Home-Away-From-Home Lunches

At NAFSA this week, I was part of workshop on student support activities that address student needs during the cycle of cultural adjustment.


Suffolk University acknowledges the predictable low period in cultural adjustment when students seek out their countrymen for support. Suffolk sets up lunches for country groups in October and February just as the excitement of living in the US is wearing off. Returning students are invited to join tables with new students from their country and share their experiences in surviving and thriving.


The conversations have included such things as the best place to buy/find their homeland food or how to interact with a particularly "different" teacher or interactions with a nationality that they had not experienced at home. One of the results is that the students help each other through some of the challenges in housing, food, relationships.

Suffolk has a smaller student population and so is able to provide lunches for all. Perhaps SAL could do something similar after classes in the afternoon with snacks? Or provide some reimbursement if the students want to go somewhere to meet? Any suggestions?

A related idea was to set up Peer Outreach Partners (POPs!) to pair 'senior' students with incoming students. The success is more dependent on the pairs getting along well - something impossible to predict.

I'm very big on keeping an English only environment, but I can see real benefit in creating or supporting student support networks within their compatriot groups.

EZ Slang Activities online

Randy Davis from University of Utah has created several sites for the ELI students. EZ Slang has slang vocabulary, audio files, and activities that would be interesting for our students. Very easy to use. This could be especially good in our ACC classes.

TESOL IT Fair

Perhaps just one more post from the NYC TESOL. Randall Davis runs the ELI lab at University of Utah. He gave a terrific presentation on technology in the IEP curriculum and also coordinated the Hardware Fair. I'm linking to the description of the Hardware Fair to give you an overview of the many possibilities that were on display. I hope these posts are inspiring us to try to new things ~ especially with Moe on board to help.

Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is a great tool for our students to make short videos--probably for OC class. Suzanne Ludlum from Oakland Adult Ed showed us how her students make Digital Stories. Here are some results:
http://storiesforchange.net/stories
The idea is for the student to pre-write her story and then think of a sort of story board.
She can easily find images on Google images and save them or import her own pictures.
You insert your pictures, apply video effects and transitions, type over them using titles or credits or title overlays, and then use Audacity to narrate your story. You can have background music as well.
I'm quite interested in becoming more adept with this and after Moe gets other more pressing tasks under control, I want to work with him on this so that I can do a demo of it for interested teachers, OK?

YouTube in the Classroom

I went to the CATESOL presentation by Nathan Crandall and Steve MacIsaac called, "Using YouTube in Speaking and Listening Classes." I've got to say that at first, I wasn't sure I'd get anything out of it because they were covering the very basics of YouTube - what is it? who posts videos on it? how do you find it? - all things that anyone from my generation would know. But, after all those questions had been answered (there were a lot of people who needed the basics, so it was important), I learned a few ways to use YouTube in the classroom, other than just cueing up some videos right before class. Here's a taste:

1.  You can make a YouTube account and save movies to it so that you don't have to worry about finding them before class. The movies will be safe in your account until they are taken off of YouTube all together.

2. Within your account, you can create and name playlists. Playlists can help you organize movies by class, topic, etc. 

3. You can create a contact list (your students). You can email these contacts the videos in your account by playlist- a great way to assign homework.

I created an account, but I haven't used it in class yet. It really is a hassle trying to find the video you found the night before while your students are coming in and class is starting. I think that even if the playlist and contact list isn't for you, the account is really helpful.  

Cyber-Grading: Teaching a Paperless Writing Class with "One-Click" Commenting

Randall Rightmire, (yes, really his name), from UC Santa Barbara City College, UCSB Extension introduced a correcting system online that he had privately-made. His system included codes for each mistake, a link next to the code to send the student to an example and explanation site and all this over the web outside class. He also set it up so students can exchange each writing assignments with each other. He offered to allow anyone to go to his website and benefit from his correction system themselves.
I really think this is useful! I want to sign up for his system and use it to correct papers of students that I see once a week. This is thorough and complete! Would anyone like to make this work for SAL?

Using Technology to Mount a Collaborative Pronunciation Tutoring Project

Donna Brinton and Jack Walker of Soka University of America in Southern California presented this pronunciation project. (It should be noted that Soka Gakkai is considered by many to be a cult religion from Japan. ) Jack is head of the ESL department and Donna heads the Masters in TESL department, so they decided to do a project where their students could learn from each other. Each ESL student was assigned a tutor according to the tutor's schedule. Tutors were given techniques, but not always in the order pronunciation was presented to the ESL tutees in Jack's classes. The tutors had to dialogue with Donna on techniques, links and other suggestions. Tutors changed their tutee after two months. For the most part, it seems that tutors and tutees were satisfied with their accomplishments.
This is a great idea and I am sure people at SAL have thought of working with the MA program at San Jose State University. But just as Donna and Jack realized, this is a logistical nightmare. If this could be simplified in some way...if one tutor were always available at a particular time or... It is a great idea!