Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend, but the schedule looks chock full of a variety of stimulating workshops and presentations by educators from all over Asia and beyond.  If you want to save some money by pre-registering, the deadline is today (October 6th), so register now.

I’ve already used this in one of my EFL classes this week: I embedded a popular song into our Moodle course, did a quick search for the lyrics online and then used them to create an on-the-fly cloze exercise for the students to complete. It took a grand total of 15 minutes to do and was ready to go when the bell rang. This is a major improvement for educators looking to incorporate music into their curriculum, since songs no longer need to be hunted down and purchased, but rather borrowed for convenient use. It opens up a huge variety of music previously out of range on short notice.

So in the spirit of sharing, have a listen to one my favorite groups ever, Thievery Corporation, based out of Washington D.C. And hey, if you like their music, buy it.

Japan’s second symposium on CALL, Web 2.0 technologies, and wireless learning environments is set to take place at the Nagoya University of Commerce and Business on March 29th. Entitled Wireless Ready: Interactivity, Collaboration, and Feedback in Language Learning Technologies, the conference will simultaneously be held virtually at Gavin Dudeney’s Edunation in Second Life. Keynote speakers include Russell Stannard, John Collick of Promethean, and Michael Coghlan, who also happens to be a Webhead. And my boss, Tom Robb, will be on a panel discussion related to Japanese student preferences when it comes to vocab study on cell phones and computers - interesting stuff.

I enjoyed last year’s event: good crowd, nice atmosphere, lots to discuss. The lineup of presentations and panels looks just as intriguing this year, particularly of interest to me are the ones on mobile technologies and interactive whiteboards. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make the trip over to Nagoya due to finances, but I’ll certainly be firing up my avatar and checking out a few of the talks in Second Life. Registration is now open for the event in SL, but it’s limited to 50 participants, so if you want to attend, it might be better to register soon.

Research has shown that of the approximately 375,000 words in the English language, knowing the most common 2,000 of them will provide a learner with 80% coverage of words needed for basic communication, while knowing the most common 5,000 is necessary for reading general English without a dictionary. One problem with many language programs is that they teach too many words outside of the most frequent. Lexxica hones in on the words learners are missing from this essential corpus and trains students systematically to reach those magic levels.

What interests me most about Lexxica is that teachers can form their own groups of students and track their progress over time. Furthermore, the application is formatted to work with mobile technology, so students without desktops or laptops can participate - I saw it work nicely on the iPod touch, too. I believe Lexxica would make an ideal vocab building component for any EFL/ESL program. And it’s free!

Here’s the good part: teachers can create groups of their students and track student progress throughout the semester, allowing iKnow to become an integral part of the curriculum.

And here’s the best part: iKnow is accessible via mobile phones, so users can study on the go, and teachers don’t need to have access to a computer lab, meaning that iKnow can be incorporated into the activities of a normal face-to-face classroom.

According to its creators, iKnow has gained about 10,000 registered members since its September 2007 launch.  If you teach in Japan, this is definitely an application you want to check out.

…the global language elearning marketplace, where teachers and students from all over the world myngle, understand each other better and have fun – as they learn new languages and cultures” Myngle offers a solution by providing both students and teachers in different locations with a complete online language instruction platform, containing all resources needed for synchronous e-learning.

So in other words, Myngle plays matchmaker in the midst of a free market exchange of language teaching services and products. Synchronous lessons are carried out via Skype and feedback mechanisms are structured into the site, including public ratings for teachers, freely available on their profiles. Institutions can also get a piece of the action by establishing a presence on Myngle and promoting their own teachers and educational products.

I’ve already seen instances of other sites attempting a similar model, such as xLingo and Osnavi - or even individuals starting up their own marketing sites, like A.J. Hoge and Steve Kaufmann - so I’m curious to see how Myngle will fare. They’re looking for beta testers at the moment.

Campbell AP (2003) Foreign Language Exchange in a Virtual World: an Intercultural Task-based Learning Event, submitted as partial documentation for an M.Ed. in e-Learning at the University of Sheffield, U.K.

Indeed, professor Mike Levy addressed this very issue in his keynote, warning that as the CALL field continues to broaden, it risks losing depth unless researchers and practitioners take a longer term view of their work and make a stronger effort to collaborate with one another on projects of a similar nature. He described our individualistic tendency to ride the latest wave of cutting edge technology while ignoring older technologies, some of which may work best given the particular context in which they could be applied. One of his purposes was to remind CALL practitioners to align the goals of language learning with the strengths of each technology. New or old isn’t as important was what actually works.

