EFL537, Cohort#3, 
Day #9, November 12, 2009

Good Morning Everyone.  
The end is near (whew).    

We'll be using  the remaining course time to finish up assignments, save  your work and other online resources to your flash drive, and prepare for life after EFL537. First, a few reminders...

Reminders:  

- Your reading reviews should include your thoughts about the readings and how they apply to your teaching situation (present and future).   It is OK to use quotations from articles, but when doing so, you should use quotations marks and make it clear where the quotations are from.  Copying all or parts of sentences from others without giving proper credit is a serious violation of academic ethics.  I want to read your thoughts in your own words. If you want to make any changes to your reading reflections, you can edit your existing document.  You do not need to create a new one.  If interested, more information about proper citation (avoiding plagiarism) is at: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/

- I understand that you want to check things off your To Do list as quickly as possible, but I want you to understand that what matters to me (as an educator and as the person who has to give you a grade for this course), is how much you pursued your own learning goals and the general goals for this class.  For example, the goal of Delicious bookmarking was not for you to bookmark 30 sites as quickly as possible and be done with it, but for you to use Delicious throughout this course to document your learning (show me the sites you came across that were most interesting/useful for you).

-  It can be very challenging for me during class when several people are asking for help with technical issues, and others are saying 'Jeff, is my latest task OK?'.  Please have some patience (don't expect me to OK a task immediately after you finish it) and please, please, please provide a link or at least some details when asking me if I've seen one of your assignments.  For example, "Jeff, is my image editing task OK?  It's at: http://efl537.com/blog/image-task1  (a screencast showing how to copy a web page address  (URL) is at: http://www.efl537.com/screencasts/copying-URLs.swf )

- I enjoy seeing your photos on theEFL537.com  Profiles page.  If you haven't already posteed one, please do so (click My Account/Profile).  If you're interested in uploading lots of photos, you can try Google's photo hosting site (Picasa) by logging in to your gmail account and going to http://picasaweb.google.com/  . This NOT an assignment - just information for those interested.

Finishing up assignments
I believe most of you are well on your way toward finishing up all f your required assignments (along with many optional assignments). http://www.efl537.com/fall2009/assignments
Here are a few more details about remaining assignments.

Materials Archive.  As you know, internet connections are not always reliable, so it's useful to save your work and useful resources on your computer and/or flash drive.  Try to save at least 20 files onto your flash drive.  This is the suggested file structure, but if you'd prefer to organize files differently, that's OK.  If you have questions about how to save files, take another look at the Desktop Management Basic Guides and/or watch these screencasts.
http://www.efl537.com/screencasts/saving-files.swf  (this was recorded for an earlier session, so some things I say about what we did yesterday do not apply) and
http://efl537.com/screencasts/save-page.swf

To show me your materials archive, you can either take screenshots of each sub-folder and post them as attachments on an EFL537.com  blog post or have a short desktop sharing skype call with me tomorrow.

CALL Specialization Report/Presentation
This is basically a 'Final Report' in which I'd like you to discuss everything you've worked on  or learned during this course. What was useful and how  might you use these tools and resources now and in the future.  This can be a google doc, slideshare presentation (or slidecast), and/or audio recording.   If there were things you didn't like, don't think you'll be able to use, or obstacles you are concerned about, please feel free to mention those as well.

...and one more thing
One last optional (but strongly encouraged) assignment - a Vietnamese advice letter to Cohort#4.   Perhaps you remember the challenges, frustration, and confusion of Day#1.  Well, in a few months Cohort#4 students will be experiencing that as well.  I'd like you to write them notes (in Vietnamese) to help guide them through those early difficulties.  You can include descriptions and opinions of different tools,  strategies of how to make sense of Jeff's teaching style, and any other advice you have for those who will follow in your footsteps.  Post this as an EFL537.com blog post (create/blog entry).

Anything else?
I don't want to give you any more assignments because I think we've covered more than enough for a two week course, but there are many more CALL tools and recourses out there.  If you have questions about any of those, please feel free to ask me today or tomorrow.   All of the course material and the work you have posted will remain online for the foreseeable future.  You will continue to have access to the site and I will continue updating the guides and creating new ones for as long as I teach this course.  

I hope everyone has a good Day#9.  I will be standing by for (patiently asked) questions in the chat room and on skype :)