A final Conclusion
Now that the semester and our course “New Media in Foreign Language Education” is over I would like to write a short conclusion. First of all I have to say that I had my doubts concerning the hole weblog stuff in the beginning. Although I do use the internet and its applications a lot I had prejudice against the bloggisphere phenomenon. But I think this was mainly because of the diary blogs where most of the writers tend to give away all their privacy in an unreflected manner and I am absolutely not interested in this kind of information. But now that we were concerned with a more scientific way of using blogs and the new media in particular I have to confess that it really got my attention.
Having posted my first entries with a lot of doubts if I did right and choose the relevant topics I got more and more into it. I enjoyed thinking about an overall concept for my portfolio and topics I would like to deal with here. However now that I look at my blog and the drafts I did not finish and publish yet I realize that this topic and medium really got my attention and there are may ideas and tools I still would like to write about if I did not have to do an awful lot of other stuff in order to complete my degree. That is also why I did not contribute that much in the last weeks.
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Tools – EtherPad
Hello everyone. Today I would like to present you EtherPad, a (or the) web-based collaborative writing tool. It allows up to 16 people to simultaneously work on one document in real-time. And real-time really means real-time (delay of about 1 second).
In order to set up a document you do not need to register or login (although you could). You just visit the main page and create a public pad or just type www.etherpad.com/name_of_the_document into your browser and the document will be set up. Once you did that you are confronted with a very user-friendly interface which is really straightforward and easy to handle. There are some basic text formatting options that can be used as well as general pad options in the header. It is also possible to import a certain text document or export the pad to some general text formats. Another great advantage of this application is that you are able to access all the saved revisions of your pad or use the time slider to go back and forth in the editing process of your pad which can be really useful. All the saved revisions are saved on the server and can be undone at any time. Read the rest of this entry »
Tool – Mindmapping Tools
A mind map is some sort of diagram to sketch out, visualize and structure your ideas and thoughts about a specific topic. They have been used for a long time and for many different purposes and are a very useful thing to do in order to shape our ideas.
If one is working all by him/herself a mind map on a piece of paper is totally sufficient and serves its purpose. However, if you have to work in a group and it is hard or even impossible to find the time to meet altogether in one place it is not really possible to establish such a quick mind map. It would be possible to set up a document and send it back and forth but this method would be extremely time consuming and would not really serve its purpose.
But now there is a possibility to do that. The solution is a collaborative online mindmapping tool like MindMeister or Bubble.us. These tools allow their users to set up a mind map and modify it altogether and at the same time even though you are not in the same place, as a kind of decentralized online brainstorming session. It is also possible to edit this mind map at any time. This way members of the group could not be online a a certain point of time when the mind map is set up can add information or make changes. Another great advantage is the possibility to share or publish this mind map, though that other people or for example the teacher can take a look at it.
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Tools – Links
Back again, and a happy new year to all of you. I decided to start 2010 with some links on interesting tools for students and teachers…and here they are:
Tools – Google Wave
I can not wait to try out Google Wave! The crossbreed of e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, blog and media-portal seems to be a highly promising tool and surely will revolutionize communication and offer new effective ways of collaborative working in real time (especially in education and groupwork). A short video on Google Wave as well as some advantages that Google Wave will offer for education can be found in this article.
Tools – CoboCards
CoboCards is a free and web-based flash card application. “Cobo” stands for “collaboration” and the central idea was to create a file card trainer, which could be used for more than just vocabulary training.
CoboCards allows you to virtually create and study sets of flash cards for any topic you would like and it is possible to add pictures and graphs, edit the cards again and again and compare them to older versions. You can study on your own or with friends or fellow students using the Chat functionality, phone calls or VoIP-Software like Skype. When learning collaboratively one partner is asked a question and the other has to decide whether the answer was “correct”, “partly correct” or “incorrect”. The application saves the status of each card and provides statistics after the study session. This way you know which cards you know and which you still have to learn. CoboCards also offers the possibility to print out cards and study them offline wherever you like. Read the rest of this entry »
Tools – Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is a free online social bookmarking service. It allows you to store, classify and share internet resources (according to topics and interests) which can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. There are many other social bookmarking services available but Del.icio.us has become one of the most popular ones due to its simplicity of organizing and classifying bookmarks. In order to use this service you have to create an account, which only requires some basic information (user name, password and email). Once you have created your account you can start to collect bookmarks and manage them in private or public collections. Among many other useful options it shows how many others have bookmarked the same page and you can subscribe to collections provided by other users or follow new entries to certain categories by RSS feeds. Read the rest of this entry »
New Category – Tools
I will set up a new category titled “Tools – …”. In this category I will introduce and comment on applications (mostly Web 2.0 ones), which I consider useful and interesting with respect to the possibilities they offer for education. The entries should serve as a basis for further discussion (I hope) on how to use and integrate these tools into the teaching and learning process. If anyone of you has already used these tools in class please let me know how it worked out.
