So 14 days later, how does a language professor proceed? Which of my students, given the events they had just experienced, would be able to recall talking about past events in Italian, recalling the conjugations of the tense, the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, and irregular past participles? I tapped into some creative juices and I decided to that playing would be a good way to reintroduce them to the classroom and the language after an unexpected absence.

The game: Tombola (Bingo equivalent)

The main board (il tombellone): I provided students with a list of 40 activities  (which I would use as caller) that they may have done during the aftereffects of the superstorm. The question to them was “Since the university was closed, what did you do?” There were a list of daily activities, including getting up, getting dressed, showering, sending text messages, chatting, sleeping, as well as looking for gas, grocery shopping, online shopping, relaxing, being bored, etc.

Students were given a blank board, resembling an Italian cartella rather than the Bingo game card. 

Students were then asked to fill in 5 of the 8 spaces per row, and shade in 3 per row (like free spaces). They were allowed to use any of the 40 activities in any order. The only requirement was they phrase it in the present perfect. I modeled a few of them… “Io ho bevuto molto vino” and “Io non mi sono depilata perché sono stata a casa”. In addition to getting a few laughs, I modeled both transitive and intransitive verbs. It started the recollection process for many of them. As they completed their game card, they helped each other recall vocabulary and verb conjugations.

Once they had completed their first task, I had shared with them the rules on how to win. I asked what they knew about winning in Bingo. Students told me (in Italian) that it was getting a line horizontally, vertically or diagonally, and also the whole card. I wrote the words terno, quaterna, cinquina on the board. I asked them how many spaces they needed to get in a row to win. They recognized the number base in each of the words, and so once it was clear, the game began.

I called out each activity; I had each activity on a slip of paper and pulled them out randomly from my bag one at a time. I formed a question (Chi ha dormito molto? Who slept a lot?) and students marked their card and some even raised their hand if they did the activity. If they shouted terno, quaterna, cinquina, they were required to read out their activities to the entire class and I would confirm the win (or in a few instances, tell them they hadn’t won!). We played until all 12 prizes had been won. When we were close to the end of our activity, students were anxiously calling out the activity they needed for a win.

This entire activity took about 35 minutes (of a 75 minute class) from start to finish: 2 minutes to introduce the activity; 10 minutes to write out their 15 activities on their game card; 3 minutes to explain how to win; then 20 minutes to play and verify their win.

Students were excited, engaged, and had great fun. Their disposition had changed dramatically from the start of class to the end of it. They walked in with heads hanging low as a result of the superstorm and snowstorm (which was the day before, on Nov. 7). For a little while, they were able to forget about it by reviewing, practicing and playing in Italian. Playing Tombola helped also transition into the next part of the lesson, which introduced new material via an Italian song.

This isn’t part of the regular curriculum…perhaps games should find a more regular place in our teaching, even at the university level.

Ribloggato da VentureBeat:

• 

This is a guest post by professor, Reynol Junco

We’re in the middle of an Educational Technology ("ed-tech") startup boom.

Research by GSV Advisors shows a sharp increase in investments in education companies almost doubling between 2007 and 2011 to $930 million. Data from the National Venture Capital Association shows that investment in ed-tech companies has almost tripled between 2002 and 2011.

Continua a leggere... 1.023 altre parole

Then yesterday I read the blog of @girlcanrun, http://www.girlcanrun.com, about how the half MUST go on. She concluded her post with

• I’ve got so much grading to get through; I must get home
• I’m overworked and my research is suffering. When the f**k will I finish the articles?
• How can we continue to have the same stupid fight repeatedly
• People are idiots! Yet they are more successful/happy/rich than I
• Damn jiggly thighs! My ass still looks so big
• Doesn’t matter how much I run, the scale isn’t showing it. Time for liposuction, but Dr.D, MD&JD, says I don’t need it. Should i get another opinion?

My demons…pathetic, isn’t it? The rational, logical side of me knows that I need to shut this down. The perfectionist in me reminds me that I’m far from perfect so it isn’t going to happen…

Then I came across a tweet/link (I can’t really remember which) about taking 30 seconds while you run. For 30 seconds ignore everything and look around you. Awaken the visual. The next 30 seconds, listen carefully to what’s around you. Awaken the audio. The next 30 seconds, concentrate on your pace and gait. Focus on feeling the run. Then finally, focus on your breathing (something I’m regularly monitoring). Okay, so 2 minutes of your run NOT thinking about anything BUT the “here and now”.

I did it this morning for the first time and it made a world of difference–my anxieties disappeared after a few repetitions of the 2 minutes. I had a truly therapeutic, rewarding run. Thank you @girlcanrun, the tweet from a few days ago, and someone whose running and triathlon prep has been really remarkable, @twerick http://nadarpedalearycorrer.blogspot.com/2011/11/un-ano-corriendo.html (in Spanish).

