This week in class, we had Prof. Curis Bonk of Indiana U. lecture us via web conferencing software. His research on the future of e-learning is interesting, and me makes much of it freely available at http://www.publicationshare.com/. I was impressed by Prof. Bonk's ideas, but even more so by his seemingly nearly encyclopedic knowledge of cool learning tools on the web. His presentation covered a lot, and I scribbled down a long list of very useful names to check out.
I thought I'd highlight a few here that struck me as particularly interesting for language learning. One was dotSUB, a site designed as a collaborative "wiki" type environment for subtitling videos. I checked out the site's tanscription and subtitling UI, which aims to make the process easy enough that anyone can do it.
I really like the idea of crowd-sourcing subtitling, a task that theoretically anyone can do--it's just the work of actually getting the subtitles into the video that most people would get stuck on. Still, I think dotSUB has a way to go in some areas--it doesn't seem to have the same rigorous fact-checking ethos as, for example, Wikipedia. Also, the transcription process relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts to start and stop the video, which many causal users may be hesitant to learn. Finally, I wonder who dotSUB believes their audience to be; they don't seem to be particularly targeting language learners. As an English-speaking learner of Spanish, I found I could search for videos in Spanish, videos in English, videos with Spanish translations, and videos with English translations; but I could not specifically search for Spanish videos with English translations. I'm interested in using more video to learn Spanish, but dotSUB didn't make the process as easy for me as I would have liked. Still, all of these problems are correctable, and I'm interested to see how this pretty cool idea develops.
A second interesting website identified by Prof. Bonk was Voxopop, a tool for creating online, asynchronous voice discussion forums. A curious user can just click "Play" and immediately hear each post of a thread played in sequence; some discussions are just a few minutes, some run for hours. Unlike dotSUB, Voxopop did seem to be heavily geared for language learning, and I could see quite a few classes already using the site for this purpose. I didn't try starting my own voice thread, but the potential for meaningful interaction between geographically dispersed learners and teachers is pretty cool. Threads can even be exported to iTunes or as an RSS feed. On the whole, these are some really exciting resources to have been made aware of.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The opposite of English
We had our second round of digital artifact presentations this week! As expected, there were some very interesting ideas. A few that that stood as particular highlights for me were a concept for a game that led students on a journey through the human body, a social networking site that matched foster kids with senior citizens, and a hip-hop curriculum. There was so much creativity and dedication on display.
One student presented a prototype for a project to preserve indigenous languages, with a focus on Tanzania (the full presentation is available here). This student and I had happened to meet and speak together about our projects earlier in the week. There was a clear relationship in that both our artifacts are language-focused, but in different ways: my solution was about bringing English language learning into India's rural countryside, whereas my classmate's focused on documenting and promoting local tongues. During our conversation, I laughingly said something like, "Well, I guess my prototype is the opposite of yours."
Is it? I sincerely hope not. I do spend a fair amount of time worrying about whether English language learning programs could be perceived as a form of cultural imperialism. The last thing I want is for local languages to be displaced by English, or local cultures to be replaced by American ways. On the contrary, one of the reasons I'm so interested in English language learning is that I believe it empowers groups to share their beliefs with the world. The Web has made this more than a remote possibility, and in many ways English is the Web's lingua franca: according to Wikipedia, 56.4% of Web content is in English, followed by German at an absurdly distant 7.7%. No doubt non-English content will increase and automated translation tools improve, but in the here-and-now, getting your message out in English gives you the widest audience.
We are also seeing the emerging idea of "Global English"--the notion that British and American English are not necessarily the "correct" Englishes, that dialects spoken around the world are equally valid, and that if there is a standard at all, it should fall somewhere between all these worldwide variations. I love the idea that English can be a tool for someone in, say, Vietnam to chat with someone in, say, Denmark, without a native English speaker even in the picture.
Of course, all this is easy for me to say: I'm a native English speaker! But in the end, I think it's hard to argue with the demand: many, many people around the world want to learn English. I think very few of these people want to give up their native tongue or culture: they simply want English as another avenue for expanding their own understanding and ability to communicate with the world.
One student presented a prototype for a project to preserve indigenous languages, with a focus on Tanzania (the full presentation is available here). This student and I had happened to meet and speak together about our projects earlier in the week. There was a clear relationship in that both our artifacts are language-focused, but in different ways: my solution was about bringing English language learning into India's rural countryside, whereas my classmate's focused on documenting and promoting local tongues. During our conversation, I laughingly said something like, "Well, I guess my prototype is the opposite of yours."
