ready for the new academic year

I am very fortunate to be one of a select few professors to pilot a personalized study on learning with the iPod Touch (an entire class set–w00t!). As I am an Italian professor, the Office of Information Technology at Montclair State University, has also provided my students with the mini microphone.
In addition to the apps [...]

The Tweep Types behind the Tweets

as I write this post, Twitter is down. What did I do to network? Went back to Friendfeed (new UI in beta & a new widget for my blog) and reintroduced myself to it. Well, I also discovered a good thing while I was there (which just might prompt me to use it again).
A few [...]

Calico ‘09 musings

I was fortunate enough to have a paper accepted at the 26th annual conference of Calico ’09,  my first Calico conference ever. It was an experience that surpassed any and all expectations (how often can we say that?!). Different aspects of the conference that made it so memorable include the venue, the presentations, the participants [...]

why twitter?

An interesting international conversation on Twitter this morning caught my attention and prompted this poll. The three participants I follow, @josepicardo (UK), @nergizk (Bursa) and @courosa (Canada), were engaged in a dialogue about the ways in which we use Twitter, the purpose of following and the right to unfollow, and the idea of community membership [...]

Using the right tech tool for teaching…how did you decide?

I have deliberated this post to death, wanting to ensure that I made a positive contribution to the discussion of social network sites (SNS). As an educator, my use of SNS is always from a professional perspective (yeah, right), wanting to investigate different tools for language learning and teaching.
During one of the umpteenth [...]

rethinking my chapter title

given the negative press twitter has had of late, I really should not have been surprised by this headline: How Twitter could be worth nothing in a year
I’m thinking I should just go with a general microblogging theme…

Podcasts and FL Learning

I was invited to provide some thoughts on podcasting and language acquisition. Maybe some of the comments may be published in an article in a popular business magazine, but in the meantime, I thought I should share them on my blog.
Podcasts (both audio and video) in foreign language (FL) learning are invaluable both as a [...]

is social media really an “us” vs. “them”?

This is a post I’ve wanted to write for some time but hadn’t found my courage voice for it. It was born from a comment of a student evaluation from a fall course that stated that not only were my “clothes inappropriate” but I also “had Facebook”. The comment on my wardrobe is completely off [...]

more on plurk

On June 2nd, I received my invite from Adamo to join Plurk. You may be asking: “Why another micro-blogging site? Is the honeymoon with Twitter over?” Not at all, except I understand its shortcomings and the recent rash of problems was driving me over the edge (you must understand, addiction is a nasty thing). So [...]

becoming a p “lurker”?

update: not too far off with my title. Plurk as stalkerati central: People + Lurk = Plurk
another micro-blogging site to compensate for Twitter’s recent shortcomings…more to come later