Xerte Online Toolkits (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/toolkits.htm) is a powerful suite of browser-based tools that allow anyone with a web browser to log on and create interactive learning materials easily. Xerte Online Toolkits provides a number of project templates for creating online presentations and interactive content. Content is assembled using an intuitive interface, and multiple users can collaborate on shared projects. The software is free, open-source and is in use in over 150 institutions around the world with an active community of users and developers.

Over the last year, the Xerte Developer team have been working closely with the Language Centre at the University of Nottingham to develop templates specific to the teaching of modern languages. A range of interactions are available, allowing content to be authored and published very quickly. Using the software, the Language Centre have produced a comprehensive suite of over 600 Learning Objects to support language learning in 12 different languages.

This workshop will provide a thorough overview of the software, with plenty of opportunity for participants to gain hands-on experience. Oranna Speicher will present the Language Centre's experiences using the software. The open-source software may be freely taken and deployed at participant's institutions after the workshop.

The aim of this workshop is to highlight the language learning potential of corpus-based resources within the general framework of “data-driven learning” (DDL) as opened up by the work of Tim Johns. In recent years, this DDL approach has been extended by various initiatives that aim at pedagogic mediation of corpus data and their coherent integration in communicative and autonomous language teaching. More recent research in applied linguistics has created a variety of usage scenarios (see sample references below) for language teaching and learning (whether hands-on or in prepared materials). It has also explored the options of using corpora as an information resource to complement dictionaries and other tools for translation, writing and error-correction, and to other areas of language study.

The workshop’s main objectives are to:

• introduce participants to a sample of free, web-based corpus resources that are suitable for enriching and authenticating their language teaching classes;
• demonstrate and practice how to include these resources in a broader learning scenario where the tasks are integrated into a Moodle course;
• practice producing simple corpus-based materials and tasks in a blended language learning scenario;
• have an exchange with the workshop participants on the strengths and weaknesses of the resources presented.

This workshop aims to:

• Introduce participants to the concept of virtual worlds
• Provide hands-on practice in using the virtual world of Second Life
• Examine and discuss the potential of Second Life in language learning and teaching, with reference to ongoing initiatives and projects in this area

Prior knowledge:

Basic ICT skills: familiarity with Windows XP or higher, file management, a word-processor (e.g. MS Word), a Web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer), controlling a mouse, using the directional keys.

Prior to attending the workshop participants are expected to have:

1. accessed the Second Life website at http://secondlife.com
2. downloaded the Second Life Viewer 2 software to their own computer
3. created their avatar
4. entered Second Life at least once

All the above is described in Graham Davies’s Introduction to Second Life Viewer 2, which can be downloaded in MS Word format from Section 14.2.1 (i) of Module 1.5 at the ICT4LT website: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod1-5.htm#introslThe workshop will focus on Viewer 2, not the older Viewer 1.

Workshop contents:

• An overview of virtual worlds in general and Second Life in particular.
• Meeting at the EUROCALL/CALICO HQ in Second Life.
• Communicating: text chat, voice chat, instant messaging (IM), making friends.
• Movement controls: moving around: walking, running, flying, teleporting.
• The Second Life screen and what the main icons and menus mean.
• Tour of the EUROCALL/CALICO HQ.
• Introduction to holodecks.
• Listening to audio recordings.
• Viewing slideshows, shared media and videos on projection screens.
• Accessing a website from within Second Life.
• Using the inventory.
• Buying objects – including freebies – and adding them to the inventory.
• Notecards: accepting, saving and using notecards.
• Navigation: using the mini-map and large map.
• Marking landmarks, navigating to landmarks.
• Searching for people, places and objects.
• Changing an avatar's appearance.
• Taking snapshots.
• Creating objects in a sandbox.

 

Prior knowledge required

None, but participants should bring a memory stick with a couple of teaching resources or photographs to try uploading to a repository.

Workshop Objectives

This workshop is designed to allow language teachers to reflect on the benefits and challenges of sharing teaching resources openly, and to practise using a repository to publish their resources. Participants will become familiar with the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER), where to find them and how to create them. They will be introduced to a repository of teaching resources (LORO), and will practise creating an account, browsing and downloading material and uploading their own resources. Important issues such as copyright, licenses, metadata and attribution will be covered during the workshop.

