COERLL Newsletter Spring 2018
COERLL Newsletter Spring 2018
COERLL Newsletter Spring 2018
Newsletter
I N F O R M AT I O N
TECHNOLOGY
Spring 2018
Mission
Scan the code to the
The Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning right with a scanner (bar-
code reader) application
(COERLL) is one of 16 national foreign language resource centers to explore COERLL.
funded by the U.S. Department of Education (Title VI of the 1990
To find a scanner applica-
Higher Education Act). COERLL’s mission is to produce Open tion, Google “QR Reader”
and the model of your
Educational Resources (OER) for the Internet public. In addition, phone or the operating
COERLL aims to reframe foreign language education in terms of bilin- system of your computer.
COERLL Newsletter
Spring 2018:
Year-End Report
Project Reports
Foreign Languages and the Literary in the
Everyday (FLLITE)
(Multilingual)
OER link: http://www.fllite.org/
Coordinators: Dr. Carl Blyth (UT Austin), Ms. Joanna Luks (Cornell University), Dr. Ch-
antelle Warner (University of Arizona)
The FLLITE Project takes the creative and resources provide the necessary
moments found in everyday language use space for innovation and communica-
in authentic texts such as blogs, internet tion among professionals, a space where
memes, YouTube videos, and slam poet- theory and practice can come together.
ry, as the basis for lessons in second lan-
guage literacy. Through workshops and The project creatively uses OER as a
online resources, the project team helps means of professional development,
instructors and graduate students to write through online access to training materi-
lessons that develop students’ language als and an editorial review process that
awareness and communicative abilities includes lesson authors, editorial review
through the integration of speaking, read- board, and project directors. We even
ing, listening, and writing tasks. ask reviewers and lesson authors to com-
municate without any middle man, which
The project is unique because it pro- leads to more discussion and the devel-
vides a pedagogical framework that con- opment of a social network among gradu-
nects awareness of convention and cre- ate students, teachers, and faculty.
ativity. While the approach falls under
the umbrella of Multiliteracies, it offers We learned that a project takes time to
a unique set of pedagogical tools and reach a critical mass. It took us a while
practices that build on Communicative to refine our ideas and our processes. It
Language Teaching in empowering and also took a while until we had a critical
creative ways. mass of example lessons in different lan-
guages. Today, after four years, we have
Over the past four years, we created and 30 lessons that come from 6 different
edited sample lessons (shared in the form languages (Chinese, French, German,
of an online resource), created profes- Persian, Portuguese, Spanish) and an
sional development materials including editorial board of 30+ faculty members.
webinars and workshops (also shared as
online resources), and refined a pedagog- Now that the approach has been fully
ical approach to FLLITE, which couldn’t realized, we can further focus on build-
have been done without many conversa- ing a professional learning community
tions among project directors, colleagues, through work with university language
and collaborators. program directors and graduate students,
in order to embed the FLLITE process into
We strongly suggest that authors who actual methods courses.
contribute lessons to FLLITE choose
open texts and other open media for their
lessons and ask all authors to adopt a CC
BY or CC-BY-SA license. Open practices
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COERLL Newsletter - Spring 2018 - 4-Year Report
Through an online community and year- The openness of this project has offered
ly workshops, Spanish instructors share tremendous gains. For example, we used
resources they have created or found excerpts from the SpinTX corpus to cre-
specifically for teaching Spanish heri- ate original exercises that used Spanish
tage learners. These resources reflect the spoken in Texas, which is the language
diverse linguistic and cultural knowledge familiar to our students. In addition, we
of the U.S. Spanish speaking community. learned about other similar open source
projects in universities across the United
Three years ago, we had no idea that high States and incorporated available mate-
quality, open resource materials were rial and ideas from those projects in our
available to use in the language class- own project.
room, specifically in the Spanish heri-
tage language classroom. Meetings and At the 5th National symposium on Spanish
workshops with COERLL gave us the as a Heritage Language in the University
confidence and expertise to create new of Iowa, the highlight for us was to learn
material to implement in our own class- that people in other universities are creat-
rooms. Through online communications ing their own versions of our Reflexiones,
and conferences and workshops, we’ve and our project was cited at least in one
been in touch with many people who are presentation.
