Final blogpost

The most useful aspect of CALL has been the exposure to the amount of resources available online. Whether or not each of the tools we signed up for will be used for instruction is secondary. The idea of being introduced to what is public and available is useful because when the resources are needed, I know where to find them. Setting up accounts with Youtube, Twitter, Second Life, etc, have saved us all the time of learning about them and registering for them when the time comes to use them.

The second aspect of the class I found most useful is the exposure to blogs. Implementing the use of blogs in an ESL classroom is a useful resource. Students will be able to journal whenever they want, wherever they want. They will have the benefit of editing their own work multiple times, without having to worry about rewriting the entire entry by hand. This is also beneficial for the instructor, in that there will be no need to carry around multiple notebooks, and return them in a timely fashion. Students can comment on each other's blogs as they please, and receive immediate feedback on their work. I found blogger.com to be an easily accessible blogsite, and my exposure to it in this class has been extremely beneficial.

ePortfolio

Working on the eportfolio the past few days has been an interesting experience. I discovered a lot of great CALL tools, and learned about their potential to help students acquire their L2. Putting all the required elements together seemed a little daunting at first, but it was good to see the final production of the semester come together.

The most difficult part of the eportfolio was the required abstract and sources. I already had a research-paper topic in mind, but it's difficult to write an abstract when you're not sure where your research is going to take you. I did the best I could, and wrote as if I knew where the results would take me. Finding sources is always difficult, but luckilly I had some help because of all the research I've done on SoftChalk at work, in the LCLC. I think blended learning is an interesting topic, and I truly think it's the future of teaching.

The most satisfying part of the portfolio was seeing it all put together in the end. Lots of work this semester, and it's nice to have something to show for it.

Second Life

Upon further use and exploration of Second Life, I don't think it is something I would implement in an ESL class. While it has some benefits, I don't think they outweigh the negative. I think the inital setup alone may be troublesome for some students, because the tool requires certain capabilities of a computer, and students may not have access to those types of computers. It would be ideal to use Second Life with students in the classroom, but this would only happen under the circumstances that the school provides the instructor with the tools necessary to allow this to happen.

The activities and exercises I would use Second Life for are all tasks that students could complete with real people, in authentic contexts. While it may be easier and less expensive for some students to experience these tasks virtually, the point of the task for me is to allow students to have the experience.

While Second Life does have some benefits for ESL students, I have yet to be sold on its unique benefit to instruction.

Video Conferences

I think video conference has great potential, especially in foreign language and ESL classrooms. The reason they can be so beneficial is that language learners benefit so much from speaking and listening to others speak. This is a great way to bring a guest speaker into the classroom, without the scheduling and hassle that generally accompanies the process. Speakers can appear from any part of the world, which live guest speakers cannot (usually).

The drawback of this tool is that it may be difficult for some students to use, as exemplified by our demonstration on Tuesday. The teacher may need to guide students through the process several times before they are comfortable doing it on their own. Another possibility would be to use video conferencing in the classroom only, and not independently.

E-Journaling

In the article, the authors discuss how students created e-journals as a response to the speech acts they were assigned. Students were given some structure on the assignment, and generally enjoyed the activity. Although students may have enjoyed the experience, it may have been sort of a stretch in terms of a CALL tool, but rather, a way to incorporate technology into the classroom without adding any significant improvement to the lesson. It's nice to include technology into activities, but students need to feel that they're using the technology for a purpose, and not just for the name.

One suggestion for e-journaling is to create a scavenger hunt activity where students are required to visit locations around town, then create e-journals on their experiences. The journals will be available to their classmates, so that students who were assigned to different locations will have the opportunity to read and comment about what his or her classmates experienced while visiting the given location. This way, students are using technology in a way that they cannot use paper and pen.