LING 797 Research Presentation

The link to my video presentation can be found here. The actual research paper is available here on Google Docs.

At least the Citeulike staff care...

So my saved articles from Citeulike inexplicably got deleted twice and I ranted about that here. I don't know how, but two Citeulike representatives (Kevin and Chris) took the time to e-mail me and figure out what was going on. They even retrieved my articles! I was quite impressed by their politeness and professionalism. It turns out that my articles were an unintentional casualty of spam removal or something.

Anyway, I will give credit where credit is due and comment the good folks at Citeulike for standing with their users and customers.

Thanks.

I hate Citeulike

For whatever reason, all of my Citeulike sites have disappeared.

That is the second time that has happened. Now I have to find all of those articles AGAIN. Fortunately I have the authors' names, but I am sick of having to find all those sites and add them to this library again if it's only going to disappear. Why can't Citeulike save my library?

This is one example of how technology is more trouble than it's worth. I would have been better off just using bookmarks.

Bah.

Mini-Project 3

This is the link to the Mini-Project 3 video.

This is the Mini-Project 3 Japanese-English script.

Here is the Mini-Project 3 purpose statement (also available on Google Docs here).

This is a video detailing my dream life. I talk my students through my perfect day from waking up to going to bed. After each event in which I describe an activity I engage in, I ask the same question to the students. The target language generally consists of yes-no and wh-questions:

What time do you wake up?
Do you have a pet? What’s its name?
What’s your favorite television show?
Do you play a musical instrument?
What kind of music do you like?

This video is presented entirely in Japanese with Japanese subtitles. No jargon or slang is used. It is designed primarily for low intermediate students who are familiar with the traditional phonetic Japanese scripts as well as some basic kanji (pictographs).

There are several possible activities that could be done in conjunction with this video:

1. Students could watch the entire video and be asked comprehension questions either after each scene or at the end. (skills practiced: speaking and listening, and/or listening and writing)

2. Students could ask each other the questions posed in the video as they are presented. I model how to answer these questions prior to asking them. Students could also ask as many questions as they can remember after watching the entire video. (skills practiced: speaking and listening)

3. More advanced students could watch the video with the sound muted. Only the subtitles will be visible. These students could then be tasked with quickly and accurately reading the subtitles before they change. (skills practiced: reading and speaking)

4. Cloze-type exercises could be given in which students must say or fill in the missing word from the subtitles. This would require the instructor to have the subtitles printed out with the appropriate gaps. (skills practiced: listening, reading and speaking)

5. More advanced students could develop a set of follow-up questions to ask each other based on my original questions. Or they could find a partner who is imitating “me” and ask their follow-up questions to "me." (skills practiced: speaking and listening)

6. Students could engage in speculative language about the feasibility of such a life or what my job could be, for example. (skills practiced: speaking and listening)

Thoughts on mobile technology

This week we learned about podcasting, vodcasting, and mobile technology. I think this has a lot of potential in the classroom, but it would require a cultural shift in how we view the purposes of these technological devices. For example, people tend to think of iPods as devices for listening to music or downloading their favorite television shows. In other words, it's used mainly for entertainment. Using this as an educational device seems a bit too much to ask for now.

I'm not sure teenagers or college students could do it or would want to do it. Asking them to transform an iPod from a video library to a smaller version of a language lab tape player seems a bit too optimistic.

Having said that, podcasting allows for maximum flexibility in that people can download and listen to podcasts on their own schedule. But I think that users would be more likely to listen to these podcasts at their regular PCs, rather than on some mobile device.

I also think podcasting/vodcasting has to compete with the digital camera. Digital cameras are easier to use and are more familiar. Their accessibility gives them credence. Podcasting is new to a lot of people, including people who are familiar with technology, such as myself. You'd have to do a lot of training of teachers in addition to training the students before you could really implement this in the classroom.

And finally, I could comfortably assert that podcasting and mobile technology seems a bit more practical than Second Life!

Palmer on Podcasting

Second Life, but no second chance

The Second Life activities we conducted in class this week were both interesting and revealing. I had never heard of SL before, so I learned a lot from the readings and my presentation on the subject. It seemed like a visionary program that could potentially yield all sorts of rewards in the classroom, but when it came to the hands-on activities, I began to question its usefulness and practicality.

To start, there were problems downloading the SL client to the computers in the language lab. And seeing that these are university computers, it would seem that those computers would be of a higher quality than those that people have at home. The inability to download the client program consumed time that could have been better spent on another task.

When we did actually get to use the program in pairs and trios, I found that it was quite easy, if one wanted, to stray off task. Part of this is because of the novelty of it all. After all, how many people have created avatars and flown around a virtual world? But because of this fascination, I feel it may overshadow the language learning activities that are supposed to take place.

I also found SL a bit cumbersome to use. The controls felt awkward, and I wasn't quite sure how to navigate. I remember one student found a door that would presumably lead to another world. (It had an "exit" sign on it and other avatars were turning into sparkles when they touched it, as if they were being vacuumed or whisked away to the other side.) This student spent several minutes trying to go through the door and talk to people for clues. Keep in mind that these are reasonably tech-savvy university students. How could a digital immigrant navigate this?

To give SL a final chance, I tried downloading the SL client on my computer at home. I wanted to explore a bit more. I was successful, but could not open the program without crashing Windows. So that's when I decided to uninstall the program and take a pass on it for now.

This is not to say SL is worthless. It's probably quite fun and interactive. But as a tool for language learning, I believe it's more trouble than it's worth based on my experiences with it thus far.