Using the Facebook for Education

Reflection of the article, "Using the Facebook groups as a learning management system (LMS)"

by Qiyun Wang, Hury Lit Woo, Choon Lang Quek, Yuqin Yang and Mei Liu

Founded by Mark Zuckerber, Facebook is website for a social networking service which was launched in 2004. According to Wikipedia updated information, as of April 2012, there are more than 900 million active users. Once registering and creating a personal profile, users may exchange messages or automatic notifications. Users may join common-interest user groups organized by workplace, school, or other categorized groups. The applied linguistics of GSU shares a group to deliver news of the department activities.

     In this study of Wang et al., the Facebook was used as a learning management system (LMS) in two courses for putting up announcements, sharing resources, organizing weekly. According to the study, using the Facebook as a LMS has both advantages and disadvantages. The results showed that students’ preference to the Facebook as a LMS was favorable, but they complained about the difficulty in uploading various format of files and not being organized in a threaded structure. Students also comments about privacy matter which might be revealed to somebody not related to the courses.

      The participants in the study expressed some satisfactions and agreements in that the Facebook provides an efficient and useful interface and platform for sharing information and resources since it looked similar to a notice board. Interestingly, many students agreed that the Facebook implemented efficiently and successfully as an LMS though, master students appeared not to agree the satisfaction.

      While reading this article written by Wang et al. (2011), I learned about social affordance referring to “the extent to which the Facebook group could provide a safe and friendly environment in which the students could conveniently communicate and interact with one another.” Technological affordance implies “the extent to which the Facebook group could be used without technical difficulties” In the discussion section, the study pointed out that the Facebook still has a number of constraints and potentials to be used as an LMS.

Second language learners’ Language ego in the second life world

Second language learners’ Language ego

in the second life world

If “Real life” or “Second life” on screen is completely realized, I guess there are many ways we can utilize for teaching English. For example, assuming the feedback exchanged in the second life world is authentic enough, the students can practice English depending on situations. It will be very beneficial to protect the second language learners’ language ego. The language ego is the identity created from learning a language, and when learning a new language, we may have another language ego according to the new language’s socio and cultural registers. The characteristics of language ego include fragility, defensiveness and raised inhibitions.

In our discussion about teaching English as a second language, one of core issues are dealing with student’s anxieties and pedagogical approach to reduce them. Depending on students’ personalities, the affective levels could be very different. We learned that someone’s language ability does not reflect their intelligence, but students don’t know and often get overwhelmed in situations like correcting speech structure and plan an activity not to hurt students’ feelings. For thoses students, learning a second language in the virtual life could be very beneficial in that they don't need to be defensive or feel anxiety.

According to Rak (2009), “When we theorize the identity production in a world such as Second Life, then, we must assume that Second Life is a public which is made up of persons who have consistent identities.” However, whether it is consistent or inconsistent, to build and produce the identity requires some efforts. In reality, technology need to develop more to achieve our educational purpose. Once, I tried to pratice English with a virtual tutor, Mike.

http://www.eslfast.com/robot/english_tutor.htm



If you read the text message exchanged between me and Mike, it is not comrephensible. The tutor, Mike is not reponding appropriately, so he is not able to teach literally. In my final thoughts, we still need to go a long way to realize the virtual education, but it is worthy to invest our resources to accomplish some achievement in the fields.

Delphi method; the future of YouTube examined by Snelson, Rice, and Wyzard (2012)

Research priorities for YouTube and video-sharing technologies:

A Delphi study_1168 119..129

Chareen Snelson, Kerry Rice and Constance Wyzard (2012)

     For me, the method of research, a Delphi study was very interesting because it was the first time for to learn that this kind of research method exists in the world. The origin of name, “Delphi” is from the Oracle of Delphi which means “something oracular, something smacking, a little of the occult.” The Delphi method is a systematically and interactively developed forecasting method which replying on panel of experts. It is based on the assumption that experts group’s judgments are more valid than individual one like “two heads are better than one head.”

