I attended the Mie University Moodle Moot for 2012. During this conference, I participated by giving two presentations and also contributed to one showcase. I also watched several presentations given by other members of the Moodle Japan organization. Here is an overview of what I did during the conference:
As in the previous year, I once again attended the Nagasaki Inter-Commercial High School English Speech Contest at Sasebo Commercial High School and participated as one of the Guest Judges. This was the 29th contest. I was able to enjoy listening to a series of English recitations and speeches and gave evaluations eventually helping to determine the winners.
Participants joined from 7 different commercial high schools around Nagasaki Prefecture. The winners for both the recitations and the speeches this year came from both Nagasaki and Sasebo Commercial High Schools. Although there were only two winners, the students all gave their best efforts and showed a great deal of preparation and practice in their performances.
POODLLPUP – The Bootable Open Source Language Laboratory
by Thom W. Rawson
University of Nagasaki, English Lecturer
The purpose of this project is to create an independently usable and portable language laboratory on a compact disc. Online e-learning is a growing field in education which has been expedited through the use of online, freely available and open source operating systems, software, and tools. Using a combination of open source tools and utilities, implementation of an independently bootable and portable web server with both a PHP-based learning management system and a streaming multimedia server has been possible. This project requires Intel-based hardware, an optical drive, network interface, and memory. It provides a fully-functional online e-learning classroom and language laboratory in a portable design – a compact disc. This document will discuss the features and implementation of this project which has been called “POODLLPUP – The bootable Open Source Language Laboratory”.
On Saturday, I attended the 28th Nagasaki Inter-Commercial High School English Speech Contest at Sasebo Commercial High School and participated as one of the Guest Judges. I enjoyed listening to a series of English recitations and speeches and gave evaluations eventually helping to determine the winners.
Participants joined from 7 different commercial high schools around Nagasaki Prefecture. The winners for both the recitations and the speeches came from Sasebo Commercial High School. Nice efforts were given by all participants.
What is a small sized classroom? This is a seemingly simple question but the answer might vary depending on the lecturer, the subject material, and the individual university standards.
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Justin Hunt, Nagasaki Commercial High School
bitwalker@gmail.com
Thom W. Rawson, University of Nagasaki, Sasebo
tallthom.com
Currently available computer language laboratory systems (CALL) are lacking one major feature; curriculum content designed for the classroom. Systems are made with top quality hardware and have excellent feature sets designed to be flashy and impressive. The technology is exciting.
However without the appropriate lesson materials most of these technical features are not easy to use in a real class. For example, most LL systems allow the teacher to create a pair session and to have the students talk in pairs via headsets. But is there a means for the teacher to provide the students something to talk about? Is it possible for information gap activities to be used which show each member of the pair a different “worksheet” on their computer? It is surprising to find this area lacking.
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論文 “Video News Casting in English: Using Video to Promote English Communications” JALT: The Language Teacher （Vol 32：Number 4） 2008年4月（単独）
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