Events http://conf.posterous.com Conferences, Seminars, Webinars on education, linguistics, language learning/teaching, e-learning, m-learning posterous.com Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:34:00 -0700 JALT2011| 37th Annual International Conference on Language Teaching and Learning & Educational Materials Exhibition 18 – 21 November, 2011, National Olympics Memorial Center, Yoyogi, Tokyo. http://conf.posterous.com/jalt2011-37th-annual-international-conference http://conf.posterous.com/jalt2011-37th-annual-international-conference
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Jalt CALL Forum at JALT 2011

The forum is titled, "Students utilize technology every day. . .Do your classes?" We will hope to bring the concept of CALL to a wider audience by featuring speakers who understand that students' lives are infused with technology and have decided to leverage that fact to improve their teaching.

TIME: Saturday Nov. 19, 12:40 - 1:40 pm.

PLACE: Main Hall

 

☆Our presentation

Title: Learning and growing with blogs in EFL contexts

Presentation category: Paper Presentation (Short Paper)

Summary (75)
Integrating web-based resources for communication in EFL classes helps provide a communicative environment where students can use English to interact with people beyond the classroom walls. This paper will discuss how language teachers can overcome challenges of students with limited computer experience and lack of motivation for learning by integrating a class blog with Web 2.0 tools (such as Twitter) to promote collaborative activities between classes in Japan and those overseas.

Abstract (150-250)
If teaching, learning, and growing are indeed a single, social process (Pederson, 2011), then integrating web-based resources for communication in EFL classes makes sense. These tools provide a communicative environment where students can use English to interact with people beyond the classroom walls. However, the potential benefits may not be reaped unless due consideration is given to students with limited computer experience (vis-à-vis cellphones), and those with negative feelings toward using or learning English. This paper will discuss how language teachers can overcome these challenges by utilizing a class blog for maximizing the advantages of technology integration. Keys to effective implementation of online activities include ease of accessibility and use, meaningful links between in- and out-of class activities, and face-to-face or online activities for focus-on-form. Two implementations of a class blog will be examined to compare different blogging platforms (Blogger vs. Posterous) and classroom settings (computer lab vs. regular classroom). The presenters will also show how Web 2.0 tools (such as Twitter) were used in combination with a class blog to further promote collaborative activities between classes in Japan and those overseas.

Reference:
Pederson, S. (2011). Scattered leaves. JALT 2011- 37th Annual International Conference on Language Teaching and Learning & Educational Materials. Retrieved from http://jalt.org/conference

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Sun, 12 Jun 2011 15:00:00 -0700 JALT CALL 2011, June 3 - 5 at Kurume University http://conf.posterous.com/jalt-call-2011 http://conf.posterous.com/jalt-call-2011
Jaltcall2011
Check out this website I found at jaltcall.org

The 2011 JALT CALL SIG Conference will be held on June 3 - 5 at Kurume University, Mii Campus, in Fukuoka.

The theme will be Building Learning Environments

Proposal submission : February 15

 

Proposal Abstract 

(Yamauchi & Uchida) 

Overcoming Barriers to Student Engagement in Using English Online

Japanese university students not majoring in English have few opportunities to use English outside of the classroom. In this study, online learning environments have been used to compensate for this disadvantage of EFL contexts. The authors chose Moodle forums, which provided a secure platform for students to experiment with online interactive English activities, such as discussions, sharing work, and posting comments. Also, one of the authors connected one of the classes to the Moodle network, which allowed students to roam into associated classes. These scenarios will be described in more detail in the presentation.

 

Before commencing our pilot studies, it was anticipated from a literature review and previous university classroom observations (Yamauchi 2009; Stout 2010; Kikuchi & Otsuka 2008; Kiyota 2008; and Maeda 2009) that most students had limited computer experience (vis-à-vis cellphones), some had negative feelings about learning or using English, some were reluctant to engage in dialogue, and classrooms provided limited access to ICT. These observed attributes were thought to inhibit participation in online activities outside of the classroom.


This presentation summarizes three case studies using Moodle for out-of-class activities, and presents student performance data and feedback to discuss the relationship between the above limitations and the motivation of students to participate. In brief, features of learning technology, characteristics of instructional settings, appropriateness of student skill sets, attitudes toward language, and dispositions toward dialogic interaction may be implicated in student behavior. Based on these findings, suggestions will be made to overcome the above limitations and increase student engagement.  (249)

 

(Posted on January 29, 2011)

 

Presentation Slides

20110605_kurume_JALTCALL_Yamauchi_Uchida.pdf Download this file

(Updated on June 13, 2011)

 