interested in collaborating and contribut-
ing to the project, and we’ve grown the The future of the project is establishing
community and added content to the the Texas Coalition for Heritage Spanish
website. (TeCHS) and having a productive first
round table where we will decide our
Much of this content, such as our goals and objectives. We hope to grow
Reflexiones units, now incorporate a criti- the coalition and use it to benefit heritage
cal language awareness approach, which Spanish programs across the state. As
seeks to promote the affective and soci- for our own work, it is certain that we will
olinguistic needs of heritage language not be going back to the traditional book-
learners. oriented classroom style in our Spanish
heritage courses. There is so much out
Our project is unique because it is a com- there to use and share that it would be
munity that promotes sharing and col- hard to do so.
laborating among instructors of heritage
Spanish at all levels. Since many of us
heritage Spanish instructors are all work-
ing on similar projects across the country,
it makes a lot of sense for us to share
our work as OER so others can benefit
from it.
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COERLL Newsletter - Spring 2018 - 4-Year Report
COERLL’s tool eComma allows a group eComma an even more collaborative and
of users to annotate the same text togeth- sharing-based open project. We’ve also
er and to share their annotations with made other tweaks to enhance the tool’s
each other, a process often referred to as usefulness for language teachers, such
“social reading”. This type of collabora- as enabling right-to-left text display.
tive online annotation offers a new kind
of reading experience: instead of making Social reading is still a relatively new
notes in the margin of a book, readers can practice in classrooms, and there aren’t
share their reactions instantaneously and many public examples of teachers using
build a body of commentary about a text it in foreign languages. We hope we can
together. COERLL’s eComma website provide teachers a way to experiment with
provides case studies and other materials different social reading techniques in their
to inspire social reading lesson plans that classes. To spur this experimentation,
use eComma or any other social reading we’ve published a lesson planning guide
tool. with ideas on the many different imple-
mentations of social reading.
eComma was first developed in Drupal by
the English Department at the University We intend to keep registering people to
of Texas, and licensed under an open use eComma. As long as this happens,
GNU General Public License, which we will still need to maintain the technol-
allowed COERLL to continue developing ogy. However, our main focus will move
it. away from adding functionality to the tool,
and towards gathering knowledge about
The most important work over the last all the ways teachers can read socially
four years consisted of our development with their students, no matter what anno-
of eComma into an LTI – an app that tation tool they are using. To that end, we
allows eComma to be installed in any will continue to collect case studies, and
Learning Management System (LMS). may add new ideas to the lesson plan-
We’ve subsequently tested eComma in ning guide.
Canvas, Blackboard, and Moodle. Now
that eComma is available in LMS, teach-
ers no longer have to rely on COERLL
staff to set a lesson up every time they
want to use the tool, which has made it
accessible to many more teachers. The
growing number of users has allowed
us to collect case studies from language
teachers describing how they have used
social reading in their classes, making
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COERLL Newsletter - Spring 2018 - 4-Year Report
This podcast series provides practical are independent from one another, can
lessons that demonstrate how Brazilians be integrated into any course of study or
really speak, through brief, slice-of-life dia- used for individualized learning, in any
logs, which focus on some daily situation, number or order.
scenario, or task. Each podcast lesson
includes the presentation of a brief dialog, We’ve learned that when it comes to
English translation, and more in-depth podcasting, get to your point quickly.
analysis of the pronunciation, vocabulary, There is no need for a two minute intro.
grammar, and cultural content in the les- Jump right in and get to the content. The
son. Discussion blogs also accompany situation-based dialogs in each episode
each lesson, providing community inter- of Língua da Gente provide for a rich
action for comments and questions. mix of grammar and vocabulary. It was
liberating to write these dialogs and focus
The complete Língua da Gente pod- on phrases that people use without wor-
cast series has 75 beginning lessons, 75 rying about the associated grammar, or
elementary lessons, and about 35 inter- whether a specific grammar principle is
mediate lessons. These lessons are also too advanced.
searchable and sorted by topic, gram-
mar, function, and textbook chapters. Our future plan is to provide "can do" les-
The library gives a solid foundation for son plans that reference and incorporate
learners of Portuguese, be they indepen- the various podcast lessons, to help users
dent learners or students in an organized know what to do with the materials and
class. sort through the large number of lessons.
