The LTD Project Blog

Thanks to Isabelle Jones for pointing out this thought-provoking video by josepicardo (2008.02.28) to the Diigo Resources for Languages Group.

In an interview podcast to warm the pool by building social presence prior to an online conference, Jonathan Finkelstein prompts Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt to touch upon online assessment strategies, especially ones to use with adult learners who are likely to be learning what they need to, just in time, rather than learning what someone else thinks they need to, just in case it’s on a quiz or test.

A gem that I’m carrying away reflects remarks Paloff made about 14 of 15 minutes into the interview, about the value of social presence. Segueing from assessment to online presence, when Pratt emphasizes presence (instead of social), he’s probably referring to facilitators as much as to other online inter-actors (or course-takers). If he isn’t, he ought to be.

In turn, Palloff mentions research indicating that deliberate if not explicit developments of online presence at the onset of interactions enhance learner involvement, engagement, persistence, performance, and satisfaction. She characterizes such developments as “an extremely important component of community building” (Show #3: Assessing the Online Learner – An Interview with Rena Palloff & Keith Pratt, 2008.08.31).

Following up one of Larry Ferlazzo’s top site recommendations, I tried out Fo.reca.st, and found it relatively easy to use to create a survey – once I’d discovered the functions hidden behind all the tabs, and tried out the various ways to format surveys. I’m not sure that the format names (for example, “plugged”) or the interplay between survey default and item specific display settings are easy to understand, particularly for English language learners and the not-so computer savvy (his criteria, 2008.08.22), but the illustrations and individual item previews may serve to bridge the gaps.

One problem I encountered while test driving a survey occurred when I missed the review button on a final item by a few millimeters, and wound up posting before answering all of the items in the survey. With no final warnings or confirmation routines that I recall, asking for example, “Are you sure you want to submit those responses?”, especially on surveys set for only one go per IP (and not requiring responses on first pass), the review button location, and possibility of submitting responses before really ready may be usability issues.

Nevertheless, ease of editing, formatting, and publishing virtually unlimited numbers of surveys, and items, as well as pre-formatted displays of results, is noteworthy. So are the possibilities of adding images, sound tracks, and video files for survey item stimuli, though at present they must be stored elsewhere. One recommendation I got was to store images in Flickr (personal correspondence, 2008.08.30). However, when you go to grab a URL at Flickr, the download page reminds you that Community Guidelines for uploaded images call for links back to the originals on the Flickr site, from their new locations. If there’s a trick for backlinking from images used at Fo.reca.st, I haven’t found it, or figured it out.

If you and learners with whom you work have ready access to public file storage, for A/V stimuli to add to your surveys, and you don’t need or want to manipulate resultant data yourselves, then Fo.reca.st seems to be a good way to go.

This post introduces a little something that I gleaned from the blogosphere today. I’m posting a hotlinked remix of a message about it that I’ve just sent to a mailing list:

Bloggers Alec Couros (Open Thinking and Digital Pedagogy, Dalton Sherman…) and Kevin Jarrett (Welcome to NCS-Tech, Every… [e]ducator… [m]ust… [w]atch…), among others, highly recommend watching the following video. So do I. I’ve watched it once, and listened to it twice.

It’s of a keynote address to a back-to-school convocation for teachers in the Dallas Independent School District (Dallas ISD). Video recordings of the speech by Dalton Sherman, a fifth grade pupil, are available from both the school district and YouTube:

http://www.dallasisd.org/keynote.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAMLOnSNwzA

The text of his speech is available from the Dallas Morning News (2008.08.25).

http://tinyurl.com/DaltonSherman-IBelieve

To find out more about the Dallas ISD, please visit the official site or Wikipedia:

http://www.dallasisd.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Independent_School_District

(personal correspondence, 2008.08.27)

This is a micro-edited cross-post from a Learning with Computers message that [had] yet to appear on-list:

In learningwithcomputers@yahoogroups.com (message 3808), “Gladys Baya” <gladysbaya@…> points out a Camtasia-produced video demostration of Russell Stannard['s] giving screenplay + audio feedback on a short essay in English by a student from China:

http://www.russellstannard.com/king/king.html

Gladys asks: “Have you ever tried something like this in your own teaching practice?” In a follow-on, she suggests that “we are bound to differ in the way we go about giving feedback… [and] can profit from reflecting about this simple approach to discuss student-generated writing on screen.

A short answer would be, “No, I haven’t tried anything like that”, for one reason because I haven’t got Camtasia, though apparently older versions are available for free (Windows only). Nevertheless, I agree that Stannard['s] video demo. of one-to-one, tutor (teacher) to tutee (student) feedback deserves a good close look. What follow are some reflections.

We may notice that the student’s names and hometown feature prominently in the two paragraph self-introduction. We also may realize that Stannard… has made a widely-accessible public display of the work, spot-lighting and highlighting mistakes in it. His markings are monochromatic (yellow).

Though his feedback begins by focusing on a mistake, it includes a modicum of praise midway on (towards the end of the first paragraph – spotlighted, but left unmarked), and then more mistakes. Stannard… concludes with more positive observations about the communicativeness of the student’s piece, and suggestions for reviewing the video repeatedly and revising the essay.

Although in the essay the student claims better writing skills than speaking skills, in the feedback, which as Gladys points out is under three minutes, I would hardly call Stannard['s] speaking speed slow. He uses lots of teacher-talk, for example: “participle”, and “perfective” (if I caught those words right after two listenings). So I wonder whether the student will get it working alone, or even with near-peers.

