Day 8


EFL537, Cohort#4
Day #8,  July 28, 2010 
You all have continued to do a great job.  I can see you working hard on assignments and overcoming slow connection challenges to get tasks done.  Just a reminder - all skills tasks this week are still optional, so if you don't find it interesting or would rather spending your time working on other skills or assignments, that's OK.
  • On that note, if you have any 'final requests' for a particular topic or skills you'd like covered before the course ends, please let me know by adding a comment in the Final Requests Forum Thread.
  • Yesterday, Hai asked me about CALL resources to help students prepare for exams. Personally, I'm not a big fan of exam based education, but Korea has a very exam based system, and unfortunately, the U.S. is becoming more so. In any event, I have added a section to the Activities Skills Training Page with link to materials designed for test taking preparation. If people find any other useful materials, please add a comment to that page. 
  • We will have a 'virtual visitor' today. Sarah Lilburn, the host and producer of The Daily English Show will be skyping in and hopefully sharing live video at 10am today.  It would be great if we had some questions prepared for her.  Please post questions (on any topic) for here in the Questions for Sarah Forum topic. 
  • I see many of you have added at least 30 bookmarks to your Delicious account.  Please make sure that your bookmarks are tagged appropriately.  Suggestion for some useful tags can be found in the Delicious Tagging section the Social Bookmarking Skills Training.
    Examples of appropriately tagged Delicious accounts:  LearningCall   ngocanh_vnu11   VanHaido
  • Unfortunately,  Van Tran's computer has fallen victim to a nasty worm (like a virus) that has made it almost useless.  Hopefully, Mr. (Dr.?) Tuan will be able to heal her computer and bring it back to health, but this raises the very important CALL skill of computer security.  You can find some links and guides here http://www.efl537.com/node/432  .  I will be updating that page today, but the two security programs I always install are AVG Free (anti-virus) and Spybot Search & Destroy (anti-spyware).  Good luck Van Tran!

Today's Skill: Blogging - Exploring EFL BLogs and Subscribing to blogs using and RSS Reader

Other Week#2 Assignments  (same as before)
  • Continue Exploring  the CALL Buffet and adding bookmarks to your Delicious account. 
    By the end of this week you should have at least 30 websites bookmarked and properly tagged  in your Delicious account.  Feel free to share information with your classmates as you make interesting discoveries. (I'm especially impressed when I see someone has added a few bookmarks each day as opposed to adding all 30 in a day or two - looks more like the student used the tool as intended and bookmarked sites as he/she discovered them as opposed to thinking, "OK, I want to finish the Delicious assignment - I'll bookmark 30 sites now and be done with it". )
  • This week's readings: Updated
    You will need to find two one more reading that are about a topic (or topics) in which you are especially interested.  Originally, there was going to be two more reading reviews required during Week#2, but I've changed that only one more, so that if you prefer to spend time on other assignments, you can. If you want to do two (or more) additional reading reviews, that's great. Follow your learning passions.
    To find the readings, you will need to look at the EFL537 Reading List, the LearningCall.net Readings Index, or the Custom Search of CALL related journals.
     Before writing your Reading Reviews, please  let me know which readings you plan to review by posting a brief description and the website address (URL) of the article here: http://www.efl537.com/forum/week2-readings-topics
     Reading Review#3 is due July 28. 

  • Continue writing daily reflections on your Posterous.com blog.
    By the end of the course, you should have at least 8 reflections.  Feel free to post additional reflections and other material there, but only 8 reflections are required. 
  • Final Report/Presentation - This is a summary of what you spent most of Week#2 focusing on. It can be a written report, slide presentation, and/or audio recording discussing the area of CALL you focused on during Week#2.  Include links to any relevant  readings, resources, or websites. Please focus on one or more of these questions:
    • Which aspects of CALL are you most likely to use in your current (or near future) teaching environment? Tell me some specifics about how you will implement it. 
    • Which CALL skills/tools are you most interested in learning more about after this course? How can you do so? 
    • What are the biggest obstacles you face in actually making use of CALL tools?  How can you (and the entire educational system) overcome these obstacles?
    There is no fixed length requirement, but if you submit a basic written report, I suggest keeping it between 600~1000 words. The size of other types of submissions is up to you - however much you need to say what you want to say.
    Due August 2. 
  • Week#2  Skills  
    All Week#2 Technical Skills are OPTIONAL !  Each day will will focus on particular skill.  If you  prefer to focus on other skills or Week#2 tasks, please feel free to do so.  These guides are here so that you can learn about these skills if you wish, but if you are not interested in a particular skill or you find it very difficult or stressful, I don't want you to waste your time and energy on it.  I'd much rather you focus on further developing skills you've already learned or focusing on other Week#2 assignments that are more meaningful to you. You can see a list of all skills guides here.
    Tasks covered so far this week: