Learning Languages Online

Many universities require their students seeking Bachelor of Arts degrees to take courses in a foreign language.  Often, for those students, finding study partners and media rich practice materials can make the difference between a passing and failing grade.  Fortunately, there are a number of  helpful online sites where students, and anyone else wishing to learn a foreign language, can get assistance.

LiveMocha

My personal favorite is LiveMocha.  The site assists individual study of many different languages (I’m studying Hindi) through some well-structured learning and practice activities (developed by subject matter experts) that encourage development of reading and listening skills as well as writing and speaking skills.  There is a large support community of learners who provide feedback to each other on assignments as they are turned in.  My first Hindi assignment received feedback from 4 separate individuals within 6 hours!   The site also lets you build friendships with speakers of your target language so that you can practice with a real person.  This site would be a great site to send your students for extra practice that is both engaging and effective.

Palabea

If stronger social learning is more your style, or if you want a place to teach your online class, then Palabea might be the site for you. Much of the learning content you will find at this site is developed by the community members and includes text, audio, and video materials.  You can choose to access support materials randomly or join one of the virtual classrooms devoted to a specific language.  Teachers using this site can also create and upload their own content.  For social learning, there are discussion forums and live chats for several target languages, making this a great place to go to find communication partners.

iTalki and Babbel

Two other communities, iTalki and Babbel, also have nice community features like chat and discussion forums and some learning resources, but most instructional materials are provided for a fee.  These are both potentially good places to visit and socialize in your target language.

Summary

Each of the four sites has something interesting to offer, whether you’re looking for a more studious directed study environment like LiveMocha or a more socially-oriented space like  iTalki and Babble or even a place with course creation features like Palabea. Visit them all and pick the one that best meets your needs and the needs of your students.

Personal Learning Networks

I’ve been collaborating with some colleagues to develop a series of webinars and challenge activities about personal learning networks (PLN).  The entire experience so far has been fantastic – especially the discussions as we each tried to explain what our PLNs mean to each of us.

If you’re interested in exploring the topic of Personal Learning Networks and want to join in the discussion, come check us out at Connect! Your PLN Lab.

Podcasting via Email? Yay!

While preparing for a workshop and a webinar on audio tools, I happen to run across Posterous and was immediately intrigued.  This blog tool lets you easily post via your email and even cross-post simultaneously to a number of other sites, including Twitter, FaceBook, Flickr, Blogger, WordPress, and more.   And, while those are really cool features, what really got my attention was the ability to podcast via email.

I’ve taught a lot of podcast workshops and I’m always looking for new tools that make it easier to become a podcaster without having to learn a lot of the technical stuff.  Posterous is that new tool.  Imagine it – create your mp3 audio file, email it to your blog, and voila! You’re a podcaster. Posterous takes care of the rest – putting your file into your blog so that it can be listened to there and also having a feed automatically generated so people can subscribe to it in iTunes.

If you’ve been waiting for a simpler way to podcast, then give Posterous a try.  And, while you’re at it, check out how easy it is to use the other features of this blogging tool: you can send ppt, doc, pdf, jpg, avi, mpg files and more to your blog just by sending an email with an attachment. They’ll be put in a format that can be read online and even downloaded and shared with others.  You’ll be amazed at the simplicity and usefulness of this cool blogging tool.

Getting things done…with audio.

Recently, I spent some time reviewing technology for a webinar on audio productivity tools that I was presenting.  The goal was to find some tools that somehow helped with productivity and had an audio component.  I found several:

Dixero – a great little RSS text-to-audio podcast tool. This simple tool provides a way for you to create playlists of your favorite text-based RSS feeds which are then converted to an audio podcast.  In terms of productivity – now I can listen to my favorite updates while I walk or commute.

File2WS – easily share files on the web for viewing or download.  Many teachers I know like to make text, images, audio, and video files available for listening to or viewing on the web but don’t really want to deal with the hassle of figuring out how get these things in a blog, wiki, or other service.  This service takes care of that – freeing up your time to do other things.

Posterous – blog posting of text, images, audio, and video using just email with attachments.  This service does so much more, but just the convenience of emailing posts and having attachments automatically converted for web viewing is awesome.

