Final wrap-up homework

• Make one final blog reflection by answering the following question: "What specific technologies and/or ideas (if any) that you learned in this course are you going to use or using currently for your own teaching purposes?"

This course was one of the most enjoyable and useful for me. I really had lot of fun shooting video, although it was one of the hardest tasks. It was interesting to read my peers' posts on the technologies, as well as get information about tools that can be used for our teaching experience. 

Apparently the course was highly educational for me personally as the sources offered for each topic were fresh and understandable, for instance they helped me to understand the use and the idea of RSS feeds and cloud computing. 

Obviously, it is not possible to imagine our life without technologies nowadays. Technologies are everywhere, in all the fields of human/social life. Education is not an exception. The tools and sources offered during the course are indeed being used widely and I am also already trying to make use of them during my teaching experiences. 

I have started with blogging/microblogging but I am planning to engage more technologies in my classroom. The first thing in the list are movies that are also going to be used for my capstone project. 

Indeed, I enjoyed this course, and another good thing is that I have a record of all the homework reflections on my blog and will definitely go back to them from time to time to refresh some tools in the memory and use most of them. 

Google for Education and Cloud Computing

In the world of fast developing technologies, tablets and smartphones, internet with incredible high speed education cannot stay apart. We as teachers are able and encouraged to use all the opportunities given.
Cloud computing is something we all have heard about, and i am not an exception. But only after watching this small video assigned I now have a better understanding how it works. Basically, it is something that we all use in this or that way. For instance, if someone wants to get information about any person. first thing he does, he goes to Facebook. We all keep tones of information on our facebook pages, on our blogs, we share information with the world.

This has its benefits and disadvantages of course. However, I believe that it has more benefits, especially in terms of education on all the levels and fields. Cloud computing gives us an opportunity to use one application which is flexible for everyone, it only needs to be customized to our own needs and requirements. This is especially useful for business sphere. I remember last year I was organizing a training for one of the IT staff on cloud computing. Although it is not yet very much spread in Armenia and only few companies are replacing their systems, applications, hardware with ones on the web, but cloud computing gives more flexibility to the business sphere. However, the issue of security is still not clear to me. To some extent the information which is stored on the web may be not in a very secure hand, as it can be more easily hacked by the professionals. Maybe this is lack of my own information about the topic, however, I want to believe that the servers where we store any information, are being well protected.

Cloud computing also provides an opportunity to not only share your own community, but also get accesses to other communities, exchange experience interaction.

As for the Google applications created specially for education, most of us use most of them but maybe have never thought of using them for educational purposes. Its inspiring to know that you can create groups for online class sessions, talks for instant chats and sites to store your own information. And theses all not taking into consideration the gmail, calendar and drive.

So far, google has created a very good environment for us to be able to teach without any specific efforts for creating a community somewhere on the web. The first thing that's necessary is to simply have a gmail account.

I loved the videos, and especially the one with google tutorial which i will have to watch once again to be able to build up a specific scheme to use it during my teaching experience.

Analytics in Learning and Education

After having read the article Analytic in Learning and Education by Phil Long and George Siemens, I can consume that analytics is one of the most important parts of developments in the educational field. Analytics has always been granted in science, and nowadays with all the technological opportunities is can be used for deeper understanding of human learning process, as well as certain and useful developments in education. As stated in the article the ides is simple and potentially transformative: analytics provides a new model for college and university leaders to improve teaching, learning,
organizational efficiency, and decision making and, as a consequence, serve as a foundation for systemic change. But using analytics requires that we think carefully about what we need to know and what data is most likely to tell us what we need to know. Continued growth in the amount of data creates an environment in which new or novel approaches are required to understand the patterns of value that exist within the data. P.W. Anderson stated that “more is different,” emphasizing that
new models of and approaches to data interaction are desperately needed when we are confronted with abundance.
Or, as stated by David Gelernter: “If you have three pet dogs, give them names. If you have 10,000 head of cattle, don’t bother.” Quantity changes the methods and approaches that we use to interact with and make sense of data.

Google’s Marissa Mayer suggests that data is today defined by three elements:
1. Speed—The increasing availability of data in real time, making it possible to process and act on it
instantaneously
2. Scale—Increase in computing power: Moore’s law (stating that the number of transistors on a circuit board will double roughly every two years) continues to hold true.

3. Sensors—New types of data: “Social data is set to be surpassed in the data economy, though, by data published by physical, real-world objects like sensors, smart grids and connected devices”—that is, the “Internet of Things.”

Analytics in learning leads to the understanding of new techniques to be developed and integrated into education to achieve better results for student learning. And by development of the educational fields we will reach to the points of lifelong learning and wave of innovations which will make a better world for all of us.

However, i still need to read the article more attentively and watch more videos on the topic to be able to give a more profound feedback and share my own profound opinion.

Learning Management Systems (LMS)/(CMS) vs. Personal Learning Environments (PLEs).