Some Basic Principles for Teaching with (New) Media
I tried to set up some general principles for the use of new media in class. Here are my results:
- First of all it is important to keep in mind that not every student has a computer or internet connection available at home, which is especially important when it comes to homework assignments.
- Be prepared for technical problems. You always have to think of alternatives and set up a backup plan when using media in teaching.
- Familiarize yourself with basic troubleshooting skills. It is not always a technical problem.
- Be aware of the fact that your students might have little or no experience in using the computer.
- If you are using media support you need to have basic background knowledge about the medium you use. For example what is a podcast, what are valuable resources and how can they be produced?
- Use media support but not just for the sake of it. Choose topics from the curriculum where it actually makes sense to use media support.
- Do not only have your students consume media, but let them create own media content. This way they can develop skills and competence in both consuming and producing media.
- Teach your students to analyze and evaluate media content critically.
- Make results visible. It is the only way to get feedback from outside the classroom.
- Teach your students to use new media to connect to the real world and to build and join communities.
If you think there are more important principles that I did not mention please let me know…
Web 2.0 Rest Room
My course instructor recently twittered a link to a web 2.0 rest room. I really liked the idea a lot and it is a nice gap filler for all of us who need a break from all this overwhelming web 2.0 stuff (but still do not want to leave their computer). Go on and give it a try! Perhaps you will need it once in a while…
I actually like the idea so much that I created my own rest room page although it was not possible to get it all white!
What exactly is New about New Media?
It is not easy to give a definition of what new media exactly is! And since the term new itself involves a change in the state of affairs it could change every day. What is new, what is old and where should we draw the line? Generally it seems to come down to three main characteristics:
- The combination of author and audience. We become creators and consumers of media. Everyone can publish information and interact with each other.
- Open access and collaboration. New media provides improved approaches to collaboration and knowledge becomes easily accessible for everyone.
- The combination of multiple genres, tools and mediums to achieve a certain goal.
How to … Use Extracts
If you want to publish a post that has a lot of text or contains many pictures it takes quite a lot of space on your main-page and all your latter posts will not be visible at first sight. Readers of your blog will have to scroll down a long way (clearly depending on the length of the entry) to view your older entries. This may become annoying and disrupting for the reader and he/she might not continue reading your blog.
In order to provide a well structured and clearly arranged overview of your posts you should therefore only publish extracts of longer entries on your main-page. These extracts have a link saying “Read the rest of this entry” (the phrase can be modified) at their end which, when clicked, makes the whole post visible.
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Literature – “New Media – New Teaching Options?!”
During the research for my term paper on the new media in foreign language education I came across a quite promising book with the title “New Media – New Teaching Options?!” which was edited by Gabriele Linke and published in 2006 (not the most recent publication there is, but I think it is still recommendable). It contains numerous English and German articles all concerned with ways to enhance teaching and learning by the use of traditional and new media.
The book is available at the Zentral Bibliothek Marburg and a short description can be found here. I will let you know more about it in a while …
Link Page and Link Blogroll added
I have added a new page where you can find an ordered collection of links I considered quite useful. The collection subdivides into various topics and every individual link will be followed by a short description. I will try to keep it up-to-date and add new links from time to time.
I also added a blogroll category “ePortfolio Links” with the most important links to the sidebar.
If you encounter any dead links or have further suggestions to extend these lists please let us know.
Video – ePortfolio Entwicklung und Verwendung
During my research on eportfolios I found this video (German) which gives you a rough overview of the topic and could answer some questions you might have.
[Source e-portfolio blog]
!Somehow the video frame is not directly displayed. If you know how to do that please let me know!
How to … Embed a Video from Blip.tv
Embedding videos from blip.tv on your wordpress.com blog works a little bit different than the process to embed a video from youtube or google. Fist of all you have to visit blip.tv and choose the video you want to have on your blog. Then you must click the orange “Share” button on the sidebar and select “Embed” from the drop-down menu.
Now push the “Show Player” button, select “WordPress.com” and hit the “go” button.
Video – The New Media Literacies
It’s all about skills!!! As a startup for this page here is a short video clip I came across.
[Source The New Media Literacies]
Welcome
Welcome to “My New Media ePortfolio”. This blog will demonstrate my competence in using the new media for educational purposes and help me to reflect on my learning progress. You are welcome to give me some advice, make suggestions or comment on my posts.
