New Copyright Rules

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The government has released some important exemptions to the copyright laws governing circumvention of digital controls. Main stream media is focusing on the “jail break” permission for cell phones. For those not familiar with the term, by default an IPhone will only run apps that have been approved by Apple and from their store. This creates their own very profitable ecosystem, which the pros and cons that come with any selective list of software, i.e. usability and quality versus choice and variety. Users who preferred the latter would “jail break” the phones or “crack” the device to allow it to run other apps. This is now legal, though I’m sure it still voids the warranty. Expect to see competitors to the Apple app market soon.

For educators, the more immediate benefit comes from the permission to rip DVDs for educational use provided it falls under fair use guidelines or the Teach Act. Up until now, even though it fell under fair use, the defeating of the copy protection was in and of itself illegal, which made for a rather illogical situation where the final product was legal but the only way of obtaining it was illegal. Keep in mind, this is still not carte blanche for educators and videos. Streaming entire films from a course management system is still illegal. If you’re interested in copyright permissions available to educator, the University of Texas has a fairly easy to understand description.

Student Video Projects

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While putting together some notes on our introductory session for faculty in the Willoughby Program, I started making a list of recent class projects that make use of some of the technologies. These videos were created as part of the Mike Fratantuono’s class, “The Global Economy”. Students used IMovie to explain a topic of their choosing on globalization. We’ll talk about the assignment that was given to students, the training, and the rubric he used for assessment.
The_Twitter_Revolution
Wal-Mart_Final_Cut_2

Google Books Adds Ancient Greek and Latin Texts

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This is another example of how Google Books can dramatically impact traditional education. The effect of digitized texts goes far beyond access. By converting the text to a digital format, it opens up new possibilities for textual search and analysis. Read a the full description of the latest addition to Google Books here:

http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-releases-500-scans-of-ancient.html

Blog Moving

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This blog will be moving next week to http://blogs.dickinson.edu/edtech. Hopefully with a broader topic, I’ll write more.

Finding and Organizing Authentic Content for Students

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One of the great early benefits for language learning  was the availability of authentic content.  At first students could find newspapers from abroad, then radio, then other kinds of multimedia, and finally even connect and interact with people via blogs, social networks, and Skype.  The challenge is no longer availability, but rather finding and organizing the content so that’s accessible and of interest to the students.

Pageflakes is an rss reader that allows you do this very elegantly.  For those unfamiliar with rss readers, it’s bascially a way to pull in content from various sources to create a person portal page.  I set up a series of these pages (flakes) for the intermediate German classes.  Each page is for a specific city and this works well since the textbook is also organized by focusing on one of these cities for each chapter.  What’s nice about the portal is that this information unlike the text is dynamic.  Students living in these places blog about their day in the location, video clips from the city are shown as are newspaper articles and so on.  You can check it out here:

http://www.pageflakes.com/bryantt/

Of course, if students wish to add content, that can also be added to the portal.  I know professors have structured their courses at Dickinson before as a virtual or imaginary semester abroad with students doing everything from finding apartments to taking classes.  This would provide students with real time content to create these stories and give them life.

Social Networks and Language Learning

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Akiko Meguro combined the social networking site Mixi (http://mixi.jp) and the Mixxer (http://www.language-exchanges.org) to make communication with native speakers an integral part of her course.  She uses the Mixxer to organize bi-weekly language exchanges via Skype for her students, then she has her students reconnect with their partners using the journal function in Mixi, the Japanese version of Facebook.  This encourages the students to continue to meet with their partner outside of class and introduces them to an entire social network within the target culture as well.  Many of our students continue to use Mixi after the course and once they’ve graduated.  We had one language partner visit the class from Japan this year and we regularly hear of our students reconnecting with their language partners once they study abroad their junior year.

This video will give you an idea about the Skype portion.  These are her slides about Mixi.  Obviously Mixi is only for Japanese, but we can set up a similar interaction using the Mixxer and/or other localized social networks.

It’s a great way to introduce culture and prepare them for a study abroad experience.  If you’re interested in doing something similar, please stop down and see me in Bosler.

UCLA’s Language Material’s Project

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UCLA announced the publishing of the “Language Material’s Project”.  It’s a very well organized database of resources for language teachers of less commonly taught languages.

http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Lessons.aspx?menu=003

These searchable repositories aren’t as necessary as they once were with the rise of very large, public and international web 2.0 sites of links, pictures, news, video, etc.  These crowdsourced sites tend to be much larger than academic repositories and are easily searchable by language via tags.  For example, one can search Flickr or YouTube by keyword in a given language and find thousands of videos.

That being said, I think this project has some strengths that will appeal to language teachers.  The organization by material type and language makes it easy to find quality resources on the topics common to beginning and intermediate texts.  For Arabic they’ve also categorized the items by country of as standard Arabic.

If you’re looking for something specific, you’re probably still better off going to a more general site for authentic materials.  On the other hand, if you’re starting your syllabus for next semester, it’s well worth the time to peruse the materials they’ve collected in the language.  Odds are quite good you’ll find something (menu, brochure, simple online game) that can add to a class activity.

Univision comes to YouTube

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YouTube is looking to compete with other rising sites such as Hulu for the internet TV market.   They took a big step today by signing a deal with Univision.

Wired on Univision and YouTube

There’s certainly no shortage of video on the web, and it may not be long before we begin questioning the need for satellite progamming altogether.  In addition to having the videos available on any computer, they also become archived and searchable.

Twinity, 3D Berlin

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Twinity is pushing their 3D version of Berlin, and they’re taking advantage of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  They’re holding lectures, classes, and have recreated the wall in it’s original location.  It is interesting to see the location of the wall in modern day Berlin.  The world is still primarily populated by German speakers, so it shouldn’t be hard to start a conversation.

Kindle Goes International

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The Kindle is now being sold in other countries.  Unfortunately, only English books are available.  Too bad, once books are available in other languages along with the corresponding built-in dictionary, it could be a real aid to the students in their first year of literature classes.  If their readings are old enough to be in the public domain, it would save them some money in the long run as well.

Amazon announcment