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Plunge into a text with social reading

August 16, 2016 2 Comments

Photo credit (left): flickr user Jake Macabre Creative Commons License
Photo credit (middle): COERLL Creative Commons License
Photo credit (right): Deutsche Fototek Creative Commons License

COERLL recently made the social reading tool eComma available for users of Learning Management Systems (LMS). In eComma, a group of students can annotate the same text together and share their annotations with each other in the form of comments, tags, and word clouds. Students’ natural capacity for socializing online is put to good use with social reading, as they learn from each other, uncover the multiple layers of meaning in a text, and reflect deeply on their reading. But how does a teacher set this process of learning and reflection in motion?

There are a lot of options for using eComma with your class, and how you choose to use it depends on what your goal is. Here are some possible goals for reading, and ideas for how to meet them:

  • Introduce a new grammar concept: Provide students a grammatically rich text to read in eComma before coming to class. Ask them to comment on words they don’t understand, to make observations about certain parts of speech, and to make guesses about grammar rules, all while responding to each other’s comments and questions. In this way, they learn from each other as they form patterns, solve problems, and build hypotheses. (This inductive technique was developed by Alex Lorenz from The University of Texas at Austin.)
  • Raise awareness of cultural constructs: Lead students through a series of steps to build awareness of their assumptions about the L2 culture and language. They begin by “red flagging” a text based on anything that stands out. Through comments to each other and further research, they discover where they may have been misconstruing a text, and finally formulate a modified interpretation of the reading based on research and peer feedback. (This process was developed by Joanna Luks, as described here in more detail.)
  • Guide students in identifying key information in the text: Kara Parker of Creative Language Class uses highlighters and paper instead of eComma, but the same ideas can apply in eComma… ask students to identify “who”, “where”, “when” and “action taking place” in the text. Then, they can use this information as a basis for a summary of the text, in paragraphs or tweets. (Read more here.)
  • Show how tenses convey meaning: Ask students to label verb tenses to bring their attention to the differences in how the tenses are used.

These are only just a few ways of using eComma, and any of them could be done asynchronously as homework, or synchronously in the classroom, where students can see each other’s comments popping up in real time.

You can also make use of certain strategies to ensure your students are engaging with each other and with the text. For example, require each student to respond to at least one comment from a fellow classmate, ask them to find patterns in what their peers are commenting on, ask them to make comparisons, or assign them each a role in reading and annotating the text. (For example, each student highlights a different grammatical structure.)

We hope you will find a way of using eComma that works best for you and your language class! If you do, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below… your ideas could be valuable for other teachers.


For further reading:

  • Instructions for installing eComma as an LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) app in your LMS and adding it to an assignment or course content.
  • eComma case studies and further research
  • Social reading lesson planning guide

Filed Under: Technology-based language learning Tagged With: asynchronous, collaboration, culture, eComma, foreign language learning, grammar, Online learning, reading, social reading, synchronous, tenses, tools

Availability of Foreign Language materials in OER repositories

March 6, 2016 5 Comments

Photo credit: flickr user gotcredit.com Creative Commons License

Here at COERLL, we encourage teachers to use Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) in their classes. One way to begin using OER and OEP is to search for and use pedagogical materials (lessons, activities, and courses) that other teachers have posted online in OER repositories. To help navigate through the many options, we’ve gone through all of the OER repositories we know of to see what the benefits are of each one, and how much language content is available. This is a summary of what we found, we hope after you read this you will want to either search on some of these sites, or upload your own materials for sharing! And please let us know in the comments if you know of other repositories not included here!