Dial2Do -  use your phone to send email, SMS, IM, record notes, calendar items, t0-do lists, post to Twitter, FriendFeed, and various blogs PLUS listen to RSS feeds.  The possibilities (and ease) of this tool made it the hands-down favorite during the webinar.  Please do yourself a favor and check out this tool.

I hope you find at least one of these tools useful!  If you do try them out, let me know how it went.

Web 2.0 Selection Criteria

I often post info about tools I find and I think those posts are generally helpful. However, I thought you might like to know how I decide which tools I’m going to use in my classes.

The appropriate use of the right Web 2.0 tool can ensure better access, strengthen interactions, increase learning, and improve satisfaction (all in a generally cost-effective manner!). However, once you’ve chosen a particular class of Web 2.0 technology (i.e. content creation tools, communication tools, social networking tools…) making a selection from among several seemingly similar Web 2.0 tools in that class can often be challenging and time-consuming. That’s why a checklist is useful. It will save you time by helping you eliminate poor tool choices. Once you’ve eliminated the poor choices, you will have fewer tools to test and a greater chance of finding that perfect tool to satisfy your course goals and learning objectives.

Of course, the number one criteria on any checklist should be that the tool supports your learning objectives. That being said, there are many other criteria to consider. You can download the full checklist (attached) and use it without reading any further. However, if you’re the type of person who prefers to see how a checklist is applied, keep reading to see how I applied this checklist during a search for a specific type of tool.

Scenario

I decided that student presentations (with peer assessment of those presentations) would satisfy a number of my learning objectives and since I knew there would be a significant time-commitment to create the instructional materials for this new activity, I wanted to make a careful selection. So, I went to one of my favorite places to find new tools – Go2Web20 and did a search on presentation tools. The results yielded several possible choices including Viddix, MyPlick, AuthorStream, SlideShare, Preezo, PreZENtIt, and Spresent. With my list in hand, it was now time to refer to my checklist to begin eliminating tool options to find the best choice for my needs.

Criteria 1: Access

Immediately I saw that I should eliminate MyPlick, AuthorStream, and SlideShare because while they allow you to share presentations online, they didn’t allow you to create them. I felt that both options were necessary in case I had students who didn’t have, or couldn’t afford, PowerPoint.

Further reading suggested that I should also eliminate Spresent because its future as a free tool was in question. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time creating instructions and support documentation for a tool that might not be available next semester. Additionally, it is a flash-based tool which puts its ADA compliance into question (without extra work,that is).

After even more reading, I noted that Preezo required “a modern browser.” I know many of my students have computers that are about 4 years old on average so they probably don’t have up-to-date browsers. I’m not entirely convinced this would be a problem but, I’ll eliminate this tool for now and only come back to it if my other options are unsatisfactory.

Finally, I was also able to eliminate Viddix because the format of its product will probably not meet ADA requirements. Of course, as with Preezo, I’ll keep this in mind for further testing if I have time or if the other options don’t work out.

Criteria 2: Usability

At this point, I haven’t even had to try out a new tool yet and I only have one tool left to check against my criteria. This is one of the major benefits of having a well-defined checklist: it saves you time. There’s no point in testing tools that don’t even seem to meet the accessibility criteria.

A quick test of the tool shows that, from a usability perspective, PrezentIt is fairly simple to use. The account creation process was simple and the interface seems intuitive. Unfortunately, the help section is almost non-existent but, since the tool seems easy to use and since I’m comfortable providing tech support, I don’t feel this is a major concern.

Criteria 3: Privacy & Intellectual Property

I’m always cautious when reviewing tools for privacy and IP issues. PrezentIt states that it will not share private data and it doesn’t place a claim on any IP rights to data you create or post there. Not all services make this claim, so it is good to read the End User License Agreement and Terms of Use prior to using a tool or making your students use it.

PrezentIt has options to make content totally private (creator’s eyes only), totally public (anyone can view) or view/collaborate by invitation. This is a bonus because students can work on their presentations privately and then share them with others only when they’re ready.

