How to use your iPod for language learning:

As I mentioned some time ago in another blog note, there is a whole world of features for your iPod out there. I recently purchased an iPod Touch and I just can’t believe the things you can do with such as small device.

I am sure that most of you have heard about podcasts. For those who haven’t…where have you been for the past 5 years? To make a long story short, a podcast could be defined as the RSS for iPods. There are millions of types of podcasts, from cooking to travelling, but the one that caught my attention, and the reason why I am writing this today, is the language learning podcast.

There are different ways to find the podcasts that are most appealing to you. One of them is through iTunes; you can just perform a search with the language you’re interested in, and within seconds you’ll get a list of ten thousand podcasts you can subscribe yourself to. Remember there’s an opinion section, where people that have used it can tell you how they liked it, that might be helpful.

Another way to find your podcast is through the Internet. If there is any company or Institution that you might find attractive or interesting for whatever reason, you may want to check their website first to find out if they have a podcast service available. Be aware though that some of them are for free, but some others may not be. Here’s an example of finding podcasts through the web:

http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-podcasts

Now that the iPod Touch and iPhone have gotten so popular, the growth of the applications that have been created for them have been growing proportionally. The easiest way to find an iPod app is through iTunes. As long as you have your iTunes Store account set up, you’re ready to go. There is a section called App Store where you can find anything you can imagine, but to make things easier you can just filter your search by selecting, in this case “Education”, and then “English” for instance.

What’s good about these apps? They’re a lot more fun to interact with. You can replay the lessons, take your quizzes, keep track of your scores, and find out what you did wrong and why.

Some of the stuff is for free, but with apps, I must say that the real good ones are not for free, but it is not as bad as you may think. You can find apps, which are worth having for $10.

For those of you tired of the University old styles, here’s iTunes U. This new feature in iTunes called my attention about 2 years ago and I wasn’t that sure that it was going to take off, but to my surprise, you’d better believe it did. So, what’s iTunes U? It could actually be considered as Podcasts, but these ones are real University lectures.

The number of Universities that have joined this program is massive. The best way to find the things that you’re looking for would be by filtering by your University or even by whatever you degree is in. The good news is that almost everything I found was for free and that I have never been disappointed by any of the things I checked up…go check it for yourself, here’s video that will show you how:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPNQGmCMv1E

2nd mail generation?

I suppose that some of you may have heard of Google Wave these days. Watch the following video and try to compare the concept of email given in the chapter 4 of your books with the new means of internet communication emerging thanks to this tool. What do you think about Google Wave? Do you think that it will phenomenon similar to the one experienced by email or Internet in Education? What kind of activities could be done with your students in the future thanks to this technology?

You can read something here related:

http://www.johnbreslin.com/blog/2009/10/28/some-of-my-very-preliminary-opinions-on-google-wave/

http://markcbain.com/?p=318

http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/the-google-wave-will-change

By the way, did you get any Google Wave account?

The Oral Language Archive (OLA)

All you may have read in your books, OLA is a rather relevant project in the 90ies dealing with spoken discourse. Could you find any differences or similarities with new projects like these: language exchanges , audiopal, englishaddicts, subdub, europodians project, etc

HyperCard, Apple, Hypertex...?

With the information given in Mike Levy's book and this data coming from the Wikipedia, to try find a relation between the three words written in the tittle of this entry (HyperCard, Apple, Hypertex) and why the creation of HyperCard has been so important for educational computing.

Please, use the comments section below to add your answers.

CALL Projects, associations & key ICT professionals

As you may know, CALL and technology in general develop very quicky. Here you are some of the recorded presentations that took place during an event organized by the European NIFLAR Project:

Ton Koenraad's NIFLAR Presentation, 12 November 2009:
https://admin.emea.acrobat.com/_a789908106/p73683230/

Panel discussion, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to
repeat it", 13 November 2009: Duane Sider (President of Rosetta Stone),
Vance Stevens, Graham Davies and Ton Koenraad:
https://admin.emea.acrobat.com/_a789908106/p63251182/

And there were many other excellent sessions:
http://virtual-round-table.ning.com

** Information sent by Graham Davies to EUROCALL's list.

Ways to follow this blog...

Internet is already a big jungle. The best way to get updated via Internet of everything you may consider interesting is by subscribing to blogs and other websites using feeds aggregators. Watch the following video and try to think if this kind of web 2.0 would have been useful in the time of writing of the book by Levy.

Welcome to this new academic course!

Are you ready to begin? Do you all have your books? If it is so, try to read the introduction and compare it with your own conclusions generated from the following video (taken from the CNN):



Read also the text taken from the same site: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/24/language.training.online/index.html

Did you know all you have just listened and read? Do you agree with all that? Do you think the way of learning languages with a computer has changed? In which way?