For Wednesday

Hi everybody!

READING:
Here is the reading for Wednesday. It's an easy read that provides excellent insight in ways to use technology for higher learning outcomes.

STORYBOARD:
Please, bring your course storyboard. I am going to ask you to explain to the class how your course will be structured. I will collect your storyboard but for the class presentation, I will probably ask you to draw it on the board like I did last week.

AUDACITY:
Here is the handout for the activity we did together last week. Please bring your laptops so that I help you install Audacity and the mp3 encoder on Wednesday.

Thank you!
Edwige

The video I told you about

Interesting....

Next week

Dear all,

I hope you enjoyed the Miro tutorial. Here is a Hot Potatoes tutorial. I will keep on posting mini assignments like this one to help you develop your tech skills. It is very important that you take advantage of these assignments. If you have any problems with this, contact me.

An ongoing assignment for this class is to keep on collecting materials for your course and to make progress building it. We are going to start advertising these courses in 2 to 3 weeks and students will start signing up. We need to pick an offering date for these courses soon.

Here is what we will do on Tuesday:

- Yoshie will give her presentation
- We will discuss the readings for 30 minutes. The reading for tuedsay is Blake chapter 6 (please be prepared to discuss this text)
- You will work on developing your course for the rest of the class

Please bring everything you will need to be able to work on your course: your laptop or your course material on a memory key.

Thank you!!!

Technology assignments and meeting

Hi everybody,

Thank you for your presentations yesterday. It’s good to see that everybody is making progress.

Since you are all at various stages of your projects, I would like to meet with you individually as soon as possible to discuss timeline, course structure, activity, ect. I will be in the office on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday during spring break. And if you are not around during spring break, Wednesday and Thursdays are the best days of the week for me. Please e-mail me your preferred dates and time as soon as possible. Thank you!

Like I said in class, if I were to do it again, I would include a one-hour weekly technology lab in the class. Since we only have 30 minutes, I have decided to create tutorials for each one of the important applications that you need to know how to use.

I will create tutorials for:
• Ning
• Youtube annotations
• Miro
• Jing
• Audacity
• Hot Potatoes
• Blogger.

These technologies work like building blocks, I will try to make the connections obvious.
I hope you will take advantage of these tutorials. Obviously, if you use Ning, you will not need the Blogger one and the other way round. That said, if you are not sure which one you want to use, then I suggest doing both!

I started with Miro and Ning:

The Miro tutorial gives you step-by-step instructions on how to install and use the program and ends with an assignment. Please, do the assignment unless you are already familiar with the application.

The Ning tutorial is the one I put together for the workshop last week. It provides step-by-step instructions on how to build a Ning site so the assignment is built-in. I might provide other Ning mini tutorials for more specific tasks inside Ning.

If you get stuck, e-mail ASAP to let me know. I wouldn’t mind getting feedback on these tutorials. Please, do not hesitate to seek help if you need it!

I will post the reading for the week after spring break and additional tutorials in a few days.

Have a great spring break!
Edwige.

To do for March 18th

Hi everybody!

Here is what you need to do for march 18th. You have two weeks to prepare a 10 minute presentation on the five items below. I would suggest getting started early as this will take some time and some research.

1. Summary of course structure: 2 or 3 weeks? How much content? etc...
2. Final version of your learning objectives.
3. Choice of platform and why (Ning, blog, website...)
4. First draft of your storyboard (it can be a handwritten plan, or you can use the autoshapes in Word)
5. One CBI based activity (as developed as possible, even if it is all on paper. You should have your text or video clip, pre and post reading/listening question, glossary, background info, etc)

Let me know if you have any questions! I will be in Tempe Wednesday through Sunday but I will check e-mail daily. Thank you!
Edwige.

Readings for Tuesday

Hi everybody,

Here are the readings for Tuesday.


If you haven't done so, please e-mail me version two of your learning objectives!

Opening Doors through Distance Language Education: Chapter 5:Designing a Distance Foreign Language Environment.

We need to submit the MERLOT proposal before the 23rd. I will share a googledoc with you guys!

Thank you,
Edwige.