This post is dedicated to LMS and PLE. I have watched the video posted (LMS vs PLE) as a source for general information about these two topics and explored a little bit in Edmondo.


Well, first of all, it is very important to structure your own understanding of any learning system and basically to have definitions which are understandable for everyone. So I can call myself now one integrated into the family people who distinguish LMS and PLE.

The video itself was just great as it gave me very quick and manageable definition of these two items. Although in my personal opinion it is impossible to stay away from any Learning Management Systems nowadays. However, knowing that centralized and decentralized systems exist is important, to be able to choose where you want to belong to. However, I believe we all started with LMS, then maybe at some point turned to Personal Learning Environment. But this is also arguable, as a learner cannot be totally out of any society and even a facebook link can lead him to at least one Learning Management system and here you are, involved in LMS.

With all the opportunities that we are provided today, with all the technology and available sources we really do not need to go somewhere to learn something. We just open the browser and find whatever information we need. So, I personally think that even if you are not enrolled in any LMS such as Moodle or any discussion forum, or anything else, you will still any information you need online.

Explore some information about the topic following these links:

articles on LMS
some more

Distance learning: Student self management and motivation

In both articles by Cynthia White Distance or E-learning has been discussed and the information was really useful. The main finding for me was that Distance Learning field has already been researched and actually is still being researched as something arguable and contrasting with the traditional teaching methods. However, most of the ideas explored in the articles I share and I wanted to point out some important ideas I noticed.

As it is mentioned in the articles, the role of the teacher changes in the terms of Distance Learning. Teachers' role is different from their colleagues who are working in a class. First of all most of teachers involved in Distance Learning work part time and at some point their role can be undervalued by the learners. Secondly not all the teachers even experienced ones can be teaching on distance. Specific skills are required for it and they must be trained before involvement in such a project.
Third, most of the people usually acquire foreign language in a face-to face interaction, learning in groups and getting immediate and ongoing feedback from their peers and teachers. Thus the role of distance teacher is huge and small at the same time. concrete techniques should be applied to get some kind of authority, control and be able to give feedback to the learners. And finally, most of the teacher in distance learning projects are not involved in the course development which itself decreases their involvement in the course.

Below are several points that the teachers should take into consideration. These are that Cynthia White et al. pointed out.

Professional Skills and Responsibilities of distance teaching tutors as per Cynthia White, et al. 

• Know the course materials well
• Keep up with the administration
• Receive and respond appropriately to students’ feedback on all aspects of
tuition
• Advise students on what they can do locally to improve their learning
experience
• Help/facilitate/inform about self-directed learning
• Judge when to refer a problem on to other support services
• Mediate between ‘powers-that-be’ and students
• Get students to review their ways of learning as appropriate
• Be aware of different learning styles

According to Cynthia White the ability of each learner to identify, participate in and manage learning experiences, which match their individual learning needs, is essential to fully benefit from the opportunities available in distance learning. In my view it is the development and exercise of this ability, the hallmark of learner participation in independent language learning environments, which may be supported by, but not always directly mediated by, language teachers. "In particular learners need to develop awareness of what it means to be a distance language learner and what is required of them (their identity), and what is available to them within the wider learning context (the context of delivery) as they seek to adjust to a new learning environment". (Cynthia J White, 2004)

I would also draw attention to the maxims that are highlighted by the author which I consider important:

1. Maxim of empowerment: teachers in distance learning should encourage the learners to ensure them that they will learn the material.
2. Maxim of appropriateness: learners should get appropriate help with grammar.
3. Maxim of honesty: teachers should build supportive relations with the learners.
4. Maxim of openness: learners should feel that they can approach their teacher anytime.

In any case, I truly believe and the experience of work also shows that the learners in distance learning should be highly motivated to learn. Especially in case of free courses the level of responsibility decreases in case if the learners don't understand why they are taking this or that course, or when they are just assigned by the manager or encouraged by friends. The role of self-motivation and self management is absolutely important in distance learning.

The author has mentioned 4 main factors that can be affecting the process of distance learning:
1. Immediate demand of the course: the learners are in an isolated study context and self-motivation is rather important.
2. Teacher is remote: this may lead to not appropriate or not enough feedback to the learners.
3. Awareness on the part of learners: The learners should clearly understand what they are doing and why, and be confident in the necessity of the course for their development or growth.
4. New technology boarders: learners may face problems with all the opportunities that distance learning provides, and simply get lost in the technologies. This may burden their learning process.
5. Independent learning: the distance learnign course should be designed and constructed to have maximum learner-context interface. Not to mislead or confuse the learners everything should be clear to the learner, tutorials or documentation guides should be available to guide the learners through

the course.

