Favorite night spots

Phillip and I will be bringing you the 411 on our favorite nightspots in San Antonio. Check it here for the hottest spots.

"Tell Me More" Software Evaluation

Title of Software: Tell Me More

Producer: Auralog: Innovation for language learning

Target students (e.g., age or grade-level of students):

Proficiency level (e.g., beginning, intermediate, advanced):

Description: Designed for language learners of ESL, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese
The software has two interfaces. The first is self-study where student chooses what he/she wants to learn. Various links allow students to navigate through the program at their own pace. Many language drills and pronunciation drills are available. The second interface consists of a teacher operated mode where the teacher controls the course of study for the language learner. Various windows helps teacher give or deny access to students at various program levels.

Language skills targeted: Beginner to Advanced Speaker

Evaluation:
Perhaps the programs strengths is that it is easy to use. There are plenty of help buttons that allow users to navigate easily through the program. Graphics have good resolution, and it is easy to make out visuals. In the phonetic area, a computer graphic demonstrates how the sound is made. In addition the sound bite repeats itself until you make it stop. Weaknesses include comprehensibility of the spoken language. There is no way to clarify or make the sound better.

I would not use this program as the soul source for teaching English language learners, but I would use it as a station in order to supplement what is being taught in class. If the district paid for it, I’d be willing to use it in the classroom. Because of the language drills and repetitiveness of the program, I would have to say that program uses the audiolingual method. Although the software tries to be interactive, students learn by repetition.

#6 Inquiry & Problem Solving

Eggbert’s chapter on Inquiry and Problem Solving mentions the use of a KWL chart as a solution to both inquiry and problem solving. In my class the chart is modified thanks to a training on Expository Text I attending. Instead of writing down what students know, we write down what they think they know about any topic. After we begin reading students go back to see if any of their statements was present in their reading. If it was, students place a plus sign next to their thoughts. If what the student thought about a topic turned out to be erred, then they write a minus sign next to it. If the thoughts addressed not addressed at all by the reading, students then circle it. In the second column students write in new information such as important and interesting facts about the topic. In the last column students write what they still want to learn about the topic.

Some of the skills this process involves is the connection of and synthesis of background knowledge to the text. In addition students actively search for what their information in the text and evaluate whether they are right or wrong. Lastly, students continue to ask questions about the topic, this lends itself to extra-credit if the student wants to research the topic more.

Perhaps podcasting can be used as a tool where students use their background knowledge to tell about a topic. Then listeners can comment on the podcast and provide feedback for students on where to take their research.

Prompt 5

Comprehensible input is important because that way the information is promulgated by the teacher and recieved by the student is how it will be embedded in the students mind. By the same token the facilitator has the responsiblity to structure the student's output. Eggbert shows various examples for teachers to structure the output such as creating "Wanted" signs with random pictures to focus on "past tense" or creating digital presentations about various topics.

Using the ideology of student-cenetered learning, students should work collaboratively to improve social skills while working on their responses or creating presentations. Onew way to captitalize on this social learning is through the use of "wiki" short for quick reference. Students could potentially start quick notes about their workplace or trade and other students could edit and add information to what has been started. The work published on the wikis could potentially be corrupted by pranksters, but surpisingly many of these hacked wikis are corrected within hours. It has been concluded by Richardson that many of these wikis are slightly less accurate than the encyclopedia.

One of the benefits of wikis is the potential for publishing information regarding any topic immediately. This could be applied to many of the science or social studies topics that are expected to be taught. The teacher could lead the topic and students can add on informations, vidoes, pictures, or data. The data from the FRESA project referenced by Cummins could be an example of farmworkers cultivation of strawberries and the effects it has on their life.

The wiki prayer sums up best how wikis can be a good resource for students:

Please, grant me the serentiy to accept the pages I cannot edit,
The courage to edit the pages i can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Prompt 4 Using Technology

Effective communication in the learning classroom is necessary so that students can become more proficient in English. Eggbert describes many ideas for facilitating communication among students using technology. One of those is what we are currently doing in this class. Each students has their own blog and is responsible for posting their own and commenting on others.

I could see how this would be a great tool to use with the ELL learners, because they would be forced to write in English, and the pressure would be on them to write well so that others could their message. It would also help my weak spellers because it would force them to spell correctly, in addition spell check would make them select the correct spelling for their words.

I really did not understand many of the other ideas, I don't know that they would be useful since I have not personally tried it, or seen it done. Implementation of a blog such as this would help close the gap of a transmission approach, and make the students problem solvers and critical thinkers.

Prompt 3 Authentic Communication

I agree with the Cummins chapter on how it becomes impossible to teach students in poor schools how to think for themselves, when the high stakes standards testing has principals practically forcing teacher to teach to the test. Principles don't want students doing hands-on experiments, they want them working on on paper-pencil test over and over again until they are able to master multiple choice test.
It is a great idea to bump up learning in the classroom with authentic texts. I like the idea of the French MGM school and the Italian CEM schools. I was surprised to learned that they have used the technique of school collaboration since the 1920s. As I read about it, while I don't really have an opportunity to communicate with other classrooms, I can certainly make students talk to each other and share written ideas with each other on a weekly basis. Of course implementation kinks would have to worked out.
I have not used the different web sites for ESL students, but I agree that students will be able able to listen and to try to comprehend authentic English dialogue, the portion of the equation that is missing is feedback if they were to try to imitate. However, there were programs that mentioned that students could have real time communication with a native English speaker, this would be great practice for authentic communication and feedback.
This past weekend I heard on CNN that for Japan watching t.v. shows on their cell phones was old news. As the technology becomes available, pretty soon, people will be able to video conference with their cell phones. This would be a great resource for a classroom to have as they implement authentic English instruction with ELL.

Prompt 2: Authentic Literacy

Multiliteracy goes beyond reading and writing in the classroom. It includes the culture and society print rich environment or lack thereof. In capitalistic societies, students are more prone to be exposed to commercial advertisement that targets a myriad of consumers in an effort to make a profit. In addition, students are often exposed to multiple languages and multiple modes of communication that includes visual and auditory or a combination of these. Consequently students should be exposed to real life experiences for reading and writing beyond the classroom in a collaborative effort from the community in an effort to build social capital and achieve literacy engagement.

Eggbert philosophy on the authenticity of reading and writing resonates with the multiliteracies paradigm. Eggbert believes that students should be allowed to interact with their environment in order to attain greater literacy skills. He expresses that students should be have extensive reading and writing practice. As they are exposed to authentic materials, students must them be instructed in learning strategies such as deduction and prediction in order to get the most out of the literature.

Blogging is a form of authentic communication that can be used by ELL in order to attain better grammar usage as well as to be able to convey messages and to negotiate meaning with English proficient students or people. ESL literacy programs would do well to implement blogs for their students as part of their curriculum.
Setting up the blog was not difficult, what has difficult was personalizing it. It was hard to read through the HTML to find out what codes needed to be changed to get it to do what I wanted it, I don’t think I’ve been quite successful yet, since the page layout is not what I envisioned it to be. Regardless of the minor page issue, I would like to use this blog as a tool to publish and express ideas on immigrant issues.

Use Photostory 3!!

This is FREE software produced by Microsoft! It is a great tool to create slide shows with music, text, and narration. The possibility of uses in the ESL classes. . . endless! If you would like to try it out for yourself, download it from the Microsoft website. For guidance on how to use Photostory 3 use this Jake's online tutorial.

Once you create your great lessons, please share them here!!