Language Portals

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16March2009

One of the principal developments of Web 2.0 is the development RSS, or Real Simple Sindication.  Basically RSS is the content, stripped of most design, from sites such as blogs and other sites that have frequently updated content.  This allows people with RSS readers to view only the content they haven’t already read from a large number of sites in one location.  This becomes a serious time saver once you’ve started reading blogs and using other Web 2.0 sites such as Flickr and Delicious.

One of these RSS readers, Netvibes, is particularly good for language learners, as it provides suggestions for RSS feeds based on a location.  The user can, for example, provide their location as Bremen, Germany and specify their interests as news and technology.  A portal can then be created that includes their Gmail and Facebook along with stories from the German news, the weather in Bremen, and German technology magazines.  If the class is blogging as well, the portal can be used to keep track of the other students’ blogs in class.  For the instructor, it provides an easy way  to structure and view the content being created by students in different locations.

Those interested, feel free to stop down and I’ll show you some examples.

Digital Storytelling Article

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4March2009

There’s a great essay on academic commons, Multimedia as Composition: Research, Writing and Creativity.

The part that may be most valuable for professors considering assigning such a project is the short list of recommended techniques:

  1. pitching (where ideas are presented to the professor or class for feedback)
  2. storyboarding (the visual equivalent of outlining)
  3. drafting (early projects that get feedback)
  4. peer evaluation
  5. group work (so students can supplement each others’ skills)
  6. revising (to promote the idea that the project’s quality is more important than the grade)

The essay is practical and concise.  Well worth the time to read.  If you’re just getting started reading blogs and using rss readers such as Bloglines or Google Reader, the Academic Commons is a great blog to get you started.

Digital Storytelling

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26February2009

The definition of “Digital Storytelling” has expanded over the last couple years.  It used to refer almost entirely to projects from a first person point of view created in IMovie.  These could be either simple skits and dialogues done with a camera or a series of still images with a soundtrack.  IMovie has very simple functions for transitions and has an effect called the “Ken Burns effect” that adds motion to still images.  The Center for Digital Storytelling is a good place to find examples.

http://www.storycenter.org/stories/

Although IMovie is quite easy, Web 2.0 applications have entered this space as well to offer even easier alternatives.  VoiceThread is probably the most popular.  Users can upload images and organize them into a slideshow.  It’s also possible to record an audio track for each image in the show.  Visitors to the voicethread can then leave voice comments as well.  This is a good example from an English class in Brazil who created a voicethread about 5 of their most important cities then sent their presentation to a class in California for comments.

http://voicethread.com/#q.b69307.i359512

Digital storytelling fits nicely with a learner centered language classroom as they are by their nature collaborative works that focus on the creator’s life and interests.   The technological skills required have also become very minimal.  I’d be happy to show a class at Dickinson how to use either IMovie or Voicethread.  An IMovie training would take most of a class hour depending on whether students would use still images or record with a video camera.  A Voicethread tutorial would take 20 minutes or less with questions.

Although the stories are very easy to create, it’s still important to do some planning.  Be clear about your expectations to the students.  Provide them with examples to set expectations and to generate ideas.  Let them see the grading rubric you’ll use for assessment.  Finally, break the assignment up into parts to avoid having students spend a great deal of time on the assignment but finishing with a poor project.  A common suggestion is to have students submit their project in three parts: a storyboard, a script, and finally the finished project in IMovie or on VoiceThread.

Delicious

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16February2009

Delicious may very well be the single most effective utility for finding and sharing resources on the web.  Stated simply, Delicious is public bookmarking service.  Once you’ve created an account on Delcious and installed a Firefox plugin, you save your bookmarks to the web instead of your browser.  This comes in very handy if you use more than one computer, which most of us do.  Although, that’s really just the tip of the iceberg to get people started.  The real power comes with tagging and networking functions.

Let’s start with the tagging.  Most of you have probably “tagged” something at some point.  It’s basically attaching a keyword to something so you can find it later.  By tagging your bookmarks, you’re organizing them according to your own metadata instead of just one long list.  You can then find bookmarks by keyword which are often displayed in a tag cloud.  You can take a look at my tag cloud to get an idea of how this works.

