The end of another academic year is coming to a close and this brings me much relief. I would like to focus my efforts on my tenure package and continue to ride on the wave of teaching with technology in my department. This is an exciting time for the department, the most exciting in fact in the last 4 years. There has been some experimental redesigning of course syllabi with technology, but now, there is going to be a more concentrated effort on offering these courses in a more official manner.

One of the greatest downfalls in teaching with technology, as I have found, is that so many people implement technological tools to such varying degrees but then do not necessarily share this information, so it always feels like you are reinventing the wheel when you have a brainshower and want to do something pedagogically sound and technology-enhanced. Case in point, how many of my colleagues know that at our institution this spring term alone offered 26 online courses (many in the MBA program) and 34 hybrid courses. These numbers are surprising because I don’t know how many of us are aware of whom else is experimenting with this new course format and I wonder if there have been any conversations that have arisen from it…

Our college has now initiated a dialogue about hybrid and online courses with our first meeting scheduled Thursday. One question that has always intrigued me about hybrid courses is: how do we define it? By what parameters are we limited? After some research, I’ve discovered that there is no singular definition. This may or may not be disturbing (depending on just how prescriptive one may wish to be—or not!) but I think it is time that we share ideas with the hope of creating a model that works within our community, with our student population and with the support of administration. Our personal objectives will always remain very distinct (as they should be), but we really need to come together to enhance our common vision and promote it, as I believe this is very important.

The great thing for my department is that we have all been given the thumbs up to explore the degree to which and the manner in which we will develop our hybrid and/or online courses. So what is new in my department in Spring 2009? Well, there will be some fully online courses (intro Italian I & II courses), the use of SL in another major elective course, and a hybrid course for FL teaching methods. There is one additional member of our department who will also be teaching a hybrid course for a further major elective course, but I am unsure of how she will approach it.

Given the array of courses and course designs, we must remember that as with all good teaching strategies, to understand teaching styles with respect to technological tools is just as important as appreciating different teaching styles and types of teachers; each one of us can all constructively contribute to the dialogue of this new direction for our college/university.

So I’d like to ask you about your experience with hybrid/online courses. Have you ever been a teacher or student of one? What would you rate positively? negatively? Any words of wisdom you’d be willing to share?

enough said

Thanks to some news from fivehusbands yesterday, I just discovered a new book which is a must for my library. Published by Bantam Books in 2007, Christopher Barzack’s One for Sorrow has received much praise, including “beautiful, honest and heartbreaking” by the Washington Post. 

Now from Ohio to Italy. La casa editrice Ellint (a branch of Edizioni Elliot) has translated the novel and is publishing it under the title La voce segreta dei corvi. Traditionally, the corvo (raven/crow) has symbolized a bad omen, and that one must learn from the past …

To whet your appetitie, here is a video of Christopher reading the first chapter of his book: 

Grazie ad un twit ricevuto ieri da fivehusbands, ho scoperto un nuovo libro da aggiungere alla mia libreria personale. Stampato dalla casa editrice Bantam Books nel 2007,  One for Sorrow di Christopher Barzack ha ricevuto molte lode; il quotdiano Washington Post dice che è un libro “bello, onesto e straziante. 

Adesso dallo stato dell’Ohio al belpaese. La casa editrice Ellint (di Edizioni Elliot) ha tradotto il romanzo e l’ha pubblicato con il titolo La voce segreta dei corvi. Il corvo è un simbolo di profezie negative che insegna a imparare dal passato… L’autore Giovanni Arduino disse questo de One for Sorrow

Quale è stato l’ultimo libro che hai letto che pensi ti sia rimasto dentro come una radice che affonda le sue estremità nella parte più profonda dell’anima?