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Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:16:00 -0800 Moodle Moot Japan 2011 - 2月22日~23日 http://conf.posterous.com/moodle-moot-japan-2011 http://conf.posterous.com/moodle-moot-japan-2011
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via moodlejapan.org
第3回 Moodleの教育者と開発者による研修会
2011年 2月22日(09:30-17:30)~23日(09:00-16:00)
高知工科大学
発表:英語を「使いながら学ぶ」ためのForum活用 
非英語専攻の日本人大学生の多くは授業外で英語を使う機会をほとんどもたない。週1回、授業で英語を勉強するだけでは、英語力向上だけでなく、英語を「伝達手段」として認識することも難しい。この状況を改善するために、MoodleのForum を含めオンラインでの英語使用機会の提供は非常に有望である。また、発表で取り上げるように、Forum の利用により、間違いを恐れて中間言語使用をためらう学生たちに、個々の間違いを訂正することなくFocus on Form を促すフィードバックが容易になる。
Forum 中心のMoodleコースの作成自体は容易であるが、普通教室での授業における課外活動にForumを利用する場合には、Moodle利用法の周知とForum活動の設計の面などで工夫が必要である。本発表では、これらの工夫の実践例として、Forum を利用した英語活動を充実させるためのスキル(オンライン辞書・ハイパーリンク・画像などの利用も含む)の段階的な導入、授業と連携させたForum活動例(授業前の協同予習・授業後の発展学習)、Moodle Networkを利用した学校間交流プロジェクトについて報告する。
Moodle Forums for helping students learn English by using it
Many non-English majors in Japanese universities have few opportunities to use English outside of the classroom. It is difficult for those who only study English once a week in class to improve their English, or even to recognize it as a means of communication. To make up for this disadvantage in the EFL environment, it can be quite helpful to provide opportunities to use English online, including discussions using Moodle forums. Using discussion forums also allows the teacher to easily give focus-on-form oriented feedback without correcting every error they make.
Although it's fairly easy to set up a Moodle course to mainly provide forum activities, if the F2F class meets in a traditional classroom and not all students regularly use a computer at home, some considerations are necessary regarding how to familiarize students with using Moodle and how to design forum activities. This presentation reports some of the author’s attempts to facilitate and encourage students to use Moodle forums outside of the class, including a step-by-step introduction to skills that will help them communicate in English online, forum activities directly related to in-class activities, and an intercollege project using Moodle Network.

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Thu, 27 Jan 2011 22:43:00 -0800 Eurocall 2011, Nottingham, England 31st August - 3rd September http://conf.posterous.com/eurocall-2011 http://conf.posterous.com/eurocall-2011
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(Invited to take part in a joint presentation on an Interschool project using Moodle Network.) 

Proposal Abstract

Interschool Collaborative Activities Using a Customized Moodle Network

Harashima, Kanda, Sato & Yamauchi 

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, recently wrote concerning thriving social-networking services, “Each site is a silo, walled off from the others,” (2010, p.2) and expressed his concerns about the closed nature of online community sites. This concern very much applies to the communities developed inside Learning Management Systems (LMSs). The inhabitants at one LMS site hardly ever communicate or collaborate with those living in other LMS sites, because each LMS world is closed and the service is strictly limited to its registered users. We have thought it regrettable, and hoped for some ways to allow users of different LMSs, both teachers and students, to share ideas, materials, quizzes, resources, and tasks among themselves.

Moodle is a very popular open-source LMS. With version 1.8 Moodle has incorporated a networking function through which different instances of Moodle can be connected with each other and the students at each Moodle site can move to other Moodle sites without signing off. Although this Moodle Networking function, or M-net, provides a very promising way for teachers to share resources and for students to communicate and collaborate with remote partners, little has been studied concerning the practical merit of using M-net for collaborative learning.

The authors set out to conduct an experiment on setting up M-net between servers at different locations in 2009. After establishing and testing the M-net, we began to engage our students in a number of interschool collaborative activities.

The first semester we implemented three activities: Exchange Forum, where students from three different schools gathered on M-net and exchanged opinions on current issues; TOEIC Reading Quizzes, where students remotely accessed and solved TOEIC-style quizzes; and Collaborative Database, where students from remote Moodle sites put their efforts together and created a database of the world’s most influential people.

After the semester, we realized upon reflection that each remote user was not easily identified as to which school/Moodle site he or she represented. This led us to have the M-net customized by a programmer so that each remote user could get color coding, which enabled users to visually distinguish each remote user according to school or site.

With this modification we introduced Interschool Discussion in the second semester using M-net, where students engaged in debate-like structured discussions on some controversial social issues. 124 students from four different universities exchanged heated discussions over M-net, being fully aware who was coming from which Moodle site this time. Toward the end of the activity we conducted a questionnaire. The results revealed some interesting insights into the differences between face-to-face and online discussion types, students’ sentiment toward remote discussion partners, the effectiveness of M-net and its customization, and the significance of being connected to learners whom they would never see in real life. In this presentation we will report our analyses and findings concerning the data we collected.

Works Cited

Berners-Lee, T. (2010). Long live the Web: A call for continued open standards and neutrality. Scientific American. Online. Retrieved on Feb. 3, 2011 from http:// www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=long-live-the-web

Presentation Slides (PDF)
Eurocall2011final-2.pdf Download this file

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Wed, 05 Jan 2011 19:40:00 -0800 Flat Classroom Conference is in Beijing, February 25-27, 2011. http://conf.posterous.com/flat-classroom-conference-home http://conf.posterous.com/flat-classroom-conference-home
Flatclassroom2011

I sure want to join this conference! Could I after visiting Kochi 22-23? 

Related post by Vicki Davis

 

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