Rabu, 25 Maret 2015

Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL)

Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL)

Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) may be defined as the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning (Levy, 1997, p.1).


Roles of the Computer in language learning and teaching:
- computer as tutor for language drills or skill practice
- computer as a tool for writing, presenting, and researching
- computer as a medium of global communication
The advantages of CALL
Learner’s Factors
    • CALL can adapt to the learners' abilities and preferences.
    • CALL can adapt to the learners’ cognitive and learning styles.
    • CALL can adapt to the learner’s self-paced learning. CALL can be used for remedial work for slow learners and to accelerate learning for fast learners.
    • CALL offers individualized and private learning.
    • CALL, with branching capability, provides choices and paths for learning, allowing learners to work independently.
    • CALL allows learners to control their own learning process and progress.
Motivation and Attitudes
    • CALL provides strong motivation for learning. Students will often do on a computer what they are reluctant to do in a textbook or paper-pencil.
    • Some CALL features such as graphics, sounds, animation, video, audio are interesting and motivating for many learners.
    • CALL can improve learners’ attitudes towards learning English.
    • CALL (internet) provides authentic communication that motivates students to use language outside language classroom.
Feedback and Progress Record
    • CALL can provide immediate responsiveness and feedback.
    • CALL provides accurate records of the learner’s performance and progress.
Teacher’s Roles and the Relationship with the Learner
    • CALL can change the relationship between teacher and student.
    • The teacher becomes a facilitator rather than a person who controls the learning environment.
    • CALL is predictable and non-judgemental.
Mastery Learning
    • CALL provides opportunities for mastery-learning language skills.
    • CALL can lower the amount of time required to master some materials.
Co-operative Learning
    • CALL (e.g.simulation games) encourages learners to work cooperatively in problem solving.
    • CALL allows learners to learn cooperatively as a result of working together (such as group works, and discussion.)
Communication
    • CALL (e.g. games and puzzles) create information gaps which provide learners a need to communicate or interact with each other or with the program.
    • CALL (e.g. e-mail, chat, moos) promote direct communicative skills for the learners.
    • CALL (e.g. e-mail, chat, moos) provides authentic, real communication with native speakers of English outside the classroom.
Access to Information and Cultures
    • CALL (e.g. CD-ROM and the internet) can increase access to information to the learners.
    • CALL (CD-ROM and the internet) allow learners to acess to cultures around the world.
Learning Environment
    • CALL is a neutral medium. Compared to teachers, computers do not lose patience, get angry, or play favourites as some teachers do. This creates a safe learning environment.
    • CALL can provide an active and positive learning environment.
    • Integration of a variety of multimedia such as texts, graphics, sound, animation, and video, allowing for creating authentic meaningful language learning environments.
    • CALL (the internet) has no limitations regarding different time zones and places.
Cost Effectiveness
    • CALL is cost effective.

Traditional CALL

Traditional CALL programs presented a stimulus to which the learner had to provide a response.
Discrete error analysis and feedback were a common feature of traditional CALL, and the more sophisticated programs would attempt to analyse the learner's response, pinpoint errors, and branch to help and remedial activities.

Explorative CALL

More recent approaches to CALL have favoured a learner-centred, explorative approach rather than a teacher-centred, drill-based approach to CALL. The explorative approach is characterised by the use of concordance programs in the languages classroom - an approach described as Data-Driven Learning (DLL) by Tim Johns (Johns & King 1991).

Multimedia CALL

Early personal computers were incapable of presenting authentic recordings of the human voice and easily recognizable images, but this limitation was overcome by combining a personal computer and a 12-inch videodisc player, which made it possible to combine sound, photographic-quality still images and video recordings in imaginative presentations - in essence the earliest manifestation of multimedia CALL. 

Web-based CALL

In 1992 the World Wide Web was launched, reaching the general public in 1993. The Web offers enormous potential in language learning and teaching, but it has some way to go before it catches up with the interactivity and speed of access offered by CD-ROMs or DVDs, especially when accessing sound and video files.

(Source: https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/61)


Reflection:

On week 4, I learned more about Computer Assisted Language Learning. The roles of computer in language learning and teaching are important. The computer can be a tutor for language drills or skill practice. It can be a tool for writing, presenting, and researching. It also can be a medium of global communication. We should put the computer in our learning process to improve our education.

Jumat, 20 Maret 2015

ICT Tools, Roles and Application in Education and Language Learning

ICT Tools, Roles and Application in Education and Language Learning

Educational ICT tools can be divided into 3 categories: Input source, Output source and Others.
See the following graph :





http://www.elmoglobal.com/en/html/ict/01.aspx

3 MAIN ADVANTAGES OF ICT TOOLS FOR EDUCATION:

1. Through ICT, images can easily be used in teaching and improving the retentive memory of students.
2. Through ICT, teachers can easily explain complex instructions and ensure students' comprehension.
3. Through ICT, teachers are able to create interactive classes and make the lessons more enjoyable, which could improve student attendance and concentration.

3 MAIN DISADVANTAGES OF ICT TOOLS FOR EDUCATION:
1. Setting up the devices can be very troublesome.
2. Too expensive to afford.
3. Hard for teachers to use with a lack of experience using ICT tools.

