Building an Effective, Free Language Lab
Erin Noxon
In today's presentation Erin Noxon explained to us how she set up her Global Interaction class and how it facilitated the ability of the students to become more globally aware.
Her goal was to improve their conversational abilities by providing authentic situations in the classroom for them to hone their skills. The aim here is that such situations could help learners realize the utility of foreign language to become global citizens.
Noxon set up the class using blended technology, i.e., her class incorporate technology as the backbone of the curriculum but the technology usage is not the main purpose of that instruction. Therefore in the class, the students use computers as the medium for their English study.
Her classes are broken down into two sessions in which various tasks are assigned for students to complete. These include Listening and Speaking sessions.
For Listening, this includes face-to-face interaction with the teacher, pronunciation practice using voice recognition software from Google and listening practice using video interviews from the web site Elllo.org. With the Elllo videos, students do cloze activities and answer questions about the videos they are required to view.
For the Speaking session, students are expected to complete activities such as making presentations and speeches, doing conversation tests, doing interview tests and completing computer-based tasks. One particular computer-based task that is quite popular is using voice recognition software through Google Docs where students read a text aloud so that Google could transcribe the dialogue.
Additionally, Noxon discussed how it is important to teach students about digital citizenship. This is important in terms of confirming the guidelines students should follow to ensure their safety when working with online resources.
Links to various worksheets to use with Elllo videos were provided:
http://bit.ly/EllloWorksheets
http://bit.ly/EllloForms
Link to meeting listing

Next Item Previous Item