Interesting, for me anyway, was Levy’s emphasis on integrating technologies students are already using in their personal lives with pedagogy and curriculum design. In this way, what happens in the classroom can become more relevant and meaningful to learners, thus creating a smoother transition between school and life outside. The blend of such technology and pedagogy will, of course, be different according to each particular learning environment, culture, and society. Here in Japan for example, mobile technology is ubiquitous - every student carries the most advanced cell phones in the world in their pockets - yet very few teachers have found ways to integrate their use in classroom settings. Unfortunately, I missed the plenary from professor Yasunari Harada, which may have shed some light on empowering students through use of technology in the classroom.

Another salient feature of the conference for me was the sharp increase in the number of presentations on Web 2.0 technologies compared to the previous two JALTCALL conferences. Whether or not this actually reflects a shift in educator understanding of the liberative potential these technologies have to offer remains to be seen, but what is more likely, in my opinion, is the case Levy described: people are riding the latest wave of hype in their educational research and practice. And surfing is fun, that’s why we do it! Experimenting with new technology is exciting, especially if we think it’s going to motivate and help our students to learn the languages we are teaching. So, unless we take a more balanced approached as a community of practice, greater depth to our understanding of how to use particular technologies will continue to elude us. Two years from now, we will have probably seen a steadily declining interest in blogs and podcasts, and an increase in focus on mobile and 3D web technologies, at least here in Japan; in other words, continued disintegration.

A party was thrown Saturday evening at a cafe on the Waseda campus, not far from the clock tower and statue of Waseda founder, Okuma Shigenobu. Conference participants mingled on a patio under a full moon while light food and drinks were served. In addition to catching up with some old friends, I also met some fellows from Kanazawa doing work multimedia Webpublishing work with design students at KIDI. They recently started a site WPMU-based site, callled Bloxi, for educators in Japan interested in doing similar such projects with their students. As the night wore on, the beer kept flowing, and then the real disintegration started. As we were ushered out of the cafe, a group of male Waseda students were having quite a rowdy pow wow of their own. Let’s just say the big bright disk in the sky wasn’t the only full moon we saw that evening.

Conference organizer, Michael Thomas, kicked off the event with an introduction on the Web 2.0 that included a showing of Graham Stanley’s video presentation on the topic. Michael also added that much of the discussion on the Web 2.0 in language learning has mostly been descriptive and relatively uncritical, and he called for more critical discourse on the subject.

Steve McCarty gave the opening keynote, which centered mostly on giving an overview of current Web 2.0 tools and practices in second and foreign language learning. Interestingly, he simultaneously gave the presentation in Second Life, where Gavin Dudeney’s avatar was present along with a few others. I thought this was an excellent way to demonstrate firsthand what one possible future of online learning might look like.

Next came an engaging, well delivered presentation from Chris Houser on the use of mobile phones in language education. He argued that CALL rooms will eventually be replaced with mobile technology, especially as phones evolve into much more powerful tools, resulting in a more integrated, normalized version of CALL. Chris also shared previous research indicating that Japanese learners preferred using mobile phones over computers and pen/paper for sending and receiving messages, for the phones provided the most access and comfort. Along the way, he described several ways of using mobile phones in the classroom, introducing applications created specifically for the cell phone, such as EduCALL, Vidioms, and Poodle (like Moodle for phones).

I really appreciated the effort Chris put into preparing for the talk, especially at such short notice, since Michael Coghlan had to back out at the last minute. I wonder if Chris has taken any tips from Garr Reynolds, for I noticed many similarities between his presentation style and what Reynolds advocates on his website: the speaker moves around, tells stories, engages the audience; while the slides are simple, containing few words, mostly pictures and diagrams to accompany the talk. Very well done Chris!

The third and final keynote was from Michael Vallance, who spoke about informed use of learning technologies, drawing heavily upon his research and experience from many years of teaching in Singapore. For me, the most interesting part of his talk was his explanation of the integral relationship between educational research, practice, and policy and how all three aspects affect one another. This provided a helpful framework for discussing the transformative impact of learning technologies on our academic institutions. He concluded by describing a project called, iPod therefore iWrite, that put iWriter to use, a program similar to a blog client for iPods, something Mogopop also seems to do.

From there I listened to two short but informative talks by ESL podcasters, Robert Chartrand and Bill Pellowe of ESLPodcast, and Robert Diem and Roberto Rabbini of The Bob and Rob Show. I found their methodological descriptions on podcasting of particular interest, as I’ve been experimenting with similar techniques at English Conversations. It will be interesting to see how the work of these ESL podcasters evolves. And if they ever decide to join forces, we might end up with the Bob, Rob, Rob and Bill show!

