Archive for October, 2008
Collaborative Editing Online: Available Tools
It is not only wikis and blogs that you can use collaboratively online. Now it is possible to create graphs and charts together, as well as regular text documents and tables. What you Need Tool to Adopt a graph or a chart Gliffy an online word processor and a spreadsheet application in one; you need […]
In: Collaborative Learning, Web 2.0 Tools
Web 2.0 in Education: Affordances
NB! Web 2.0 properties are moulded by user perceptions. The notion of the learner-context interface (Language Learning in Distance Education by Cynthia White, p 86, etc CLTL) places the individual learner’s capacity to construct an effective interface with target language* (TL) sources in the learning environment at the centre of distance education. * I guess any subject […]
In: Course Design, Instructional Design, Web 2.0 Buzz Words
Collaborative Learning Online: Principles and Guidelines
Quintessentially, in order for a collaborative task to succeed it is necessary to provide for the following: 1. The students in a group must perceive that they “sink or swim” together, that each member is responsible to and dependent on all the others, and that one cannot succeed unless everyone in the group succeeds. (I wonder […]
In: Collaborative Learning
Sample Collaborative Learning Tasks & Activities: Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning
Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning The goal of this activity is to generate discussion among student groups about a specific topic or content area. Faculty conducts a brief (10-15 minutes) lecture on a topic or content area. Faculty may assign a reading or written assignment as well. Instructor then gives the students a set of generic […]
In: Collaborative Learning
A Guide to EFL/ESL Exams and Levels
This is a table that provides a compact comparative overview of such EFL/ESL exams as FCE, CAE, CPE, IELTS & TOEFL.
In: Course Design, Testing and Assessment
Types of Groups and Groupwork
GROUPWORK Various names have been given to this form of teaching, and there are some distinctions among these: cooperative learning, collaborative learning, collective learning, learning communities, peer teaching, peer learning, reciprocal learning, team learning, study circles, study groups, and work groups. But all in all, there are three general types of group work: informal learning […]
In: Collaborative Learning, groupwork
Designing Multiple Choice Tests (validity, reliability, etc)
Here is a nice article on designing multiple choice tests
In: Instructional Design, Testing and Assessment
Setting up a Wiki for your Class
There are several websites that allow you to set up a wiki for your class quickly and easily, the most popular ones are PB Wiki Wetpaint Wikispaces
In: Using Wikis in EFL
Top 25 Web Design Blogs
Daily Blog Tips
A Super-Duper Book on Accents & L1 Dependent Mistakes
I came across this book quite by chance. The title of the book – Learner English by M- Swan & B. Smith – has little to do with the contents at first sight (I did not expect to find detailed analyses of different languages in it as well as pragmatic lists of difficulties that learners […]
In: Accents, Commonly Made Mistakes, Course Design