Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Communicative 2.0 -- Foreign Language Education Learning with Video Games and Live Web Media from Authentic Youth Culture | Lingual Gamers

This is an exceptional look at the present/future of language learning with a focus on popular media.

There is so much here, I've had to tackle it in chunks. The author really makes a great case for a number of issues. He's definately one to follow.

This is the same author who presented on using Sims2 for language learning, which I think is a very strong piece.

Check it out

Sunday, September 17, 2006

PLE's from Alt-C Conference in Edinburgh

One of the great benefits of blogs is that people can report back to the public on events that wouldn't likely be published elsewhere.

Thanks to Terry Anderson for this post on the PLE (Personal Learning Environment) at the Alt-C Conference.

As I am just getting into PLE's and thirst for more and more information on what apps are out there and how they are being implemented, I love posts like this. It will take be a while to look through it all, but I appreciate the figures (as well as the links to others.

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

Realistic face sketch

This blog points to an interesting Flash application. It is a face sketcher that really requires no drawing skill.

This is a fun tool, but it could be more than that. It could encourage students to create their portraits or for characters in student created literature.

Check it out. I spent way too much time on this one, but it was really fun :)

My wife wasn't very impressed with my sketch, but I got a kick out of it.

Unfortunately, it was really difficult to get the image this far. The designers did not intend for you to be able to save these images, so they might not be happy if I'm doing so (I apologize to them if they'd rather I not do this). I had to hit "Ctrl PrtSc", open my image editor, open a new image (should default to size of your screen), paste (Edit >> Paste), then crop out everything you don't want, then save.

Have fun