“Those with either auditory or kinesthetic learning preferences frequently find themselves at a great disadvantage in the web-based learning environment.” (Tongdeelert 2003.)

Bummer. (My intuited concerns confirmed.)

SL conference on language learning

Learned of a SecondLife virtual conference about language learning in SL in May 2009. Worth ‘attending’.

mind-controlled games?

Prensky’s ‘digital wisdom’ article had link to a company that have made a headset/helmet that reads your facial expressions to control a wheelchair! Is the next step that it will read your mind so that you can play games without lifting a finger? My 6-year old daughter was fascinated and wants one for her birthday …:-/

(Belated) notes on SecondLife – from Learning Technologies exhibition

I wanted to (belatedly) write about an impressive presentation by Maria Toro-Troconis (Imperial College London – Head Learning Technologist) at the Learning Technologies exhibition in London at the end of Jan 2009.

She demonstrated how SL has been used to help train medical students through use of role-play. She explained that there was some debate as to whether SL is a game or not. (Surely not?) Games provide a risk-free environment for learning; when using games, players are still engaged after over an hour. (Tell me about it: football game!) As such, she seemed to feel that SL is a game or at least has some of the same characteristics as games.

She also referenced Prensky’s ‘digital natives’ theory. And ‘flow theory’.

SecondLife has no pre-defined goals, however, she says. These need to be imposed to take advantage of the space that it offers for the learner to manouevre in.

Spoke of the need for:
– scaffolding
– cyclical content
– experiential approach
– 4 hours getting used to SL before going on to learning

Link to her work.

Digital speed

Becoming more attuned to my adopted digital nation: I was about to e-mail some links for further reading to work from home, before stopping and realising that I can just paste them here; it’s quicker!

Johnston, B and Webber, S “Information Literacy in Higher Education: a review and case study” Studies in Higher Education vol 28 no 3, August 2003

Rogerson-Revell, Pamela (2007) Directions in e-learning tools and technologies and their relevance to online distance language education Open Learning vol 22 no 1

Warschauer, M. (2000). The death of cyberspace and the rebirth of CALL. English Teachers’ Journal, 53, 61-67.

wiki arguments

(Copied this from my discussion board post for my reference. Any comments welcome!):

Came across this article via my ‘subscription’ to bloglines: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/08/0116224&from=rss

It raises the issue of arguments over wiki construction and how quickly those in disagreement will ‘revise’ each other’s contributions. For me, that presents a useful idea for language learning: a deliberately controversial wiki, perhaps one in which contributors take on roles and must aim to have the wiki reflect *their* views (in role). In this sense, the wiki is used sort of for collaboration, but in fact for polite confrontation.

By golly, I think I have a useful idea for my assignment!

Articles

Finally managing to get my teeth into some articles re. the course:

‘Blogs for specific purposes: Expressivist or socio-cognitivist approach?’ (Murray and Hourigan, ReCALL 20 (1))
A very persuasive account of the benefits of using blogs in SLA.

‘The power and politics of blogs’ (Farrell and Drezner, Public Choice (2008: 134)
Not about ESL. I read it to try to get a wider perspective on blogs. argues that bloggers have a real influence on society and politics. I’m not convinced, tho’ I guess it’s true that a bogger has “first-mover advantage” from “speedy publication” (p 17).

‘Preparing language teachers to teach language online: a look at skills, roles, and responsibilities’ (Compton, CALL 22:1)
Discusses online language teacher-training (with reference to Hampel and Stickler) and makes some useful suggestions, although remains very unspecific. Interesting point about the importance of setting up a positive online social environment helping to lead to a successful online course. Bit disappointed. Thought this would be more revealing.

‘Predictors of Learning Satisfaction in Japanese Online Distance Learners’ (Bray et al, IRRODL 9:3)
Looks at a number of problems encountered in Japanese online language-learning programmes but maintains that online learning fits working / older students all the same. Interesting point about strong govt regulation of HE, relaxed only recently, hence opportunities for OLL now.

catch up

Seem to have covered a bit of ground over the weekend and caught up with regard to blogs and wikis. The process was more useful on this course than when I took Digital Environments, just in that we had to set up our own blog and wiki whereas on DE they were already set up, if I remember correctly. A useful learning curve – although the technical stumbling blocks are annoying.

Doesn’t seem to be that much discussion on the course so far – good for me in view of the slow start to the course; perhaps this will kick off a bit in Block 2.

Need to do some more reading around the subjects to be discussed. New article in Innovate on digital natives, too, which looks interesting:

Digital wisdom

Anyone read this?

blogrolls

Also haven’t managed to work out how to add the other course members’ blogs to my blogroll. WordPress begins to frustrate me… (It always seems worse when you’re already playing catch-up.)

Audio blog

I recorded a blog to experiment with posting an audio file to a blog but WordPress doesn’t let me upload it to the new post. It also has a message saying that only ‘jpg, jpeg, png, gif, pdf, doc, ppt, odt‘ files are uploadable – none of these are audio file types, are they? So how do you get an audio file onto the blog??