Nowadays, when we cannot imagine our life with new technologies we also get thousands of opportunities to learn new languages, professions, get new skills. However, it is learners choice if they want to develop themselves or not. Our role as teachers in my view is to encourage our students, friends, acquaintances to benefit from the new technologies and get as much as we can whether it is related to their professional growth, language learning, etc. Even if we feel the interest towards a certain course from the learner but we also see hesitation on whether to take it or not, we should do our best to encourage them to go for it. As it is never late to learn, the things is to clearly define what is useful for us at this or another point of our lives.

Open Educational Resources

As Gerry Bayne, EDUCAUSE Blogger states in his blog, The availability of and interest in open educational resources (OER) haveincreased dramatically over the past decade. 

The increased availability of OER raises questions about the effect they are having on student learning and about models and policies for sustaining current efforts. The Internet has also fostered a new culture of sharing, one in which content is freely contributed and distributed with few restrictions or costs. The most visible impact of the Internet on education to date has been the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, which has provided free access to a wide range of courses and other educational materials to anyone who wants to use them. The movement began in 2001 when the William and Flora Hewlett and the Andrew W. Mellon foundations jointly funded MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, which today provides open access to undergraduate and graduate-level materials and modules from more than 1,700 courses (covering virtually all of MIT’s curriculum). 


What do we mean by “social learning”? As stated in the article by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler, perhaps the simplest way to explain this concept is to note that social learning is based on the premise that our understanding
The article Minds on Fire, states that there is this Cartesian perspective,  which assumes that knowledge is a kind
This can become a living or dynamic infrastructure—itself a reflective practicum. An example of such a practicum is
I will totally agree, that tools such as blogs, wikis, social networks, tagging systems, mashups, and content-sharing sites are examples of a new user-centric information infrastructure that emphasizes participation (e.g., creating, re-mixing)
All the above mentioned is a piece of information I found important for myself, that's why i included it in my blog post, and I will get back to it from time to time to reinforce learned information. In my opinion, and as it is stated in the above mentioned article, technologies and open resources are of huge importance in our life. However, I assume that all the technologies should be used with a great understanding of why they are used in TEFL classroom, and what we want to receive from our students. Teacher should prepare perfectly before implementing them into the classroom, develop tools for moderating and at the same time control, as well as motivating the students. Otherwise the resources can be used in a way, which will not benefit the learning process and will only grab time from the students learning timeframe. 

of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions,
especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning. 
I can remember the times when i was fulfilling my first degree we often times used to work together on our homework assignments  as it was easier for us to understand what is expected from us. Although we have never been assigned group projects, doing homework or working on lectures was more useful and motivating. Also it was fun as we spent time with peers and were not ashamed to ask questions which we couldn't ask the lecturer. 

of substance and that pedagogy concerns the best way to transfer this substance from teachers to students. By  contrast, instead of starting from the Cartesian premise of “I think, therefore I am,” and from the assumption that knowledge is something that is transferred to the student via various pedagogical strategies, the social view of learning
says, “We participate, therefore we are.” We need to construct shared, distributed, reflective practicums in which experiences are collected, vetted, clustered, commented on, and tried out in new contexts. One might call this “learning about learning,” a bootstrapping operation in which educators, along with students, are learning among and between themselves.

the online Teaching and Learning Commons (http://commons.carnegie foundation.org/) launched earlier this
year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The Commons is essentially an open version
of the Foundation’s Gallery of Teaching and Learning (http://gallery.carnegiefoundation.org/), which has been operating for the past nine years. The Gallery provides an online showcase for case studies of successful teaching and learning projects that have been supported by the Foundation, along with a set of web-based tools (the KEEP Toolkit) for creating these case studies (http://www.cfkeep.org). The Commons is an open forum where instructors at all levels (and from around the world) can post their own examples and can participate in an ongoing conversation about effective
teaching practices, as a means of supporting a process of “creating/using/re-mixing (or creating/sharing/using).”

over presentation, that encourages focused conversation and short briefs (often written in a less technical, public
vernacular) rather than traditional publication, and that facilitates innovative explorations, experimentations, and purposeful tinkerings that often form the basis of a situated understanding emerging from action, not passivity.
We now need a new approach to learning—one characterized by a demandpull rather than the traditional supply-push
mode of building up an inventory of knowledge in students’ heads. Demandpull learning shifts the focus to enabling
participation in flows of action, where the focus is both on “learning to be” through enculturation into a practice as well as on collateral learning. The demand-pull approach is based on providing students with access to rich (sometimes virtual) learning communities built around a practice. It is passion-based learning, motivated by the student either wanting to become a member of a particular community of practice or just wanting to learn about, make, or perform something.

However, reading such articles give me a path to think and develop some procedures and my own technologies for future career as a teacher. 