Here, how can we organize the panel of experts and how can we define “the experts”? Referring to Rowe & Wright (1999), the key features of a Delphi study can be described as follows: 1. Anonymity of Delphi participants allowing free expression of ideas and opinions; 2. Iteration allowing participants to examine or modify their reviews based on the views of the expert group; 3. Controlled feedback informing participants of the other participant’s ideas and opinions; 4. Statistical analysis allowing for a quantitative analysis of data.

In this research, the Delphi technique was employed to find out what areas experts anticipate are most in need of research in video-sharing technology over the next 5 years.

“What should be the research priorities in video-sharing technologies (YouTube) over the next 5 years?”

In conclusion, the research listed and ranked seven research priority categories in order of priority: 1. user, group and communities; 2. teaching and learning; 3. social political impact; 4. video creation and production 5. legal/ethical; 6. media management; and 7. commercial interests. It was an interesting research in that we tried to clarify how humans interact with YouTube and video-sharing services and forecast where it goes in the future. Thinking that teaching and learning are ranked the 2^nd, we teachers should be aware of the importance of the influence of video sharing social media and consider how to employ them in pedagogy.

Source: Chareen Snelson, Kerry Rice and Constance Wyzard (2012)

The unrealistic claims for the effects of classroom blogging

The unrealistic claims for the effects of classroom blogging on English as asecond language, student's writing performance

by Ming-Huei Lin, Chin-Ying Lin and Pi-Ying Hsu (2011)

In the aspect of convenience and easiness, blogs are widely used for communicating among people, and many educators tend to believe that the blogs facilitate teaching and learning. I agree this point, so I was thinking to research on the topic recently. Yet, this article, as you can guess from the title, unlike the studies supporting positive results of blogging, revisits if classroom blogging can significantly benefit students learning or not.

     In the research of Taiwan, the experimental comparison on two writing groups of ESL majors comprising 25 students was implemented. To test student performance, the pre/post testing were employed, and the tests were two types of writing task. One is a short argumentative essay about social issue, and the other is a short essay reflecting on events in their lives. The essay was scored and graded by two raters to measure interrater reliability, thereby examining using Cronbach’s alpha. According to the high Cronbach’s alpha (.84) in the test scores

     When examining “the effects on performance of classroom blogging in the ESL writing classroom and compared this approach with a traditional teaching method in writing performance (Lin et al. 2011)”, the results of the paper shows that students taught by a traditional method had similar improvement of writing performance to the students taught using blogs. The researcher explained, however, with the purpose of facilitating student’s learning development; the results revealed blogging format teaching failed to achieve the goal in the EFL writing environment.

       Since my research was strongly related to this research, I read this article very interestingly. My research will deal with “the effect of using blog for young ESL learners’ writing,” and if I can suggest positive previous research data as well as negative results as a literature review, the paper can be more logical and balanced.

Soap opera vs. sitcom: Word coverage and incidental vocabulary learning

 vs. 

Do you know which program is more beneficial to learn English? The Simpsons of Friends?

10th Conference for the American Association for Corpus Linguistics

October 7th Friday

Topic: Soap opera vs. sitcom: Word coverage and incidental vocabulary learning

Presented by Al-Surmi, Mansoor at Northern Arizona University

        In the conference, Al-Surmi suggested TV shows provide authentic materials contents through satellite worldwide, and they have combination of visual and aural input which make learning easier for L2 learners. Teaching English with TV contents is likely to be effective in that L2 learners can witness the dynamic of reaction. His research inquires include "Can L2 learners incidentally learn vocabulary by watching TV show?" and "How many vocabulary knowledge is needed for incidental vocabulary learning to occur?" His research was based on Webb and Rodger (2009) suggesting that the coverage of vocabulary at the 3,000 word level relatively provides the potential range of vocabulary need to comprehend TV programs.

        Using the soap opera corpus composed of the 2008 episodes (The Young and The Restless) and sitcom corpus of "Friends", Al-Surmi analyzed them with the RANGE program. The researcher’s findings showed that soap and sitcom would likely be more beneficial for incidental vocabulary learning if they are used when learners had sufficient knowledge of the first 3,000 word families.

       Interestingly, this study investigated that genre covering the first 3,000 most frequent words tend more likely to provide incidental vocabulary learning occurrence. Furthermore, watching one or more episodes might not be as effective as having thee knowledge of the first 3,000 word families. However, the researcher also admitted that animations for kids are more appropriate teaching materials than sitcom or soap opera, and it is also proved under the same hypothesis.