The second set of panel speakers I saw included a talk on mobile learning in Taiwan from Teresa Chen, an introduction to the pedagogical applications of using digital video clips by David Ockert, and a presentation on using weblogs for intercultural exchanges by Nathaniel Carney. I found the latter most relevant to my own work with weblogs in the language classroom, and was glad to see Nathaniel take a critical approach to his research into the blogging process. One of his main points was that weblogs are good for discovering other perspectives on a given topic or issue, but that they weren’t so effective for enabling sustained interaction. In the context of a language exchange between two or more predetermined groups of students, I would agree with his assessment. Although in that case, I would have used a threaded discussion list for the exchange, not weblogs. I also agreed with Nathaniel that the use of weblogs should be supplemented with other forms of technologically mediated interaction, such as audio, video, or photo sharing.

Finally, the day ended with a Q&A session with the three keynote speakers. The salient point for me was that Web 2.0 technologies do not necessarily imply 2.0 mindsets, and the institutional “fit” here in Japan isn’t all that great. So clearly there needs to be more action research from teachers striving to integrate these potentially transformative and liberating technologies, and a corresponding attempt to educate other teachers, not only in the uses of Web 2.0 tools, but perhaps more importantly Web 2.0 mindsets.

Michael Thomas did such a great job organizing the event that I hope he gets involved in holding a follow up conference in 2008. If so, I’d like to see slightly less emphasis on podcasting on more on the use of social networking applications, which I think have far more interactive potential than the broadcasting of audio files. In the meantime, check out his call for chapters in the Handbook of Research on Language Acquisition Technologies: Web 2.0 Transformation of Learning.

Update: Michael informs me that there were exactly 68 conference attendees.

Now is the time to abolish homework, and let children, families and communities use that time to prepare for a future where creativity and flexibility will be essential.

A must-read post from Harold Jarche points out the ills of homework and argues that we should give our children back their personal time. As a father, I’m thinking a lot about this issue and have pondered setting up - or getting plugged into - a homeschooling/free schooling network here in Kansai. There are so many learning opportunities available in the community and on the internet that school ends up just getting in the way.

Update (3/23): Michael Coghlan has been replaced as a keynote speaker with Chris Houser.

For the purposes of my language learners, it would be nice if Explode automatically matched profiles of different users that shared many tags in common. At present, users have to manually add ‘friends’ after browsing tags and profiles; fine if there are 100 users throughout the system, but not so useful if there are tens of thousands. Having trouble finding the right friend was something my learners struggled with when we were using Livejournal a few years ago, as it offered no matching system. Try skimming through 7,573 individual profiles of people interested in ‘music’…

Anyway, I’d thought I’d play around with Explode for a while and see how it develops.

Via Bee Dieu.

A rich discussion on this topic has arisen out of the EVO 2007 Blogging for Beginners workshop.  Check it out.

This article outlines some helpful tips for using Skype. I particularly like the ability to remotely access my Mac from my cell phone to initiate calls - it apparently works in conjunction with Soonr. That should save a bit of cash each month if it works.

Imagine that instead of tagging conferences, courses could be broken down and tagged. Instead of searching for who is writing about a certain conference, students could search for lessons on certain topics and for when they are being presented. They could then login to that class, participate in the discussions and learn what they need to.

He goes on to say:

A system like this would allow students the freedom to assemble the pieces of their courses from a number of places from the best teachers possible, and allow them to move through the pieces as they need them.

With the wealth of online courses available on a wide range of topics, why not remove some of the constraints on time and content to give learners greater access to resources and experiences of their choosing? Of course, there are some practical issues to contend with, particularly economic ones, but the technology makes it possible for the whole concept of ‘course’ to evolve into a more fluid entity congruent with the messy and unpredictable process of learning itself.

When it comes to Webpublishing, it’s easy to fall into the habit of writing for an audience, which can lead to sensationalism if carried to an extreme. We should instead be striving to cultivate community in our online interactions, which invovles examining our inner orientation and, if necessary, changing our habits of posting content, away from a ‘presenting’ mentality toward one whose intent is to open discussions and make meaningful connections. This same practice can be carried over into our physical lives as well, balancing our self-centered tendencies with a community orientation.

So when it comes to devloping digital literacy, this audience vs. community disctinction should be emphasized and continuously revisited in reflective activities. As Fisher reminds us, we should not be educating our youth to be globally competitive, but rather globally cooperative.

Originally uploaded by doc18.

2007 is the year of the fire pig. Fire is the element of passion, adventure, and restless energy. People born in the year of the pig are said to have honest, trustworthy, and straightforward characters. May this New Year inspire us to make bold, dynamic changes grounded in honesty and inner strength.