Measurement of cognitive load

Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) has been a remarkable instructional theory that facilitates learning for over three decades. The theory has its ground in the studies that have examined what happens in cognitive processes when working memory and long-term memory interact (Sweller, Ayres & Kalyuga, 2011). This interaction obviously affects learner's performance and learning as an outcome. Granted that too much cognitive load is created for some reasons such as complexity of material or poor or inefficient instructional design of the material, the outcome is jeopardized as insufficient working memory resources manage to carry out processes required to learn. CLT has successfully presented barriers to learning and proposed strategies like modality effect to deal with the difficulties (Sweller et al., 2011). When CLT was born, one of the basic concerns was how to measure the construct. Several measures such as error rates, time on task and dual task methods were applied until a self-rating measure was created by Paas (1992). This measure has been a hit in the field of cognitive psychology; however, after a while it received some criticism. It was basically designed to ask for learners' perceptions of their invested mental effort on a task while learning and taking tests. The criticism has been centred on the nature of the measure itself that it is a subjective measure and all three types of cognitive load cannot be measured by this single subjective measure. Additionally, it has been stated that there have been several variations in labels and items of the scale as well as administration time and frequency. Responding "timing and frequency" issue and meeting the criticism, Gog, Kirschner, Kester, and Paas (2012) have worked on the effects of timing and frequency on cognitive load measures. They collected invested mental effort ratings when each problem solving task in a set is done and compared them with the mental effort measured once at the end of the set. The findings confirm that the frequency affects the value of the mental effort and the accurate data can collected through repeated and consistently administered measures. This finding will likely help set up the conditions that can provide an accurate and reliable results.

Reference:
Paas, F. (1992). Training strategies for attaining transfer of problem-solving skill in statistics: A cognitive-load approach. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 429–434.
Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). Cognitive load theory. New York: Springer.
Van Gog, T., Kirschner, F., Kester, L., & Paas, F. (2012). Timing and frequency of mental effort measurement: Evidence in favor of repeated measures. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26, 833–839.

Note to the readers: After a long vacation in the United States, Turkey, Cyprus and data collection procedures for my Ph.D thesis, I am back to my blogging, Yay! I have read a lot about Cognitive Load Theory and will be writing about it for a while.

YouTube and video-sharing technologies

Last week I read an article about online video sharing services, namely Youtube. It seems to me Youtube might attract the interest of educators, students and researchers since it has been a hit since 2005 and more than 2 billion views are said to be done per day. Snelson, Rice and Wyzard (2012) did a study to receive expert opinions about the areas that are most need of research in video sharing technology through Delphi technique.  The participants (experts) responded to a question "what should be the research priorities in video-sharing technologies over next 5 years?" and the categories were identified on the second round and then on the third round of discussion, the experts were asked to review the items and ranking based on the initial response to the question. To my surprise, the findings indicate that research priority category number one was users, groups and communities. The learning and teaching processes were ranked as the second. The third was social/political impact, the forth category was video creation and production and the fifth category was legal/ethical issues. The final two categories were media management and commercial interests. I regard this ranking as a step in doing research in education, and in my humble opinion, we need to look at the impact of video-sharing technologies on individuals and their use of video on their own learning. The users' profiles and preferences should be taken into consideration before designing research since I believe that it is the users' voice or preferences that has made the Youtube videos popular. Although the study is current and highlights the importance of users, groups and communities as a crucial category to research, it has some limitations. Firstly, there are no implications about how the categorization could be integrated into classroom-based research. Another limitation is that the most of the participants are from the field of education and their preferences for the categories might be related with how they regard the Youtube videos for education. There could have been much diversity in participants' profiles (maybe users themselves) to claim the key research areas about the video sharing service.

Reference:

Snelson, C., Rice, K., & Wyzard, C. (2012). Research priorities for YouTube and video-sharing technologies: A delphi study. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43(1), 119-129.

