I have heard this a bit this week, especially from one of the Ed tech talk guys.
I guess my problem is that i am uncomfortable writing thoughts that are not fully cooked on something as wide open as this blog. i suppose I will have to get over that if I am expecting my students to learn how to do this next spring. and to do it as a required part of the course. I do fine talking and emailing about these ideas, concepts, concerns…there is a give and take there. But this seems so one sided.. and kinda lonely cuz you wonder if anyone is reading, if anyone is out there. Especially if you have a problem (Thank you todd for the Skype help, by the way!) and you need an answer.
So here is today’s question (let’s see if anyone out there is listening):
What kind of emerging technologies would be best for teaching a conversation class in a second language?
Clearly Skype holds some promise, especially if I could figure out a way to record the calls and post them as mp3 files.
But what about wikis and moodle and blogs? Am I crazy in thinking that these could be used as pre-speaking exercises where points of view (in the target language) are exchanged in a written form, beginnings of arguments form, vocabulary grows, followed by a conversation and then feedback (once again) in the blog.wiki.moodle site.
Can it be done? If so, how?
How Web 2.0 can YOU go?