The Korea Herald : The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper

The Korea Herald : The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper: "The educational districts of Gangnam (Gangnam-gu and Seocho-gu) in Seoul and Imshil in North Jeolla Province showed the highest academic achievements, while Goksung in South Jeolla Province marked the lowest.
None of the sixth graders in Imshil scored below the basic standards in English. The Education Ministry attributed Imshil's high performance to the three-day English immersion camps sponsored by the county and after-school classes run until 6 p.m. in each school.
Goksung had 8.5 percent of its sixth graders below the basic standard and 50 percent in the 'proficient' level.
In Gangnam, 95.1 percent and 93.6 percent of the sixth graders scored 'proficient' in English and math, respectively."

Korea Herald does a little bit more with the standardization testing stats. Perhaps they are from Gangnam and Korea Times is from Goksung.

donga.com[English donga]

donga.com[English donga]: "Yangyang and Muan airports are considered the least profitable."

No duh. Build it and they will come doesn't work, Korea. That was a movie called, Field of Dreams

Fresh Competition Looms at Schools

Fresh Competition Looms at Schools: "Among Seoul and other major cities, Seoul showed the largest number of students who failed the tests, while Busan, Daejeon and Gwangju had relatively smaller numbers of students falling behind basic levels."

Of course the largest number is in Seoul; the overall number taking the test is larger there than anywhere else. And how come Gangnam in Seoul is targeted with a special number when they are already an enfranchised section of the population? Where are the contrasts of stats, Korea Times?

What I want to know is how many students per capita (by city or province) are failing the standardized tests. Why is Gwangju mentioned when is it more economically marginalized (and problably has a higher per capita percentage of failing students than Busan or Daejeon) than they other cities mentioned?

Jeollabukdo is the province that is most struggling with limited education dollars to meet the needs of this rural population. What are their results?

And I want to meet one of the 12 KTU members who have been fired from not implementing the state wide test to their primary or secondary students. Who are they, why did they resist, what are they doing now?

This article and the issue of standardized testing scores is confounded further with the amount of educational training students are receiving from cram schools. The economic, digital, English and participatory divides are significant in South Korea.

IU W55 Mobile Learning Week 3

My emerging lexical definition
My view as an instructor
My lexical definition of mobile learning. Learning that the learner receives, interacts and broadcasts for community building, communication, and cultivation of richer or more learning opportunities.

My view as an instructional designer
Learning available through a portable device which pulls information "just in time" and connects the learner to a community of practice (shared learning environment).

My Devices

Mylo
Mylo or my life online is a mobile device I purchased this past summer, but am really only using as a MP3 player. It is a wireless device with a mini key board and touch screen. It has rss, podcast, skype, facebook, web, photo, video and camera. It is an integrated device with several widgets.

http://reviews.cnet.com/pdas/sony-mylo-2-black/4505-3127_7-32815250.html?tag=also

I thought it had camera with video (thus also recording audio) but it does not and I'm a wee bit irritated about that. The camera doesn't take good quality photos. The wifi is unpredictable and slow.

For educational purposes, I think it can be used to download instructional videos and podcasts. It can receive RSS feeds for classes. The communication tools (Skype, Facebook, chats in general) help connect learners to others. The wifi web access can (in theory) pull any online content (from self initiated to checking in on Oncourse).

Tablet PC
Lightweight laptop, notebook, touchscreen pc, keyboard, wifi, webcam, microphone in, finger print id, dvd, pen, swivel screen, you name it you can connect it.

http://www.tabletpcreview.com/default.asp?newsID=1064

I introduce my laptop to everyone as my new boyfriend. I love the power and flexibility it gives me. But I think most important to me is OneNote. I can capture stuff from all over the web and my computer and it documents where and when it came from. I can organize in a manner that is convenient to me; it lets me easily cross reference and connect even when copy and pasting. I can take screen shots of anything and turn it into a jpg. I can audio and video record. It takes my hand writing with my pen device and can convert it automatically to text.

For educational purposes, this is a wonderful tool to push or pull info, create and communicate.

Cellphones in Korea
My students almost all have cellphones. They average 10-150 text messages daily. They also use the Korean to English (and vice versa) dictionary regularly. The students don’t necessarily have internet access as it is deemed too expensive especially when internet is ubiquitous here - labs, own computers, computer labs. Students also use their cameras frequently.

Top ways to connect learners to learning in my EFL environment:
SMS, electronic dictionary, photos, video, audio, voicemail.

Activities or Tasks through cellphones
1. Sms "telephone" game or scavenger hunt
2. Would love to find a phone dictionary which keeps a history of daily words looked up, which could then be uploaded to the instructor and I could incorporate these into online activities (puzzles, crosswords). Or better yet, they could be made into personalized practice materials by the learner to supplement their particular learning style(flash cards with photos, quizzes, stories, videos, mnemonic songs, riddles, word/pic journal).
3. Photos. Discovery events, capture pics, upload with written work to our www.Ning.com forum.
4. Video. Can be mixed with movie maker to make a story, an explanation, etc.
5. Audio. Can record me in class, or record authentic use for further review, questioning of content
6. Voicemail. Opportunity to practice speaking, but with a "do over" component until they get it right.



PDA - Ogato et al
Ogata, H., Saito, N. A., Paredes J. R. G., San Martin, G. A., & Yano, Y. (2008). Supporting Classroom Activities with the BSUL System. Educational Technology & Society, 11 (1), 1–16.

My first response is that pda's are obsolete. This past summer I was laughed at when I tried to purchase one in Best Buy.

I am interested in applications more than the technology. I think learners whether they use cell phones or laptops could download an application specifically for the course. The application could be detailed to what learning methodologies and instructional strategies that the course designer, instructor and learner wants it to accomplish.

For example, going back to week 1's HP Mobile Computing In Higher Education about science lectures. This could all be an app that the learners use. Capturing, researching, confirming, expressing are all important elements in the learner's process that could be customized for the course and even further customized by the learner to their learning styles or preferences.

Podcasting - Preuss
Preuss, M. (2008). Instructional Podcasting in Higher Education: Rockingham Community College Pilot Study, Rockingham Community College.April 7, 2008.

I really enjoyed that this was a tracked element of learning.

PACE is so important in the learning process. Going at one’s own pace.

I also think that learners can watch and rewatch according to their learning pace.
Additionally this is a learning method which incorporates lecture style with radio style.
A mix of traditional classroom and traditional media.


SMS - Lu
Lu, M. (2008). Effectiveness of vocabulary learning via mobile phone. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 24, 515–525. Blackwell Publishing Ltd (2008).

This is nice, but I think underutilizes the cognitive participation enormously. Instead of focusing on memorization, it could be put into richer activities for better retention. Scavenger hunts, puzzles. Additionally, learners could appropriate the sms into other activities - photo dictionaries, sentence activities, videos and audios of authentic use of the vocab.

I think of "Made to Stick" the vocab in the sms has to be a shorter clearer message due to practicality. What is not realized is that the process of shorten actually follows a marketing method of easy recall for rich messages.

In language learning, more words doesn't mean it is better or clearer to the learner. Word choice is more important. Special attention to connecting to what the learner already recognizes and connecting repeatable, iterative new learning is very important when we have limited "room" or "time."

The same thing happens when learners do a speed speaking activity (Paul Nation, Keynote speaker, KOTESOL National Conference, May 2006)). Having pairs of learners talk about a personal topic for a number of minutes (5 for example). Then new partners, decrease same topic to 3 min, then with another partner to 1 min. His research shows that language use improves (grammatically) as well as the robustness of the vocab (either scaling up or scaling down to help their partner understand their message quickly.)