The finishing touches are being put on the site. The last few little details are being looked after. Everything is finally coming together. Except for one thing: the Search parameters.
The problem with the parameters in the Search menu is that they aren’t all technically accurate. Have a look at the Course Format parameters in the screenshot. The first one, Webcam Lessons, is the one that I am having problems with and keep changing
So much for being original…
Inside Higher Ed published a news piece today on Wikipedia in the classroom titled “When Wikipedia Is the Assignment.” In case you haven’t seen them, I wrote Simple English Wikipedia for ESL/EFL Students Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 for students studying on their own and Add Some Spice to Writing Class With Simple English Wikipedia for teachers because I hadn’t seen anyone advocating students writing for Simple English Wikipedia.
A while back I wrote a couple of posts (Learning to Pronounce English Words with the IPA and More About Learning Pronunciation) about how to use the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) to learn English pronunciation. In one of the posts I recommended the University of Iowa online IPA chart for English students. However, the University of Iowa chart is not perfect. For one, it is intended for phonetics students and, as a result, it is not very easy to use and navigate without a solid understanding of the IPA and phonetics.
I have started getting TOEFL data ready for the Ask Olli index. I did a teaching TOEFL course about seven years ago, but I have never taught it so I decided that I need to refresh my knowledge.
So, after reading a bit about the different TOEFL flavours now available, I started looking for an online TOEFL practice exam.
The Course Management System (CMS) developer Blackboard released a report on online learning for k-12 students. I found it through an article posted on The Journal titled Study: Students Want To Learn Online.
My immediate reaction was deep skepticism—of course a study sponsored by one of the leaders in Course Management Systems finds that students want to learn online. But I decided to get the report to see if it has any lessons to apply to online language learning.
Over the last couple of days I’ve been getting various notices about two new MMORPGs for preschool children by Disney and Nickleodeon. The first notice that I found was on paidContent.org. Then a couple of blog postings announcing the new services and pointing out that they aren’t anything new. All this buzz left me wondering a couple of things.
Yes, they most certainly did: Club Penguin for $700 million. Club Penguin is for children aged 6-12. Disney’s new offering, Bunnytown, will tie-in with a Sunday-morning puppet show for preschool children.
I was on UsingEnglish.com when I saw a forum post from a student asking for help finding a word that rhymed with ‘hurt.’The first thing I did was think up a few words that might help, but then I started thinking that there must be a better way of finding rhyming words.
I am not a programmer, but I do know a little about programming and there is a very easy way to match parts of words in most programming languages. Regular expression let you substitute parts of words with wildcard characters. It is very easy to program a feature that lets you match just the ending of a word to find possible rhyming matches. So I decided to look for an online dictionary that lets you find words that end with the same sequence of letters.
In case you haven’t seen it yet, the Economist magazine is having an online debate on technology in education.
Proposition: The continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most education.
I was going to write a summary of the comments on the Economist debate on technology in education because there are so many of them (they require quite a bit of sifting), but I had too many negative comments and didn’t want to seem like a jerk.
So, instead, I would like to elaborate on my own thoughts on the subject.
Roy the Zebra is a reading site for children that centers on a group of animal characters. The main feature of the site is the nine-part story of Roy’s escape from a zoo and search for his herd. There are also a lot of interactive reading games using the characters introduced in the story, and Roy-themed songs.
The respected business and international affairs weekly, The Economist, is currently holding an online debate on the usefulness of technology in the classroom.
Proposition: The continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most education.
The debate is concerned with technology in the classroom, but I think a lot of the comments apply to online language learning resources.
Sir John Daniel, in his opening statement for pro side of the debate, argues that, while there are a few notable successes where technology is used to solve specific problems, mostly technology is used as a fancy tool to spruce up education.