Showing posts with label Hybrid and Blended Learning. Show all posts

Data-Driven Teaching: A Shift in Blended Learning Education

Data-Driven Teaching, DDT, Hybrid and Blended Learning, LMS 0 comments

Photograph taken in Honduras, CA and contributed by Fernando Carranza

Looking Through Casement ELT Window

Data-Driven Teaching:

A Shift in Blended Learning Education

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Post 300

For several years now, blended teaching in language learning is an integral part of many programs in universities or at language schools around the world. That is, with the incorporation of learning management systems (LMSs) for language development and mastery, teachers are now in much control of what students are doing away from the classroom. Though the LMSs has come to substitute the traditional print workbook of yesteryear, data now coming from the platforms are not really being used to plan instruction and learning focused on the students. A shift in blended learning education has not yet been accomplished, and it is a real need nowadays.

Let’s Understand Data-Driven Teaching (DDT)

“Data analysis can provide a snapshot of what students know, what they should know, and what can be done to meet their academic needs. With appropriate analysis and interpretation of data, educators can make informed decisions that positively affect student outcomes” (Lewis, Madison-Harris, & Times, n.d.). In terms of language teaching and learning, DDT must then be focused on relevant areas of instruction for learners; DDT does not focus on teacher-centered instruction, but quite the opposite. Its main reason to exist is to help educators to create activities that guarantee student-centeredness in language training. While using data to guide one’s teaching, planning is then targeted to strengthen student weak, developing areas and not to just cover course textbook content due to the suggested pacing for a course.

Instructor-Led Online Hours do Count in DDT

Are language instructors really aiming at using DDT while teaching a course? Based on my experience with LMS administration and usage mostly recorded in memoranda, this has not materialized yet in my language teaching contexts, at the university and the language school where I work. The LMS is being loosely used by instructors and colleagues to basically assign content on the platform to somehow practice what is covered in F2F class sessions. Somehow the LMSs continue being used as eWorkbooks rather than a system to collect data for the strengthening of one’s teaching to develop student performance weak areas. The effect of using the platform as an eWorkbook is that the time spent online is not consolidating student learning, which is meant to be the reason why LMSs exist. As a consequence, planning needs to be connected to what data on the platform are telling instructors to guide them in class teaching in a blended learning scenario. The one single imperative that is being left out in this new educational scenario is the analysis of statistical reports to create a connection between the classroom, the platform, and back to the classroom. And part of this imperative is to use this blended learning instruction cycle to make instructor-led hours count for student language development.

Why LMS Work Instead of Paper-Based Homework

If my typical, traditional student is like yours, print workbooks for homework are not exactly a priority for them. A typical learner of mine is that one that shows up for class with not homework on his/her workbook, either because they simply forgot or because s/he could not find the time to complete the assignment. Consequently, learning consolidation may not be achieved when this kind of learner decides that homework is not important for him/her due to their other social or educational endeavors. Moreover, for the teacher –when the workbook’s exercises are checked orally, there is no way to know what areas are giving learners a hard time; something that can be easily done now with the statistical reports that an LMS can produce for instructors. To sum up, language teachers with no DDT orientation as part of their planning and teaching fail in LMS correct use. The right usage of the LMS explains why it is essential to use statistical information to use the platform instead of a print workbook due to the amount of information that can be derived from LMS’s reports.

The Need for Making LMS Instructor-Led Hours Count

A mind shift is needed on how LMS work is perceived by students and orientation is needed from instructors. Student independent work is quite good for self-regulated individuals, and many people take their language learning seriously, whether that is a language or something else they are interested in. For more traditional students, the LMS guided hours can be very fruitful if DDT is present. The idea that platform exercises just need to be completed to comply with work for a course is not exactly the expected behavior a real interested individual demonstrates in language learning. That is why it is necessary make the LMS instructor-led hours count for language mastery and performance. Online hours, as it can be seen, need to trigger data to drive the blended learning cycle to practice the areas that must be practiced, and not a random exercise a teacher arbitrarily decides is the right one to join class activities with platform tasks and then back to the classroom exercises. Though the LMS work may good for some individuals, those students who already know the subject-matter by heart do not need to review what they have already mastered; the platform hours need to be guided in such a way that learners just work on the areas they need to continue developing.

