Filed under: Useful sites/links
22/07/2009 • 10:13 0
Course authoring tools
When management of higher educational institutions don’t know much about e-learning, they tend to assume (at least the ones that I’ve had to deal with) that it’s simple, fast (something that can be done in teachers’ free time) and that it’s a cost effective replacement for face-to-face teaching of foreign languages in small groups. When they want to cut institutional costs, foreign languages seem to be the ones that have to be sacrificed first. It’s not a new story – I know.
What I can do as a teacher is probably just to keep providing professional explanations for why cutting classes of foreign languages will not be good for students’ study and future careers and explaining language acquisition theories and results of research that serve as a basis for FL pedagogy. I’m also ready to share my knowledge of pedagogy with my colleagues who tend to specialize in a subject field but know little about teaching. In a similar effort I’m trying to introduce them to the open documents movement, PLEs, wikis, blogs, open courseware for e-learning and some pedagogy underlying e-learning. At least those who are ready to listen and learn.
It seems knowledge of course authoring tools might also benefit my colleagues (some of them have recently started to get familiar with Moodle), so based on the list of course authoring tools at the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies I’m now trying to explore the ones available for free. The commercial tools do look great but as a teacher I know that good looks cannot hide poor contents. I’m sure the free tools will do. So just a quick starter for those interested in course authoring tools and learning objects (LOs).
One of my favourite downloadable course authoring tools is Xerte – a tool that is simple and efficient. You can learn how to use it by watching this video. You can use it in Moodle too.
Planner tool - GloMaker 2
Glo Maker 2 seems promising especially because of its planner tool that is especially helpful to people with less pedagogical knowledge. It’ll be released in August this year. It’s downloadable.
My favorite online course authoring tool is MyUdutu. You can build a learning object online and download it for free. Hosting is also provided but they charge for it. You can check their tutorials. Udutu LOs can be used in Moodle.
I’d also recommend reading David Wiley’s review of learning object literature, advice on assessment and accessibility issues of e-learning design by TechDis, the article ‘Learning Objects Update: Review and Critical Approach to Content Aggregation’ by Balatsoukas, Morris & O’Brien (available here.). More articles can be found in Educause Review, the Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects (IJELLO) and at Learnativity. The history of learning objects is also quite interesting and can be found here. I’ve also found two interesting blogs: one is Iterating toward openness that discusses issues of instructional-technology, open content and open-education, the other – RLO Blog with advice on learning object design.
Filed under: Teaching, Useful sites/links
14/06/2009 • 09:50 0
German learner corpus
Just a quick link to those interested in learner corpora. Falco focuses on the acquisition of German. It’s just a pity I can’t speak German. However, two articles are available in English from the site:
Anke Lüdeling, Maik Walter, Emil Kroymann & Peter Adolphs (2005): Multi-level error annotation in learner corpora. In: Proceedings of Corpus Linguistics 2005, Birmingham.
Hagen Hirschmann, Seanna Doolittle & Anke Lüdeling (2007) Syntactic Annotation of Non-Canonical Linguistics Structures. Proceedings of Corpus Linguistics 2007, Birmingham (online-Veröffentlichung).
Filed under: Corpora, Linguistics, Useful sites/links
16/05/2009 • 16:07 0
Free access to Grammar Patterns 1
A pre-publication version of the book Grammar Patterns 1: Verbs by Francis, Hunston and Manning has been made available at the Centre for Corpus Research at the University of Birmingham! A move worth applauding.
Filed under: Corpora, Linguistics, Useful sites/links
26/03/2009 • 17:07 0
Innovate
In the European year of creativity and innovation I’d like to draw your attention to an online journal I’ve recently come across: Innovate – Journal of Online Education. The articles are a valuable source of knowledge to anyone engaged in online education. I warmly recommend it.
Filed under: CALL, Useful sites/links