Educational ICT tools are not for making educators master ICT skills themselves, but for making educators create a more effective learning environment via ICT.
(Source: http://www.elmoglobal.com/en/html/ict/01.aspx)

There are so many online tools in teaching and learning, for example wallwisher and prezi. Wallwisher is very useful. Students can mind-map, build mood boards for creative projects, or create research walls on a given topic. Plenary discussions can be initiated by topic walls made collaboratively, or by teachers. For instance, a Key Stage 4 Media Studies teacher could create a wall of YouTube film trailers to initiate a discussion on genre, classification or censorship. The other online tool is prezi. Prezi provides users with a large canvas upon which to pin text slides, video clips and images. So far, so PowerPoint, you might say. Whenever you or your pupils would use Microsoft PowerPoint, Prezi provides a more dynamic, engaging and visually attractive option. Innovative Science and Maths teachers of all key stages are already using Prezi to explain key concepts to pupils around the world.
(Source: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/372979/10-free-online-tools-for-teaching-and-learning)

In the twelfth plan, The Planning Commission has stressed that ICT tools must be used for significantly improving the educational services and for streamlining the admission process. Says Dr Veera Gupta, Secretary, Central Board of Secondary Education, “ICT is integral to the teaching learning process. In an age where massive expansion of education is required, we cannot do without the use of technology. ICT is vital for dissemination of knowledge, for evaluation and for keeping data and records. The role of ICT is multi faceted and it has to be exploited to the maximum potential.”
(Source: http://ictpost.com/role-of-ict-is-multi-faceted-in-education/)

The use of ICT in the English classroom extends beyond its motivational value to address key outcomes of the syllabus, and allow students to become competent users as well as consumers in English.
Research suggests that incorporating ICT into the English curriculum can:
  • improve writing and reading skills
  • develop speaking and listening skills
  • support collaboration, creativity, independent learning and reflection (Becta,2003a, Becta,2003b, VTC,2003) (cited in Becta 2005)
As an interactive and collaborative medium, ICT allows responding, composing, and publication to be easily shared and offers students the opportunity to explore the language of texts more creatively and develop as speakers, writers and readers for an ever widening range of purposes and audiences. ICT can enable students to:
  • access information and respond to a widening range of texts
  • organise and present information in a variety of forms
  • broaden the range of audiences for their work
  • compose a widening range of texts for a broad range of purposes
  • compose for real audiences. ICT can support them in their choice of genre for audience and purpose.
  • identify key characteristics and features of text
  • develop understanding of language and critical literacy (Becta,2006,ICT in the Curriculum)
(Source: http://www.englishteacher.com.au/AboutUs/OfficialStatements/ICTsinEnglish.aspx)

Reflection:

I studied more about ICT Tools, Roles and Application in Education and Language Learning. The benefits of ICT in education is a tool in supporting the development of knowledge for students. It may help students for understanding the lesson clearly. It is a facility to identify the students' information easily. It is very useful as social media which is used to support the process of learning. It is also used for discussion and submission of opinions among the members of school. It is used as a tool to improve the quality of education. It can help students and teachers in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the process of learning and teaching. It is very important because it is used to facilitate students in achieving the educational goals.

Jumat, 13 Maret 2015

Management Information System


Management Information System


After reading the material from the links that have been recommended by Mr. Rudi, I tried to summarize the important subject matters relating to the management of information systems. The MIS concentration prepares students to excel professionally and contribute meaningfully to the knowledge or information economy of the 21st century. MIS professionals bring technology and business together to deliver information solutions that help organizations meet their goals. This is a system that provides information needed to manage organizations effectively. (Source: http://www.sjsu.edu/isystems/)

http://vincentpage.blogspot.com/
Information System is a combination of information technology and and people's activities using that technology to support operations, management. In a very broad sense, the term information system is frequently used to refer to the interaction between people, data and technology. Information system is very important to business. It serves as a guide for business workers to be responsible enough in making decisions and performing their jobs. (Source: http://vincentpage.blogspot.com/)
We are very familiar with what is called HTML. HTML which stands for Hyper Text MarkupLanguage, is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML is the basic building-blocks of webpages.The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose them into visual or audible web pages. (Source: http://vincentpage.blogspot.com/)
We should know about hypertext and hypermedia. Hypertext is basically the same as regular text. It can be stored, read, searched, or edited with an important exception. Hypertext is text with pointers to other text. Besides that, hypermedia is a superset of hypertext. Hypermedia documents contain links not only to other pieces of text, but also to other forms of media like sounds, images, and movies. Hypermedia simply combines hypertext and multimedia. (Source:http://www.rc.au.net/papers/www-0595/wwwhype2.html)
We often find the word multimedia in our daily life. Multimedia is the field concerned with the computer-controlled integration of text, graphics, drawings, still and moving images (video), animation, audio, and any other media where every type of information can be represented, stored, transmitted and processed digitally. A Multimedia Application is an Application which uses a collection of multiple media sources e.g. text, graphics, images, sound/audio, animation and/or video. Hypermedia can be considered as one of the multimedia applications. (Source:http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/ISE_Multimedia/node10.html)

Reflection:

I studied management information system. I think that we should not be outdated. Technology and information system will help us to develop ourselves. This system opens the window brighter for our future. Having academic knowledge without technological knowledge is also be ineffective. Our task is to compile both of them to be a sophisticated compilation. We are going to be people who will be looked for by others if we serve of what is needed by the world.