http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll salvete • 欢 迎 • bienvenue • willkommen • bienvenido Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:07:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en So I finished the 16-hour course on eLearning last week. I really enjoyed it. I thought we covered a lot of the fundamentals that contribute to the creation of engaging and motivating learning experiences. Michael Allen's model of Context, Challenge, Activity, Feedback is something I'll be chewing on for a ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/03/03/thoughts-on-learning-part-iv/ Yesterday, in the online ASTD course, our facilitator emphasized that one of the biggest challenges facing instructional designers today is the emphasis on CONTENT PRESENTATION instead of PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES. Why is it so easy for us to fall into the trap of believing that telling is teaching? We tell, then ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/02/18/thoughts-on-learning-part-iii/ During my second eLearning course, we were reminded that in many ways, computers are the dumbest things on earth. The great advantage that human teachers have over computers is that they are responsive. They can immediately tailor instruction to meet a learner where they are at, to answer their specific ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/02/06/thoughts-on-learning-part-ii/ This week, I've started taking an online eLearning course through ASTD. One of the big differences between what I see in education and what many of these corporate educators and trainers are dealing with, is that certain aspects of their businesses sink or swim based on how well they can ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/02/05/thoughts-on-learning-part-i/ SnapZ Pro: Snapz Pro X allows you to effortlessly record anything on your screen, saving it as a QuickTime movie or screenshot that can be emailed, put up on the web, or passed around however you want. This is the tool used in the World Language Lab to create training ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/06/04/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-23/ YouTube: A popular video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube was created in mid February 2005 by three former PayPal employees and was acquired in November 2006 by Google, Inc. Other similar services include TeacherTube, Google Video, and Yahoo! Video. w http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/05/29/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-30/ Wiki: A collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work”. Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis and is the source for many of the ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/05/21/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-29/ Vodcast: Video podcast (sometimes shortened to vidcast or vodcast) is a term used for the online delivery of video on demand video clip content via Atom or RSS enclosures. The term refers to the distribution of video where the RSS feed is used as a non-linear TV channel to which ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/05/14/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-28/ Visual Thesaurus: The Visual Thesaurus is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus with an innovative user interface that helps students to understand language in an exciting new ways. Students can type a word in English, French, German, or Spanish and see related word families visually represented on a mindmap, much akin ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/05/08/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-27/ UCLS WebCal: The UCLS WebCal is a resource calendaring system designed to facilitate the check-in and check-out of WLL equipment and the scheduling of the lab for use by teachers, language classes, and individual students. WLD faculty can only reserve the lab by visiting this online calendar. An iCal feed ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/04/30/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-26/ Several times a week, prospective parents and curious onlookers pop their heads in the lab to see what is going on. It's probably hard to tell, so I thought I'd write a quick post explaining the different areas of the lab and a general outline of activities. As this diagram shows, ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/04/24/what-do-you-do-in-the-lab/ UCLS Webmail: UCLS Webmail is a service available to students and faculty at University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Since many students do not frequently access their school email until pressed upon to do so, language learning activities that require the use of this technology will serve a dual purpose: to ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/04/23/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-25/ Text Messaging: Text messaging, or texting is the common term for the sending of “short” (160 characters or fewer) text messages, using the Short Message Service (SMS), from mobile phones. It is available on most digital mobile phones and some personal digital assistants with onboard wireless telecommunications. The individual messages ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/04/16/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-24/ Skype: The main difference between Skype and VoIP clients is that Skype operates on a peer-to-peer model, rather than the more traditional server-client model. The Skype user directory is entirely decentralized and distributed among the nodes in the network, which means the network can scale very easily to large sizes ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/04/09/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-22/ RSS: RSS (which, in its latest format, stands for “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”, contains either a summary of ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/04/02/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-21/ Keynote: Keynote is a presentation software application developed as a part of the iWork productivity suite (which also includes Pages and Numbers) by Apple Inc.. Released in August 2007, the latest version, Keynote 4, runs on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard only. Lawrence Lessig and Aaron Swartz ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/03/19/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-31/ Quia: An online quizing appliccation that allows teachers to upload content and design a multitude of games and learning activities. Question types include multiple choice, true-false, pop-up, multiple correct, fill-in, initial answer, short answer, essay, matching, and correct ordering. Teachers can create class pages for communicating with students and track ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/03/11/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-20/ There are a lot of ways that you can change the world. Usually, people who change the world(s) they live in persuade others to change their behavior in one way or another. They do this is by sending a clear message to the others about what they stand for. How ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/03/07/how-can-i-change-the-world/ Podcast: The term “podcast” is a portmanteau of the name iPod and broadcast; a “pod” refers to the iPod, and “cast” to the idea of broadcasting. Specifically, Podcast means, Portable OnDemand broadCAST. In other words, a podcast is a collection of files (usually audio but may include video) residing at ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/03/05/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-19/ MyTunes RSS: MyTunesRSS allows you to access the music and videos from your iTunes library over a local network or the internet. You can access your music from all over the world using a simple web browser. The World Language Lab uses MyTunes RSS to grant students and teachers access ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/02/27/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-18/ Start by going to the iTunes music store and clicking on the Podcasts link on the left hand side. Right now you will see a box that looks like this: Select French (or whatever other language you are interested in) and listen to your heart's content. As far as video resources go, ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/02/22/where-can-i-find-french-podcasts-and-video/ Moodle: Moodle is a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It has a significant worldwide user base with close to 30,000 registered sites and over 12 million users (as of Aug 2007). Moodle is designed to help educators create online courses with opportunities for rich interaction. Its open source license and modular ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/02/20/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-17/ Okay, so I am honest when I say that the students and teachers here at Lab impress me with their talents, energy, spark, and character. Lots of great people here. But I am also honest in stating that I do not think we are spending much of our time on ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/02/14/this-should-rock-your-world/ iTunes: iTunes is a digital media player application, introduced by Apple in 2001 for playing and organizing digital music and video files on your computer. The program is also an interface to manage the contents on Apple’s iPod as well as the recently introduced iPhone. Additionally, iTunes can connect to ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/02/06/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-16/ iPod: iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple and launched in October 2001. The full-sized model stores media on an internal hard drive, while the iPod nano and iPod shuffle use flash memory due to their smaller size. Like many digital music players, iPods ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/01/30/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-15/ iPhoto: iPhoto is designed to allow easy importing from digital cameras, scanners, picture CDs and the Internet. Almost all digital cameras work without additional software, as do many scanners. iPhoto supports most common image file formats. Once photos are imported, they can be titled, labeled, sorted and organized into groups ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/01/23/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-14/ Instant Messaging: Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. The text is conveyed via computers connected over a network such as the Internet. Instant messaging requires an instant messaging client (i.e. iChat, GoogleTalk) that connects to an instant messaging ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/01/16/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-13/ I'll start with this paragraph from an About.com article: How do I find German podcasts? The best way is to use iTunes or some other podcast directory. Podcast.net lists over 20 podcasts in German. That's where I found Annik and "Schlaflos in München," but she's also listed in iTunes and other ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/01/10/where-do-i-find-german-podcasts-and-video/ iMovie: iMovie is a video editing software application which allows users to edit their own home movies. iMovie imports video footage to the Mac using the FireWire interface on most MiniDV format digital video cameras. From there, the user can edit the video clips, add titles, and add music. Effects ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/01/09/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-12/ iFlash: A virtual flash-card program built for Mac OS X. iFlash includes many great features to help improve study. You can record audio directly into any flash-card as well as attach images. Other features include an unlimited amount of card sides per deck, advanced importing and exporting, printing, quick-searching, and ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/01/04/what-kinds-of-technologies-are-available-to-ucls-students-11/ Chickering and Ehrmann's final paragraph summarize some critical points. After all is said and done in favor of and contrary to creating an ideal setting for real-world learning, it is up to each individual student and parent to decide what they will take from any given situation. Videos like this ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/01/02/seven-principles-for-technology-enhanced-classrooms/ What would you like to see happen in the World Language Lab this year? I've been thinking about goals for the coming calendar year for the World Language Lab. During the first 12 weeks of the school year, we saw about 20 classroom visits per week to the lab. Not bad, ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/01/01/happy-new-year-2/ Chickering and Ehrmann remind us in their seventh and last principle that Good Practice Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning. I've observed in our department a strong awareness of different learning styles. Many teachers are consciously and consistently incorporating different kinds of activities that will give everyone a chance ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/12/28/seven-principles-for-technologically-enhanced-classrooms-8/ Good Practice Communicates High Expectations. If I had to theorize about this principle, I would take it a step further. Expectations are often upheld by the implication of undesirable consequences, which will result if said expectations are not met. Grades are one example of this. Some students are motivated by ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/12/27/seven-principles-for-technologically-enhanced-classrooms-7/ Chickering and Ehrmann state in their fifth principle that Good Practice Emphasizes Time on Task. Time + energy = learning, they say and "allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty. When was the last time you set about to learn something? How long ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/12/26/seven-principles-for-technologically-enhanced-classrooms-6/ eeshaun http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/12/25/seven-principles-for-technologically-enhanced-classrooms-5/ The fourth principle, that Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback, is a challenge in even the smallest of language classrooms because one teacher is speaking to many students with vastly different target language skills. And it's even harder for every student to be able to speak back to the teacher and ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/12/21/seven-principles-for-technologically-enhanced-classrooms-4/ In their third principle, Chickering and Gamson write that Good Practice Uses Active Learning Technologies and that students "must make what they learn part of themselves." So when exactly does knowledge or a particular skill become a part of us? I'll throw something out for the picking: when we use ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/12/20/seven-principles-for-technologically-enhanced-classrooms-3/ The second principle is Good Practice Develops Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students. Readers should know that I am particularly biased here. If I had to choose between spending precious class-time, homework-time, or life-time on information transfer activities versus using technology to develop real-world skills like how to work in a ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/12/19/seven-principles-for-technologically-enhanced-classrooms-2/ Over the break, I've decided to digest an article written by Arthur W. Chickering and Stephen C. Ehrmann and reflect a little on how I've seen the Seven Principles playing out in the World Language Lab and with language teachers. The first principle, that Good Practice Encourages Contacts Between Students and ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/12/18/seven-principles-for-technologically-enhanced-classrooms/