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Title: Article: Myths about Bilingual Children
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From https://qz.com/1051986/a-lot-of-our-ideas-about-bilingual-children-are-total-myths/
Masha Rumer writes that although there are clear cognitive advantages to bilingualism, raising a bilingual child is not an easy task. They are not little sponges, they may resist learning a minority language, and strategies such as “one parent one language” may not be necessary or even effective.
Read the article at https://qz.com/1051986/a-lot-of-our-ideas-about-bilingual-children-are-total-myths/
Source: Quartz
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Title: Flexible Seating and Classroom Libraries
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This month in InterCom we’re focusing on learning spaces that are meaningful, relevant, and tied to learners’ needs. Here is a timely article from Edutopia about flexible seating in high school classrooms, featuring specific tips from practicing teachers, one of whom is a high school Spanish teacher: https://www.edutopia.org/article/high-school-flexible-seating-done-right
In a related vein, get ideas for a classroom library from this post: http://misclaseslocas.blogspot.com/2017/08/spanish-classroom-library-tour-2017.html
Source: Various
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Title: Debrief Ideas for Novices and Intermediates
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From https://deskfree.wordpress.com
What do you do with your learners after they do an interactive activity? Profe Ashley has written a great blog post with debrief ideas, sorted by learner proficiency level: https://deskfree.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/debrief-ideas-for-novices-intermediates/
Source: Desk-Free
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Title: Augmented Reality (and Virtual Reality)
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Richard Byrne has written a short and clear explanation of the difference between augmented reality and virtual reality in this recent post: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2017/08/this-is-augmented-reality-this-is.html#.WZSSjneGPwc
If you’re interested in augmented reality, check out ARIS (https://fielddaylab.org/make/aris/) and Metaverse (https://gometa.io/). Read a review of Metaverse at http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2017/08/diy-augmented-reality-3-ways-to-use-it.html#.WZSSX3eGNPU, and find place-based learning resources at CASLS’ pebll website: http://pebll.uoregon.edu/. A Metaverse hackathon is happening this week; learn more at http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2017/08/an-augmented-reality-hackathon-for.html#.WZXyKXeGNPU
Here’s an infographic about augmented reality in education: http://elearninginfographics.com/augmented-reality-will-transform-education-infographic/
You can also use Story Spheres to create virtual reality experiences: https://www.storyspheres.com/
Source: Various
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Title: Martha Ramirez English Language Teaching Blog
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From http://martharamirez.com.co
Martha Ramirez is an English language teacher whose work is featured in this week’s Topic of the Week (http://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/content/23624) article by Jeff Magoto. Check out her blog for more great information about language teaching, with a special focus recently on flipped instruction.
Ms. Ramirez’s blog is available at http://martharamirez.com.co/blog/
Source: Martha Ramirez English Language Teaching Blog
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Title: Bring a Bit of Place into Your Language Classroom
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Christopher Holden is an Associate Professor at the Honors College at the University of New Mexico. Julie Sykes' and his AR game Mentira is well-known for jump-starting interest in place-based mobile games for language learning. He has been involved with many other language learning projects using AR and other place-based technologies since. He is also a member of the design team of the ARIS project, where he builds community among creators of AR for learning.
Whether you're teaching introductory or advanced levels of language, one of the most exciting things to do is to connect the somewhat abstract activities of language learning in the classroom to real live contexts for language use in the world. But how many of these language-culture connections really bring students into another world? How far do we get from just a swap of vocabulary or shallow dive? When we can provide students with deeper experiences, both in terms of culture and language, we can draw them further into the worlds we'd like to share. When you go somewhere and can begin to develop relationships, things being to take off. At the same time, multifaceted experiences are often hard to pull off in a classroom environment or in places where there are not a lot of local contacts in terms of relevant language or culture. But with a bit of creativity, willingness to leave the room with four walls, and the help of some modern tools, there are new options for creating culturally relevant language experiences for language learners. Augmented Reality (AR) brings a lot of possibilities into play. Essentially, AR is a framework for creating hybrid worlds: a bit of what is already there and new content and modes of interaction layered on top. AR is still pretty new but a lot more of us are familiar with it after last year's launch of Pokémon Go. Using GPS coordinates, QR codes, and a variety of other mechanics, authors can bring ideas or observations in the usual world to new prominence in participatory contexts layered above.