MALL in TEFL

Nowadays it is simply impossible to imagine our life without mobile phones and smartphones. The smartphones are used not only for calling, but also for exploring internet, using social network, blogging, and in some cases for language learning. For me personally it is not crucial and cristal clear why we, teachers should use the usage of smartphones and mobile phones in the learning process. However, it is obvious that in order to follow the modern technologies and motivate our students wee need to use the technology. Well, in my mind the mobiles and smartphones can be used first of all for listening comprehension. They can be used in order to assign the students to listen to or watch some tv programs, podcast, radio, all the the target language. This will develop the students abilities to understand the speakers who speak the target language as a mother tongue.  

Students can also use their smartphones or mobile phones to record themselves or their conversations outside the classroom for further discussion with the teacher for example. 

However, i personally think that use of smartphones especially with the presence of internet connection in the classroom will easily draw the students' attention to anything else except the lesson. Thus it is necessary to use the modern technologies in a very limited amount and under direct supervision of the teacher. IT is not easy to do, however, the teacher must be perfectly prepared for the lesson, including strict and clear instructions for the students when using such technologies, the step-by-step lesson plan and available feedback options.  

And the most important thing is to limit the use of mobile phones or smartphones to adults, and try not to implement them in a classroom with teenagers or children. Firstly because these groups are more difficult to control or moderate during the class and its quite easy to loose their attention during the class. 

Digital Story-telling

Creating Constructivist Learning Environment for Japanese EFL Students: A Digital Story Program 1

Guofang Wan, Ohio University, USA; Rex Tanimoto, Osaka Gakuin University, Japan; Rosalyn Anstine Templeton, Marshall University, West Virginia, USA

This study assesses the effectiveness of FM Magic, a web-based multimedia English program that teaches EFL in a Japanese university. It uses the Constructivist Multimedia Learning Environment Survey (CMLES) and a Student Open-ended Questionnaire. Results indicate that FM Magic creates a positive learning environment for these EFL students. It is different from the teacher-centered and
grammar-translation approaches of language instruction. The study also suggests some ideas to refine FM Magic and further bring it into closer alignment with the constructivist approach for language instruction.

MacGregor (2002)
explores the use of a computer paint program and indicates that children showed
greater creative strength in visuals and created more detailed accompanying stories
than traditional paper pencil group, and made more revisions in both their visual and
written products.

Gaming in the classroom

After teaching nine university courses using the virtual world of Second Life as an educational classroom, the author of one of the articles Cynthia M. Calongne came to the conclusion that successful virtual class experiences require a blend of technology, tools, content, student ownership,
identity, engagement, course structure, risk management, mentoring, feedback, and a good orientation to using the tool. During one of her sessions, a student reflected: “If teens can do it, I can do it.” Student ownership grows as students visualize the class workspace as a place where they meet, attend class sessions, work on projects, play, and relax with friends. Fear and uncertainty are barriers to learning.

I totally agree, that students worry that they are already challenged to learn a host of new concepts while acquiring the desired course competencies. Adding the complexity of a new software tool increases their perception of risk, and they need to see the benefits and how the instructor will manage the risks. Students need to know that it is OK to make mistakes and to explore the boundaries and that they are required to be active participants. After all, students learn best from their mistakes and rarely forget them, so one rule is that mistakes are great opportunities for learning. New roles emerge as students move from campus and online discussion boards to the virtual world classroom. Education centers on discovery, yet students often have a limited view of their role in the classroom. Some may be taking a class because it is required rather than because they chose it. A few may feel disengaged and go into “cruise control,” expecting the instructor to entertain them. Shifting students from the passive roles of survivors and castaways to the active roles of researchers and explorers requires a change in their perception of themselves and their willingness to participate. However, there should be a well-structured course includes a syllabus that defines the course objectives, learning objectives, goals, measurements, a schedule of activities and assignments, and rubrics for assessment. Virtual world courses add information on how projects will be delivered, how class discussions will be evaluated, and how students can benefit from feedback to improve the quality of their work throughout the course. Exams or assessments of competency shift to projects and solutions to problems that are expressed in context, offering new ways to visualize, experience, and assess the solutions. Virtual world classrooms are no less real than other online class environments, and if used for synchronous class sessions, they may simulate a campus-based class meeting.
In order to use virtual worlds for teaching it is not necessary to have a teaching game to involve students it is enough to create one or use one of existing virtual games/realities to engage students from the classroom into an environment where they feel relaxed.

Guess who

Arus Shahinyan, Nellie Adamyan and Christine Verdyan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV03hKfwdbU&feature=youtu.be

Shooting a video

Frankly speaking this project was not fun for me at all. Being a journalist by my first degree, I am not a big fan of shooting videos. Usually that what the camera men do. And for me it was really hard to think of something worth to shoot in educational aim.

However, being in a group of my peers Nelli and Christine we came up with an idea of a video, that seams interesting and fun for us. It can also give a topic for discussion to the Ss after watching.
The video making itself was done by the great help of my sister who apparently had an experience and is fond of experimenting with the related technical stuff.

So I can adore some videos shoot by others, but for myself i am definitely not going to shoot videos for my classes. At least for now.