Criteria 4: Workload & Time Management

Because each student has to create an account, I can easily track who has done what. There is also a comment feature which is tied to an account so it will be simple for me to determine who has done a peer assessment. Finally, the presentation can be embedded in the LCMS which will save me time be letting me view all presentations in our course room instead of visiting multiple sites.

Criteria 5: Fun Factor

The tool allows for insertion of images and text and has some interesting slide transitions as well. It doesn’t have the capability to add sound, but I think that the ability to have discussions around text and image presentations (as opposed to just text-based discussions, for example) does add some fun and creativity to the learning activity.

Overall, I would say that PrezentIt meets the checklist criteria and my stated needs and objectives. Of course, this was just a first pass using some very quick guidelines to eliminate obviously poor choices. Now that I’ve eliminated all but PreZentIt, I have time to focus and refine my testing to ensure a perfect fit with my learning objectives.

I hope the checklist is helpful to you. It’s a fairly generic version that should work in a variety of situations with many different types of tools. However, I would like to mention that, in actual practice, there is more of a feedback loop when using the checklist – initial goals and objectives inform basic choices then, as tool testing begins, some refining of specific requirements usually occurs. For example, in the above situation, I initially excluded three really decent tools simply because I specified that the tool should be a content creation and content presentation tool. Normally, I might have reconsidered my requirements or at least applied the checklist to those tools while I was applying it to PrezentIt, just in case I changed my mind about my needs.

Web 2.0 Technology Selection Criteria

Evaluate your possible tool choices using these criteria to eliminate poor choices quickly. Then, do more extensive testing to find that ‘perfect’ Web 2.0 technology.

Criteria 1: Access

• Is the tool accessible by Windows and Mac users?
• Is the tool / product of tool viewable in a variety of web browsers?
• Does the tool work well for those with dial-up connections?
• Does the tool provide options that support ADA compliance?
• Is the tool free?
• Will the tool be around for a while?

Criteria 2: Usability

• Do you have to create an account to use the tool?
• Is the tool easy to use?
• Does the tool have a robust and easy to use Help section?
• Does anything have to be downloaded and installed on the computer to use the tool?

Criteria 3: Privacy & Intellectual Property

• Does the tool allow you to restrict access of your work/your students’ work?
• Does the tool protect your personal data (e.g. email address given when account created)?
• Does the tool allow you / your students to retain sole IP rights to the content you create?
• Does the tool allow you to determine the copyright status of the content you’ve created?
• Can you save a copy of the product to your desktop for archival purposes?

Criteria 4: Workload & Time Management

• Does the tool make it easy to track student work (for grading purposes).
• Does the tool support private and public commenting (for individual and group feedback)?
• Does the tool provide for an RSS feed to track work via email or an RSS reader?
• Is it possible to embed the tool into the LCMS you’re using?

Criteria 5: Fun Factor

• Does the tool allow you to be creative during the learning process?
• Does the tool allow you to demonstrate creativity in the learning product?
• Does the tool provide opportunities for different types of interaction (visual, verbal, written)?
• Does the tool increase the perception of connectedness?
• Does the tool encourage collaboration?

Feel free to use/distribute this checklist to other educators who may find it helpful.

Web 2.0 Selection Criteria

Science Game for Middle School!

Normally, I confine my posts to web 2.0 technologies; however, I thought the Science Pirates game was important enough to break with my self-imposed restrictions!

The people of the NMSU Learning Games Lab do some tremendous work and their work on Science Pirates is no exception.  That they care deeply about learning  is evident throughout this game – from the programming, art work, and voice talent to the instructional design and science curriculum!  I can’t speak highly enough of this team or their work.

So, if you teach science or middle school children, check out Science Pirates. Then, if you have time,  help the great folks at NMSU who created it by testing it out and giving them feedback.   Enjoy!

Etherpad and Synchronous Text Editing

I recently received my beta invite to EtherPad, a real time text collaboration tool. So far, I like it.  It allows multiple people to edit the same document simultaneously – with none of that pesky document jumping that happens in Google Docs.  Each person editing the document has their own color and you can immediately see who has typed what. There’s also a built-in text chat feature (nice, but I’d prefer voice chat) and a few options (e.g. whether to see line numbers). There is no rich text support and you can’t export  (features I would like to see added) but since it’s in beta perhaps those things will be added.