… Andando appena indietro, One for Sorrow di Christopher Barzak, dolce e violento (mi piacciono gli opposti che si incontrano e si fondono non senza problemi, gli angoli e gli spigoli che non possono smussarsi). …

although I downloaded the article as soon as it appeared online, I just read Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance this past weekend. I had my usual lapsus calami and for the nth time this year, questioned what I do. Like Mike Wesch, I teach at a large public university. Also like Wesch, I teach, for the most part, required courses for which students put in a minimal effort. Unlike him, I do not have large classes, because they are capped at 25 (though they usually are closer to 30). Unlike him, the content being delivered is in a foreign language and one thing that I have discovered with each passing year is that if a student takes degree requirement courses reluctantly in English, many have an even stronger aversion to those offered in foreign languages. The excuses range the gamut: I’m not good at languages to why should I study languages? everyone speaks English.

I applaud Wesch for what he does in his classroom—he wants his intro to Cultural Anthropology students to co-construct knowledge about different topic areas, not only to explore them, but to live them through World Simulation. As I read the brief methodology he presents in the last paragraphs of his article, I chuckled to myself: not because I dismiss it but rather because I embrace it. I have been using such a technique, under the guise of foreign language level-appropriate communicative activities.

Since the 80s, foreign language educators have been trying to encourage students to simulate various scenarios that they would encounter if they were in an environment where the foreign language is used. Providing students with authentic input (this is where the Internet as a “medium” helps students get “the message”) and having them attempt to negotiate meaning and construct knowledge is at the base of each and every lesson. Ask any of my students if they are able to sit where they lay their backpack in my class, and the answer is no. They move around a lot, with partners or in groups, working on jigsaw activities, where each student is responsible for becoming and expert on his/her topic then moving on with other groups to share information and knowledge and learn from his/her classmates. They simulate, role-play, discuss, share and reach the objective of the activity, doing this for the most part in the foreign language. 

The fact that this methodology, these techniques are being implemented in courses other than language courses gives me hope. Why? Because it is not just “those crazy language people” who have unconventional ideas about the teaching and learning dyad.

Ay, there is the rub—the out-dated educational model. Students come to my class expecting a lecture … some even in English. Apparently, the grammar translation method to language learning is still alive and well in many classrooms and institutions in this entire continent. We, as a department as well as a united front with other FL departments, have pleaded with the university administration to allow us to address the issue of how foreign languages are learned in the freshman seminar offered to our students. To date, we have been unable to get time in that seminar.

This tells us that administrators too are unaware or wish to remain uneducated about acquisition theories and techniques and the role of technology in language teaching and learning pedagogy. Moreover, they fail to recognize that the “lecture” designation given to our courses is completely inaccurate, arbitrary and unsound.

So, how can we update this model of education? Do we start at the top and work our way down to the students, or do we start with our students and move up the hierarchy? What do you think?

A number of weeks ago, Melanie McBride suggested that I make some noise about Web 2.0 technologies and user rights. I am an avid user of these technologies who appreciates the level of engagement of social media, and a scholar who would like to continue to implement these computer-mediated communication tools as regular instruments to my foreign language teaching and learning repertoire.

Last fall, after exploring Facebook for a number of months, I was put off by it for a number of reasons, in particular the excessive spam continuously received after adding modules…and that was extremely frustrating given that the modules are fantastic and that is one of the greatest features of FB. OK, I am sure there is an academic use of FB that I could have contrived, but I tired of it before I could investigate it further and develop something. In addition to this, a NY Times article from December 2007, I posed the question “Is Facebook Public?” and found this concern to be quite valid as a researcher/scholar. Then, with other FB issues “Leaving is hard to do” as a former user I do feel that I have no rights. 

So then, what options to I have? Not to participate? That would be wholly unacceptable to me, as I am a technophile / Web 2.0 aficionado. There is a call to create a personal policy that gives users rights and real options (I strongly urge you all to complete the survey Social media: Essential user controls) because we have every right to control and own what we choose to share. We tend to show greater ownership when it comes to e-commerce but not social media. I wonder why?

P.S. Did you ever notice that after you delete a tweet on Twitter, it actually doesn’t “disappear”… compare my archived tweets of less than 48 hours ago….

to those from tweetscan…

@biz what’s going on?

