Recently in - News and Reports Category
nearly 1 month ago, 20th june marks the day that i'm officially graduated from my (1st) MA course and this is the envelope that flew all the way from singapore:
besides sharing the joy, here's my research for sharing:
Title:
An Exploratory Study on a Metacognitive Approach to Teaching and Learning of Spontaneous Speaking in Chinese Language with Audioblogs
Keywords:
chinese language, speaking, audioblog, metacognition, language learning, language teaching, educational technology, weblog, edublog, 华文, 口语教学,元认知,博客,信息科技,有声博客
Summary:
Language learning involves four areas, namely listening, speaking, reading
and writing. This study focuses on speaking, an area that is often neglected by
teachers for various reasons. In many Chinese Language classrooms, which are
teacher-centered by tradition, students have minimal opportunities to actively
participate in the negotiation of meaning during lesson. To develop students to
become independent learners of speaking in Chinese Language, a metacognitive
framework developed by Goh and Zhang (2002) was adopted in this study. Twenty-five
Secondary Two Express stream Chinese Language students, aged 13 to 14,
participated in this eight weeks study. Audioblogs was used as the mediating
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tool through which the students
interacted as they developed their metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive
awareness. Through the use of scaffolding questions, the students carried out self-appraisals to evaluate and monitor their oral performances and planned for their
future speaking tasks. The students were also tasked to provide comments for peers’
oral performances. Seven usable sets of data were analysed and based on inferential
statistics, the treatment may have led the students to improve significantly in their
pretest-posttest oral performance scores. Through peer commenting and self-appraisal
activities in the audioblogs, the students developed greater metacognitive
knowledge and metacognitive awareness.
and here's the thesis in PDF format. you may need to grab acrobat reader 8 or above to read the content.
and last but not least, i would like to thank the following friends once again, as without their help and encouragement, this research would not have been possible:
Dr Tan Seng Chee (my sup), Dr Christine Goh C.M., Mr. Lim Sing Gee, Mdm. Tan Hiok Keng, Mdm. Ho Fui Ling, Ms. Hoe Joe Hwee and Mr. Amos Goh Yoong Shin, Mr. Darren Anthonio Marino Nonis, Mr. John Ow Eu Gene, Ms. Jeanne Marie Ho Pau Yuen and Dr. Chua Guat Kheng. and last but not least yh2, yh3 and yh4 :)
Nielson//NetRatings released a report:
6.6 percent of the U.S. adult online population, or 9.2 million Web users, have recently downloaded an audio podcast; 4.0 percent, or 5.6 million Web users, have recently downloaded a video podcast. These figures put the podcasting population on a par with those who publish blogs, 4.8 percent, and online daters, 3.9 percent.
Looks like podcasting has overtaken blogging as the next popular online activity? The full report goes here.
looks like if nokia is building podcasting application into their h/phones, soon we'll need not worry about portable mp3 recorders/devices; at least here in singapore i believe :o
[source: gizmodo]
Read this off podcasting news:
Arbitron, a research firm serving the radio industry, has released this report and besides the figure above, here are some trends:
- The weekly Internet radio audience has increased 50% over the last year.
- Nineteen percent of persons age 18-34 have listened to Internet radio in the last week.
- Satellite radio subscribers are twice as likely to live in 100K+ households
- Many people are still confused about what podcasts are.
- Podcasting attracts a relatively youthful audience. More than half of listeners are under 35.
- 11% of all Americans have listened to audio podcasts. That translates into approximately 27 million Americans that have tried podcasts.
- More than half of all teens own an iPod or other portable media player.
and that's in the US. wonder what's our local trend, and among them our students of coz *hmm*
... and so reports The Daily Vanguard from Portland State University.
�Podcasting isn�t a replacement for in-classroom teaching: it is, however, an excellent supplemental study aid,� said Chris Dawson, CTO of Web Cast in a Box. �The option to review a lecture on an iPod, while in the car, on the train or on vacation, is something many students are interested in. Many already have iPods [or another MP3 player] and can listen to podcasts with very little effort.�Schools and universities are beginning to use podcasting to archive and make
available lectures and seminars. Bart Massey, professor of computer science at
Portland State, is investigating podcasts for use in his own classes.
and the full report goes here.
Apple is adding iTunes/Pods to it's repertoire of Apple Education Slutions. They are now offering US universities free hosting services for their educational content.
Apple shares common goals with education � to advance teaching, learning, and research through innovation, and engage and empower students. Students expect a campus environment that accommodates their digital lifestyle, adapts to their individual learning needs, and encourages collaboration and teamwork. Introducing a way to simplify and meet all these needs � iTunes U.
Let's see if Creative is able to counter this move to capture the market share. The iTunes U home page goes here.
CNET Asia reports that Creative has launched ZenCast.com and the ZenCast Organizer software to allow Zen Vision users to manage audio and video blog content for their players. This will surely be an important step for Creative to compete for the market share in the latest podcasting trend.
