Day 1:

 

Here's my first assignment for Day One: the two-column table:

 

I was born in Tennessee, went to UT (I bleed orange), and spent 10 years in the army.	I enjoy birding, films, and reading (mysteries, science, fantasy, and literature).
I speak Russian and Ukrainian, a little Gaelic, less Welsh, and am trying to learn Japanese.	My hobbies include writing, photography, and blogging. My blog is The Greenbelt, if you're interested.

 

Here is one of my photos - a marina Muscovy saying "Hi there!" - I used Word to stick in the bubble (autoshapes), then Picnik to resize, and the wiki to host.

 

And this one was captioned in Picnik (which doesn't do Cyrillic):

 

Here is my Trackstar project:

 

 Medvedev's Inauguration

 

And here is a poster:

 

Transfer of Power

 

 And here is a photo of Putin and Medvedev enjoying a walk in the snow:

 

 

 

Reflections:

This is going to be great. The number of applications is enormous, and lots of them I'm not familiar with. The PBWiki would be an excellent tool for a couple of courses, and being able to embed the audio for the songs referenced in an article - cool, and easier for the students. Finally I'll get a chance to look at Audacity, too!

 

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Day 2:

 

Here is my audio file - it's Putin's New Year message for 2008:

 

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And here edited to only the speech:

 

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http://technologysi2008.pbwiki.com/f/Putin-New-Year-Message-Only.mp3

 

Here's my first video (now I know to use bigger photos!):

Ryan's Fourth of July

 

Ryan is my grandnephew.

 

 

This is my Voki, Katarina! (Although for some strange reason she will not display properly!)

 

Aha. Figured it out by looking at the source code - well, what, if not why: there was an anchor to the poster! So Katarina's working now.

 

Here's another Voki to see if I do it right this time.

 

 

And another video A Story of Two Men

 

Reflections:

Audacity is as easy as Susan always says. That's going to be very helpful. The Photostory tool is great, too - some of the others have made really professional-looking videos. The Voki is fun - maybe we can use them in the ACLP, if I can figure out how to make them actually work. I don't know what's wrong with mine.... Later (much) it occurred to me to look at the source code (source is our friend). There was an anchor around the Voki code, linking to the poster. How bizarre. But it's fixed now.

 

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Day 3:

Video! Oh, yeah.

 

Here's one I edited in Jumpcut, which is going to be sooooo useful:

The new year comes to Moscow

 

 

 

Here's a multiple choice test I made with Class Marker.

Here's a short answer test I made.

 

Here's a gloss - just mouse over the underlined word and look in the browser's message area (bottom in Firefox). 

 

A longer entry with several words glossed. Unfortunately, if there are more than one words (or phrase) glossed, the player stalls out during upload. But with just one word, it can be on this page, as you see above, and below:

 

One word of warning about embedding Gloss with the player. - if it's in Cyrillic you can't look use the 'back' feature. One shot's all you get before it's converted to numeric code that will not display properly.

 

Here is a little activity I made on Quia. Can't do the word search in Cyrillic, but the other ones work well.

 

Here's a matching activity from the CLA tool.

 

And here's an eval with a long Russian text, also from the CLA tool.

 

Reflections:

Video is great, and the resources here will be so incredibly useful. Especially the online hosting and editing!! sites. Quia is useful (I knew that), and ClassMarker is good. I like the Gloss Maker. With our shared drives, it will be extremely useful and easy to use.  The Eval Maker is easy to use, too - it makes a good review tool, I think.

 

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Day 4:

Jeopardy and Hot Potatoes - Gotta admit I've been looking forward to these! But first, embedding a picture with caption from a website: T-Rex talks about performative utterances:

 That worked well!  (Except that sometimes the wiki format cuts off the right edge.) Use the "slide photoshow" widget from the "Insert Plugin -> Photo" menu above.

 

Here are five exercises I made with Hot Potatoes.

Name that animal (domestic)

 

Name that animal (wild)

 

New Year Jumbled Sentence

 

New Year Cloze

 

New Year Reading Comprehension (quiz)

 

Here's a Jeopardy! game I made.

 

And here's a link to a Google docs presentation:

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Reflections:

Hot Potatoes is cool - very flexible, supports Cyrillic, and offers a lot of possibilities. We need this. If worse comes to worst, I'll download it and do telecommuting! Jeopardy is also tres cool.

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Day 5:

Last day. Wow. A lot in the last week.

 

Chat - the Yackpack looks useful for some things, though I don't know how much I'd use it. Regular chat - especially with Blackboard or eClass - is definitely useful, though.

 

Second Life - again, not sure how I'd use it though I can see overall applications.