The Blended Cycle and DDT

To really make the LMS instructor-led hours count, the blended cycle needs to be based on data-driven teaching. At this point in language blended education, the instructor is practicing content in class to improve student performance in the four skills. Then, practice activities to continue building on class content is assigned as a consolidation task (group of exercises). Then, learners, guided by the teacher, retake the same content to demonstrate the mastery of it in class. Data produced by the LMS reports generated by the platform is analyzed prior the retaking of content for demonstration; this is done to create a lesson plan that is initially based on the LMS trouble with activities learners had and that the data show. Whatever is going to be (re)practiced in class is to help learners who show difficulty in their LMS work understand whatever they have not been able to grasp 100%.

Taken from https://www.cli.org/blog/what-is-data-driven-instruction/

Measurably Better

“If teachers deploy blended learning ‘properly’, students’ results are measurably better” (Baber, 2013). Why is it that we are still striving to get better results with students when we have information right at our fingertips by clicking here or there in the LMS? As Baber (2013) cleverly states it, “a key element of ‘proper’ deployment is that teachers regularly log into the learning management system, view students’ performance, and then adapt what they do in the classroom.” But based on my reflective journaling and personal memoranda, I can barely see any of this Baber is talking about actually happening in any of my two workplaces. Once again, LMSs are being used as eWorkbooks that will not yield the same kind of result similar to the one we could be getting by simply logging into the platform from time to time to see what the whole group as a whole is having trouble with, and from that point on continue building the language they need to develop, but with a more constructivist orientation in our planning process and blended teaching practices.

“If teachers plough on with their pre-determined curriculum regardless of the students’ strengths and weaknesses as visible from their performance date –they may as well go back to old-fashioned homework on paper” (Baber, 2013). Yes, it is true that we have course outlines to follow as well as a coursebook that needs to be covered, but without understanding learners’ “strengths and weaknesses” we are just contemplating what really is happening outside through a casement window; while there are teaching professionals deploying blended learning practices properly and there are students learning a language proficiently, what are we waiting for to log into the system(s) we are currently using and learn from what our students are striving to learn to give them a hand and the correct kind of blended activities to guide them through their construction of the inter-language to speak English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) as it is described in the CEFR.

References

Baber, E. (2013, May-June). Data-driven teaching: the next big thing? Voices, 232.

Lewis, D., Madison-Harris, R., & Times, C. (n.d.). Using Data to Guide Instruction and Improve Student Learning. Obtenido de SEDL.Org: http://www.sedl.org/pubs/sedl-letter/v22n02/using-data.html

Saturday, October 15, 2016

A Vast Green Field of Opportunities: Understanding Why Student LMS Results Show Success or Failure

Higher Education, Hybrid and Blended Learning, LMS 0 comments

Photograph taken in Honduras, CA and Contributed by Fernando Carranza

A Vast Green Field of Opportunities:

Understanding Why Student LMS Results Show Success or Failure

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Post 296

Though I am currently working more with online learning scenarios that include WASs, mostly faculty members of various universities around the world, I do have my F2F language courses with pupils who want to learn English for various reasons. Somehow, most of F2F students are newbies in the use of an LMS with a Blended Learning orientation because former language trainers encouraged LMS work as a mere eWorkbook and not as the tool it actually is. As soon as they became my learners, I changed the whole dynamics of blended work on the platform though it was perceived as a mandatory statement coming from me, their instructor. When confronted with their final grades in the course, a big disparity between LMS results vs. final exams and course grades was noticed. And all this made me think of the reasons why this happened: 1) task completion is not a synonym of learner autonomy, 2) learning consolidation is not guaranteed by time invested on the platform, and 3) student cognitive capacity can be affected by time on task in the LMS.

