Educational Theory

I just taught a group of delightful Korean students from Chuncheon. These students are teacher trainees, and my brief was to introduce them to principles of autonomous learning as we see it here in a Western setting. The idea was to give a short lecture on Independent learning... background, theory, practicalities etc. I wouldn't usually give a lecture but I was informed by the programme administrator that the students requested lectures for listening and note-taking practice. So... in launched I, spouting on about social constructivism and the role of the teacher, the role and responsibilities of the student. To my surprise, and I don't know why considering they are teacher trainees, they were already familiar with the educational theory, and asked me some rather probing and insightful questions about practical and pragmatic issues associated with learner autonomy as it relates to their classroom practice. I was delighted and impressed with them (especially considering that their language level was pre-intermediate level).
After that I introduced them to blogs in English. They were already very familiar with the idea; they all had mini websites using blogging software from home, so they were easily able to transfer the principles to blogging in English.
I've put their sites here in my links comments... the first 11 on the list

CALL Symposium

I have just attended a CALL Symposium put on by the UNITEC in Auckland. It was wonderful after having been working with a sense of isolation in my attempts to incorporate relevant CALL methodologies into my practice. There are other practitioners out there, I feel like we are pioneers in a way, working with technology to extend the boundaries of language learning and acquisition ... yadda yadda yadda

I learned about issues with teacher training... how to get alongside other staff to offer support. The speaker wanted to highlight that the pedagogy must never by overshadowed by the need for technological instruction. In whatever the trainees learn about the technology, they must first know the theory and pedagogy (andragogy?).

I went to a demonstration of a product called MonoConc Pro developed by NZ academic at Auckland University. This could do a number of fancy statistical calculations with the corpora, (whatever corpora is available or you happen to be using with the product) but it was its application to teaching collocations that peaked my interest. The product is for sale, and I would like to get my hands on a copy. I would also love to get my mitts on a copy of the pronunciation product that a team at AUT have been developing called Pronline. Sound pedagogy, and great interaction with the learners. They will soon be releasing a version for the web, so I'm waiting in line.

And much much more.

RSS

RSS reader
this link has interesting feeds, although it seems as if the first and second pages are not working properly, so I'll have to fix them. The third page was loading correctly last time I looked.