Reading #10

RICHARDSON Ch. 7. Fun with Flickr: Creating, Publishing, and Using Images Online
BLACKBOARD - Kern, R. (2006). Perspectives on technology in learning and teaching languages. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 183-210.

After reading Richardson, what ideas do you have for using images and programs such as Flickr in the language learning classroom?

Kern gives a broad overview of issues in CALL, with specific examples from three areas and implications for teaching and research. Select and share your own thoughts and opinions on one or more issues that Kern raises.

Re. Flickr
RICHARDSON Ch. 7. Fun with Flickr: Creating, Publishing, and Using Images Online

As Richardson points out, some of the best features of a site like Flickr are the different ways in which images (and videos) can be organized. They can be indexed with tags, put into sets and slideshows, or organized together with other users’ images into groups with specific themes.

One advantage of flickr is that it might be considerably faster and easier for younger students to learn how to use, compared with, for example, video-casting software.

I think one good (and pretty obvious) way to try to begin using flickr in a K-12 class (and I believe it is similar to some of the other activities we have deiscussed in class) might be to have students bring their cameras on a field trip (to the zoo, museum, etc.), and then in groups students can prepare and upload a slideshow of images, which they can then show in class and narrate for their classmates. Another project could be to have students make a step-by-step “how to” presentation using a set of images. For example, they could interview a beekeeper, and get enough images of the process to make a short presentation on beekeeping which they could show and narrate for the class. Or the instructor might have them interview their parents or grandparents, and prepare a similar “how to” on the steps in making a pie, barbequeing a goat, etc.--the key, of course, is choosing a direction or topic that students will think is interesting and also fun to share with classmates.

Re. Kern
Kern, R. (2006). Perspectives on technology in learning and teaching languages. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1)

I think it was this paragraph that I thought was most thought-provoking in this article:

“Does multimedia authoring improve learners’ language use in terms
of accuracy, fluency, and appropriateness in offline contexts? We don’t
know. But the value of such projects may be found elsewhere. Nelson, for
example, is not looking at language learning in the traditional sense of
acquisition of morphosyntax or vocabulary, or even academic writing.
Rather, he is looking at learners’ acquisition of a metacommunicative
ability to reflect broadly on signifying practices and specifically on
textualization, considering language as just one dimension of semiosis.” (p. 197)

There are many details that can be measured when attempting to evaluate the effectiveness of various types of CALL tools, media, methods or approaches. I think that among the more difficult variables to measure are the effects in terms of learners’ attitudes and motivation. I was thinking specifically about the long-distance tele-collaboration that Kern was describing. When looking at the effectiveness of tele-collaboration, then, I think that one must keep in mind that a lot of the potential benefits might be in raising learners’ level of cultural awareness, in sparking their interest and curiousity in the culture associated with the target language, and in helping remind learners that language-learning has concrete and real-life applications. So the difficulty for evaluation, I think, is that the biggest potentially-positive effects are the hardest to measure.