That way both students and teachers can
The lesson topics, dialogs, podcast com- draw from the lesson plans and immedi-
mentary and analysis all point to language ately incorporate the podcasts. It seems
as it is really spoken in everyday situa- that users benefit from an out-of-the-box
tions. This practical approach provides presentation where they do not need to
learners with a resource that is almost make any kind of modification when using
never found in textbooks and for which it the materials.
would be difficult to parse out in authentic
texts.
Reality Czech
(Czech)
OER link: http://www.realityczech.org/
Coordinators: Christian Hilchey (UT Austin), Mary Neuburger (UT Austin)
A digital badge is an online representa- In the original project plan, Ms. Dong
tion of earned knowledge or skills, which would have mentored the COERLL
can be used in formal or informal learning Collaborators throughout the whole year
settings. For this project, Thymai Dong, but couldn’t complete this part of the proj-
the former World Languages Coordinator ect because she was hired for another
in Austin Independent School District position at AISD. Even so, the teach-
(AISD), created a professional develop- ers continued to grow professionally and
ment badge system based on the TELL reflect on their progress, and they each
Framework (Teacher Effectiveness for wrote a report about their experiences,
Language Learning), which provides reflecting on the period between the sum-
resources for language teachers to self- mer of 2016 and the summer of 2017.
assess, reflect, and improve their teach-
ing in seven domains of expertise. AISD The reflections these COERLL Colla-
language teachers participated in profes- borators submitted revealed the extent
sional development sessions related to to which teachers can take what they
these domains, and afterwards had the learn in professional learning sessions
option to apply their learning by complet- and implement it in their own class-
ing certain tasks in order to earn badges. rooms. Setting goals, getting individual
mentorship, workshops where teachers
Despite the usefulness of badges in dem- actually get to practice the strategies
onstrating growth and learning, it is not they’re learning about, time to plan, and
always easy to motivate people, in this self-assessing all seemed to help the
case teachers, to take the time to apply COERLL Collaborators try new things and
their learning and submit evidence of it advance their teaching skills.
in order to earn a badge. For this reason,
in the summer of 2016, Ms. Dong chose We at COERLL would be thrilled if some-
three “COERLL Collaborators”: teachers one could take these insights from teach-
from AISD to mentor in earning badg- ers, combined with Thymai’s badge sys-
es. Rachel Preston, Tania Shebaro, and tem and the TELL Framework, and try
Janeth Medrano committed to attending again to use badges for professional
workshops, meeting with Ms. Dong regu- learning. We still believe this system can
larly, and earning badges for a year, all work but like all things, it will take some
while documenting their experience. The more experimentation.
intent was to begin developing a com-
munity of teachers interested in earning
badges and in supporting each other in
their professional growth.
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COERLL Newsletter - Spring 2018 - 4-Year Report
OER/OEP survey
Coordinator: Joshua Thoms (Utah State University)
This project involves the creation and vs. blended and online FL courses), and
distribution of an OER/OEP survey to educators' teaching context (i.e., K-12
FL educators working in all levels of schools vs. community colleges vs. uni-
education—K–12, community colleges, versities). I have also gained an under-
and 4–year colleges. The survey targets standing as to what motivates and deters
FL educators at many types of institutions FL educators from using OER in their
(e.g., private vs. public, urban vs. rural) to courses. FL educators indicate that they
answer questions about their knowledge primarily look to OER to address issues
and perceptions of OER. not sufficiently covered in traditional text-
books, and state that OER are more cur-
This research sought to fill a void in the rent than most publisher-produced mate-
literature regarding how the open move- rials. Survey respondents indicated some
ment is affecting foreign language (FL) main deterrents to using OER: many OER
educators in the United States (US). are not comprehensive in nature, and FL
The resulting scholarly outputs shed educators often have difficulty knowing
light on how FL teachers perceive and how to locate high-quality OER. In sum,
make use of open educational resources FL educators in the US are increasingly
(OER) in their classes and how and why becoming more aware of OER and are
they engage in open educational prac- engaging in OEP for reasons that go
tices (OEP). This project has resulted beyond the two benefits of access and
in three conference presentations, one cost typically associated with open educa-
multi-country webinar among research- tion. That said, more research in this area
ers working in the US and the European is still needed.
