A month has already passed since we started to explore and use Twitter and I’m so glad that I’m reflecting on it only now. This time spent on Twitter helped me to get the essence of this technological tool and to use

it to my own benefit.

     So, as we know Twitter is an online application that is part blog, part social networking site, part cell phone tool, designed to let users answer the question “What are you doing? Each posting is limited to 140 characters, which gives a chance for the users to keep their ideas and thoughts short and sweet.

Twitter is a room of conversations, where a user can easily understand when to jump in, what to write and how to comment. For some people the public timeline is quite interesting and practical, because they can collect hundreds of friends and followers, they can keep connected with a select group of colleagues and acquaintances through a shared space and what not. 

      Tweets comprise some private information about a person’s likes, dislikes, frustrations and sometimes some of this information is trivial, some boring, and some perhaps better kept private. However, the information written in twits is an excellent way to get someone to know better. Although tweets in general are very little, they facilitate a new way of seeing and understanding people.

     As a tool for students or professional colleagues to compare thoughts about a topic, Twitter is a critical technological tool that force its users to be brief and to the point—an important skill in thinking clearly and communicating effectively. Moreover, Twitter can provide a simple way for attendees at a conference to share thoughts about particular sessions and activities with others at the event and those unable to attend.

Reflection on Connie Yowell's (2009) Talk

Keywords: Digital media, young learners, paradigm shift, technology

Connie Yowell’s talk was very critical to me in understanding and appreciating the role of digital media in education. Several important questions, such as how young people are changing as a result of digital media, how their learning is changed and what are the implications of those changes, were touched upon in this talk.

Connie Yowell’s talk enlightened my understanding in a way that today only technology can address the young learners’ needs and that several paradigm shifts in traditional education should take place.  The paradigm shifts mentioned by Yowell (2009) that need to be addressed were as follows:

       ·        Reducing the gap between formal and informal learning context

·        Shifting from consumption to participation

·        Creating a community and taking participation actively

Based on the findings of different researches done, in the 21^st century 96% of young people play games, which is true across race and gender. The problem is that all the nice things that they are doing via technology are happening only outside the classroom, in informal learning context, thus creating a gap between the two learning environments. From Connie Yowell’s talk I inferred that when kids are playing games they don’t need a teacher or a textbook to learn how to play “Pokemon” or “Hyper Spider”. They form groups, sharing the same interests and form communities without anybody’s instruction. So, they simply learn by doing and giving feedback to each other through comments. According to Yowell writing comments is a feedback loop, which is modeling the young learners how to be reflective, as well as how to continue to improve the quality of their products.  

In a word, the learners become not only consumers, but also doers and producers and they shift from being private to public, because they are no more individuals, they are communities, who teach each other, learn from each other, as well as give feedback to each other’s works.  

My personal opinion concerning suggestions for the research agenda in the field of technology and TEFL are the following:

•  Use of VLC for watching movies and videos
•  Use of web applications, such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, etc.
•  Use of Blogging and iTunes for listening to different podcasts on various topics

Google Apps

Google Apps has become the technological center of nearly all of our operations. Sharing notes, lesson plans, meeting minutes, and updates has become an indispensible part in teachers’ life. The whole world has become a unified team due to technological developments.

Year ago if I were asked a question what Google Apps is, I would say, it’s the same Gmail. Only after a thorough exploration of this web technology I learned that Google Apps is a collection of web-based programs and file storage that run in a web browser. It doesn’t require users to buy or install software. The only thing the users need to do is to simply log in to the service to access their files and the tools to manipulate them. Google Apps comprises various offerings, such as communication tools (Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Calendar), productivity tools (Google Docs: text files, spreadsheets, and presentations), a customizable start page (iGoogle), and Google Sites (to develop web pages).

So, among these various Apps some of them can serve as an effective tool in an EFL classroom settings.

Google Docs is the first application that I’d like to discuss, because of its flexibility and practicality.   Documents allow the user to create writings anywhere there is an internet access.  Users no longer need to save to a server, carry a flash drive, or worry about working on either a Mac or Windows machine.  With Documents, users can also share their work with others to read, edit, or contribute to the content.  For students, this tool is especially helpful as it allows them not only to work from home, school, or other internet location but also gives learners a chance to share and collaborate with other students.

Gmail is the next important App that is critical for both teachers and students to keep in touch with each other constantly. Gmail encounters lots of advantages, such as speed. It is surprising to see the very fast mail delivery and mail reception in Gmail. Even there is no need to refresh the web page to see the new mails. Besides, Gmail has the ability to label the mails that you get from your friends, professors or other staff. Moreover, powerful search within the mail message is among the advantages of Gmail, because one can find the desired mail easily by doing a simple search.