Technology and collaborative writing

Have you heard about Wiki? If no, let's watch this:

In a second language writing class, peer response and teacher correction have been main forms of feedback until the integration of technology in writing classes are welcomed. By the introduction of communication technologies in our lives, the concept of collaboration in writing classes has changed from a peer (an author) being a passive recipient of the peer response to a reconstructor who is constantly in active collaboration with others for the formation of a text. In a sociocultural perspective,  knowledge is created and re-created in the discourse of learning how to write through collaboration. Thus, a learner can make meaning of “own understanding through the constructive efforts while collaborating with the others. One of the tools that enables learners to create, transform, and edit their work with a certain accountability is Wiki, which allows teachers to facilitate and monitor the collaborative activities by checking what changes are made, by whom, when and how often they are made. Collaboration by the use of Wiki might help improvement of language accuracy (Lee, 2010). Students may benefit from the collaboration with peers, not by creating more content per each edit, but by revisiting the content already formed. As for the content, after revisions and peer feedback, students can maintain an organized flow with a certain structure. In conclusion,  Wiki can create learners' engagement and collaboration through meaningful tasks such as problem solving, making decisions, editing and so forth.

Reference: 

Lee, L. (2010). Exploring wiki-media collaborative writing: A Case Study in an Elementary Spanish Course. CALICO Journal, 27(2), 260-276. Retrieved from http://www.calico.org/

Integration of Technology: A utopia?

Due to the student-centered teaching models, performance-based instruction and assessment, and national standards modified to meet the needs of students of the millennium, today's language teachers have encountered the fact that teaching and learning a second/foreign language through technology is a common practice to introduce, facilitate, reinforce, assess, and remediate student mastery of language learning. Therefore, language teachers are expected to know how to use a variety of new technologies and applications in classroom environments in order to meet the needs of students with different learning styles (Otto & Pusack, 1996), and apply the technical pedagogical knowledge in language teaching.

Although there is a high expectation for language teachers to gain technological pedagogical knowledge in emerging technologies that enable the application of technology in classes, there is still a way to succeed in integrating technology in language classes. First of all, the conceptualization of technology is difficult to schematize. Bauer and Kenton (2005) conducted a study on the barriers of technology integration in class and found that teachers think anything they do with technological devices such as using a projector to show a Word document to students or downloading an audio file and making students listen to the file can be samples for the integration of technology in classes. Stolle (2008), in the same vein, pointed out that there is uncertainty about the integration of technology into instructions in classes. The uncertainty is likely due to the fact that most of the teachers regard the integration of technology as a technical capacity rather than a means to master the language skill. For example, they might think the use of PowerPoint to deliver a lecture is integrating technology in class; in reality, it is not the case because there is little space for students’ active participation in learning through technology. For integration to be successful, it is necessary for it to be high-level integration, which is associated with student-centered and constructivist practices (Becker, 1994). Moreover, although there are technical facilities that make the integration feasible, language teachers may not be willing to use it in their class. Marcinkiewicz (1993) stated that “[f]ull integration of computers into the educational system is a distant goal unless there is reconciliation between teachers and computers. To understand how to achieve integration, we need to study teachers.” (p. 23). Teachers’ unwillingness apparently stems from two sources: their belief about its efficiency (intrinsic) and a lack of time and practice (extrinsic). According to the implication of the study by Ansell and Park (2003), teachers are unlikely to try innovation or to put much time and effort into technology integration. Fabry and Higgs (1997) also concluded that the teachers’ unwillingness is a key barrier to integration of technology in the classroom. Elmore, Peterson, and McCarthey (1996) explained the reason for the unwillingness of technology use in classes with the lack of practice stating that “… teachers’ practices are unlikely to change without some exposure to what teaching actually looks like when it’s being done differently” (p. 241). Last but not least, the barrier for technology integration in language classes might be due to the external constraints such as lack of equipment and technical help to teachers when they need it (Beggs, 2000; Cuban, 2001). These internal and external reasons prevent teachers from partaking in experiences of integrating technologies in classroom environments.

