I was chatting with a friend who teaches Japanese yesterday (Hi, Noriko!) and was suddenly reminded of a character in a series of videos that I watched in one of my college Japanese classes. If you’ve ever studied Japanese, you probably know this gentleman of indeterminate ethnicity and nationality – it’s Yan-san! Even if you [...]
Betsy’s Eclection
Language + Technology
17
Jun
Language learning while knitting
Published in InstructionalDesign, Language, PersonalI recently learned to knit and crochet, which you may have noticed if you follow me on Facebook or Ravelry (username: betsylavolette – let’s be friends!). It’s a great way to pass the time when you’re captive in a car, casually chatting with family, or watching a movie, but sometimes I get out those needles/hooks [...]
16
Jun
The Computer Assisted Language Learning Consortium Conference 2010 was in Amherst, MA, June 10 – 12. I summed up my feelings about it in this tweet: Goodbye, #calico2010! It was awesome, in terms of presentations, people, planning, place… Presentations I learned so much from the sessions! This was the first conference I’ve attended where I [...]
23
Apr
Dimdim vs. Elluminate, Round 2
Published in InstructionalDesign, OpenSource, Web2.0Several people have written to ask me for a copy of the paper I allude to in Dimdim vs. Elluminate: Fight! Well, the status of that paper has been “in press” since it was accepted by TechTrends in December 2009. I was hoping to wait until it was “officially” published in TechTrends before publishing it [...]
23
Apr
I love Japanese Pizza, but…
Published in Language, Personal…Pizza Hut Japan, you’ve got to be kidding me: Please keep your “mini dogs” and their ketchup away from my mayonnaise and corn pizza!
14
Apr
Goal Analysis Diagram by Elizabeth Lavolette is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. [This is the fourth in a series of posts about Dick and Carey's The Systematic Design of Instruction. Want to read an overview and my thoughts on Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 before proceeding?] Chapter 3 starts out [...]
30
Mar
[This is the third in a series of posts about Dick and Carey's The Systematic Design of Instruction. Want to read an overview and my thoughts on Chapter 1 before proceeding?] This chapter is mainly about writing goals for instruction. However, before getting too excited about designing instruction, Note that while an instructional designer may [...]
26
Mar
I’m working my way through The Systematic Design of Instruction (SDoI), 4th ed., by Dick and Carey, and here are my thoughts on Chapter 1: Introduction to Instructional Design. (You may get the impression from this post that I’m disagreeing with what the book says, but for the most part, I’m not. I’m just not [...]
24
Mar
The systematic design of instruction
Published in InstructionalDesignI’ve been working as part of an instructional design team for almost two years now, and I haven’t read The Systematic Design of Instruction by Dick and Carey. (Don’t laugh!) It’s time to correct that. I came to instructional design not from an education background, but from applied linguistics and teaching English as a second [...]
9
Mar
Push the BigBlueButton
Published in OpenSource, Web2.0When I try a web-conferencing product, I expect to find myself in a sterile demo room – alone and left to my own devices. When I tried BigBlueButton, I was momentarily confused. Many people were in the demo room. They were talking, text-chatting, pointing at slides – and one of the developers, Fred Dixon, starting [...]