 

Here's another Jeopardy game, this one embedded:

 

One last video - no narration since no mike on the laptop, but I think it's pretty nice.

 

 

Reflections:

It's hard to believe the week is over already. So much done in such a short time. I don't by any means feel I've mastered most of this (any of it, maybe), but now I know it's out here and where to find it. The handouts and the information here on this wiki will be invaluable. I'll be stealing a lot of it... er, using it as resources once I get back.

 

This workshop was more than worth the time it asked. I'll be recommending it to some of my colleagues for next year.

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SSBI Day 1:

 

I'm going to use this space for the time being for my Journal for the Styles- and Strategies-Based Instruction Workshop.

 

Lots of talk about "strategies" and "goals", but while the goals are clear, what isn't clear is what a strategy actually is. Andrew's chapter will give you insights.It did indeed.

 

 

"Inserting strategies" - I'm not sure what that means. I think it might mean telling while modeling students how to do the task. YES!

 

I'm getting that it is important to introduce students to the concept but I am not sure what I will be introducing. Generally I only know one way to do things.

 Actually you know more but students also will give you ideas. I'm getting the idea. We've gotten examples now, and it's taking form for me.

 

As the day goes on I'm getting a clearer picture. Now to get what some examples of strategies might be. I think my 'how to translate' paper is strategic. Probably!

 

Great talking with you, Karen! I can tell you have a particular learning style ;-) Very true - and I'm (unfortunately) so far off the scale in many cases that I really find it hard to understand how the other ever works!

 

SSBI Day 2: 

 

Interesting to see the varieties within styles. Things I tend to think of as “going together” obviously don’t. Example? Closure-Analytic-Reflective, for example.

Introvert=/= shy!

The exercise with the ‘paper ball’ didn’t really work for me. Too much time for what we got out of it – I guess it was discussion-stimulating in that no one really knew what we were doing, but that frustrated me while we were in small groups. However, the large group review yielded some good insights. Thank you for this insight.

We’re doing a lot of small-group discussion when I feel we don’t yet know enough to be able to discuss. I’m telling myself: “There are 25 other people; someone’s style is being catered to!” Your patience is appreciated!

Good – in fact, excellent – point about teaching students to develop their styles and strategies to deal outside their style Excellent point! Hadn’t thought of that, but sometimes you really have to! So that when they’re no long in school they know what to do to continue to learn. Compensating skills allow you to learn without – or in spite of – a teacher. :-D I’m seeing this, now I think of it, in self-learning Japanese.

Nice to see I’m not the only one wanting specifics. Can’t wait for more hands-on activities Wed Thurs Fri and now we’re getting some, which is great, though I hope we get through more of them in less time per activity. Faster pace! Will do!

 

 

SSBI Day 3: 

 

 The small group discussion on frameworks was much more useful that the large group, which just rehashed the small one. But the large group on responsibilities was great.

I must try to remember that most of these teachers have classes which are much bigger than mine that will be doing all the “sharing” in target language. So the “pairing” isn’t redundant but instead allows for preparation, rehearsal, and confidence-building. What seems redundant and time-wasting isn’t. But in small classes, introverts can get “talked out” and have nothing left to say if “pairing” and “sharing” are both done.

Speaking of extraverts – they really do run the world. All this sharing of personal information so promiscuously – I hate it, and so do most of my students (my agency is highly disproportionately MBTI IJ). And for adults, it can be off-putting. This is why we have sports and movies! Even asking about families (as opposed to letting students talk about them) can be dangerous, and politics and religion almost always are.

One advantage of knowing styles and types is to discover who really wants to hear constant praise – and for whom it begins to sound false or – worse – sarcastic. And for each to also recognize the needs of the others, as I see you not. Yes - I have to learn to give praise when needed, and not think someone else is (a) needy or (b) sarcastic/insulting. It's a dance!

I think the main thing I’m going to be able to do is teach them how to adapt their styles to the rigors of the translation task.

 

SSBI Day 4: 

 

Pragmatics is good stuff - fascinating. (I teach it - have to, for high level texts, and for dealing with culture.) But it's often better to be foreign, I think. You can get away with mistakes if you're not taken for one of the natives, at least if your attitude is right. Still - fascinating though it is - does it belong in an SSBI workshop?

The Kim game was an excellent window into strategies and how they are used by people. The groups often had a basic strategy, but it didn't always suit all the members. The discussion afterwards showed a lot of good strategies for remembering things, including chunking for better retention. Very useful.

'Dear Abby' gave more useful (more in number) on applying strategies to concrete problems. Less in-depth on cultural differences and more on problem students would have been better, but it was still good. Useful examples and ideas.