There are two possible ways to avoid the aforementioned barriers of technology integration in language classes. Firstly teacher training for language teachers, especially public school teachers, is necessary and can be realized in three ways: macro, micro and personal. In a macro way, there should be a nationwide training scheme for language teachers to encourage them to conceptualize technology and apply it in facilitating learning. In Turkey, there has been an attempt, known as Dyned, to promote the use of technology in language classes by requiring the K-12 teachers’ participation in the online training platform so as to provide time and place flexibility of training language teachers (Ministry of Turkish Primary Education, 2007). However, if there isn’t a good training structure so as to tailor the needs of teachers with different backgrounds and proficiencies of computer literacy, the training might fail. Tilfarlioglu (2011) discussed the reasons for the ‘failure’ of Dyned and concluded that it is time-consuming to complete the assigned tasks and it is compulsory rather than voluntary for a language teacher to register for this training and complete all the tasks. For the nationwide training, voluntary participation, practicality and transferability of the training program to the learning environment must be taken into consideration.  In addition to the macro initiatives, there should be micro level initiations for teachers to encourage and increase their use of technology in language classes. The initiation could be arranged by the institutions or specific centers such as a lifelong learning center. These centers could promote the use of innovative technologies and classroom practices, and provide technical and pedagogical help when the teachers need it. As the teachers are involved in institution based training, they will likely gain practice and encouragement in transferring the skills or experiences into their teaching. Moreover, they will probably be more convinced to see the tangible results of using technology in their language classes. The initiation could be also at personal level and its efficiency depends on how language teachers are willing to cooperate and work on the participatory action research to discuss teaching successes and challenges through technology. They get together, describe and address the problematic issues of technology integration in language classes, then they take action, collect and analyze the data in their immediate environment and finally reflect upon the findings and the whole process of research.

Another solution could be a partnership with the businesses and schools for the development of 21st century education in schools. For example, schools can start a dialogue with businesses for the excellence in teaching, thus convincing them to sponsor for international and national paid training programs for language teachers, donation of mobile devices or computer labs and opening up lifelong learning centers or innovation centers. For example, the Center for Instructional Innovation at Georgia State University encourages and promotes the use of new technologies in classes by providing training, grants and electronic devices like iPads to the academic staff and seminars. This initiation could set an example how a learning center might contribute to the acquisition of knowledge and classroom practice of teachers.

These solutions might not be effective in the short term due to a lack of human resources, current incentives, and high cost; however, it might be effective in the long run. As Tilfarlioglu (2011) indicated, to gain the technical pedagogical skill for a language learner in the new millennium takes time, yet it is unavoidable. The effectiveness of training apparently depends on the frequent practices of technology in language classes. Yildirim (2000), and Zhao and Bryant (2006) indicated the importance of periodic training and expressed a need for more follow-up training or one-to-one mentoring practice in order to support teachers’ integration of technology. As an English teacher, I believe that if there are opportunities for teachers to have experiences in designing language classes by using technology, they will be more motivated to use technology in class. I took a course where I created my own podcast, movie clips and online-corpus data, which empowered my teaching skill. Depending on my own experience, I can state that the most crucial solution to the barrier of technology integration is perhaps giving the feeling of being empowered in teaching through technology. With the critical planning and design of training and sponsorships from businesses, the integration could be easily optimized.

Technology has revolutionized education in the 21st century and apparently the way language instruction is taught and delivered. Teachers feel more obliged to acquire computer literacy and use technology in their classes. Although there are problems in the realization of this integration, when critically planned, technology integration in language classes will no longer be a utopia but a classroom routine in the 21st century education.

References:

Bauer, J. & Kenton, J. (2005). Toward technology integration in the schools: Why it isn’t happening. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 13(4), 519-546. Norfolk, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/4728.

Becker, H. J. (1994). How exemplary computer-using teachers differ from other teachers: Implications for realizing the potential of computers in schools. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 26, 291-321.

Beggs, T. A. (2000). Influences and barriers to the adoption of instructional technology. In proceedings of the mid-south instructional tech-nology conference. Retrieved from http://frank.mtsu.edu/~itconf/proceed00/beggs/beggs.htm.

Computing in Education, 32(4), 479-495.

Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused: computers in the classroom. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Elmore, R. F., Peterson, P. L. & McCarthey, S. J. (1996). Restructuring in the Classroom: Teaching, Learning, and School Organization. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Fabry, D. L., & Higgs, J. R. (1997). Barriers to the effective use of technology in education: Current status. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 17(4), 385-395.

Lee, S. T., & Chang, H. M. (2007). Technology integration in a foreign language class: Successful strategies and challenges. In R. Carlsen et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2007 (pp. 2882-2887). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

Marcinkiewicz, H. R. (1993). Computers and teachers: Factors influencing computer use in the classroom. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 26, 220-237.

Ministry of Turkish Primary Education (2007). Dyned Ingilizce Dil Egitim Sistemleri. Retrieved from http://mebides.meb.gov.tr/.

Otto, S. K., & Pusack, J. P. (1996). Technological choices to meet the challenges. In Foreign language for all (pp. 141-186). Northeastern conference reports. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company.