Is it? I sincerely hope not. I do spend a fair amount of time worrying about whether English language learning programs could be perceived as a form of cultural imperialism. The last thing I want is for local languages to be displaced by English, or local cultures to be replaced by American ways. On the contrary, one of the reasons I'm so interested in English language learning is that I believe it empowers groups to share their beliefs with the world. The Web has made this more than a remote possibility, and in many ways English is the Web's lingua franca: according to Wikipedia, 56.4% of Web content is in English, followed by German at an absurdly distant 7.7%. No doubt non-English content will increase and automated translation tools improve, but in the here-and-now, getting your message out in English gives you the widest audience.
We are also seeing the emerging idea of "Global English"--the notion that British and American English are not necessarily the "correct" Englishes, that dialects spoken around the world are equally valid, and that if there is a standard at all, it should fall somewhere between all these worldwide variations. I love the idea that English can be a tool for someone in, say, Vietnam to chat with someone in, say, Denmark, without a native English speaker even in the picture.
Of course, all this is easy for me to say: I'm a native English speaker! But in the end, I think it's hard to argue with the demand: many, many people around the world want to learn English. I think very few of these people want to give up their native tongue or culture: they simply want English as another avenue for expanding their own understanding and ability to communicate with the world.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Funny pages
Next week, a second round of digital artifacts are due in my Web-Based Technologies in Education class. This time, we're making a prototype of a media solution that addresses the needs of vulnerable/underprivileged people. We heard a bit about one another's artifacts in class this week, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what my classmates come up with. I plan for mine to involve having kids publish their own webcomics to them help learn English.
Outside of class, I've been reading Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art," a very interesting book about the stoytelling potential of comics generally. It's not an area McCloud particularly addresses, but it occurred to me that comics are a really great medium for foreign language learning. They offer such a terrific combination of picture, story, and words. A far more interesting story can be told in a comic than a foreign language learner could read in words alone, and there are visuals to cue certain vocabulary words. Plus, it's long been a pet theory of mine that stories are key to getting people engaged--the question "What happened next?" is such an essentially human one.
So integrating stories into a foreign language classroom would be good...but even better would be getting kids to write their own stories! Let them write and draw about whatever matters to them, and learn new words along the way. Plus, the fact that most of the words in comics are lines of dialogue lends itself to in-class activities around actually speaking the foreign language...in this case, English.
I never knew what a world of comics was out there on the web until I started doing the research for this artifact. There are some really gifted(mainly adult) artists and writers publishing their stories online. Of course, in many cases kids won't be able to match the talent of fully trained adults; but I found encouraging the realization that one of the most well-read webcomics out there is xkcd, which stars a lot of faceless stick figures--about as visually simple as you can get! Clearly people look for more in a webcomic than just flashy illustrations...
The group I'm targeting is rural Indian kids, so I made a particular effort to find Indian comics. Comparisons of the kids' comics I found on the Indian website Tinkle and the kid-recommended American comics I found elsewhere on the Web highlighted the importance of cultural context. For example, I don't really think Indian kids would find a comic like this one amusing...it requires understanding of Christmas and all the bizarre little holiday doodads in stores. One of the Indian comics I saw involved a man haggling with a beggar who claimed to be blind over whether he was really blind or not; I think usually in the US we wouldn't think this was an appropriate subject for a kids' comic. But in my view, cultural differences shouldn't be a deterrent to kids reading comics produced by kids in other parts of the world. On the contrary, with some adult help, it could really open up children's minds to how similar and how different kids who live far away might be.
Outside of class, I've been reading Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art," a very interesting book about the stoytelling potential of comics generally. It's not an area McCloud particularly addresses, but it occurred to me that comics are a really great medium for foreign language learning. They offer such a terrific combination of picture, story, and words. A far more interesting story can be told in a comic than a foreign language learner could read in words alone, and there are visuals to cue certain vocabulary words. Plus, it's long been a pet theory of mine that stories are key to getting people engaged--the question "What happened next?" is such an essentially human one.
So integrating stories into a foreign language classroom would be good...but even better would be getting kids to write their own stories! Let them write and draw about whatever matters to them, and learn new words along the way. Plus, the fact that most of the words in comics are lines of dialogue lends itself to in-class activities around actually speaking the foreign language...in this case, English.
I never knew what a world of comics was out there on the web until I started doing the research for this artifact. There are some really gifted(mainly adult) artists and writers publishing their stories online. Of course, in many cases kids won't be able to match the talent of fully trained adults; but I found encouraging the realization that one of the most well-read webcomics out there is xkcd, which stars a lot of faceless stick figures--about as visually simple as you can get! Clearly people look for more in a webcomic than just flashy illustrations...