Although I haven’t done extensive testing yet, I can tell already that I would use this tool in a number of situations.  For example, during meetings everyone could be reading and taking notes – very handy for making sure that we’re all all the same page.  Also, for the classroom, I can see teams of students collaborating on any number of writing assignments or planning out team projects.

EtherPad seems to work fine on windows and mac – I tried IE7, Firefox, and Safari and had the same experience on all those browsers and across platforms.

If you’re looking for a way to synchronously work on documents, visit EtherPad and request an invite.  I think you’ll enjoy it.

Concept Mapping Web 2.0 Style

Concept maps, mind maps, graphic organizers… whatever you call them, they’re great teaching and learning tools.  Some of the ways I’ve used them or seen them used include:

1. Quizzes and Exams – give your students a list of concepts to map out to demonstrate their understanding of the relationships among the concepts
2. Study Aids – ask your students to create and share concept maps of the chapters in their text books or other content you have them read
3. Lecture Aids – create and hand out a partially filled out concept map of your lecture and have your students fill in the missing material as you present it in the lecture

There are lots of great concept mapping tools out there but, in keeping with the web 2.0 theme of this blog, I’m going to tell you about a few free online tools that you might enjoy.  These will be brief intros to the tools. I’ll post lengthier descriptions of each in later posts.

Mind42
The concept mapping tool by Mind42 is a good choice if you’re looking for a tool that supports collaboration. This tool has built-in connections with Skype and Google Talk so you or your students can easily work together mapping things out.  Additionally, this tool makes it quite simple to add links, to-do lists, and wikipedia pages to your concepts and it has a revision tracking feature. It also does a fair job of importing concept maps from other programs and exporting your finished maps in a variety of formats and its fairly simple to use point-and-click interface means you’ll be creating some decent concept maps quickly.  However, if you’re looking for a concept mapping tool that provides you with the versatility to create maps that have large chunks of text or include symbols that can have text in them, this tool probably will not work well for you.

Mindomo
If you’re looking for a concept mapping tool that allows you to include multimedia in your maps, then Mindomo might be a good choice for you.  Another feature that makes this tool stand out is that you have access to a large database of public maps that other users have created and shared. Additionally, you have the option to embed your maps in other web pages.  The tool itself is fairly simple to use and include the typical text bubbles that you’re likely to associate with concept mapping software.  As with Mind42, this tool lacks the library of symbols that you find in a program like Inspiration, but I think the other features make this a tool worth checking out.

MindMeister
MindMeister is very similar to Mind42 in its basic capabilities, but the user interface is quite different.  If you need a basic concept mapping tool that provides options for sharing and revision tracking, and lets you include links and symbols but you want that in a package with the more traditional control panel, then this might be the tool for you.

If you haven’t yet tried using concept mapping tools in your classroom, give one of these a try. They’re easy to use and you might find that they can be quite beneficial to the teaching and learning process.

Opportunities

I always get to work on many fun projects with some really wonderful people.  Currently, two projects have me pretty excited:

Once again I get to collaborate with the fantastic people at Sloan-C on their upcoming International Symposium on Emerging Technology Applications which is going to be in San Francisco June 17-19, 2009.   The CFP has just been posted and I’m quite excited to see how many people plan to share their knowledge and expertise!  The 2008 symposium in Carefree, Arizona had many interesting presenters and I’m sure this symposium will be as good or better!

The new school year means a new series of free webinars with the uber-wonderful RETA crew at NMSU.  Last year was the first year we rolled out our webinars program and we had a lot of fun together.  We learned so much and we made exciting connections with folks from all over the U.S.  This year, we’re extending the number of webinars and including many more technology topics.  Come join us if you’re looking to learn more about using technology for teaching and learning.  It’s going to be a blast!

Discussing Technology

During Campus Technology ‘08, I was fortunate to meet Dr. Peter Hess of MIT.  I say fortunate because it is obvious that he’s a dedicated educational professional who cares about teaching and learning.  Recently, he started a educational technology discussion forum.  If you like to participate in discussions about technology and education, head on over there and start posting!