Stolle, E. (2008). Teachers, literacy, & technology: Tensions, complexities,

teachers: A discussion and analysis of attitudes and use.

Tilfarlioğlu, F. Y. (2011). An international dimension of the student’s attitudes towards the use of English in Web 2.0 technology. The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 10(3), 63-68.

Warschauer, M. & Meskill, C. (2000) Technology and second language teaching and learning. In J. Rosenthal (Ed.), Handbook of Undergraduate Second Language Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Yildirim, S. (2000). Effects of an educational computing course on pre-service and in-service

teachers: A discussion and analysis of attitudes and use. Journal of Research on

Computing in Education, 32(4), 479-495.

Young, C. A., & Bush, J. (2004). Teaching the English language arts with technology: A critical approach and pedagogical framework. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial], 4(1). Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol4/iss1/languagearts/article1.cfm

Zhao, Y. & Bryant, F. L. B. (2006). Can teacher technology integration training alone lead to high levels of technology integration? A qualitative look at teachers’ technology integration after State mandated technology training. Electronic Journal for the Integration of Technology in Education, Vol. 5. Retrieved from http://ejite.isu.edu/Volume5/Zhao.pdf.

Digital natives vs. digital immigrants

Who are we? Digital natives or immigrants?

When I see my nephew, who is just 6 years old and can use a computer, iPad or iPhone very well and does all kinds of fun stuff such as downloading files, uploading videos and pictures on his Facebook, I often question the pace of technology in our lives. It is funny that I had no idea of technology until I attended the university. I believed that there was a magic IT room that we could get connected to the world, and when we were out of that room, we were not connected virtually to search on Altavista or Yahoo. I didn't get the idea that the existence of the internet as our new space or persona was simply there outside the IT room. By the time I was good at using the computer and some software, I was nearly graduating from the college. Now you can tell that this might happen and it is called as the generation gap. It might be but more than this, it is a singularity as Prensky (2001) says: "A really big discontinuity has taken place. One might even call it a “singularity” – an event which changes things so fundamentally that there is absolutely no going back. This so-called “singularity” is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century".

According to Prensky (2001) how might this singularity affect our teaching then?

The profile of students as digital natives is as follows: 

1. Today's students think and process information differently from their predecessors.
2. Today's students speak of a language different than their predecessors. That is, the language of the digital immigrants refers to going faster, less step-by-step and more random access.

The basic thoughts for teachers:

1. Teachers need to reconsider teaching methods for the learners who cannot tolerate the slow pace and step by step processes.
2. Teachers should take the content into consideration. Whatever they teach, they need to think if they can make the teaching more efficient by using technology, thus getting the attention of the students of 21st century.

Reference: 

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. Retrieved on http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf

Teaching content-specific vocabulary by using corpus tools

What is a content-specific vocabulary?

It is conceptually related to specific content and crucial to the instruction of the content. It is highly noticeable and defined in the context. For example, you can read the following sentence in an anthropology textbook: "This way of responding to cultural different behavior is known as ethnocentrism- the belief that one's own culture is most desirable and superior to all others". (Ferraro, 1995, p. 23)

What is a academic word?

It is not salient as content-specific word because it is not directly related to the topic of certain content. It is often used in a variety of contexts and in addition to this, it is extremely difficult to explain. In terms of teachability,  although content-specific words are of importance for students to master the content of a particular content, we need to consider that academic vocabulary might be more important for the success in the long run.

Using corpus to search academic vocabulary:

First of all, a concordancer is needed to check the occurrence of the words. When a concordance creates a frequency list, teachers can compare it with the existing list of academic vocabulary (Nation, 2001). This enables teachers become aware of a set of academic words that occur in academic context. Students  can work on the frequency list, concordance lines and extended concordance displays for further context with the help of teacher. Teachers can also create their own corpus, uploading the files on the concordance program and make the database for the distribution of the academic words used in the context. Additionally they can encourage students to compare their own definitions or knowledge of the language patterns with the context in the concordance. All these might help raise the awareness of words and inferencing skills.

Reference:

Nation, I.S.P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: CUP.