Learning objectives

*****PLEASE, READ PREVIOUS POST AS WELL!!*****

About the learning objectives for your course, here are a few pointers:

The learning objectives describe the learning outcomes of your course. As such, they tend to be fairly precise.

For example:
After taking this three-week refresher class, students will be able to:

- apply the subjunctive mood in new and unprompted situations.
- analyze and summarize an authentic text (at the intermediate level) dealing with social problems in France.
- explain and justify their position on illegal immigration.

There is only so much you can get done in 3 weeks! You will have to be selective in your choices.

Where to get information on what to include in your course:
- Ask instructors (incl. yourself!) who teach 3000 level courses what students need to review the most.
- Ask students who took 3000 level courses what they struggle with
- Ask your TA coordinator.
- Try to find the placement test for 3000.

I suggest you start refining your learning objectives as soon as possible. The sooner you have them, the sooner you can get started developing your course. No need to go crazy on the details, half a page to a page with bullets will be fine. Now is the time to decide whether you want to develop and two or a three-week course. Please, bring draft 2 to class on Wednesday!
Let me know if you have any questions or are confused about anything!
Thank you!!
Edwige.

For next week: Feb 18th

Hi everybody,

I thought we had a productive discussion and I hope you have a better idea of what the instructor's role is in CM asynchronous discussions. There are NO READINGS for next week, but we need to do a few things.

I created and shared 3 Google documents with you. You can log in Googledocs using your gmail account at http://docs.google.com/

1. The first document is called technology reviews and is for your information only. I will update it every week.
2. The second document is the Merlot conference proposal but the deadline was extended so we have time. We’ll work on it together in class next week.
3. The third document summarizes yesterday's discussion. Please review the various project suggestions (1), add your tips on how to manage online discussions (2) and make some suggestions on developing a rubric to assess online discussion (3).

Thanks!
Edwige.

For next week!

Hi everybody,

I had a great time this morning. I was worried I hadn't prepared enough questions...clearly, it was not an issue! In case you downloaded the syllabus, please be aware that I am changing it on a regular basis. Your best source of info on what to do for next week is the blog itself:

For next Wednesday:

1. Remember that we meet at 10:30am. We'll look at CMC tools for 30 minutes.
2. Please, e-mail me your logs.
3. Post an answer to the questions I uploaded to the culearn forum and answer a couple posts as soon as you can so that we can compare with the google groups forum.
4. Readings:
Learning domains and learning objectives
Standards for FL Learning
5. Prepare a first draft of your learning objectives and e-mail them to me before class (this way you don't have to print anything).
Here are a few questions to consider when determining course content, I am sure there is more, we'll talk about other factors in class!
- How much can you cover in two/three weeks?
- What are important skills/forms your students need to review?
- How can you validate your choices?

It is helpful to consider the ACTFL standards and also the taxonomy for the cognitive and affective domains when thinking about what you would like your students to learn/review/practice in your course (see readings above). We'll talk about this in class next week as well!

For those of you who would like to read it, here is the first chapter of the Blake book. It is a really good introduction and explains a lot of the terms he uses in chapter 4!

Please let me know if you have any question!
Have a great week!
Edwige.

Next week

Hi everybody,

Thank you so much for your contribution to the chat. I hope you enjoyed it as much as Lisa and I did. Here is the Blake reading for next week. Disregard the syllabus about posting answers. We are going back to a regular class rhythm and therefore, we can revert to our good old habit of doing the readings at the last minute (or is it just me?!). As you can see, the pace is quite different when the course is all online. Please bring your logs to class!
Have a great week!

Edwige.

Last chat before we all meet face to face next week!

Hi everybody,

I am really enjoying the discussion this week, trying to resist the temptation to answer every post so that you get a chance to do so!
I wanted to remind you to take a look at Apex's online courses (I sent you the login info via e-mail) and to prepare some questions for Lisa. I will let her lead the chat.
Take care!
Edwige.

Teaching online?

****I just posted the questions for week 2! Looking forward to the discussion!****

Hi everybody,

This is the cover of a book on teaching online. The cover is interesting...how do you understand/interpret the choice of illustration? Drop a comment to let me know what you think!
I am not sure how to interpret it myself!
Edwige.

Looking forward to chatting with you next week!