Wordle.net

Word Cloud made by Joohyun's blog postings (2012)

Word Cloud made by Joohyun's autobiography (2012)

 Created by Jonathan Feinberg, Wordle is a website for displaying words of certain text’s words distributions on the Java platform. Wordle provides service to generate “word clouds” from the text we insert. The cloud shows salient and prominent words that appear more frequently in the source of text you inserted. I’ve tried to make two word clouds. One is for my autobiography and the other is made by the blogs that I posted in my blog.

Many students use Wordle.net to create their research identity statements, and it makes sense when it is likely to show the most frequently used words in one’s research data. People’s interests will dominate someone’s mind subconsciously or consciously, and their writing will present the current interests or the flow of thoughts. We can also identify a politician’s priority or main drive of the election through creating “word clouds” with their speech scripts or their news or announcement.

     Jack Richards (1976) demonstrated about knowledge of word frequency as “knowing the degree of probability of encountering that word in speech or print.” Based on the assumption that the more people know about, the more frequently they use the words, if we look at the word cloud, the student or researcher’s personal interest and tendency of thoughts and opinions will be likely to be read.

     

Word Cloud made by Joohyun's Autobiography(2012)

      When creating the word cloud with my autobiography, I could know the most frequent word in my paper was English, teaching, and students. Even though someone looks at my word cloud, he or she will probably notice that my occupation or main interest in my life will be English or teaching a language as a teacher. The word cloud shows the aspect of focus of life pretty well.

Anytime, anywhere, anyplace

Anytime, anywhere, anyplace: Articulating the meaning of

flexible delivery in built environment education_1138 904..915

Richard Tucker and Gayle Morris (2011)

This research elaborated the process for negotiating aspects of flexible learning by listening to teachers, students, and institutional perspectives on the “flexibility.” The negotiation is defined as “something to bridge the gap between student expectations of flexibility and the teachers.”  In this context, the research needs to define what the flexibility meant. The study suggested that two types of flexibility which are planning flexibility and interpersonal flexibility. The planning flexibility means “how to maintain largely the same teaching and learning program but offers more delivery flexibility,” and the interpersonal flexibility implies “pedagogical change to more student centered contributions.”

Students’ interpretation for the five delivery dimensions such as the time and place, content, pedagogy, delivery channels, types of support was straightforward. Students asked flexibility in delivery for both lecture/theory and studio/design modules, which was consistent with previous research results.

I personally thought it was interesting to test flexibility because the matching process as an analytical tool for measuring and implementing the flexibility cannot be easy. However, the study was well-organized based on the interview,  and the results of this study concluded that the change to interpersonal flexibility is more difficult since instructors are asked to redesign course activities and their assessments. According to the results of the study, they showed that students demanded the categories of flexibility are “pedagogy and delivery.”

Using Corpus Tools to Highlight Academic Vocabulary in SCLT

Using Corpus Tools to Highlight Academic Vocabulary in SCLT

by Donley and Reppen (2001)

What are the advantages of using corpus techniques to identify important academic vocabulary words? This article offer a few pedagogical usages and application of corpus tools for teaching vocabulary. It also helps Sustained content language teaching (SCLT) teachers to be able to integrate academic vocabulary teaching into their instruction.

What are the SCLT? Donley and Reppen (2001) generally define SCLT as follows: “highly salient due to its relationship with the targeted topic, conceptually related to other content words within the unit, restricted in use within one discipline easily explainable, typographically enhanced within textbooks, defined within text, and crucial to the instruction of the content.”

I definitely agree that corpus linguistic technology provide teachers and students with a principled, holistic, and empirical way to identify useful vocabulary. Teachers can use them in two ways. Firstly, they may use corpus tools to develop and adapt materials. Secondly, they may use corpus tools when they help students explore academic vocabulary through classroom activities. Another advantage of using the corpus tool is creating and adapting materials depending on teacher’s selection of academic textbooks. Donley Reppen (2001) suggests that teachers may us corpus tools for assessment, text enhancement, and material development. Especially during the class, teachers may use concordance lines, frequency lists, and extended concordance displays to devise an activity designed to target specific vocabulary words.