LORO (Languages Open Resources Online, at http://loro.open.ac.uk) is an online repository of language teaching resources aimed specifically at language teachers. Launched in 2010 by the Department of Languages at the Open University, LORO allows users to access and share resources for language teaching and learning, and to exploit, remix and extend resources created by others. LORO currently holds over 1700 resources for French, German, Spanish, Italian, Welsh, Chinese and English for Academic Purposes and has over 500 registered users.

Workshop Contents

a) What are Open Educational Resources (OER)? How are they different from digital resources?

b) Writing to share - issues to consider:

• Copyright (Creative Commons)
• Attribution and ownership.
• Licenses
• Metadata and discoverability.
• Quality assurance and peer review.

c) Finding OER for language teaching: Merlot, LARC, LORO, Xpert, Language Box and Humbox.

d) Benefits and challenges of sharing teaching resources:

e) LORO as an example of a repository of teaching materials:

• Creating an account and the user profile.
• Browsing, searching and downloading resources from LORO.
• Uploading your own resources (metadata and licenses).
• Making the most of LORO: commenting, bookmarking, saved searches, RSS feeds, collections.

 

Prior knowledge: Basic familiarity with Moodle from the teacher’s perspective.

This workshop builds on experiences and results from the EU-project PELLIC (Practice Enterprise for Language Learning and Intercultural Communication - LifeLongLearning Programme, Key Activity 2: Languages, 2009-2011).

During the piloting phase of the project (Oct.-Dec. 2010), students in five European countries have been made “virtual entrepreneurs”, and have been interacting and trading with each other. Their interactions were scaffolded and supported by a customized Moodle platform (http://www.pellic.com) that has been integrated with the Google Apps suite of business collaboration tools.

I want to show how Moodle has been used as a pivotal point in this scenario. In particular, I want to give hands-on experience on how Moodle’s activity tools can be adapted and extended for pedagogic use in practice enterprise courses and similar task-based learning scenarios, particularly in tertiary level education, advanced vocational training and continuing education.

Workshop participants will become familiar with the Moodle-based virtual learning environment and learn to implement and support language learning related tasks and activities suitable for a practice enterprise scenario. Every participant will receive an account with teacher rights on the VLE in a separate course area which will remain accessible after the workshop.

Workshop contents:

• how does a practice enterprise course work – who’s doing it, and with what benefit?
• how can this methodology be used for promoting authentic language learning in a content-language-integrated fashion?
• how can Moodle tools (such as the database activity) be set up and adapted to real-life requirements?
• how can Google Apps be used productively for collaborative writing, making contact among each other, building websites - and how can these tools be integrated with Moodle?

Prior knowledge required

The practical hands-on sections will use resources which are either in German, French, Spanish or English. Please note that English can be used throughout in relation to the applications.

Workshop objectives:

• show how digital language labs can motivate language-learners all of ages
• examine the ways in which digital language labs can improve the quality of both teaching and learning
• provide hands-on experience in using language-labs as well as range of software applications.

Workshop format

In the morning session participants will learn through hands-on practice how to create their own hypermedia learning unit using FLAn. In the afternoon session they will use free Web-based resources for acquiring, creating and editing multimedia materials for use with FLAn and other CALL projects.

Although FLAn can be used for learning virtually any language, workshop participants will use prepared materials with English as L2 and their choice of language for L1. Each participant will have a booklet with step-by-step instructions for following along with the instructions. Participants will also have access to a Web site where all workshop materials and other training materials can be downloaded for later reference.

The afternoon session will focus on processing multimedia materials for use with FLAn and other CALL projects. Participants will be introduced to free applications for processing images, audio and video through hands-on activities. They will also examine online repositories of free multimedia materials.

Workshop contents

Morning Session

• Introduction to Hypermedia

• Creating multimedia annotations with FLAn

• Resources at RedHotWords.com

Afternoon Session

• Sources for images, audio and video

• Creating and editing images

pixlr.com

picnik.com

Image Editor

Photo Editor

• Creating and editing audio materials

 Myna by Aviary (Web-based)

 Audacity

 Switch

• Creating & editing videos

YouTube Video Editor

Google Video Editing Software

keepvid.com

• Integrating multimedia into FLAn units