On being mobile
February 3, 2010
It certainly seems to me that in 2010 there is an ever-increasing emphasis on being able to get information and be in contact with others at any time – travelling to work, in the air, on the train, finding friends, BBC news live from the scene, and so on. It’s not surprising that once again learning is coming along a little later than the entertainment side (first entertainment, then business, then education) but it seems to me that there is also quite a movement in education to make learning as mobile as possible also – flexible to the needs of the learner, and accessible from anywhere in the globe.
Last year I noted a journal article about some research on using mobile phones for vocabulary learning in Taiwan. I’ve just been sent a link (thanks, Denny!) about an online conference discussing “mobile learning in the real world”. If you want to be up to date with the latest ideas in mobile learning, and to have a chance to discuss issues with others, this looks like a good “conference” to attend. It looks as if it’s free!
If you decide to sign up for it, please let us know!
Language Learning and Technology
February 3, 2010
A new issue of the online journal Language Learning and Technology has been published – see the list of contents here.
You may also find it interesting to look at the review of this book (the link is on the journal page):
The Theory and Practice of Online Learning
Terry Anderson (Ed.)
Article PDF
Reviewed by Mandy Reinig
pp. 24–27
Support session 2nd February
February 2, 2010
Some of us met in the computer lab this morning and we worked together on a number of things. First, we checked who had created a blog, and a few people still had to create their first blog post as well. That’s now done!
We decided to work on creating links in blogs. To do this, you need to open the dashboard or admin area of your blog. There should be a link to “links”; click on that. Then you will see a new page on which you can type the name of the link (you can do whatever you want) then paste the URL. We also created a new category to help to keep the blog in order. We called this “class blogs”. In the new link for someone’s blog on my blog, I made it fit the category “class blogs” by clicking on that category name.
Are these instructions clear? Please leave a comment …
Blogroll from 08-09
January 27, 2010
‘CAL’– Past, Present and Beyond
January 15, 2010
New volume in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning – available free online at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118532949/home
Blogging to empower learners
December 15, 2009
An interesting blog post about using blogging to empower learners:
http://gladysbaya.edublogs.org/2009/12/05/beyond-school-walls-teaching-blogging-to-empower-learners/
10 tools with tasks
November 27, 2009
Nik Peachey has been reviewing internet-based tools for teaching and learning for some time, and his blog is a wealth of ideas. In this blog post he has given 10 tools with associated tasks, for teachers to try out and then consider the value of using them for teaching. What do you think? Which is your faourite?
MERLOT in Second Life
November 3, 2009
The university of Oregon has decided to create an environment in Second LIfe that mimics the real-life campus (they even state that the main building is an exact replica). Personally, I’m not convinced that re-creating something that exists in real life, with all its restrictions, is the best way to explroe the creativitiy and freedom that could be possible in a computer-generated virtual world, but that’s just my opinion …
Here’s a link to news about the MERLOT campus:
http://grapevine.merlot.org/index.html#news03
and here’s the video:
ELT and blogging
July 17, 2009
An interesting video/slide presentation about using blogs:
Create a newspaper from a blog
July 12, 2009
This great little online site will take your blog feeds and convert them into a newspaper – a two-column pdf file. You can then save it.
