of links, allowing readers to inspect this information. Finally, they encourage reader reaction and therefore interaction.

Of all the above, can you see any use in blogs in the curriculum? Firstly, I ask from a teaching perspective. What use can we as teachers put to the blog technology? Secondly, what about students? How might the use of blogs in the curriculum enhance their learning -- not just from the point of view of students as readers of blogs, but that of students as creators and writers of blogs?