Assignment # 2

hello!
你好
bonjour
こんにちは
hola
γειάσου
здравствулте!
olá
هتاف للترحيب
begroeting


Welcome fellow Flexible Learning Environment colleagues ... The task I have set for is thus: You must imagine you are a New Arrival student (with intermediate/upper English skills - CSF level 1E ^), and as part of an integrated learning unit involving ESL/English and IT KLAs (I prefers subjects with abbreviations!), you must complete the following tasks (which should take you no more than an hour).

I have envisaged this task as something that would be appropriate for my ESL students and realise that a lot of it may not be that challenging for you, my esteemed colleagues! However I think it would provide a really useful introduction to some social software environments for newly arrived students and also provide them with a useful forum in which they can practise their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills and make connections with other people from their own countries, while celebrating their new life in Melbourne. The tasks will involve doing a number of Internet searches and accessing a number of social software environments.

Most of the (students') tasks would revolve around the construction and maintenance of a blog, which would be a kind of personal journal, with posts ranging from memories of their homeland to posts about their current experiences. As such, students are given the opportunity to experience the Internet as a communication medium and practise their skills in English, as well as express some of their emotional needs. They would also be exposed to different text-types, from recount to narrative. Students would also be encouraged to communicate their sense of pride in a country most of us may know little about. Importantly for ESL students, they would also learn the specific language of learning technologies, in order to talk about what they are doing.

And now...


Learning Activity #1: Choose a country from which Australia accepts people to work or study, or from which we accept a quota of humanitarian refugees. You can peruse the list at

http://www.immi.gov.au/media/statistics/statistical-info/oad/settlers/setdatb.htm



LA # 2: Once you have chosen your country, start a blog with a title and see if you can include a translation in the language of the particular country you have chosen. You can do some online translations at http://freetranslation.paralink.com/aralink.com/aralink.com/.



LA # 3: Download some pictures from your chosen country; you may like to try GoogleImages or the National Geographic.
Then, choose where you are going to study from a variety of language centres or schools around Melbourne. Add some details about your new
school into your blog.




LA # 4: Write the title for at least eight possible blog posts, for example, My journey to Australia (you don't have to write the actual post!) , or other titles which would involve practising a different text-type, eg information report.



LA # 5: Conduct some research into resources/events/activities that other more recently arrived people from your chosen country may find useful, for example, a local church service in the Dinka language, a local soccer competition at a community centre, a homework club etc.




LA # 6: Set up a del.icio.us account tagging some of the websites you have come across and paste the link into your blog. Visit: http://del.icio.us/.




LA # 7: Investigate whether you can make connections with people from
your chosen country via a social networking site such as MySpace.




LA # 8: Finally, you will create an oral post for your blog using podOmatic. You do not have to actually construct a post but simply recite the title of your proposed post. Paste the link into your blog.



Suggested activity for real (not virtual) students:
1. Analyse the language used in other blogs/websites
2. Use a variety of tools to present information, eg, photos, graphs
3. Look at text organisation
4.Read/listen to the blogs made by other students


Please paste links to your blog into the comments section here by Friday May 25