Twitter and student engagement

                                               Image retrieved from http://teacherstraining.com.au/twitter-for-education/

Social media has attracted the interest in most of the sectors ranging from business to education. According to Hughes (2009), it motivates students to be more active learners. It is no doubt that it makes people more social and current; yet I am a bit suspicious about believing that it makes people active learner. Integrating various social tools into teaching and learning has become trendy after the social networking sites have sold the idea of getting connected with the others wherever they are.  Most of the college students use social networking to keep updated or present themselves virtually. Twitter is one of the primary microblogging platforms that people follow what is going on in 140 characters. It provides constant engagement in what is going on in the world. I have a twitter account and every time I log in, I lose the sense of rigid structure of information receiving. Every minute there appears more tweets to replace the others. I have read the article The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades by Junco, Heibergert and Loken (2011). When reading the literature review, I am convinced that twitter provides 1) student/faculty contact, 2) student cooperation 3) prompt feedback. Other principles listed under the good practice of twitter are active learning, and emphasizing time on task are flawed for me. As a language teacher, I would like to see a concrete example to believe in claims that it increases active learning. What is there for us to regard the twitter engagement as learning outcome by active participation? How can it emphasize time on task when the flows are constant and when you miss being updated and you feel behind the flow of time? The study mainly aims to examine what effects encouraging the use of Twitter for educational purposes have on students' engagement and semester grades. Honestly speaking, I am still not sure what it means by student engagement. Student engagement in what? Student engagement in construction of learning, or learning processes or social being? They are all relative and might directly or indirectly affect Twitter users (students). Designing a semester-course and working with experimental and control groups to keep updated for class discussion, reminders, assistance and study groups, the authors have concluded that the experimental group has a significant increase in engagement in learning process than the control group. The main limitation is that the scope is too narrow and is not operationalized. The other limitation is to measure the engagement. The study measured the engagement through self-report, not through student active engagement. The real life observations are left out. Last but not least, there might be other variations to cause an increase in student engagement.

References:

Hughes, A. (2009) Higher education in a Web 2.0 world. JISC Report. Retrieved from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/ documents/publications/heweb20rptv1.pdf 

Junco, R., Heiberger, G., & Loken, E. (2011). The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27(2), 119-132

Learning communities on Facebook

I have a question: Can we turn a fun social networking site into learning environment? Personally, I think  we cannot or we shouldn't. We have a separate space in life: social space is for fun and connection to others. I might confront some of the scholars by stating my personal opinions. An article Using the Facebook group as a learning management system: An exploratory study by Wang et al. (2001) claimed that students were contended with Facebook functioning as LMS. The procedure of the study was basically setting up the Facebook group for students to put up announcements, resources for sharing, weekly tutorials and online discussions at a teacher education institute in Singapore. Although we know that Facebook has been a hit in social media, I think its use for the educational purposes are limited. Students might be engaged in discussions and receive the announcements. These are basically how one can plan. For receiving resources, it is rather limited. One can post videos or weblinks but not pdf files or Word documents that you might also need to share. Privacy is another consideration to taken into account. How autonomous and public can a teacher be in organizing the structure of the learning environment? More importantly, it does not make students learn by doing. Imagine that a language instructor puts up a weblink and asks students to check the information on the site and join the discussion. Do you think students learn the information for the sake of the common social platform they share? I am quite suspicious to claim that fun private social networking can be also utilized as learning environment. Yes, it can be regarded as learning environment for not specific content matters but social matters. As a Facebook user, I get informed about the news, funny video clips, youtube videos, an extract from a magazine or a column or review from a newspaper. If you count all these as construction of learning, I do agree I am learning socially and Facebook can contribute to my learning to be updated. The bottom line is this argument here: if users are obliged to use the social platform for a specific educational reason, where have the key elements of learning such motivation, learner autonomy and preferences gone?

Reference:

Wang, Q., Woo, H. L., Quek, C. L., Yang, Y. & Liu, M. (2011). Using the Facebook group as a learning management system: An exploratory study. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43(3), 428–438.

Multimedia ESP

Do you think it is important for pilots to know aviation English? Yes? No?