Criteria for evaluating repositories

This criteria was loosely based on Atenas and Havemann’s key OER repository themes of searching, sharing, reusing, and collaborating, set out in their 2013 article ‘Quality Assurance in the Open: An Evaluation of OER Repositories’, which can be found online here.1

  • availability of language content – does the repository have at least some content for language learning, and is it easy to find?
  • tools for vetting – does the platform provide for peer reviews or some other vetting/editorial process to assure teachers access to quality content?
  • ease of remixing – does the platform encourage teachers to edit materials and personalize them for their students?
  • licensing information – are licenses clearly marked? do licenses allow for fair attribution, sharing, and remixing of content? are Creative Commons licenses encouraged?
  • metadata quality – does metadata facilitate searches using different criteria (e.g. languages, proficiency level, etc.)?
  • any other qualities that create an engaging and creative space for sharing materials and ideas,such as tools to help teachers communicate and interact with each other

Repositories with language materials

MERLOT

A well respected and mature (started in 1997) repository for lessons and activities. There are lots of options for collaboration and communication, so that it’s not just a repository but a community around sharing resources.

  • Lots of language content
  • Peer reviews are available for many of the entries and Merlot’s editorial board selects their favorites
  • Teachers can discuss the materials with each other in a comments section.
  • Easy to create a learning exercise around the materials.
  • Licensing information is clearly marked (not all content is Creative Commons licensed)
  • The longevity of the platform has allowed the best materials to emerge over time – here’s a list of some award winning ones

Open Textbook Library

The best part about this textbook repository is the elaborate rating system and emphasis on peer reviews and the vetting process.

  • There is a detailed list of criteria to guide users in reviewing materials.
  • Licensing information is clearly marked.
  • Some COERLL textbooks have just been added to the language page!

OER Commons

OER Commons is a large repository for any kind of materials (lessons, activities, textbooks, etc.). It has tools in place for thorough evaluation, remixing, creation, and licensing.

  • About 700 language materials and language support for resources and metadata
  • Users can evaluate materials based on Common Core standards and an extensive rubric. There is also a general rating available (out of 5 stars).
  • The system guides users in choosing a Creative Commons license upon upload
  • The lesson builder allows teachers to create new materials or reuse existing.

Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative

Full courses available from Carnegie Mellon, for teachers looking for structured and complete courses.

  • Chinese, Spanish, French, Arabic
  • Plentiful guides and resources for teachers.
  • Licensed with a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
  • Users can add content but can’t remove or revise content from a course.
  • Free for instructors and independent learners, $50 for enrolled students.
  • Compatible with LMS.
  • Statistics about student use help teachers track progress and help Carnegie Mellon research education theories.

Open Course Library

Professionally laid out materials are easy to find and edit in this library of courses from the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

  • 3 levels each of Spanish, French, and Sign Language
  • All materials are in google docs which makes them easy to modify.
  • All content is clearly marked as Creative Commons licensed.

Language Resource Centers (LRC) portal

The website for the 16 national Language Resource Centers (of which COERLL is one), where you can search a list of over 800 classroom and professional development materials.

  • Language content only (there are materials for LCTLs too)
  • Lots of criteria to help users narrow searches down
  • Materials have been vetted by language specialists

Curriki

Curriki does a good job of emphasizing community, and its wide range of review options helps users to sift through a lot of activities and other content.

  • 2765 entries under “World Language” content, but not all are for language teaching
  • Review options are plentiful: Members can give ratings and reviews, Curriki reviews some content based on Technical Completeness, Content Accuracy, and Appropriate Pedagogy, and there are collections curated by Curriki (no curated language collections yet though)
  • There is a separate community for teachers to discuss how to use materials.
  • Choosing a license is a prerequisite for uploading materials
  • Users can align materials with standards.

TES

TES is a repository where teachers share activities. Some activities cost a small fee but the World Languages section and the remixing tools make this site worth looking through.

  • American Sign Language, Ancient Greek, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, etc.
  • Teachers can review materials
  • All content is labeled with a license, either Creative Commons or the TES teaching resource license
  • Their related site, Blendspace, encourages remixing and is easily accessible from TES
  • Share My Lesson allows users to build a lesson plan around TES materials

MIT OpenCourseWare

MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) makes course materials from MIT classes available for the public.

  • A good range of languages represented.
  • All instructor created materials share a CC BY NC SA license
  • Course materials includes any combination of syllabus, calendar, list of readings, assignments, online/related resources, study materials, instructor insights, and sometimes even course videos.
  • Though the instructor created materials are free and openly licensed, some of the course materials referenced are not free or open.