Planting a tree on Earth Day is symbolic, especially when you have all three parties of the “highly successful” North American Free Trade Agreement working as one. 

Given my ongoing saga with moving to the US under NAFTA, I found this picture laughable. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. What does this say to you about Canada & Mexico with respect to the US? 

Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, left, U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon plant a tree in honour of Earth Day during their summit meeting in New Orleans.
© Copyright 2008 CTVglobemedia publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science is perhaps one of the first, if not only, post-secondary institutions to grant a Masters of Science Degree on Twitter as a thesis topic. I came across this dissertation in December 2007 (it was submitted in September 2007) and greedily held on to it … not wanting to share this interesting morsel on Twitter. It takes Erving Goffman’s “presentation of self in everyday life” and looks at it through the theoretical framework of Social Shaping of Technology (SSOT) and Social Construction of Technology (SCOT).

Given my propensity to want to do too much and, realistically speaking, limitations imposed simply because it is not within my realm of expertise, I will share this with my handful of readers with the hope that you might share this information with like-minded individuals in academia, business, technology, etc.

Given all the media coverage on Twitter of late, the idea of a Master of Science Degree from such a prestigious university (see Wikipedia for different rankings nationally and internationally) may make believers out of more than just us converts.

Twitter: Expressions of the Whole Self
An investigation into user appropriation of a web-based communications platform 
Edward Mischaud 

ABSTRACT 
Twitter.com is a web-based communications platform combining Instant Messaging and SMS  that enables subscribers to its service to send short ‘status updates’ to other people. Beyond  its hybrid platform, Twitter’s unique feature is its overarching question “What are you doing?”, which acts as a ‘guidance note’ on how users should phrase their postings. Although it is a ‘soft restriction’, meaning that other formats and styles are possible, this study investigates the extent to which users of Twitter are responding to the question. In the case that people are going beyond “What are you doing?”, are there commonalities in the ‘other’ uses thereof? To develop this premise, a content analysis of 60 users’ postings was conducted to seek for deviations and to categorise them accordingly. To acquire a better understanding of why people use Twitter to disseminate messages, several users participated in a questionnaire to provide insight into the platform. Based on the content analysis’ results, it is possible to conclude that the majority of Twitter users observed are appropriating the platform beyond “What are you doing?”. The findings are discussed within a theoretical framework exploring the role of society in shaping technology and the influence a technology’s design may have on how it is used. 

today I presented a faculty forum on teaching with Twitter. I had a good turnout (small group but they were interested) and a cheering section. At the end of the presentation, I went live to my fellow Twitterers to say hello and I want to thank all those who replied. The response was instantaneous–and the audience impressed. 

some of the things that people who didn’t attend may have missed included: 1) my stunning Italian linen dress ; 2) some notes and observations on twitter in education; and 3) good questions about twitter. Below, I give you some of the key ideas on twitter & teaching and I hope they might encourage you to think about it as a tool in whatever line of work you do.

I want to thank a group of followers for graciously providing me with screenshots for my presentation, which really provided a grasp of the various ways to tweet: Francesco, Luke, Milos, and Sharon, and, of course Michael, for retweeting and saving me, yet again.

Anyone interested in developing twitter as a FL classroom tool, in more defined ways, please contact me as I think it’s truly valuable.

P.S. Thanks also to AJ, who was tweeting about my presentation during my presentation! Didn’t see this until today.

so many things happen…have happened…continue to happen.
i’m not the same person i was then…i don’t expect to be this person for the rest of my life either.
i do know that some of me has changed, and i like it.
i also know that what of me has not changed is for a reason. not that i understand it…yet
hopes and dreams i still hold onto
and tho patience wanes, i persist…after all, i am the one who waits
and here i am, almost one year later

today and tomorrow represent two anxious days of voting in Italy. comparing the two main candidates, leaders of the PD (democratic party) and PDL (recently formed people of liberty) respectively, La Stampa compares these leading candidates in a manner that shows perhaps there are some ‘differences’ between the two. How would you interpret these signs?

  
Veltroni images on left, Berlusconi on right