My new mantra…take 30 seconds!

Current trends are moving towards mobile apps on smartphones and tablet devices. Apps, in my opinion, are quite panacean; anything we want or feel we need to do can be simply remedied by an app… “there is an app for that.” So I want to learn a foreign language, and I can’t justify investing in Rosetta Stone nor do I have the time to take a formal course (there are multitudinous, but this goes beyond the scope of this post!), so let’s shop the app store. Searching for apps as, if you will, a layperson (i.e., not as language professor) is surely overwhelming. So many apps (this morning’s quick search of “language learning” numbers  728 iPad apps and 1135 iPhone apps!), that it would take an army of research assistants far endless weeks to investigate them properly (and as we all know in academia, assistants and time, together with money to pay for the apps, is something we don’t have).

So, I would like to ask you, professionals and laity, which apps have you downloaded, which would you recommend, and which would you dismiss. I’m interested in all apps: the good, the bad and the ugly (you’re not too surprised that I make a cultural reference with Ennio Morricone, are you? )

Thanks in advance for sharing and helping me better understand mobile assisted language learning.

I actually gave two talks but the first, the powerpoint of which I share here, was the one of which I am particularly proud. It gave me an opportunity to revisit much about Twitter, including the *new* Twitter, new research and where I am with Twitter as an academic and avid twitterer. Discussing Twitter in higher education is always a rewarding experience because there are always some good discussions which ensue, especially those comments that begin with “I want to play devil’s advocate”

Clearly, the research on Twitter in higher ed I share in this presentation is not comprehensive. I am grateful to dana boyd for sharing research on Twitter and Microblogging on her site. Here you can find more articles, conference talks, etc.

For those of us who feel that these decisions are outwardly wrong, we unite and make our voice heard. This has been the case with the language programs cut at SUNY-Albany. If you aren’t aware of the dastardly attack on the humanities, here is the decision being protested from around the world.

In October, UAlbany president George Philip announced that the campus is suspending admissions to five programs — French, Russian, Italian, classics and theater — in the wake of an unprecedented budget shortfall.

This decision has created quite an uproar not only from academics directly affected, but from constituents in higher education from administrators to scholars to students. Stanley Fish blogged about this crisis (in two parts). Other institutions are aiming to revive the humanities.

Ultimately, once decisions like this one reached at SUNY-Albany are made, there is little hope at reversing it, despite the most comprehensive attempts made by all. As a faculty member, I have participated in letter writing (both in its traditional sense and by email correspondence), and have disseminated information to others too.

I even zealously tweeted about the online petition immediately after I learned about it. I imagine a smile or a smirk appearing on the lips of you readers as you get to this paragraph. You are probably thinking, “There she goes with Twitter again. Isn’t there a statute of limitations?!” No, there isn’t!

On Sunday, October 10, 2010, I learned about the petition via this tweet:

It was retweeted by a number of members (more than just the 2 in the image above!) in my personal learning network (PLN). One tweep asked if international signatures would be accepted. I did not know whether their signatures would be counted, nevertheless many of us pleaded with everyone in our PLN to sign the petition and retweet the information to their PLNs. Three days later, I tweeted this:

My last tweet on October 13/10 showed an increase of 2,960 signatures over the three days in which I tweeted it and it was retweeted. I am not naive enough to think that Twitter was solely responsible for this increase of almost 3,000 signatures in 3 days, but I do credit my PLN on Twitter with helping disseminate information about the petition quickly and effectively. Tweeps in Italy, Spain and England, people across NJ and the rest of America united to be heard on the SUNY-Albany cuts.

The penultimate paragraph of the timesunion.com articles tells us

The document has garnered signatures and comments from 37 foreign countries, particularly in Europe, Asia and the Pacific, as well as 49 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Although I will never know for certain, I firmly believe that the far-reaching arm of Twitter contributed to the extensive national and international representation of the signatures on the petition.

You may think this is a lost cause and I have tweeted and blogged for no reason…but there were and still are so many lessons to learn from this, at so many different levels.

I’m happy to state that my audience was fantastic, knowledgeable and willing to participate with my numerous requests, above and beyond my expectations. Thanks ITANJ for this wonderful opportunity!

In spite of my inability (read: fear) to run a race, running has given me great satisfaction. This is a goal that I’ve managed to achieve because it is a truly selfish accomplishment…I have nothing to prove to anyone, I set my own pace, I defy myself.