I

Wikis

Discussing the factors contributing to students’ involvement in an EFL collaborative wiki project* by
HSIAO-CHIEN LEE and PEI-LING WANG

"The current study aims to examine what factors facilitated or hindered student collaboration when a wiki environment was used to engage 103 Taiwanese students from two universities in an online picture book production project. Divided into 17 groups of four to six members, the students spent approximately one academic year forming online communities, learning to conduct peer editing, and collaboratively completing a final learning product, an online picture book. A variety of data, including the electronically archived versions of the wiki pages, students’ responses to retrospective surveys, and focused follow-up interviews were collected and analysed. The findings suggested that the nature of the learning tasks, students’ constant communication and appreciation of different opinions, the difficulties they encountered when communicating asynchronously, and students’ expectations toward English learning affected to what extent they were involved in the online collaboration.

I usually post the core information from the articles and other resources read/heard, to remember what is the main point of this concrete post.
Wikis seam to be interesting resource to be used in classroom. HOwever, in my current situation with my students i am not sure i will use them. This has several factors:

• My Ss are adults most of who are attending general English and communication classes as per their managers' request. Most of them are quite motivated, but their biggest problem are already fossilized errors which they have due to their age and their time availability. They usually prepare for the classes during the working hours, which has some limitations. As per the policy of our company they we are not allowed to use any blogging resources at workplace. Therefore all such webpages are filtered by the IT security and we don't have accesses to them. However, i am also considering use of technologies such wikis and blogging to force my Ss prepare at home, assign more time for study. 
• One of the disadvantages of using wikis in my current classroom is that most of my Ss have families, and i am more than sure that they won't dedicate their time to any projects assigned. And even if they split into groups, it is obvious that as in any group my Ss won't be an exception and only few of them will really get involved in the project. But i have to think of some options of engaging Ss into projects online and using wikis. 

However, I consider wikis as a efficient tool for learning. Although, it has some disadvantages as any of the technologies, but wikis give opportunity to work online, edit and correct each others post. The most important thing is just to lead the Ss in a proper way, give very specific and concrete assignments, explain Ss why you are assigning it, and what final result you expect from them, as well as coordinate their work in the best way and lead and encourage their active participation. Participation of each of them. 

Podcasting_Recipe Exchange Podcasts for ESL/EFL Jeff Mehring

The first new thing learnt about the podcast is the origin of the word. As an apple user of many years, it's a shame i didn't know that:)

On my defense, i must admit that i am not a user of podcasts, have never listened to any if not forced by friends of links sent directly:) Well, this article/book made the topic more interesting for me. It revealed number of activities that can be used for students during the class. Moreover, it also gives tips how to shape the class with the homework assignments respectively :) encouraging:)

As we all know, nowadays we don't really imagine our lives without internet, which could seam strange 10 years ago. But now we use it everywhere, on every device we get, and we try to get respective devices which will allow us to be online 24/7. This aspect could be and should be used for various needs of the society, different parts of the society in fact. In our case we more concentrate on educational needs. And as I see the possibility to create a podcast, then share it with the means of internet, upload and make if accessable and downloadable for millions encourages youth mostly to do so. Specifically, it can be used for example for homework assignments, in this way: there can be group of students who usually work together. one of them takes his turn and reads the homework readings, makes notes and then he could record it and share with the rest. I am sure although that there are people who do so, well, I think this is perfect. But the most important part is that podcasting gives both the teacher and students to make efforts but at the same time create something useful for their peers and enjoy the process itself.

So, I have to figure out the ways i am going to use this possibility during my classes. Podcasting seams to be great tool and simply cool:)

Podcast in teaching pronunciation_Lara Ducate and Lara Lomicka_The University of South Carolina

I believe, that pronunciation and accent are very important aspects in learning a foreign language. Although, some might argue, that accents may vary from nation to nation, which is true, as different languages force for example students learning English as a foreign language to keep their own language accent. However, correct pronunciation and a little accent are the evidnce of efforts made when learning the foreign language. This is of course my personal approach, however, in my class i try to teach my students to speak the most closely to native speakers. Some teachers confess that they don't have enough time to teach pronunciation. But it is obvious to me and some of the researches done state that, that foreign language speakers can be undervalued because of their strong accents or not correct pronunciation of various words. And even that there are differences for example in British and American English word stressing or pronunciation, there is some golden middle that we should teach our students.
With the development of technologies teaching pronunciation has become an easier task i believe. One of the ways of speaking skills improvement is podcasting and the below mentioned paper states that. Using the means of new technologies may not highly increase the level of speaking skills or proficiency, but it can at least encourage the students to work on that specific skill and motivate them to develop.