Watch this video:

I have read an article "Utilising multimedia ESP programme in enhancing flight attendants’ safety knowledge and problem solving skills" by Bani-Salameh, Kabilan & Bani-Salameh (2011). The article remarkably presents the importance of the simulation-based environment with the multimedia tools to teach ESP for aviation personal especially flight attendants. It draws our attention to the limitations of the existing methods of teaching ESP for flight attendants and suggests that authentic real life context should be developed by utilizing technology and multimedia tools and students’ cognitive skills should be enhanced. The authors designed a program based on Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction to teach safety knowledge and problem-solving tasks through listening and reading comprehension and worked with 36 flight attendants. The result indicates that the designed ESP program has an observable effect on the flight attendants’ recall of safety knowledge and problem solving skills. Although the study is one of the recent publication that highlights the importance of the integration of multimedia tools in teaching ESP, it has some flaws. For example, the language skills is very limited (only listening and reading are measured) and an operational definition of problem-solving task related to aviation does not exist. Additionally, the relation between Gagne’s theory and the structure of the content is not clear. I think that instead of taking aside for every kind of technological innovations and regarding it better than the traditional method of teaching, it is safer to consider potentials for improvement as well as the integration of classroom-based and multimedia ESP.

Reference:

Bani-Salameh, Z. A., Kabilan, M. K. & Bani-Salalmeh, L. (2011). Utilising multimedia ESP programme in enhancing flight attendants' safety. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42(6), 1003–1015.

What have corpora got to with language teachers? A brief note on my experience!

Not until I came to Atlanta and started my program here did I know how a teacher can use corpus in the class. I never felt interested in it as the discussion of the ownership of English was reasoned. Then I got to know how to use the concordance lextutor for our graduate writing class. In the following week, Dr. Friginal talked about it in our Technology and Language Teaching class. He mentioned his study in which he investigated the impact of the use of corpora and corpus-based instruction on the development of report writing skills of college-level students enrolled in a professional forestry program. He concluded that corpus instruction contributed to students' learning the patterns of the frequencies, and distributional data of linking words, reporting verbs and verb tenses in the students' reports in a positive way. As an assignment of the course, I prepared a 45-minute-lesson with an aim of teaching adverbial hedgers such as likely, perhaps, and probably. The assignment gave me an opportunity to design my writing class for the College of Business students and to realize that the corpus based activities were not too complicated at all. Indeed, by using corpora, a language teacher can create activities that students can raise their awareness in terms of the frequency of patterns and words, and variation across registers. In her article "Corpora and teaching academic writing: Exploring the pedagogical potential of MICUSP", Römer (in press) mentions direct and indirect pedagogical applications of the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP). She stated that students learning Academic English can directly browse papers related to their fields and carry out simple word or phrase searches.  When students are engaged in finding certain patterns and a frequency of a certain word, they can figure out the use of certain structures like this and might notice common phraseological items and their textual positions in the sample papers in the corpus. Based on my personal experiences and knowledge I got out of readings, I believe corpus-based activities created for language teaching (mainly reading and writing) are valuable for students who are in need of seeing the certain patterns and words in context as well as the collocations of the words.

For the tutorial, visit the website: http://micusp.elicorpora.info/micusp-simple-tutorials

Reference:
Römer, U. (in press). Corpora and teaching academic writing: Exploring the pedagogical potential of MICUSP.
To be published in Thomas, J and A. Boulton (eds.). Input, Process and Product: Development in Teaching and Language Corpora. Bruo: MUP.

Podcasting

Podcasting is a term that refers to downloadable audio or video over the internet. The word "podcast" is derived from combination of "pod" from iPod and "cast" from the word broadcast and was first used by Ben Hammersley, a British internet technologist, at his columm in the Guardian newspaper in 2004. It has become so popular in the USA that the podcast audiences have increased in numbers for the past few years (According to the assumption by emarketers, there will be 3.7 people downloading podcasting in 2013 and it was around 17,4 million according to the 2008 figure).

What benefits does podcasting provide for in education, especially in language learning?

1) It provides accessible practice for language learning. Students can listen to the material outside the class or at their leisure times and they continue to learn out of the classroom environement through podcasting.

2) It is authentic. That is, it provides real input to practise language learning.

3) It helps students to develop oral and comprehension skills (Ducate & Lomicka, 2009) and facilitates self-paced learning.

4) It builds a sense of community sharing and learning from others.

5) It offers richer learning environment for students with different learning styles.

There is a tutorial showing how you can create podcasting using the software Audacity, which is a digital audio editor program. There are a lot of free software to enable people (teachers and students) to create podcasting. Some of them are propaganda, evoca and podcastpeople. 

Before getting started, here are some tips for you:

• Write the script first, and provide students with the script,
• State your goals clearly at the beginning and review these goals at the end of the podcast,
• Normalize and balance the sound quality,
• Insert dialogs, images and videos to add variety of input and avoid the monotone sound.