In conclusion, since corpus based tool and pedagogical techniques are very accessible for teachers to utilize them in class, as part of SCLT, this article provides them with information to guide vital instruction to “stress language development within SCLT.”

Polarity Sensitivity of "much and many" by Register Variation

10th Conference for the American Association for Corpus Linguistics

October 7th Friday

Topic: Polarity Sensitivity of “much and many” by Register Variation

Presented by Lee, Ji Won at University at Buffalo; State University of New York

    What is NPIs? NPIs refer to negative polarity items which are words or expression appeared in a limited context. The limited context could be shown in the scope of negation or in a question. If a proper licensing condition is violated or failed to be assigned, the sentence could be NPI ungrammatical. The examples provided by Lee (2010) are as follows.

(1) You know it doesn’t cost much to do it. (Santa Barbara Corpus)

(2) ?? You know it costs much to do it.

(3) Do you all have much pollution there? (Switchboard Corpus)

(4) ?? We all have much pollution here.

(5) That future owed much to the modernist dreams of women’s emancipation and individual freedom. (Corpus of Contemporary American English, 2010, Anthropological Quarterly)

(6) There was much embracing, much exclaiming. (Brown Corpus)

    Lee suggests four (4) NPIs’ semantic and syntactic features and patterns. She states that "much" in the spoken language has progressed faster in its development into an NPI than in the written register. She also demonstrated that thorough analysis of "much" occurring in different NPIs can provide with more insights about semantic features. According to Lee (2010), her analysis of "much" proves that "much" followed by a definite NP tends to be used in positive contexts. She added we can find a stronger NPI tendency in the spoken and the written resgiters.

    In the presentation, Lee emphasized that this study could be meaning in that it is one of the studies revisited the historical development of NPIs and provided explanation relating to register variation. The main point was about the English-Specific phenomena of NPI-PPI pairs and negation types.

Cultural Impressions

IEP Professional Development Session

Thursday, April 19, 2012

1:30- 2:30

AL/ESL Conference Room

Cultural Impressions
Your student could be a big fish in their country. Encourage them to be a big fish in a big world.

Jonathan J. Orr, Ph.D., LPC, NCC
Clinical Assistant Professor
Department of Counseling and Psychological Services

Managing Within-Group Differences: Balancing Competency with Complexity

Dr. Jonathan Orr will discuss his work on cultural competency and the importance of recognizing characteristics of individual people when working with groups of people from other cultures.  The session includes experiential exercises designed to cultivate a more complex view of cultural competency. 

  

    When encountering second lanaguage learners, the lecturer said we should keep in mind that your student was a big fish in their counties and encourage students to be a big fish in the big world. Personally, this comment was very impressing.Emphasizing the culture influence, the lecturer, Jonathan provided us with a simple exercise.

My name is…(Joohyun Chun)

My mountain is …(high and steep)

My valley is …(peaceful and full of flowers.)

My river is …(narrow)

My people are …(kind and friendly)

I am…(humble)

       When interacting with others, people presume a number of things about others. The presumption is about you and others around you. Individual is more than culture difference. The lecture points out that we tend to rely on published book made out of cultural capsulation when we understand people from different countries. This kind of book can help people to have general background knowledge or to understand distinctive cultural patterns. However, there could be exception and unusual patterns out of typical characteristics. Even within one culture, individualism exists. Furthermore, people often change their persona based on the client who they talk with. According to the ecological theory, we can formulate the interaction and presumption among individuals like P(erson) x E(nvironment) = B(ehavior). People’s behavior could be decided by their personal background elements and environment about them. Person implies gender, age, education, socioeconomic situation, birth order and so on.

P(erson) x E(nvironment) = B(ehavior)

Reflection: People attending the lecture were English teachers or second language teachers’ teachers. The most impressive part of the lecturer presentation was that we’ve got to understand students’ cultural struggles. He also stated that the students could be a big fish in their country, but they are a small fish in this country. The point is teachers can encourage the students to be a bigger fish in the bigger world and validate the reason they should keep working to adopt themselves to a new environment.