I’d like to hear what catches the attention of other teachers of writing as they watch Stannard['s] video feedback demo:

http://www.russellstannard.com/king/king.html

(Beaufait, Learning with Computers,

Re: Video on teaching writing with computers [feedback demo.], message [3863],

November 30, 2007 [JST])

I’m posting a clipping here to spotlight a site gleaned from Gladys Baya (Group founder – Thanks!) on the Learning with Computers group mailing list. About video resources for teachers, Larry Ferlazzo writes:

I’ve ”re-learned” about a great resource for Teacher Training Videos that show how to utilize technology in the classroom. They’re from Russell Stannard, and he even has quite a few that are specifically oriented towards teaching ESL/EFL.

I just read about them in Nik Peachey’s blog (which also has an excellent post, and tutorials, about online video games and English Language learning). They looked great, and I was excited to put the link on my Teacher’s Page.

(Ferlazzo, Websites of the Day for

Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL,

November 14, 2007)

In a recent Green Room podcast, Dan Balzar makes a provocative statement that has inspired me to listen to it again more carefully than as music in the background. As it turns out, he says, “You can’t cobble together a bunch of little pieces, and that makes a good course” (Seven Revelations about e-Learning, The Green Room, Episode 28 [that's episode 28, regardless of the "38" in the URL], July 16, 2007)….

Now I’ve done, gone and listened again to find that Dan, talking about point number five – namely: how instructional elements can “get lost in translation” from one educational context to another, gives an example of “learning objects.” These, he concludes, “have not been as popular as we thought they’d be.”

Well, I’ve often considered the term “learning objects” an oxymoron, and never thought they’d be popular for adult learners, though perhaps they would be as work-saving devices for educators too busy to learn to craft, compose and contextualize their own educational materials. After all, what can an object learn, anyway – or, more accurately perhaps, what educational cobbling roles might fungible digital parts suit?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Attribute to “pab’s potpourri”.

This post, I’m labeling “b4b” because when I announced this blog in the Blogging for Beginners (B4B): Links: Participant’s Blogs list, I characterized it as an experiment in labeling. While this experiment has surpassed the duration of the B4B workshop by a week or so, I am anxious to flag and share the results.

Just as the blogroll that I assembled had grown too long, so too had the list of labels (I’ll work on the blogroll later). In the past few days, I have combined labels and re-affixed the combined labels to blog posts which bore original, spontaneously derived labels. What follow are a few memorable examples of the past few days’ work (ABC…). The left-most items are current labels derived from items to the right:

• AudioPodcastsVideo: Audio/Video

• This concatenation derives from recent wiki reorganization which reflects the intersection of audio files, blogs, podcasts and videos.

• BloggingCommentary: Blog/Comment

• CognitionReflection: Meta-cognition and Reflection

I’ve decided to use CamelCase, instead of slash marks, and to spell items out rather than acronym-ize them (ExtensiveReading rather than ER, on another blog). I’ve also decided to use plural forms of countable nouns: tools and wikis, rather than tool and wiki (same pluralization for del.icio.us bookmarks, when I get around to it).

In Camino, the Mac browser that I prefer, revisiting and editing posts and labels was easy because I could click on a label. Then the pencil icon on each post with labels that I wished to edit offered one-click access to the posts and their labels. For example, I could select a label like “GlobalIssue” and immediately revise each post so labelled to “GlobalIssues.”

However, in Firefox for Windows, I have been unable to display the editing icon (pencil) on any post, in spite of toggling off and on the settings for easy editing (Blogger: Dashboard: Settings: Basic: Show Quick Editing on your Blog? Yes). Clicking on a label concatenated target posts. Yet I’ve had to use the Dashboard: Edit Posts view, and repeatedly scroll down through the list of posts to visually search for labels to redefine.

Once I got to the end of the first 25 posts or so displayed, I had to scroll down and then select Older Posts, before continuing to scan for labels to redefine. Scrolling down and then reselecting Older Posts was necessary after every label update.

How did Neil Young put it in his song, “Piece of…?”

I’d better stop now, before this report and reflection turns into a rant.

A blogroll buddy from the Blogging for Beginners workshop put the following video on his blog for for a bit of comic relief “after three weeks of hard work” (B4Bers, We deserve a Break!). The six-week workshop is over now, and I’m finally getting around to enjoying it. I hope you do, too.

Whilst announcing a wonderful interview on her blog, MaryH suggests that she’ll try podcasting interviews “in the future” (B4B Message 1503). In response, Gladys points out a recording tool – blog sharing link-up (Podomatic: Blogger) that used to work for her, yet expresses a preference for “text in blogs” (B4B Message 1534, PS).

Elsewhere on the B4B list (forgive me, please, for relying here upon our memories rather than citations), contributors note challenges related to bandwidth limitations, making it difficult if not impossible to download media- (audio or video) rich blogs. They also may face restrictions on downloading media players or browser plug-ins to play back A/V blog elements.

Though I’ve begun listening to, and earmarking podcasts of interest, I prefer text in blogs, too, for reasons beyond downloading and playback difficulties. Granted, A/V podcasts are of great interest to educators who are intent upon presenting material that will help learners to develop listening and viewing skills.

However, for time-challenged educators and learners, sitting through podcasts is hardly a viable option. Attention spared while driving or cycling, I argue, is insufficient for uptake of ideas, intents, structures and vocabulary. Under such circumstances, note-making and cross-referencing are virtually impossible – unless you have a clip-board or keyboard mounted on your steering wheel or handlebars (or are concurrently recording your own commentary). Moreover, for city-dwelling pedestrians, traffic noise may well defeat listening at anything less than hearing threatening playback volumes on mp4 or mp3 players.

Rather than rant on about the drawbacks of podcasting, and before I develop a fuller argument for properly framing podcasts to develop learners’ listening skills and vocabulary, I’d better point out the LearningTimes Green Room and suggest that you check it out before the folks there quit providing nearly complete transcripts in show notes on their website as a prelude to their podcasts.