Where Delicious really shines is in its ability to connect people with unique interests and their web resources.  The first way is to simply add your friends and colleagues to your network.  This way you can all see each others bookmarks.  However, ou can also see the bookmarks of the people who have saved certain websites or used certain tags.  Let’s say you’re interested in Cervantes and digital presentation.  You can tag the Cervantes Project with Delicious, then click on the number of people who have the same bookmark and view their sites on Delicious.

Hopefully, I’ve convinced, but if this sounds interesting but a little confusing, take a look at this video by Common Craft on Social Bookmarking.

Language Exchanges

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4February2009

As the semester gets under way, we’ve already had quite a few language exchanges via Skype.  Some of the languages have partner classes with whom the students communicate throughout the semester.  Others schedule events in the Mixxer and thereby invite native speakers of our students’ target language for an exchange via Skype during class time.  There are also usually a handful of classes each semester that assign students to find a language partner on their own in the Mixxer and conduct an interview.  Usually this interview is then combined with other research to create some sort of project or presentation.

Of course, language exchanges don’t necessarily have to be limited to Skype.  Another possibility is for the students to keep a journal using either a blog or twitter and connect with native speakers in written form.  There are sites that encourage these kinds of exchanges as well.  Lang-8 is a popular site that lets native speaker suggest corrections in the comment section.  The Mixxer gives each user their own wiki where learners can write and then request corrections from native speakers.  Another possibility is to have the students in the class form their own community and correct each other.  We could host such a community on the Dickinson Blog or students could form their own using Ning, Twitter, or Blogger.

Dictionaries

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27January2009

Dictionaries are certainly one of the most heavily used online tools.  Most simply head to old-fashioned WordReference.com or something similar.  There may, however, be better options.

  • In the Arthur Vining Davis classroom (room 209 in Bosler), Babylon is probably you’re best option.  Use the scroller on the mouse to click on any word, and the English definition along with any conjugation will pop-up.  Alternatively, you can click on the bubbly blue B in the task bar and enter a word.
  • The WordChamp web reader is a great option for students reading online.  Choose the language of the web page, enter the url in the text box, and press the read button.  The web reader will then scan the page and look up each word in a dictionary.  Touch any word with the mouse and the definition will appear.  If you create an account on their site, you can save words and test yourself later.
  • Google may be the world’s best dictionary if used properly.  First, there is the official function.  Go to the localized version of Google for the language (ex. www.google.de) and enter define:komisch.  It will return a German definition with the option to see an English translation by clicking the link “Englisch” at the bottom of the page.  The real power of Google, however, comes with its less formal use.  We can search Google pages located in Germany for a certain phrase by including the phrase in quotes followed by site:de.  This is useful for students when they’re unsure of their word choice or an idiomatic phrase.  Correct phrases will appear thousands of times in reputable sources.  Poorly translated idiomatic phrases and incorrect usage will have a very few number of hits on much less recognized sites.  For example, if we go to www.google.de and enter “so schwer wie Eisen” site:.de (as hard as iron), we’ll see we only have 5000 hits.  The examples from German sites only occur when the writer is actually comparing metals or compounds that are in fact “as hard as iron”.  On the other hand “Hals über Kopf” site:.de (literally ‘throat over head’, it means ‘in a big rush’) returns 130,000 in a context you would expect.  The same method could be use to check to see if accusative or dative is used with a certain preposition, common word order, etc.

Europeana Launched

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16January2009

Europeana aims to gather and digitized the collections of some of Europe’s largest libraries, archives, and museums.  Their website is still in beta; however, the collection is already quite extensive.

http://www.europeana.eu/portal/

It’s well worth the time to do some quick searches to see what resources are available. The images are not of the same quality that you would find in our Artstor subscription (http://library.artstor.org/library/welcome.html), though the collection itself is larger and includes audio and video as well.

Other sources you may be interested in:

  • Flickr (Photo sharing site.  Most images in creative commons.  High quality photos, everyday life)
  • ccMixter (Repository for music, most of which is generously licensed under a Creative Commons. Great for Podcast intro music etc.)
  • Creative Commons Search (Search several popular web resources for creative commons resources)
  • Blip TV (similar to YouTube, but much smaller and higher quality video)