Teaching Assignment Ideas:
- Voice blog
- Video captioning
- Phonetic pronunciation videos
- Class Wiki
Voice blog: A class blog that is similar to the blog we are posting our assignments to for this class, except all the posts would be of students speaking. Downloads could be made from computers or cell phones. This assignment would be for foreign language teaching although it would be suitable for almost any type of communications class.
Video captioning: Downloadable videos that are captioned as a means of teaching a foreign language to students. Captioning in this arena can be used to improve word boundary recognition and vocabulary acquisition.
Phonetic pronunciation videos: Downloadable videos of the pronunciation of various English, sounds phonemes. This idea is based on a face-to-face exercise that I believe is attributable to Steve Copley, an instructor at George Mason University’s English Language Institute. Mr. Copley has had success with helping students pronounce difficult English sounds by placing his hands on the sides of his face, like blinders on a horse; standing directly in front of the student; and repeatedly pronouncing the sound. Downloadable videos of a person pronouncing different phonemes would be the technological version of the above process.
Class Wiki: The class researches and contributes to a class Wiki. The class could be giving the freedom to either come up with their own topic or select from several predetermined topics. If there was a large interest in a couple of topics, the class could divide into two or more Wiki groups, depending on the class size.
These seem like really great ideas for teaching language. I like the blog approach in particular – that seeems to really hit what the students are supposed to be learning.
These are really interesting-possibly usable if studing foreign ad’s in a marketing class- see them once without captioning-guess product- then view with caption to get the gist.