The current paper reports on an investigation of podcasting as a tool for improving pronunciation skills in intermediate language learning. The authors examined the effects of using podcasts to improve pronunciation in second language learning and how students’ attitudes changed toward pronunciation over the semester. A total of 22 students in intermediate German and French courses made five scripted pronunciation recordings throughout the semester. After the pronunciation recordings, students produced three extemporaneous podcasts. Students also completed a pre- and post-survey based on Elliott’s (1995) Pronunciation Attitude Inventory to assess their perspectives regarding pronunciation. Students’ pronunciation, extemporaneous recordings, and surveys were analyzed to explore changes over the semester. Data analysis revealed that students’ pronunciation did not significantly improve in regard to accentedness or comprehensibility, perhaps because the16-week long treatment was too short to foster significant improvement and there was no in-class pronunciation practice. The podcast project, however, was perceived positively by students, and they appreciated the feedback given for each scripted recording and enjoyed opportunities for creativity during extemporaneous podcasts. Future studies might seek to delineate more specific guidelines or examine how teacher involvement might be adapted to the use of podcasts as a companion to classroom instruction.

The study sought to investigate the following questions:
1. Did students’ comprehensibility and accentedness improve from their pre-test to post-test?
2. Was there a difference in comprehensibility and accentedness between the extemporaneous podcasts and the scripted podcasts?
3. Did students’ comprehensibility and accentedness improve with each task?
4. Did students have positive attitudes

Procedure
After making their own recordings, students were required to listen to classmates’ extemporaneous podcasts and post comments on the content. The extemporaneous podcasts were graded by the instructor of each class using a rubric that took into account content, coherency and organization, pronunciation and fluency, accuracy, creativity, and impact on the listener.

Data Analysis
For the purposes of analysis, students’ podcasts (8 per student) were downloaded and stored on a computer or CD. They were assigned random numbers and then judged by two raters6 in each language, for a total of four judges in the study: one NS of the target language and one NNS (the NNS tested at or above an advanced low proficiency level) for each language. Two judges for each language were used to account for any possible variation between raters.

IN my personal opinion this method of using new technologies is an interesting and interactive, also creative tool given to the students. Most of the people, students like to share their opinions and especially knowing that it is going to be uploaded to an open auditorium and not only their peers and lectures will have access to it may motivate them to creativity.

Some of the students could react not very positive to this initiative. However, luckily during the above mentioned research students were eager to work on the tasks given. I will for sure take using podcasts in my classroom and hopefully it will contribute to the best development of speaking skills of my students.

Using blogs and twitter in an EFL class

How would you use blogs and twitter in an EFL class?

To answer the question, I will repeat myself and mention that at the moment the best purpose for using blogging and twitter in my class would be writing reflective journals and below i will try to point out some specifics:

• Identify you learners and setting - The learners are teenagers or adults, proficiency level - upper the pre-intermediate
• Explain how you will introduce blogging and twitter to you learners - I would present the main purpose of reflective journal writing, which is reflection of whatever learnt and discussed during the class, revision of the material covered, the learners attitude and perspective towards the material, their general impression from each class. 
• Explain a specific blogging and twitter assignment/task - Learners are asked to reflect as stated in the previous bullet point, as well as presented the general evaluation method
• Explain whether and how you will evaluate them - full and detailed evaluation criteria will be presented to the class: 1. comprehension of the covered material; 2. challenges during the class and during completing homework assignment; 3. accuracy in using terminology
• Predict challenges and propose solution - the main challenge may happen in the beginning, if some of the learners are not yet familiar with using the blogs, this is a matter of experience. the best solution would be to conduct one or two classes in the computer lab and guide the learners when starting using blogs. 

Blogging and Microblogging

Whether or not you are ready to implement blogging and/or microblogging in your own teaching. 

To answer to the posted question I have read the following research papers: 

Blog writing integration for academic
language learning purposes: towards an
assessment framework
Liam Murray, Tríona Hourigan & Catherine Jeanneau
University of Limerick (Ireland)

liam.murray@ul.ie, triona.hourigan@ul.ie, catherine.jeanneau@ul.ie

and 

Microblogging for Language Learning: Using Twitter to
Train Communicative and Cultural Competence
Kerstin Borau1, Carsten Ullrich2, Jinjin Feng1, and Ruimin Shen2
1 Distance Education College of Shanghai Jiao Tong University,
3/F No. 500 Jiangsu Road, Shanghai 20050, China
2 Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 1954 Hua Shan Road, 200030 Shanghai, China


IN the first research project is discussed how during the last years for learning purposes students were required to write and ‘complete’ their academic blog as it represents one compulsory element –with due weighting, given its importance– of a language module assessment. This compulsory blog writing task has raised a number of pedagogical questions which are explored in this study, such as: effective integration, assessing and rewarding student creative expression within the blog medium, self-reflection as a language learner and ultimately the role and value of academic blog writing in language
acquisition. Such resources as blogs represent the current proliferation of generic tools onto the
market which, if exploited appropriately, may provide learners with additional aids which can be integrated into their studies.The main challenge for teachers lies in identifying the L2 potential of these tools in order to create a meaningful context for their appropriation within the language learning
classroom. For a language learner examining such a generic tool, the difficulty in creating the necessary order and structure required for classroom exploitation is one of the main challenges associated with this approach.The most important factor for consideration here involves the establishment of an effective teaching approach which outlines the practitioner’s specific aims
and objectives. This should also present an appropriate assessment framework in relation to the task which is being set. Thus, the paper shall discuss specifically the question of outlining a viable pedagogical framework which proposes a set of guidelines for the assessment of L2 academic blogs.

