CALL and its Evaluation

1. CALL and its Evaluation Blake, Chapter 3 2/23/10 TESL 532, Lord Crocco Michelle Luster Natalia Golovina

2. PLATO – The 1960’s Before you read this chapter, did you know? • Two decades before the World Wide Web came on the scene, the PLATO system pioneered online forums and message boards, email, chat rooms, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multiplayer games, leading to the emergence of what was perhaps the world's first online community.

3. Computer Based Education: The beginnings • PLATO's most enduring legacy is the online community spawned by its communication features. • It originated in the early 1960's at the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois. • The Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL) was founded by Bitzer, an electrical engineer. • It is a timesharing system. (It was, in fact, one of the first timesharing systems to be operated in public.) Both courseware authors and their students use the same high-resolution graphics display terminals, which are connected to a central mainframe. A special-purpose programming language called TUTOR is used to write educational software. • Throughout the 1960's, PLATO remained a small system, supporting only a single classroom of terminals. About 1972, PLATO began a transition to a new generation of mainframes that would eventually support up to one thousand users simultaneously.

4. What happened next: The 1970’s • “Term Talk” A "term-talk" conversation was limited to two people… • “Personal Notes” The FIRST ‘Email’ system…

5. CALL: The Evolution Digital Classroom:iCALL Intelligent CALL

6. The Three Stages of CALL

7. Authoring Capabilities MANY of these programs are free for educators, allowing them the opportunity to enhance their lessons by: • Creating CALL exercises for in-class use. • Creating CALL exercises for homework. • Utilizing CALL LMSCMS templates such as Moodle to manage classes. But, these have limitations: • Constrains the creator to a predetermined set of formats

8. Vocabulary Glosses • WordChamp: Applications/Demo • You can get help, find a language partner, or a tutor. • Go to ‘help for teachers’ link to learn more about the features. • Over 130 languages online • Ts can create a class, assign homework, and check Ss progress. • Your very own wiki page: http//:www.icall.wikiscpaces.com • Hot Potatoes: Tutorial/Demo

9. A tool and a tutor: Tutorial Call • These programs are examples of how CALL can provide a blend of both tool and tutor by allowing the student (user) to be in control of the targeted words but not the database and multimedia components facilitate the training affect. • This supports Krashen’s (2004) theory of the importance of authentic material in SLA.

10. CALL Standards (1) • Standards for TESOL teachers: • CALL will soon be included in these standards. • CALICO states that teacher training in the uses of technology are very limited and in need. • ISTE suggestions – this IS the future. • Although research reports on the numerous advantages of technology-based instruction for language learning (Wiburg & Butler-Pascoe, 2002; Warschauer & Kern, 2000), many TESOL programs still lack adequate integration of learning technologies into their curricula. Teachers are not receiving sufficient-instruction or practice in the integration of learning technologies into their courses (Kavanaugh-Brown, 1998; Symonds, 2000). As a result, language teachers are faced with the challenge of using technology successfully without proper preparation. 

11. CALL Standards (2) • CALICO and ISTE recommend continuous and relevant instruction and support for educators and administrators at all levels. Furthermore, they encourage states to develop standards for teacher technology preparation and require candidates for teaching positions to demonstrate their technology skills. • For instance, The Technology Performance Profiles for Teacher Preparation (NETS, 2003) developed by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) suggest ways programs can incrementally provide learning experiences that will help prospective teachers meet the standards.

12. Hot Potatoes Enables to create interactive Web-based Exercises of the following types: Jquiz (question-based exercises) JCloze (gapfill exercises) JMatch (matching exercises) JMix (jumble exercises) JCross (crosswords) The Masher (building linked units of material) http://hotpot.uvic.ca/wintutor6/tutorial.htm http://www.teaching-tools.de.vu/

13. Strong and weak qualities of iCALL

14. CALL evaluation • FL teachers have a professional responsibility to seek out and select what they consider to be the best set of CALL learning materials for their students. • Current techniques: checklists, surveys, evaluation studies involving qualitative and quantitative data • The CALICO journal maintains an excellent online software review section: https://calico.org/p-21-SoftwareReviews.html-Courseware#Guidelines

15. What factors should be taken into consideration while evaluating CALL ? • Technical and design factors • Provision of help and feedback • Level of interactivity • Efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation • Teacher fit (methodological approach) • Learner fit (as a function of the individual learner profiles, interests, and computer infrastructure) • Operational fit (interface features and activities types)

16. What factors should be taken into consideration while evaluating CALL ? • Language learning potential • Meaning focus • Authenticity • Positive impact (the effect on developing learning strategies, pragmatic abilities, and cultural awareness) • Practicality http://www.ict4lt.org/en/index.htm