Ask any Apple fan why they love their desktop/laptop/iWhatever and inevitably you’ll hear that Apple Devices Just Work. It’s true that, in Cupertino, hundreds of millions of dollars each year are poured into designing products that are as intuitive and simple as possible, without sacrificing quality. I’m not a member of the Cult of Jobs(…)
I am the Director of a very unconventional language learning center. First off, it is not in a basement. It is on the third floor of a castle like building with gobs of natural light and way high ceilings. We also do not have carrels. When it was built in 1995 the faculty had the(…)
This entry is part 16 of 35 in the series Teaching Transparently http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrclean/ / CC BY-NC 2.0 O’er the past few days there has been a kerfluffle brewing over at Inside Higher Ed in their Blog U section. As my colleague and fellow LLU blogger Doug posted earlier this week, Joshua Kim, a blogger(…)
I have been in the same job, as Director of a Language Learning Center, for 10+ years. In that time I have worked with 4 and a 1/4 individuals who have more than aptly filled the role of Educational Technology Specialist. (the 1/4 refers to the poor, poor sod who left after a month or(…)
Prior to coming to my current job in higher ed and language learning technology, I taught in a grade school. Grades 7-12 to be exact. The wonder years. (I now realize how wonderful they are, and how awesome my colleagues were then, now that I have kids of my own in that age bracket). To(…)
I am taking a poll (and writing a paper) so please help me out and leave your answers in the comment box above: If you work in the area of language learning technology, or know someone who does, please tell me what your/that person’s title is. We all know that it sometimes feels like it(…)
At the same time of the Xerox club (see below), Sister Joan Schmitt was teaching French in the Holy Family High School Language Lab. As you can clearly see, it was a compelling, technology-rich, language learning experience. Please note, if your lab looks like this, please put down the reel to reel immediately and leave(…)
This afternoon, hundreds of the biggest geeks in the country gathered in San Francisco for MacWorld 2008. Although last week’s announcement of updated desktop systems pointed to Something Really Big to come, I was disappointed by what we got. Do I want a MacBook Air? Duh, of course, even though I think it would more(…)
Last summer, at the IALLT Biennial conference, when I described the addition of parakeets and finches in the set up of our language center, someone remarked “Of course! How brilliant! The Cocktail Party Effect!.” I never knew that there was a name for this, nor that it had a page in Wikipedia. I just thought(…)
We’re due to have the computers in our lab refreshed this year, and with Gateway being split and sold, we’re not yet sure who will be supplying our campus’s PCs for next academic year and beyond. One idea for how to avoid the whole PC / Mac issue that we had is to simply have(…)