With free, easy-to-use AR design tools out (ARIS is my favorite), language educators and researchers over the last decade have found AR to be a convenient and accessible way to develop and integrate educational ideas that come from the worlds of videogames, place based learning, or even revitalize older modes of participation, like Dinner Murder Mysteries. AR can be used to create language rich activities for students that also bring them into contact with the places around them or each other.
Even better, AR does not have to involve complicated media. You can build quite complex worlds with ARIS using only text, photos, or videos, along with the sort of multiple-choice style simulated conversations (in text) made familiar from videogames. It is simple enough for teachers to use or for teachers to assign to their students. Although there is a lot of interesting decision making that can happen in playing one of these games, it may be even easier to access a depth of engagement with less up front time spent in production by using AR as a way for students to develop and create meanings through design.
Best of all though is the growing community around these ideas. From basic technical support, to examples and help with the nuanced art of designing AR experiences for learning, there are many resources and contacts available. Here are a few that can help you get started:
- PEBLL - A database of place-based language learning activities maintained by CASLS at the University of Oregon. Don't forget to tell them about your project too!
- ARIS Homepage - All the basic details and how to get started with ARIS.
- Field Day Forums - There is no question too simple or complex that you can't get help with it from the other ARIS users. This is the beachhead of the super friendly ARIS community and even a place to go ask questions about other AR tools like Aurasma or Taleblazer.
- Paris Occupé - Terri Nelson's amazing AR game simulating what it was like to try and survive in Paris during WWII.
- Mobile Media Learning: Innovation and Inspiration - A collection of simply shared stories about experimentation with rich mobile experiences for learning, many of them AR. Free PDF too!
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Title: Make a Game to Make a Game!
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By Christopher Holden
The road to the creation of meaningful game-based learning can be long. The biggest obstacles are not technical though. What seems to not happen enough is to have very early experimentation with the marriage of these new tools and the larger aims of learning. Instead we have too many instances of producing the same instruction in a different medium. And too much energy and money get thrown into production when the basic ideas have not been tested. This activity is designed to serve as a foundation for a more holistic and healthy learning game design process.
This activity forms basic familiarity with ARIS as a tool to create mobile, place-based learning experiences. Based on the concept of "performance before competence" it gets you making activities in place before worrying too much about if they are fun or encode learning you care about. From a very simple creation, you begin the process of iterating on a design, and adding in relevant material. The overall idea is to learn to create experiences in this new medium that are more than replications of instructional delivery in the old media, to do something that specifically leverages the unique affordances involved. It is described as a self-study for a teacher and colleagues, but could easily be done in groups or with students. No technical background is assumed, but one does need access to a desktop internet browser (e.g. Google Chrome on a laptop) and an iOS device (but not necessarily one per person).
- Imagine a three point tour: three places to go that are within easy walking distance of one another, are worth going to, and have some way to be connected to an overarching idea that would not be obvious to ordinary observers.
- Create a title, short description (<50 words), and image to be placed at the location. The trick with the image is not to replicate what the person will see with their eyes anyway. Find something that compliments what's already there in real life or helps a visitor notice something hidden or subtle.
- Use the basic tutorials at manual.arisgames.org or fielddaylab.org/courses to put your three pieces of content into ARIS and thus create a GPS-based tour.
- Use "offsite" mode to make sure that your tour works in software.
- Find a friend to take the tour with (one of you will need an iOS device that will get internet service where the tour locations are).
- Discuss some experiential aspects of taking the tour: How did the information provided by the device and bodily experience compliment each other? Did the big idea come through? What did you talk about while you were walking between waypoints? Was this tour actually place-specific, or could it have taken place anywhere?