Blogger is another useful application in education, which allows the learners to write about anything and everything. It’s a free space where one can express their ideas and thoughts freely, without any limits and restrictions. Blogging helps to enhance the students’ self-esteem greatly, because after writing and publishing a post people can leave comments thanking you for a great post.

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is a relatively new term introduced in the past year and the term cloud computing comes from the use of a cloud image to represent the Internet or some large networked environment. It means different things to different IT professionals and to different institutions. This new type of industry joins the ranks of terms including: grid computing, utility computing, virtualization, clustering, etc. Cloud computing is now associated with a higher level abstraction of the cloud. Instead of there being data pipes, routers and servers, there are now services. Cloud computing is often used to loosely describe a broad range of activities, ranging from outsourcing a specific activity to a single external provider to delivering a set of services from the cloud in such a way that users are not even sure where their data is being housed or where it is being processed. Cloud services offer higher education and research institutions the power to choose: the opportunity to rethink which services are needed to support education and research and what will be the best way to deliver those services. Behind the services are data and compute resources. A user of the service doesn’t necessarily care about how it is implemented, what technologies are used or how it’s managed. Only that there is access to it and has a level of reliability necessary to meet the application requirements.

So, cloud computing is accessing resources and services needed to perform functions with dynamically changing needs. Cloud manages multiple infrastructures across multiple organizations and consists of more than one frameworks overlaid on top of the infrastructures tying them together.

Web Analytics

Web analytics is the practice of measuring, collecting, analyzing and reporting on Internet data for the purposes of understanding how a web site is used by its audience and how to optimize its usage. So, web analytics is the study of visitor, navigation, and traffic patterns to determine the success of a given web site. It doesn’t only focus on the amount of traffic, but it focuses on in-depth comparison of available visitor data, referral data, and site navigation patterns as well as being able to tell us the amount of traffic we receive over any specified period of time.

As our ultimate goal is to use any kind of technology for educational purposes, especially language learning, I think that web analytics can be used as a practical tool in analyzing and improving students’ learning process. Moreover, the teacher/instructor can use this technological tool for learners’ ongoing evaluation and their progress. The teacher can easily see how many times the learners spend in this or that site and how much they explore it. Besides, it gives a chance to notice those students who are at risk of failing their courses, thus further steps can be undertaken in advance.

So, today the role of web analytics continue to grow and it has become a critical tool not only for measuring and optimizing web usage, but also for improving and assessing students’ learning process.    

Distance Learning

Years ago the terms open learning and distance education was merely a dream, but today it is the fastest growing fragment in education and training. Distance learning opens access to education and training, freeing learners from the constraints of time and place, and offering flexible learning opportunities to individuals and groups of learners. It is the process of transferring knowledge to learners/students who are separated from the instructor/teacher by time or physical distance and are making use of technology components, such as the Internet, video, CD's, tapes, and other forms of technology to accomplish learning.

The emergence of the Internet and related networks such as the World Wide Web has had and will increasingly have fundamental effect on the transformation of education and training in all sectors. ODL (Open Distance Learning) provides education to those who cannot study in the traditional manner, as it gives freedom to choose what, when, where, and how to learn. Hence, distance learning is very flexible. At the same time, distant learning requires more of the learner. As a learner, you are responsible for ensuring that you schedule the necessary time away from other activities in order to complete your coursework and assignments. Whatever schedule you set, you must follow through with it, or else your learning will not be effective. Distance learning has reversed the dynamics of learning; instead of the student going to school, the school now comes to the student.

VLE vs. PLE

For the first time when I saw the terms VLE and PLE, it didn’t make any sense to me and I didn’t have any idea concerning these two terms. Only after watching several videos and reading different articles related to this topic I started to differentiate between these strange terms.   
VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) is “a web-based online environment that integrates tools for content delivery, communication, assessment, and student management”.  It’s special software that provides an integrated package of resources and facilities to support the web-based delivery of courses; including mail, real-time chat rooms, online discussion forums, individual webpages, image databases, resource banks. Moreover, it allows teachers to create a homogenous context for all learners, providing with the same experience of the system: same content, organized in the same fashion, with the same tools.
PLE (Personal Learning Environment) is more of a concept than a particular toolset - it doesn't require the use of any particular tool and is defined by general concepts like: distributed, personal, open, learner autonomy. These conceptual attributes influence the types of tools individuals select to engage in learning. A typical example of PLE is the incorporation of blogs, where students comment on what they are learning, and their posts may reflect information taken from the webs, such as YouTube or in RSS feeds from news agencies. 
Though VLE is a great repository of rich resources and tools, where everybody can produce and share information online, my opinion is that VLE or PLE will never take the place of direct teaching and learning. It can facilitate, make more productive, ease and enhance many aspects of both teacher and student’s life, in case it is used in the right place, at the right time and with the right students.