Educational Technology and Language Learning

1. Educational Technology and Language Learning FeruzAkobirov and Ryan Olesh

2. Purpose • Consolidation of resources related to language learning, particularly English language learning, through the use of technology. • Gaining a cross-cultural perspective on this topic. • Exemplifying this topic through participants’ own projects.

3. Development Environment • Pbworks • http://pbworks.com/ • Within this wiki site, we included many types of media ranging from Youtube videos to constructivist programming software program files (Scratch and Etoys) • www.scratch.com • http://www.squeakland.org/

4. How We Collaborated • Feruz and I used email to coordinate the project • We communicated with our Costa Rican colleagues by email as well

5. Benefit as Result of International Comparisons • Feruz is from Uzbekistan and Ryan is from the U.S. • Feruzspeaks multiple languages • Ryan studied Spanish formally in college and works at the AEC at KU. • Although our Costa Rican partners did not participate much, we benefitted from the project because we had to consider how the content on our wiki would appear to audiences from different cultures and nationalities.

6. Highlights: Homescreen

7. Highlights: Resources

8. Highlights: Presentation

9. Highlights: Discussion

10. Highlights: Video Resources

11. Future Plans or other International Collaborative Activities • In the future, Feruz and Ryan would like to pursue similar such endeavors in order to gain more multi-dimensional and multicultural perspectives on their research. • Not only receive constructive feedback from faculty and peers here at KU, but to receive feedback from a broader audience given the globalized world we live in. • As instructors, may be useful to have students use these wikis to gather information from personal sources that transcend national boundaries.

12. Any Questions? Thank you for listening!