Union in 2015, and two manuscripts that
are currently under review. Three related projects have begun as a
direct result of this project: a co-edited
The most innovative aspects of this proj- book with Carl Blyth that will explore a
ect include (a) investigating OER and number of issues related to the open
OEP issues among a wide range of FL education movement and FL teaching and
educators working in a variety of teaching learning in various contexts throughout
contexts in the US, and (b) gaining a bet- the world; a study that takes a closer look
ter understanding of what inhibits or moti- at FL educators working in K-12 contexts
vates FL educators to create, adopt, or and how the open education movement
re-mix materials for their teaching context. has affected their creation and/or use of
OER as well as their teaching practices;
I have learned that there are a variety of as well as a project that investigates
factors that affect whether or not FL edu- whether or not administrators working
cators are aware of OER and what moti- at US colleges and universities take into
vates them to engage in OEP. Some fac- consideration open education efforts of
tors include the specific FL being taught, faculty members who are under consider-
the format of instruction (i.e., face-to-face ation for promotion and tenure.
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COERLL Newsletter - Spring 2018 - 4-Year Report
TELL Collab
OER link: https://www.tellcollab.org/
Coordinator: Thomas Sauer
The TELL Collab brought together world learned that it’s necessary to maintain
language educators to explore, model, and a balance between ceding full control
share effective language teaching prac- to participants and structuring sessions
tices identified by the TELL Framework. and schedules. Consequently, we tested
The two and a half day professional different approaches that balanced deci-
learning experience included a mixture of sions more equally between participants
collaborative sessions, presentations and and organizers.
resource sharing to help teachers identify
their own professional learning goals and We also learned a lot about digital badg-
strategies for meeting those goals. es. During the first two years, participants
could earn peer-to-peer badges, which
Thomas Sauer of the TELL Project they awarded to each other for small acts
planned TELL Collab events nationwide, during the workshop such as sharing
while COERLL gave input and organized experiences, questioning the status quo,
the logistics for the yearly summer TELL or providing encouragement. They could
Collab in Austin, Texas, which hosted 228 also earn “Official” badges related to three
teachers and administrators over three main areas of learning. Both years, par-
years. Participants left the TELL Collab ticipants earned many more peer badges
motivated by what they had learned, than official ones (in year one, a ratio of
inspired by the colleagues they had met, 2:1 and in year two, 10:1). We attribute
and eager to get back to the classroom to this to several factors: whereas the peer
test new techniques. badges awarded something participants
had already done, the official badges
The TELL Collab was innovative because required extra time and work; the peer
it gave autonomy to participants to choose badges were given on the spot, but the
session topics and teach each other, put- official badges required follow-up; and the
ting faith in them that “whoever comes are peer badges were awarded by peers, but
the right people”. the official badges required self-reflection.
In year three, we combined the two sys-
Many aspects of the TELL Collab reflect tems into a new system, and almost all
the ethos of open education. The TELL participants earned a badge.
Framework carries a Creative Commons
license, making it available to any teacher If we were to do the TELL Collab again,
interested in self-assessing their abilities we’d like to find a way for participants to
and tracking their professional growth. maintain their professional learning all
More generally, the TELL Collab thrives year, so that the Collab in the summer
on sharing and flexibility, which are key would only be one piece of a broader
elements of the open education move- plan. However, this would require more
ment. extensive organization and communica-
tion.
The flexible aspects of the TELL Collab
were also part of its challenge. We
12
COERLL Newsletter - Spring 2018 - 4-Year Report
ARNOLD • POTTER
http://espanolabierto.org/recorridos/ come to browse the array of people and
ARNOLD POTTER
Master Teaching
authors of Recorridos-Don Quijote, a pair Recorridos was developed by Betsy Arnold and Rose Potter (University of Texas at
Tadriis: An Arabic
#P229A140005 from the U.S. Department of Education.
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