This is so conspicuously different from my writing, which has waned considerably. With each sentence I write, I imagine endless challenges from reviewers and critics–unsupported theses, poor discussions, irrelevant conclusions. After an entire academic year (the one immediately subsequent to tenure) in which I was given endless administrative duties, I find myself unable to write. I need to find a way to write for me first, then for an audience…to make my writing analogous to my running. And then maybe this restlessness will pass, maybe…

After my last post on how I’m learning Spanish (and now Portuguese too) on Twitter (my language goals for the summer!), in Spanish I thanked a number of people who had retweeted my blog post. Of course, there was an error in my tweet and I had two friends advise me of them, in two different ways…one in a direct message explicitly stating my error, the other in a reply message using a recast to note my error.

How do others approach error correction on Twitter? This is fundamental to me as a language instructor and I wonder what others do too!

Thanks for your anticipated feedback

So I have praised Twitter as a tool for creating connections, networking with professionals in my field and related fields, communicating with people across the world. Then, a few months ago, after the AAAL conference in Atlanta, Georgia, I put forth a challenge to fellow linguists to explore technological tools not solely as a researcher but also as a student. I requested they use Twitter, Second Life and other social networking tools to learn a language in a mode that would be analogous to tasks and goals they set for their students. A formidable recommendation, right? Well, would you know that I thought I had been doing just that…but the reality of my use of Twitter to learn Spanish was, well, quite limited. So after I set forth this challenge, I decided to make a more earnest effort to emulate the efforts I had demanded from my students to learn Italian. Basically, physician heal thyself.

My following of Spanish-speaking tweeps is amazing. Some were already in my timeline prior to my issuing of the challenge—they are scholars, language teachers, teachers, interesting people whose tweets appealed to me. They indulge me and despite my lack of Spanish language skills (remember, I grew up in Canada so my third language is French!), engage with me when I tweet them.

What are my “tasks”?
Well, let me first preface all this by saying that my Italian has been quite helpful for me to jump in feet first. I started first by reading tweets and deciphering what was being said and how it was being said. The reading of these short updates—the least intimidating form of communication—is not only entertaining but also educational.

The next step for me was sharing some of the tweets with followers in my timeline. So as an exercise, I would retweet a Spanish tweet and translate it into English and Italian. By the way, I don’t know how my monolingual followers felt about this…I never asked.

Finally, it was time to open up the channels of communication beyond the “hello, how are you?” tweets. I started replying to their tweets, comment on their avatars and generally make myself “open” to conversation. Remember Erving Goffman’s seminal work The Presentation of Self Everyday Life? Well, that’s what I did, started presenting my everyday life in Spanish. Generally, it never amounted to more than a few tweets, but this parallels the type of exchanges we would expect our students to complete in ITAL101. Okay, so I think I’m have achieved the novice-mid/high level on the proficiency scale for reading and writing!

Then yesterday, I had a lengthy exchange in Spanish that spanned 8 hours (tweeting was intermittent, not constant!). I think I hit the intermediate level of writing, because I was able to

create with the language and communicate simple facts and ideas in a loosely connected series of sentences on topics of personal interest and social needs, primarily in the present.

The beginning of the exchange is reproduced here for readers who understand Spanish. After the customary apology by the language learner (me) for messing up in the target language (Spanish), one of the highlights of this exchange occurred. The words every language learner wants to hear—my tweep told me he understood me very well.

So, wherein do my errors lie?
Well, prepositions for one. The difference between “hacer” and “tener”. Limited vocabulary. Now, to confess (#yoconfiesoque): yes, I did use WordReference to translate expressions…after so many years of language teaching, I automatically recognize that idioms won’t translate. Now, did I think in English before I tweeted? Noticeably, it was more Italian in which I though but for the most part, I was able to immediately start replying in Spanish. Then, I’d be stuck and switch to WordReference to look things up.

Do I feel confident enough?
I’m OK, but hesitant to engage in more specialized language. For example, I read a tweet from another tweep in Mexico who was looking for help transferring text from PowerPoint to Word. Yes, I had the answer. I didn’t however have the language to tweet her through it in Spanish. Luckily, I recalled that her bio page is in English so I tweeted with her in English re the software issue, but after that in Spanish about ourselves. And she corrects me! :p

If I were to take the Spanish placement test, how would I fare?
I don’t know, maybe I could take Spanish 103. Need to build vocabulary and not rely so heavily on Italian (e.g., comer / mangiare / to eat) and, of course, verb conjugations. Are these findings normal? Well, given my desire to learn Spanish (on a scale of 1-10, it’s an 11), and my training as a language teacher, I would have to say that these are not. But I will acknowledge that in these exchanges I am a student and I too experience the anxiety of social networking in the target language.

Even with my training, different things put me off a bit, especially the unwillingness of tweeps to engage. Now, when I follow a new Spanish speaker, my first tweet to them is a greeting telling them I’m trying to learn Spanish so they are forewarned!