The group I'm targeting is rural Indian kids, so I made a particular effort to find Indian comics. Comparisons of the kids' comics I found on the Indian website Tinkle and the kid-recommended American comics I found elsewhere on the Web highlighted the importance of cultural context. For example, I don't really think Indian kids would find a comic like this one amusing...it requires understanding of Christmas and all the bizarre little holiday doodads in stores. One of the Indian comics I saw involved a man haggling with a beggar who claimed to be blind over whether he was really blind or not; I think usually in the US we wouldn't think this was an appropriate subject for a kids' comic. But in my view, cultural differences shouldn't be a deterrent to kids reading comics produced by kids in other parts of the world. On the contrary, with some adult help, it could really open up children's minds to how similar and how different kids who live far away might be.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Hearing voices, seeing words
This week in class, we discussed different educational theories. I entered this class without a strong background in formal educational theories, so for me, this explanation was a big help. One of the most interesting theories discussed was the "dual coding" theory--the notion that people learn better when their different senses are engaged in learning the material. This could be, for example, simultaneously listening and watching, or simultaneously watching and moving the body.
The question of simultaneous input is one I've been thinking about a lot lately, as it is closely related to what happens in language learning classes. These days, the communicative language teaching theory is probably the most commonly accepted theory among foreign language teachers. The communicative approach heavily emphasizes input (and some production) in the target language, with minimal use of the students' known language. Key to this method is the teacher's ability to provide "comprehensible input"--that is, to speak in the target language and to simultaneously make that input understandable to students.
How best to do this remains an outstanding question. Probably the most traditional method, one many former language students will recognize, is for a teacher to accompany a long monologue in the target language with lots of pantomime: for instance, miming the act of carrying a suitcase and unpacking it for airport security during a lesson on travel-related vocabulary. Right here, in what is perhaps the simplest foreign language lesson plan possible, we have an example of dual coding. Foreign language learning environments lend themselves naturally to a dual coding approach because supplementary pictures are more than an illustrative nice-to-have: the task at hand is one of parsing meaning in an unknown tongue, a challenge oftentimes only made possible by the addition of visual input.
Lately, I have been thinking about how a function normally carried out by a teacher--that of providing visual input to make the target language comprehensible--can be replicated or even enhanced on a computer screen. The visual images computers can provide are not limited by time or space: rather than a teacher's pantomiming pulling a suitcase, for instance, a computer program can offer the student any number of suitcase images, which the student can replay at his or her leisure. On the other hand, human body language does communicate quite a bit that can be lost during a human-machine interaction: the raising of an eyebrow, for instance, to indicate a question. How best to map spoken content to visual input in a technology context? I've been ruminating on this of late, and haven't arrived at clear-cut answers yet. But it seems to me that the 2-D space of a computer screen is quite different from the 3-D space of the human body, and that creative thought is needed to understand the unique opportunities and limitations of the medium.
The question of simultaneous input is one I've been thinking about a lot lately, as it is closely related to what happens in language learning classes. These days, the communicative language teaching theory is probably the most commonly accepted theory among foreign language teachers. The communicative approach heavily emphasizes input (and some production) in the target language, with minimal use of the students' known language. Key to this method is the teacher's ability to provide "comprehensible input"--that is, to speak in the target language and to simultaneously make that input understandable to students.
How best to do this remains an outstanding question. Probably the most traditional method, one many former language students will recognize, is for a teacher to accompany a long monologue in the target language with lots of pantomime: for instance, miming the act of carrying a suitcase and unpacking it for airport security during a lesson on travel-related vocabulary. Right here, in what is perhaps the simplest foreign language lesson plan possible, we have an example of dual coding. Foreign language learning environments lend themselves naturally to a dual coding approach because supplementary pictures are more than an illustrative nice-to-have: the task at hand is one of parsing meaning in an unknown tongue, a challenge oftentimes only made possible by the addition of visual input.
Lately, I have been thinking about how a function normally carried out by a teacher--that of providing visual input to make the target language comprehensible--can be replicated or even enhanced on a computer screen. The visual images computers can provide are not limited by time or space: rather than a teacher's pantomiming pulling a suitcase, for instance, a computer program can offer the student any number of suitcase images, which the student can replay at his or her leisure. On the other hand, human body language does communicate quite a bit that can be lost during a human-machine interaction: the raising of an eyebrow, for instance, to indicate a question. How best to map spoken content to visual input in a technology context? I've been ruminating on this of late, and haven't arrived at clear-cut answers yet. But it seems to me that the 2-D space of a computer screen is quite different from the 3-D space of the human body, and that creative thought is needed to understand the unique opportunities and limitations of the medium.
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