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Thanks to all those who came along and made the first session of technoLanguages Live a great one! I was really rapt that so many people from so many places came - a special shout out to our guests from Bahrain and the USA.

The technoLanguages sessions will be held on the 2nd Monday of each month and are run as part of Learn Central’s Australia Series.

I introduced myself and the technoLanguages Wiki and then talked briefly about collaborative projects for language classes.

On the technoLanguage wiki you can find the details of this first session as well as upcoming sessions: tL LIVE

If you would like to listen, the recording for the session can be found here: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/playback.jnlp?psid=2010-10-11.0216.M.E58F6EDFFA5FA3EDE727DCFB80FBD8.vcr&sid=2008350

Please feel free to continue any of the conversations from the session in the comments section or on the technoLanguages network.

Here are a few questions to prompt you -

What is your experience with technology in the languages classroom?

What ideas do you have for a collaborative project?

What would you like future technoLanguages LIVE sessions to be focussed on?

 ’See’ you next time on Nov 8th!

Image: ‘mic‘ http://www.flickr.com/photos/55569773@N00/79236901

Just to let you know that tomorrow night I’m running a live session called ‘technoLanguages Live’ which is going to be the start of a monthly series - some of them I’ll present stuff, but hopefully mostly other people will. The sessions will be about technology in languages education, different approaches to teaching languages, and ideas on how to use both!

The session is from 8-9pm AEST Monday. Click on the following link to join at that time:

https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/launch/meeting.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.3DD99896D234646A3B71C131316FBF

Hope to ’see’ a few of you there - and if you would like to  present a technoLanguages session next year or if you have any ideas on what you would really like to have sessions on then please don’t hesitate to let me know!

Soda Snap is a great little app for sending photos with a typed message beside them - like a postcard. I have used it many times myself to send ridiculous photos of my dogs with silly little quotes next to them of what they dogs might be saying - nothing terribly educational, but there are heaps of great ways you could use it in a classroom.

Firstly, it’s a free app that you can use on iPod touch, iPad or iPhone and looks like this:
 
Then when you add an image and text it looks like this:

and then, when you want to ‘Share’ it, it will give you this screen and you will see all of your sending options. You can send it to Twitter, send it to your Facebook account, email it to someone, save it to your photo library or copy it to the clipboard.


It will then display at the other end exactly the way it looks when you create it.

Ideas for using Soda Snap in the classroom:

  • Students could take photos of their classroom or their work and send it to the teacher with some comments - or even email it to a student in a partner class.
  • The descriptions or comments that students write for the images could be in any language - there may be a specific topic happening in the class and so students need to tailor their images and descriptions to that.
  • Students could use these images to add to a reflective learning task - they could show their work at different stages with different comments.
  • Soda Snap could be used to create a visual diary of a trip or just of daily life.

What other ideas do you have for using this tool in the classroom?

Spezify is another visual search engine that gives results from websites, images, videos, blogs,  and microblogs - anywhere and everywhere really!
Features:

  • Just scroll left, right, up or down to see more search results
  • In the preferences tab you can select which websites you would like Spezify to search
  • You can collect your favourite items to come back to later
  • You can choose whether to hide images, text, or videos etc to thin out search results

Ideas for using Spezify in the classroom:
  • Students could be given the task to create a favourites page for a particular topic or project they are working on and then explain to the teacher or their group why they have selected the sites they did
  • Students could make sure they give their online work (images, blog posts, etc) a very specific tag, then search that tag and see how their work displays, and even take a screenshot of it for their blogs or portfolios.

What ideas do you have for using Spezify in your classroom?

You may want to check out this blog post about Search Cube for some other ideas and a couple of useful links about  visual search engines.


Search Cube is a visual search engine that presents results in the form of a 3D cube that you can then rotate and flip. When you want to select a result, you just click on the square and it will take you to that website.

A visual search is a great way of presenting information in a different way, especially for those learners amongst us who prefer images to text. The fact that you can interact with the cube give students a way of touching their search results, especially if it is presented on an interactive whiteboard.

Here are some ideas for using Search Cube in the classroom:
  • Search Cube shows image, video and websites in the results so you could get students to focus on one type and look for those results - as in, check the image results first. They would then have to move the cube to find the images.
  • Students could compare how many images and videos were presented compared to text based web sites. To find out what the result is before clicking on it, you just hover over it and a description will show up beside the cube as to what it is and where it is from.
  • Because of the ability to see a description of the website, students can see whether or not their search term is giving them the sorts of results they are after, and they could then discuss how they could change their search terms to get different results.

What other suggestions do you have for using this, or any other visual search engine in the classroom?

Check out this site which has a list of the Top Visual Search Engines and a comparison table with details of each one. You may also be interested in this blog post: Bing - Visual Search, teaching questioning skills.

Saturday August 28, 2010 I went to Whitehorse Plaza at Box Hill for lunch (午餐）wow out of the blues I found this Japanese style cake shop. So yummy with different variety of favours you can choose from…. coffee, strawberry, red bean, chocolate etc. I recommended you to try them… for snack or morning tea or afternoon tea. 试试吧！好吃呀！
Well another eating event… Afternoon Tea at Beaumonte International Hotel. Lots of scones, cakes, sandwiches. In Chinese… Scones = 烤 饼 kao bing Cakes = 蛋 糕 dan gao Sandwiches = 三 明 治 san ming zhi And of course, if you are adult you can drink… Coffee = 咖 啡 ka fei Tea = 茶 cha But you cannot drink any of them… [...]
星期六 二零零一年八月七曰 Wow you would not believe what I had for desert tonight!! There is a place called 糖樓 in Box Hill, full of all the old Hong Kong style deserts … So yummy. Just give you few samples: 碗(wǎn) 仔(zǎi) 翅(chì) = Fake Fin Soup 蕃(fān) 薯(shǔ) 糖(táng) 水(shuǐ) = Sweet Potato Soup You can learn this sentence structure: 你(nǐ) 要(yào) [...]
Une pétition à signer pour défendre l'accès libre des réseaux Ning.


http://education.change.org/petitions/view/keep_ning_free_for_nonprofit_and_educational_use

On April 15, 2010, Ning.com announced that it will be phasing out their free service and focus on paid Premium Services. They stated that "existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning."

Since its launch in early 2007, the nonprofit and educational community have embraced Ning and been some of its most avid supporters. We have grown our networks and expanded our reach through the tools that have been made available through this platform, and brought together those in our community who are united by a common mission.

At a time when funding is scarce and organizations are fighting to keep their doors open, it is critical that these online support communities be allowed to continue without additional financial burdens.


http://education.change.org/petitions/view/keep_ning_free_for_nonprofit_and_educational_use