Wikibooks and Wikiversity

Wikibooks and Wikiversity are both run by Wikimedia. There are currently a lot of incomplete materials there but with the ease of editing, options to add auxiliary materials, and discussion tools, these platforms could be a rich resource.

  • Many languages (mostly reference grammars) on Wikibooks, some on Wikiversity
  • Discussion tabs encourage community and collaboration
  • There’s an option to add exercises on Wikibooks
  • Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

LORO

LORO is all language content! It contains mostly activities rather than whole textbooks or collections. It’s supported by The Univesity of Southhampton and the Open University.

  • Exclusively for languages
  • Users can comment on or “like” materials
  • All content is CC licensed.

Repositories with fewer language options but with a unique angle on OER

Some other repositories are set up well but have little or no language offerings. I’d like to mention them anyways as examples of all the ways a repository can encourage sharing and collaboration.

  • Portland State University Open Text offers a carefully curated set of textbooks with a growing number of language books
  • BC Campus Open Ed has all the right tools for building a community of collaboration around the available CC licensed textbooks, including detailed criteria for peer review and resources for adopting and modifying texts.
  • The Orange Grove is the state of Florida’s repository. One of its best features is its detailed metadata which makes it easy to search for content.
  • Gooru offers CC licensed collections of materials, and many other features such as games and tools for remixing content and measuring student progress.
  • OpenStax CNX offers fully vetted, modularized textbooks, and an option for sharing activities and lessons.
  • The Sofia Project is a smaller repository, but it’s interesting to look through because of the large amount of auxiliary materials, like syllabi, rubrics, schedules, assignments, projects, exams, and even sample student assignments.
  • The Global Text Project is a grassroots approach to textbooks and encourages teachers to adopt books and work with their students to make them better.
  • The Saylor Foundation provides well organized and complete CC licensed courses with a lot of auxiliary material, and peer review and feedback are encouraged.
  • Storyweaver is not quite a repository but it offers a good model for collaborative language work… anyone can upload storybooks in any language (41 languages represented so far), and members of the community can comment on stories, share on social media, translate them or edit them for different levels of readers.

Other repositories

  • Open Yale
  • Open Education Consortium Course Search
  • Open Learn
  • Andover Fulcrum
  • Jorum
  • BC Campus’ SOL*R
  • Open SUNY Textbooks
  • YouTube Education page
  • Apple Books textbooks section (more foreign language books under the Reference > Foreign Languages section)
  • iTunes U

Areas for improvement

  • Tagging: Some repositories appear to have more language content than they do because content in a foreign language is tagged under the same category as content for teaching foreign languages. So for example, a Portuguese lesson about biology for Portuguese speakers could be in the same category as a Portuguese learning lesson for English speakers.
  • Use cases: Most repositories don’t specifically encourage a teacher who uploads a resource to explain how they used the the resource in their classroom. This information could help other teachers save time and give them new ideas about teaching methods.
  • Remixing: Editing materials is a key aspect of OER, but some sites do not encourage it. Some repositories do encourage edits in their platforms, but the resulting new material is not usable outside of the platform.
  • Popular tools: Some of the most widely used platforms (for example, YouTube) offer free resources for education, but don’t always provide important tools: peer review options, search terms compatible with educational criteria, and open licenses.

1Atenas, Javiera and Havemann, Leo (2013) ‘Quality Assurance in the Open: An Evaluation of OER Repositories.’ INNOQUAL – International Journal for Innovation and Quality in Learning , 1 (2). pp. 22-34.

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Filed Under: Finding OER Tagged With: BC Campus, Carnegie Mellon, Creative Commons, Curriki, LORO, materials, MERLOT, MIT, OCW, OER, OER Commons, Open Education Week, open educational resources, Remix OER, remixing, repository, Storyweaver, tagging, TES, Textbook, tools, use cases, Wikibooks

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