The current wave of assessment (1986 to present) is by and large associated with portfolio-based work (Little, 2002;Hirvela & Sweetland, 2005). Indeed, this present trend is regarded as helpful for making learners more accountable for their own work (Herter, 1991) and as such, reveals a more detailed account of learner development and progression. Hence, writing assessment can be viewed in terms of measuring reliability and validity, with both concepts now dominating the current approach (Huot, 1996). In fact, this question will be discussed more specifically later in this section when we examine the impact of the process and post-process approaches to academic writing.

To summariz its worth to mention that the establishment of a viable blog integration framework is dependent on a number of different issues. Firstly, in terms of assessing academic writing, the teacher should be aware of the following:

•Issues of validity and accountability in evaluating the written
content.
•Their personal objectives and aims in terms of written skill
development.
•The specific aspect of writing to be targeted (for example, discourse
specific, self-expression, grammatical testing).
•The context of the task (for example single-authored (expressivist)
or collaborative approaches (socio-cognitivist)).

Accept from the above mentioned it is also important to consider a number of issues relevant to the integration of this generic writing tool which is being adapted for specific CALL purposes. These may include:

•Learning environment (classroom-based or self-study).
•Learner profiles (covering their previous exposure and experience to more general ICT use in their studies and in their online social networking, and of course their current language attainment levels).
•Creation of a relevant, meaningful and authentic context, including 
the justification for using the tool in question.

In the context of th research and assessment, the blog represents the academic writing process method in which the student composes in an admittedly enforced medium of self-expression and analysis. The blog writing also represents aspects of a post-process method with opportunities to rationalise and reflect upon the “expressions of the self”. The formal academic essay also corresponds to the post-process approach, offering to the teacher an academically-valid assessment framework for providing
effective feedback; and to the student an academically-endorsed acknowledgement of the quality of their self-analysis and possible discovery of their most effective LL strategies. From our data we have found that most students understood the potential of blogs as a reflexive tool on LL and the benefits thereof. Yet, some remained who did not. This may require an improved integration technique on our part. The main task for researchers interested in this LL approach will be to improve upon the pedagogical and writing processes involved in turning future “masterpiece[s] of scattered thought and random concepts” into better quality academic essays.


The next research analyzes the usefulness of microblogging in second language learning using the example of the social network Twitter. Most learners of English do not require even more passive input in form of texts, lectures or videos, etc. This input is readily available in numerous forms on the Internet.
What learners of English need is the chance to actively produce language and the chance to use English as tool of communication. This calls for instructional methods and tools promoting ‘active’ learning that present opportunities for students to express themselves and interact in the target language. In this paper we describe how we used Twitter with students of English at the Distant Col-
lege of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. We analyze the students’ messages and show how the usage of Twitter trained communicative and cultural competence.

Twitter was selected as a research experiment tool because it provides the Chinese students the opportunity to practice the target language as well as their communicative and cultural competence.

According to the authors of the second research paper, Twitter seems to be a perfect tool to support learning English, especially in blended classrooms, for the following reasons. First, Twitter is easily accessibly from almost everywhere, so the students can practice at any time by sending and receiving messages either on the computer or the mobile phone. They can also decide how much time they spend reading and writing these messages. This is an essential feature for busy students. Second, Twitter is suitable for any level of English because in writing the messages, the students can chose a topic and grammatical structure fitting their level. Third, the use of Twitter as an online learning community can help to integrate students in the community who could not attend classroom.

The suitability of Twitter for language learning was often postulated, but to the knowledge of the authors until now never investigated in detail. The second work explores Twitter as a tool for active learning in the EFL classroom and provides the first detailed analysis of how Twitter was used to learn specific aspects of language. The main finding is that it is suitable to train communicative and culture competence anytime anywhere with out face-to-face interaction. In a broader scope, this work contributes to the research on using Web 2.0 services and tools for learning, so called e-learning 2.0. We show that the social, collaborative principles of Web 2.0 are reflected in its usage by learners, if used in the appropriate way. In this case, students clearly like using the service; one student even asked to continue to use Twitter after the project: “Would you please

do not close the twitter online? It offers us a free space to put ourself in English.”

To finally answer the question, I would again state, that indeed, I would like to use blogging and microblogging as teaching methodology in line with other methods. "In any case, microblogging might seam and from my point of view is a little more narrow type of blogging, however, such tools as Twitter give the students room for communication, using the language for active interaction with the peers and the instructor. I might not be using Twitter, but maybe for the reflective journals which are more of my interest, LiveJournal would be the best choice. Otherwise, I will have to think of creating something new alike Moodle. 