- Using the above discussion as a guide, consider how a similar activity might relate to learning activities you organize for students. Don't think so much about how to put textbook content into the images and descriptions but instead about how things like the empty space between tour content could be used pedagogically.
- Think a bit more deeply about one way that a player could do something more involved than "go to a location", also supported by ARIS, that would be a more advanced game mechanic to try to connect to a learning activity (e.g. following directions, identifying bits of the world, making choices in a simulated conversation).
- Consider a way in which place and learning might really reinforce each other. Maybe the place has cultural significance.
- If this creation were a story, what would the moral of that story be? How is it communicated? How is it distinct from and related to your learning goal?
- Remake your three point tour, but this time with your new wrinkles added. It cannot be any longer. Just a bit different.
- After checking for bugs, find two friends to test out your new game. Gather notes similar to before, but this time try to let them interact on their own and observe how they work together.
- Check out others' work and share your own. You can look for stories of others' use of ARIS and other place-based activities, ask questions on the ARIS forums, and describe your ideas and work. There are lots of others out there looking for company in these fields of exploration.
Think of getting involved in these ideas as something that can be done gradually and with equal parts action and reflection. With each spiral, the teacher or team gets a clearer idea of how the tools work, and how they can connect content, place, and pedagogy. Fairly early in the process, one can end up with an artifact that is worth using. And each stage of reflection and use moves the ideas ahead in concrete ways.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Title: The Font: A Literary Journal for Language Teachers
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From http://thefontjournal.com/about-the-font/
The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers is a journal about teaching and learning languages at home and abroad. It looks at the topic from a more creative, literary, and humanistic perspective than the more traditional academic publications.
The Font does not encourage or promote the use of any particular language teaching methodology or pedagogy. Rather, it is a place for teachers and learners to reflect on their experiences and observations while teaching and learning languages, or while living abroad as a teacher. It seeks to publish writing by language teachers, learners and translators in all countries, and in doing so become a venue for language teachers and learners from all walks of life, to come together and share. It also promotes the idea of creative writing as a form of Arts Based Research, and seeks to create a collection of works which arts based researchers can draw on.
Access the latest issue, which is dedicated to creative non-fiction, at http://thefontjournal.com/current-issue-4/
Visit the website to learn more about the publication, read archived pieces, and learn how you can submit your own writing: http://thefontjournal.com/current-issue-4/
Source: The Font
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Title: Book: Abriendo brecha: Antología crítica sobre la educación bilingüe de doble inmersión
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From http://www.dlenm.org/index.php/homepage/news/item/1430-abriendo-brecha
Abriendo brecha: Antología crítica sobre la educación bilingüe de doble inmersión is available now! Edited by Michael Guerrero, María Consuelo Guerrero, Lucinda A. Soltero-González, and Kathy Escamilla, this book features chapters written in Spanish by a who's who of experts in our field and is intended for use in university studies to prepare preservice teachers to understand the complexity of dual language education.
Order this book at https://dlenm.formstack.com/forms/abriendo_brecha_order_form
Source: DLENM
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Title: Connecting Language and Disciplinary Knowledge in English for Specific Purposes
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From http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781783098507
Connecting Language and Disciplinary Knowledge in English for Specific Purposes: Case Studies in Law
By Alissa J. Hartig
Published by Multilingual Matters
How are language and disciplinary knowledge connected in the English for Legal Purposes (ELP) classroom, and how far should ELP practitioners go in supporting students’ acquisition of the conceptual frameworks that shape the genres they are learning? This book presents a pedagogical model for incorporating these conceptual frameworks into disciplinary language instruction and follows four focal participants as they learn to read and write new genres in a second language and disciplinary culture. By examining not just students’ written texts, but also their reading practices and interactions in class and in tutoring sessions, the book traces the ways in which disciplinary knowledge and language interact as students develop academic literacy in a new disciplinary community. Throughout the book, the discipline of law is used as a lens for examining broader connections between language, culture and disciplinary knowledge, and their relevance for English for Specific Purposes and writing in the disciplines.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781783098507
Source: Multilingual Matters
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