Fitze and approaches to evaluating CMC

I ploughed through Fitze's article today (Discourse and Participation in ESL Face-to-Face and Written Electronic Conferences). The thing that I was wondering about was the authenticity of the experiment set-up. It was extremely well-controlled, with Class A recorded talking about a subject F2F for a certain amount of time and Class B doing exactly the same in a chat, all at the same time, sitting at individual computers in a language lab. But does the Class B set-up reflect how chat is usually used? And do the results of the research therefore really reflect "real life" language teaching? How do the rest of you integrate chat into your syllabuses? Do you schedule lessons in the regular day-time timetable of the institutions you work for as an alternative to F2F session, or is it used as an additional/complementary means of communication - an extension of another class?

Integrating tools

I was reading your views on blogs as personal and/or class tools and fully support the view that there must be hundreds of abandoned spaces out there! We do have to ask why bother!

I suspect in terms of blogs for learning, first of all the attributes of the tool itself need to be fit for purpose (eg your own use of the wikis and blogs for the webquest were your decisions. I have to say this is the first year that groups have defaulted to these collaborative tools rather than use the forum!). Yes, we're back to that word collaboration yet again:-)

Wikis clearly facilitate collaborative text construction in a way that blogs don't. The ease with which text is uploaded and reviewed is a definite attribute for creative projects, I feel. Maybe this is their strength and uses exploiting these features would seem to be logical. I do wonder if some wikis are more intuitive than others? I find myself reacting quite quickly to the 'look' of the tool and this can impact on my decision to make it a home for anything I do. You used different ones for your webquests - any thoughts on this, especially if that was your first encounter? I guess we could ask the same for most tools where we have choices, including blogs, but wikis seem to be a particular case in point:-)

Blogs clearly provide for discussion, but also seem to form a neat space for both sharing, archiving and display and I've seen various examples of them being used in this way. Along with the ability to tag entries, this seems to be again a specific set of attributes to act as a selling point.

This is a neat site that I explore with my UG class of primary school teaching assistants here in Manchester:-) In fact here are examples of blogs, podcasts, wikis all in one place - and in a primary learning context! Sandaig Primary school

What strikes me is there is no that much commenting and I felt this could be encouraged more (eg see the book review blog) but lots of 'display' - and clearly this can be seen by the children's parents too.

Here also is a nice example of Ning used in a global project around specific tasks that are aimed to make children more aware of others' voices around the world. Check thelink to the wiki from this main page for monthly tasks and uploaded projects Voices of the World

See what you think - oriented towards younger learners of course.
Diane

Chat

I am thinking of trying a chat experience with a group of young adult intermediate learners next week. I have created a dedicated chatroom for this purpose using Chatzy: http://www.chatzy.com/.

The reason I want to do this is I have a couple of very shy Japanese female learners in the class and 1 very dominant male Chinese. Speaking tends to be hard for the 2 female students who lack confidence when speaking 'in public'. After having read so much about how CMC can redress the balance in the papers we have been looking at for the current module, I'd like to see if whether and in what way the dynamics of the class during interaction change.

I'd like to leave the students as free as possible to chat but will either give them a topic to discuss or a task that involves reaching a concensus (which I think might generate more output and ensure that all the students will have to participated in some way). Any ideas?

I will keep you informed as to how I proceed and how it goes.

Approaches to blogging

As I was posting a comment back to Tony, I described Nik Peachey's blog as 'one to come back to' and I began thinking about the number of blogs I take a quick look at, but never return to, and the few that I do look at more regularly.

This made me wonder whether we read other people's blogs solely because we are interested in what we find there or whether as blog authors there might be some principles which could guide our approach to structuring and therefore make blogging a quick and easy experience for the reader.

To illustrate, Nik Peachey often posts on new software or Web2.0 applictaions he has come across. He systematically posts comments under headings: How to use this with students; what I liked; what I didn't like. Under these, bullet points are used quite a lot rather than extensive text. He also uses tagging systematically so you can easily browse the topics.

Tagging is a specific issue I suspect. This site by Ann Foreman (BC Spain) has some great posts (a veritable treasure trove of practical advice) including some nice examples of blogs. The tagging list is huge and possibly less transparent than Nik's as I wasn't sure why some tags took me to where I went, but does this make a difference? http://encouraginglearnerautonomy.blogspot.com/2007/03/setting-up-blog.html

Of course both these examples are targeted at teachers and are likely to grow quite large. Maybe learner blogs are set up more for specific projects and are more focussed by their very nature. Ann links to this BC blog which struck me as a nice idea to support exam classes and I suspect will continue to be easy to navigate as it grows http://fcebritishcouncilbilbao.blogspot.com/

So I wondered if you had examples of blogs that you might return to regularly, or learner blogs that look particularly clear and enticing?


Diane