Blog #14 CALL Summary

I feel like it's hard for me to choose right now, which CALL tools I will use in the future, but I do appreciate having an idea of the different tools that are out there. I think I'll have to get into my next classroom and take in both the subject of the course as well as my students' personalities in order to decide which tools, if any, to use. I do feel like we received a great variety of tools and an abundant amount of them. At the time it was frustrating for me, but now I really appreciate that I am familiar with these tools and feel more apt to explore others.

All in all I think one should only use CALL tools if the activity cannot be done without them or if it will be more beneficial to the students to use them. Although I think in an academic setting, they should be used, not only for their language acquisition benefits, but also to learn computer skills. It's important for students planning to enter a university to feel very comfortable using the computer, especially for research. I think CALL tools can be very useful, but each class needs to be evaluated first. If CALL tools are something that one's class can benefit from and if the students are interested in using them, then I think they should definitely be incorporated into the curriculum.

Blog #13 Second Life

I think of Second Life in the same way that I think about online chat. If you're teaching an EFL class, then it's a great way to get your students to interact with native English speakers. But, if you're in an ESL setting, then I think efforts are better spent getting the studnets to have real face to face interactions with native speakers, not computer interactions. Plus, I think it would be hard to monitor. It's my experience with Second Life that much time is spent walking around looking for others. This could be quite a waste of time for students. Even if they know where some native speaker are, what would prevent them from slacking off and going exploring. There is so much to look at in Second Life, students may easily be distracted. Overall, I think it would be fun to do one day just to give the students something different to work with. I wouldn't make it a regular part of my class though.

As far as the article we read on English video gaming. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I can see how it could help young students learn English because it would be using a medium they particularly enjoy. I'm not really comfortable with the idea of encouraging video gaming though. Plus, even if it helped them learn vocabulary and some syntacs structures, it really wouldn't help them with their communicative competency. It places them behind a barier of any true interaction. There would have to be a lot of research proving this to be very beneficial before I would ever jump on board.

Blog #12 Video Conferencing

I have always been a fan of Skype and ichat, but I had never used any of these web based programs. I don't like any of them as much as Skype or ichat, but I do see the benefit of not having to use a mac or download a program. I liked both tokbok and meebo. They seem the same to me. I really didn't like Zoho. I just felt like there were so many features I didn't know where to begin and was a bit overwhelmed. Mebeam on the other hand had the opposite affect. It was almost too easy with no features at all. Also, I was confused when it asked me to type in the name of the room I wanted to chat in. Do we make this up or should we know some names somehow? Oh, and I never received my confirmation e-mail from palbee, which I see happened to other people as well.

I'm not sure when I would use this tool. If I was teaching an EFL class I would definitely be interested in it because it would be a really nice way to match students up with native speakers and they could actually see their facial expressions and everything while they spoke. If it was an ESL class though, I would rather the interaction be face to face. Speaking to a native speaker is nerve racking enough for ESL students, let alone having to do it in the unnatural way of looking at the computer screen and having to deal with the technology as well as their nerves. It could be useful for international business people to use this technology though because video conferencing is not uncommon in the international business world and it's a good skill for them to learn and be comfortable with.