Here is the interview I did with Vera Menezes, one of the keynote speakers at WorldCALL in Fukuoka this summer. She plans to talk about Chaos theory and CALL, and CALL in Brazil and South America and she gives a little background to those topics in the interview.
One of the keynote speakers at the Wireless Ready conference on March 29 was Russsel Stannard. With a background in EFL and a degree in multimedia, he has done something simple and garnered a lot of attention, including articles in the Guardian and Times as well as invitations to talk at conferences such as Wireless Ready. That simple thing is to adapt screen capture software for the use of providing feedback for students. In his case, he uses Camtesia by TechSmith. What he does is “video” himself correcting a student’s written assignment, recording himself highlighting sections of the text, drawing marks, and making audio comments. He then sends those videos to students in the form of Flash or Windows media files (or others) and students open them up, listen to the corrections and suggestions and then redo their written work and send it back. Technically simple and pedagogically powerful. And the students apparently love it. At his website, you can find out more information, see example videos, and even watch instructional videos that show you how to do it (as well as other things). This is something I am definitely going to try in the new school year (starting tomorrow!!).
Saturday, March 29th I made the trip to Nagoya for the 2nd Wireless Ready conference, brilliantly organized again by Michael Thomas. First, as I mentioned earlier in a post on Second Life and Moodle, the conference had both a live and a Second Life version running simultaneously again this year. Last year all of three people showed up in Second Life, but this year, there were fifty (live in Nagoya there were officially 75 people registered). I think that shows that this technology is advancing nicely.
At least in certain areas. You see, when I spoke to Steve McCarty, the presenter who introduced Second Life at last year’s conference, he said that he wasn’t able to use it with his students because the computers available on campus were not powerful enough. And that, it seems became a dominant undercurrent to this conference on Web 2.0 technologies: they are wonderful, but we’re having trouble getting students to use them. Witness:
Michael Coghlan in his inspiring presentation admitting that his success rate in using these technologies with his (teacher) learners is limited; and commenting how an Australian primary school teacher had his blog project shut down by the school board when (invited) outsiders posted comments on student blogs.
Thomas Robb, Judy Noguchi and Masako Terui reporting on a study where they offered students weekly vocabulary quizzes on Moodle via cell phone or PC. Students loved the idea of e-learning but didn’t really make use of it!
Patrick Foss an Kurtis McDonald reporting on a project they organized to see if students were ready to do international e-mail exchanges: they weren’t.
Again and again, the barriers of technology, the barriers of learning culture, and the seemingly universal lack of administrative support came up and made me think that I was in a building with a bunch of dedicated and well-intentioned educators who were on to something good–really good–but were having real difficulty doing anything about it. It was the same finding I found difficult to admit in my presentation last year at the same conference, where I reported on the lack of student downloads of our class podcasts, and it reminded me of when I was 19 and my friends and I had such a hard time convincing anyone (but particularly girlfriends) of the greatness that was Joy Division and Wire (You can still achieve enlightenment here or here). Anyway, what I am trying to say is that it’s still going to take a lot of work to get students learning better with Web 2.0 tools and activities. There are still administrations to convince, fellow teachers to bring on board, learning styles and learning cultures to change, and examination washback effects to overcome. The future looks bright, but it isn’t here yet.