January « 2010 « Innovation in Teaching

Call for papers: special issue of Language Learning & Technology on Learner Autonomy and New Learning Environments

January 30th, 2010

llt

Tags: autonomy, call, publications
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New article online: Teaching (with) technology

January 26th, 2010

I just had an article appear in Prospect about teacher education for CALL. If you are interested in this subject you may want to download the article from the Prospect website.

Reinders, H. 2009 ‘Teaching (with) technology. The scope and practice of teacher education for technology. Prospect, 24(3), 15-23. You can read the article here.

prospect

Tags: call, publications, technology
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The economy of games

January 23rd, 2010

I was just reading Steinkuehler’s 2007 article about research on MMORPGS (multiplayer online games) in which he quotes a study by the economist Castronova (2001) who found that the economy of Norrath, the virtual world of the game Everquest, was the 77th largest in the world, placing it somewhere between Bulgaria and Russia at the time. Unbelievable!

Castronova, E. (2001). Virtual worlds: A first-hand account of market and society on the cyberian frontier. CESifo Working Paper Series No. 618.

Tags: games
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New autonomy book

January 20th, 2010

Book announcement. Just published byTampere University Press, Finland

Mapping the terrain of learner autonomy: Learning environments, learning communities and identities

Editors: Felicity Kjisik, Peter Voller, Naoko Aoki, and Yoshiyuki Nakata,

Part One Looking back and taking stock

1. Autonomy in language learning: A single pedagogical paradigm or two?

Henri Holec

Part Two Three examples

2. Learner autonomy in action: Adult immigrants learning English in Ireland

David Little

3. The art of improvisation: Learner autonomy, the learner, and (computer-assisted) learning environments

Klaus Schwienhorst

4. Self-Access language learning: Structure, control, and responsibility

Garold Murray

Part Three Advisor, counsellor and teacher development

5. Advising for language learning: Interactive characteristics and negotiation procedures

Marie-José Gremmo

6. Whose story is it anyway? Auto/biography in language learning encounters

Leena Karlsson and Felicity Kjisik

7. Towards learner autonomy and teacher autonomy in the Japanese school context

Yoshiyuki Nakata

Part Four Looking ahead

8. Mapping out the world of language learning beyond the classroom

Phil Benson

9. Where learner autonomy could fail a second language user: Three-level analysis of social context

Naoko Aoki

kjisik

Available from Granum at http://granum.uta.fi/english/index.php.

Tags: autonomy, publications
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Google Goggles

January 17th, 2010

How is this for an app? Google goggles (currently only available for Android phones) lets you use your phone camera to take a picture of an object (a book, a building) and it will return relevant information to you. So imagine, you’re in a museum, point at a painting and it will tell you who it was painted by! For businesses you don’t even need to take a picture; just pointing your camera is enough. How cool is this for (beginning) language learners who could use it to point at everyday objects?

Tags: camera, cellphone, recognition
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Strategic Language Learning

January 14th, 2010

Andy Gao has just published an interesting new book on the topic of Strategic Language Learning. This looks to be key reading for anyone interested in autonomy or learner strategies.

Here is a description:
This monograph reports on a longitudinal inquiry into mainland Chinese undergraduates’ language learning experiences in an English medium university in a multilingual setting with a focus on their strategic language learning efforts. This book examines the issue as to what extent language learners’ strategic learning efforts depend on their ‘choice’, if ‘the element of choice’ is the defining characteristic of language learners’ strategic learning behaviour. The inquiry, using a qualitative and ethnographic research approach, reveals dynamic interaction between learners’ agency and contextual conditions underlying the participants’ strategic learning process. Such understanding informs pedagogical efforts to foster individual learners’ capacity for strategic learning and their capacities in opening up and sustaining a social learning space for exercising their strategic learning capacity or utilizing their strategic learning knowledge.

andygao