Hi, Lisa Frumkes at Apex Learning in Seattle here. I'm looking forward to chatting with you next week. I hope you have fun looking at the materials on our website!

Week 2 start today!

Hi everybody!

I hope you had a good weekend. Here is a link to the reading for this week:
- Blake: Brave New Digital Classroom: Technology and Foreign Language Learning. Chapter 5:
Distance Learning for Languages. Does it Measure up? (Robert Blake)

The other reading will be available later today but it is optional. I will post the questions later today and I would like to move the deadline to post your answer to Saturday, at noon so that we have a little more time to reply to each other.

E-mail me if you have any questions!
Edwige.

Our discussion

Hi everybody!

I just checked the forum and I can see that you've started posting. Thank you for that! I would like to make sure that we have a chance to experience a set of productive online discussions before we meet face to face to discuss our online experience on week 3. Here are a few cues to make this happen:

• Please take a few minutes to respond to other people's introduction. Try to get to know them and think about what you would do as a teacher to get to know your students better (social presence), to give them a chance to know you and to create a sense of community.

• Make sure to respond to other people's posts on the reading as soon as you can so that they have a chance to respond to you. If we all wait until Wednesday, we will have a collection of isolated answers, and no dialogue. I guess I just learned sth about setting up deadlines for online discussions :-)
  

• Academic online asynchronous discussions (that's a mouthful!) are unique:

1. Unlike in a classroom setting, you have ample time to read an answer, think about it, go back to the reading and craft a response.
2. This type of discussion is definitely less spontaneous than classroom discussions but it can have a lot more depth.
3. Some of my teachers would require that we actually quote the readings in our answers (when relevant of course). I felt it was an excellent preparation to the paper we would end writing at the end of the week.
4. While online discussions can be very productive, they need to be carefully designed. We'll brainstorm ways to make them work in our chat next week.
   

• Here is the initial questionnaire! Please, fill it out as soon as you can.

Thank you!If you have any questions, e-mail me! Have a great weekend!

Questions are posted!

Here is the initial questionnaire! Please, fill it out as soon as you can.
Thank you!

Hi everybody,

I just posted the questions on the readings. I posted 5 questions, you can pick 3 to answer.

• I just found out that the forum does not let you edit your post once you've posted it. I would suggest typing your answer in a Word doc and then pasting it.
• To post your answer, click on the question and then click the reply button. I cannot move the posts around so we need to make sure to reply to the questions or it will get messy!
• When you have a moment, please fill out the initial questionnaire and remember to log your impressions regularly!
• If you have any questions about the course, the readings or anything, please contact me!
  

Thank you!
Edwige.

Readings

Here is the initial questionnaire! Please, fill it out as soon as you can.
Thank you!

Hi everybody,

Here are links to the readings:

E-learning in the 21st century: ch1 (optional: ch2): we will mostly discuss chapter 1. Chapter 2 is optional. FYI: the sections on Responsibility and Control, and on Teaching Principles are interesting.
Online nation: some statistics for you to browse to get an idea about the impact of e-learning in higher education.

Terry Anderson's homepage:
Anderson is a very well respected scholar in the field of distance education. He wrote several publications together with Randy Anderson.
They came up with the following framework to evaluate online distance learning environments:


We'll read a paper explaining this framework later in the semester. Please don't forget to keep a log to record your impressions and let me know if you have any questions!
Edwige.

Welcome to 7800

Dear All,

Welcome to the class! I am very excited about this project and I am glad it all worked out in the end. We'll start the class with a one hour chat session at 11am on Wednesday (tomorrow). Please take a few minutes to read the syllabus and course intro. This project is very much an experiment, I might add or remove readings or switch them around. And of course, feel free to recommend readings if you come across something interesting.

We'll use the gmail chat tool for tomorrow's chat. I have never used so it will give us a chance to see how it works. I am planning on experimenting with a bunch of new and old technology in this class, we might as well start right away! In case you don't yet have a gmail account, go ahead and create one. Your login and password will also allow you to use Googledocs and the discussion forum.

Once you have a gmail account, please send me an e-mail so that i have your address!
And if you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me or to leave a comment on this blog or to call me: 303 492 7225. Thank you!
Edwige.