RSS/useful and important

I remember the times when I was working for one of the most developed and modern online news resources in Armenia: A1+ TV Company. The webpage, which I had honour to be an editor for, was and is one of the fast developing sources for our community. However, 6 years ago, in spite of all my experience of activities in forums, chats and internet overall, I have pretty narrow understanding of how important can RSS feeds be for news. As my first education background is Journalism, and as my very loyal and strict teacher in profession, my producer taught me how to use the RSS. Although, I didn't really understand the importance of those. ANyway, I would subscribe for many webpages and would rarely read the information I received. Just like it is mentioned in the article by Will Richardson on RSS (Will Richardson, www.weblogg-ed.com
Ver. 1.5, Updated 3/29/05) I would continuously receive various non-useful information on my email which would draw my attention from the useful RSS feeds I received.
It is even more inspiring when thanks to this article i now know more about the use of RSS feeds and how to get them all together in one place. It is indeed useful in our profession as teachers to get the fresh ideas in one place and don't have to google them forever in the web.
It is also obvious that most of the nowadays information resources such as webpages of various newspapers, news agencies, etc, use the options of RSS and promote them for the readers. Almost all of them offer to subscribe to the most recent info they provide, not even by going to their webpages.
I consider this a real improvement of the information promotion in Armenia which is one step to development.
In the terms of education, I believe that most of the educational resources for teaching lecturers also give this opportunity which makes our lives as teacher easier and full of joy when we get all we need quick and fast. moreover, RSS gives the teachers who are using alternative way of teaching to share and associate with their students by not checking each of their weblogs but simply receiving RSS feeds on their newly posts and updates, which first of all saves the teachers time.

Thank you RSS:)
P. S. To those who would be interested: Read the article:

Weblogging in the classroom

"Am I ready to introduce blogging to my own EFL class? If no, why? If yes, what exactly would I like to do with it in my class, in terms of assignments, technology access, assessment, parental involvement, if any, etc?

I started my journey in the Internet back 11 years ago in 2001 in one of the popular forums in Armenia. Although there were people not only from Armenia but also from abroad. The forum gave all of us an opportunity to share our experiences and ideas freely and as Will Richardson states, there were people who actually were interested and were applying to our post. I personally was very much surprised as the author of this article when I received my first response to my post. 
Nowadays we are already familiar with blogs, which give us more interaction and room for online discussions. Blogs actually give as an opportunity to follow the developments in any area, getting hot "news" on its top with the recent developments by the author and the readers. Blogging is a great new start for networking, sharing news and ideas including education. 
We as Language teachers have much more opportunities to learn about the new methodologies of our colleagues from abroad or close ones. 
I will be honest and confess that I don't really like reading blogs, but I love keeping them.However, i must admit that reading blogs of let me say colleagues with bigger experience gives me thought, which I might not have myself, links i could have missed on important and interactive activities I might use during teaching. 
Blogs are also good in the terms of the opportunity of sharing other bloggers links, which may have been missed out, or photos, papers, etc. And the best things is that the use of the blogs is much easier nowadays that back 12 years ago the personal webpages were. We don'\t need any specific knowledge to run them. Which means that even older generation can make use of blogs, in their classrooms, which can help them not only in sharing information, but also giving an enormous amount of information without any big effort. 
According to Will Richardson, a big part of our potential students however use the blogs not for learning purposes but for journaling. It's worth to mention that one third of newly opened blogs are not being updated for months. Although, blogging ensure users to think in words, critical thinking, analytic thinking, promote creative, intuitive and associative thinking, as well as promote analogical thinking and increase access and exposure of quality information (according to Eide Neurol-earning blog, 2005).
However, to answer the stated questions I would say yes, I am ready to introduce blogs in my classroom. Moreover, I am aiming to use blogging and encourage my students to use blog writing during my internship project. First of all, It will be easier to follow the impressions, wishes and confessions of my students if they decide to be honest enough to share that information. Secondly, this is a very fast and easy way to share and exchange information with my students. Thirdly, this may be much easier for students to express their real understanding and comprehension of the content of the course. And finally, to learn about their concenrs. 
Reflection journals have been the most effective tool for my study during my year at AUA. And I am happy to know about this tool. I will try to involve my students into writing reflection journals online and sharing them with me and their peers if they would like to do so. I believe that sometimes it is easier for some people to express their feelings, as well as attitude and understanding of the covered material through written sources, and not face to face with their teacher. And this may be especially helpful in my case when teaching to my colleagues at my company. I am very proud that my company has expressed this wish to give me opportunity to gain knowledge and experience through teaching inside the company, which will develop not only my professional skills as a teacher, but also an HR professional for the best prosperity within the company.