Call Newsletter Volume 2 Number 4 January 2009

January 2009 In This Issue Web Pages Training News of the Future Projects About Us Submissions

Volume 2, Number 4 Dear colleagues: Welcome to our fourth breathtaking collection of CALL materials for this academic year. All websites are working at press time—but remember, the Internet is a moving target. No need to save this document to find the websites—they will be available permanently from the department’s CALL page, courtesy of Susan Curtis. See ―EFL-CALL Resources Website,” on the College’s Intranet home page. Or click the link here. Older newsletters are also stored on SharePoint here. CALL committee minutes are here.

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Remember that this newsletter is an internal document. If you want to forward it to friends outside the college, please delete any references to passwords exclusive to college faculty. --Steve Roney

CALL Resources

Web Pages

Links

Ed Technology (TLC) Templates & Tools (TLC) CNA-Q Library CNA-Q IT Tutorials Abdulmanan Nur’s Staff Training Page

Lang-8: Here’s an interesting idea: a social web based on writing. This web page allows students to connect with native speakers around the world, who will correct their writing for them. They, in turn, can boost their morale and make friends by helping others with their Arabic. http://lang-8.com/ --Rebecca Hatherley Glogster: An interesting alternative, for you or your students, to PowerPoint for making a lecture or class presentation. Glogster makes one big poster, that you can move around with the mouse. http://www.glogster.com/ --Rebecca Hatherley Xtranormal: Want to get your students writing? Try this one. They can make a movie simply by typing in the dialogue. http://www.xtranormal.com/

Dvolver is a similar movie-making tool. http://www.dvolver.com/live/home.html Introduce your students to the world of varying English accents: here’s Amy Walker of Seattle, Washington, performing 21 different accents in two minutes. ―Toronto,‖ though, to your present correspondent’s ears, is utterly unconvincing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k And here’s ―Miss Cupcake,‖ a Glaswegian, seeking to duplicate the feat, with a few new accents added to the mix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObonHPh15ug Face Your Manga offers a good opportunity to talk about physical appearance. Students can create their own manga (Japanese cartoon style) avatars in the process. My own manga is at right. http://www.faceyourmanga.it/homepage.php?lang=eng Listen and Write: Have students practice taking dictation from a prerecorded audio; or you can upload your own. Among other interesting features, students can track their progress and compare their results against others around the world. http://www.listen-and-write.com/ Youniverse. One sure-fire way to get your students reading: get them reading about themselves. Use with care, though—not all content here is culturally appropriate. http://youniverse.com/

Training The Teaching and Learning Centre has put together a Wiki on collaborative classroom tools. Have a look here: http://collaborativelearningtools.wetpaint.com/ -- Cheri MacLeod Also courtesy of the Teaching and Learning Centre is this online training resource. Our username is ―cnaq‖ and our password is ―atomic‖. Besides step-by-step videos to instruct you, it also features videos you can use in the classroom to instruct your students.

http://movies.atomiclearning.com/uk/home/ -- Cheri MacLeod

News of the Future Andrea Comeau sends along this fascinating clip on MicroSoft’s ―surface computing‖ technology in development. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/863734/microsoft_tabletop_technology/ --Andrea Comeau

Projects The CALL subteam for materials creation is now completing the first step of the project announced last issue: identifying CALL authoring resources available to EFL faculty at CNA Qatar –Duhail. For step 2, we have decided to tackle AWL 1 as our sample learning objective. Our goal is to demonstrate the full spectrum of CALL authoring materials to the EFL faculty, and to reintroduce some of the CALL software we have installed in the labs. --John Allan The University of Ulster is offering an award for Excellence in Multimedia Language Teaching, with a maximum value of 3000 pounds sterling. Details are at: http://www.cemll.ulster.ac.uk/site/news/mmlt_Award_09_10 --Andrea Comeau

About Us CALL stands for Computer-Aided Language Learning. We on the CALL committee have a mandate from the department to aid and abet you in using educational technology in your classroom. We currently comprise two committees: software evaluation and materials development. If you are interested, we would be delighted to have you join us in this cause. Current Members: Steve Roney (chair) John Allan (chair, materials development) Douglas Culbert Susan Curtis Scott Dagilis Darlene Liutkus Cheri MacLeod (TLC liaison)

Scott Webber Rebecca Hatherley (Academics liaison) Dan Rieb Larissa Conley Linda Earl Alan Vallely Shairon Burton

Submissions  Please consider the environment before printing this newsletter.

If you have a tech tip to share, or know of an interesting and relevant website, please send it along to [email protected] for inclusion in a future issue. A big thanks to those who contributed to this issue: Cheri MacLeod, Andrea Comeau, Rebecca Hatherley, John Allan, Steve Roney.