Some useful links for language teachers:

http://www.podcastsinenglish.com

http://www.businessenglishpod.com

http://www.manythings.org/e/podcasts.html

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/english-as-second-language/id75908431

http://a4esl.org/podcasts/ 

Hot potatoes for language teachers

Language teachers...Here is my brief review about Hot Potatoes.

Hot Potatoes is freeware that enables language teachers to create interactive online activities which then can be uploaded to a server where students have an access to. It basically includes six modules: interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap filling exercises. You can look at the sample exercises to have an idea about what kind of exercises can be created by using it. First of all, you do not need to know the language of programming and it is not complicated to use it for creating web-based teaching materials. All you need to do is to enter your data, questions or answers. Here is how you can develop a matching exercise for the language classes.

In addition, Hot Potatoes provides form-focused activities to help learners to make improvements in grammatical accuracy by noticing, correcting the mistakes and immediate positive or negative feedback on the anwers. However, through these processes, there is a limited interaction between learners and the only interaction, if it is counted as interaction, occurs when students get the written pop-up feedback to their answers which is prescripted and provided by the teacher. It seems that Hot Patatoes do enhance student learning a language to the extent how it is created  and used by the teacher. The intended use of the program is to create exercises that allow students to practise language drills and find out correct answers based on the feedback received immediately. Still, for some teachers, using Hot Potatoes means tests rather then self-learning activities. It is advisable to use for developing materials rather than testing.

As a language teacher, in spite of limited interaction between the learners while practising, I would definitely use it for some classes in which students need supplementary grammar exercises for gaining accuracy through the web-based activities.

Useful links:

http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Potatoes

Some considerations about using technology in the classroom

In the 21st century, we are living in the world where technology is almost in every part of our lives and we are used to have it for our basic needs so much that it is almost impossible to imagine what life could be without it. When we, as educators, talk about the integration of technology in teaching, although we know that the perfect harmony between the elements of the ‘circle’ (teacher, student, content and technology) might not be always easy to get due to some contextual limitations such as a lack of equipment or limited access to information technologies or considerations related to each elements, we should try our best to keep up with the standards of changing world and to understand why we need technology in our teaching environment. 

                      A model for teaching with technology  (retrieved from http://www.crlt.umich.edu/inst/model.php)

To start with, we need to know what technology means for us. For some teachers, this could simply mean using the internet for finding information, preparing PowerPoint to make presentations, or switching on computers to show some information to students. Are these examples of technology integration? One might reasonably argue that each of these examples includes technology. But, the matter is not what kind of technology is used in the classroom as regards to hardware, but how technology enhances learning processes. Effective integration must support four key components of learning: active engagement, real life situations, frequent interaction and feedback. It is achieved when the use of technology is feasible, meaningful and transparent, and when technology supports certain curricular goals. The second thing to consider is that how technology fits into our teaching philosophy. There are two very different models of teaching and learning: directed instruction and constructivism. The former has its root from the behaviorist learning theory and the information-processing branch of the cognitive learning theories. The latter, the constructivist view, evolved from the cognitive learning theory which emphasizes the individual’s active construction of understanding and active participation in learning. Some technology applications (e.g., drill and practice) are associated with directed instruction, while most others (e.g., problem solving, online discussions, multimedia applications) can enhance either directed instruction or constructivist environments, depending on how teachers fit them into class instructions. There is no right or wrong approach, one of them can be chosen over another depending on the subject or both approaches can be used alternatively as long as we are aware of what we use them for. Five questions can help us to decide the technological integration in our class.

1. Is the lesson content clear, and meaningful enough without technology integration?
2. Are activities of the lesson engaging?
3. What do we expect students to do in the lesson with or without technology?
4. How does technology enhance the learning in that lesson in ways that would be impossible without it?
5. How does technology help us to teach more effectively than using textbook or any other materials?

Last but not least, while integrating technology in our classes, we should seek for the best means or approach in order to facilitate a diversity of learning styles, motivation of learning and participation though our constant efforts and openness to go beyond where we stand by. 

 

Useful links:

http://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration-experts 

http://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration-introduction 

http://www.naesp.org/principal-januaryfebruary-2012-technology/technology-integration-new-21st-century-learner

http://remc11.k12.mi.us/bstpract/ 

http://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/download/tim_table_of_student_indicators.pdf