To start with, task completion is not a synonym of learner autonomy. In Blended Learning, the LMS is a place to foster autonomous learning; however, it is commonly perceived as a grade-oriented practice scenario. Traditional pupils come to work on the platform not just because they want to continue practicing what was studied in a F2F session but because they feel they need to get a series of language tasks correct to get a percentage in their final grades. With this kind of attitude, learning and its consolidation is undervalued by language performers and by their instructors. The constructivist rationale of language learning aided by Blended Education is easily defeated by this kind of behavior present in the school’s language trainees and trainers. As a consequence, autonomous learning is not achieved because students are just grade-oriented rather than language learning success-oriented looking for opportunities to demonstrate how much they have been learning and how they can use what they have acquired in class and on the platform.

As a second point to be considered, it is essential to comprehend that learning consolidation is not guaranteed by time invested on the platform. Time fully devoted to self-reviews and language expansion activities of thematic units in a course can be minimum and not productive for language learners’ construction of their knowledge in the target language or for the expected CEF level when they finish a course. Pupils in a course cannot be just circumscribed to what books state and what is covered in class aided by their teachers; they need to go beyond these boundaries to look for their learning consolidation elsewhere and on the course platform. The LMS is meant to replicate –up to certain extend- coursebook tasks for student further analysis and practice. If these practice exercises are not done timely and conscientiously, can they be counted as guided, instructor-led hours that can contribute with language development, CEF level attainment, and then language consolidation? A platform being used as a mere eWorkbook will not contribute to either language development, or CEF attainment, or consolidation since LMS exercises are regularly done on automatic pilot by language performers or without full comprehension of the subject-matter (thematic unit, syntactical structure, lexical expansion, and the like). This way of interacting with the LMS can lead language trainees from frustration to incomplete tasks and to zero consolidation of the content and conversational strategies covered in the coursebook.

Frustration, which is a sign of an alteration in students’ affective filter, may be an indication that learners’ cognitive loads are affected. As explained by Prof. Olenka Bilash (2015), cognitive capacity “to think at any time is finite,” and that has consequences in a persons’ learning. “And in other to get something done, we use parts of that capacity” (Bilash, 2015); But when things go beyond an individual’s cognitive capacity in language learning, information contained in a platform can become too much content for learners who are not used to a blended learning orientation in their language studies. Based on Dr. Glick’s (2016) research findings on blended learning applied to language learning in a Mexican universtiy, “Students taking blended English language courses […] outperform students taking the same course in a face-to-face format.” This can be true up to certain extend, too, but if all conditions for Blended Learning are not fully met, pupils’ platform use will not produce the desired effect especially when simply used as an eWorkbook. Cognitive capacity will not be strengthened, either, and outperformance may not be tangible in grades but a sort of statistical hallucination.

In the end, why did learners achieve so low scores on oral and written tests when compared to LMS / platform performance? Though this is not a conclusive qualitative research analysis, based on the statistics analysis (see chart), on interviews with language performers, and on personal memoranda, the inconsistency can be explained as follows. Learner autonomy does not equal platform work for the sake of task completion. That is, to do homework is not the same as profiting from a platform to consolidate learning; a grade is not that meaningful when it comes to learning. The time invested by language performers does not amount to learning consolidation, either. Just because a language trainee takes time to work on the LMS does not mean that learning consolidation is going to take place. eWorkbook-oriented platform sessions cannot be compared to instructor-led platform assignments when it comes to language development and consolidation with a Blended Learning philosophy. Finally, too much information handled by the student cognitive capacity can be way too overloaded when time on task is not enough or when language trainees lack the proper understanding of what is being studied. Once again, consolidation cannot happen surely and properly.

To sum up, the accurate and precise use of an LMS is a vast green and fertile field of opportunities for both the trainees as for the language instructors. Trying to understand why student platform results show inconsistencies can be the way to see why they fail or why they succeed. Just because a learner gets 100% of LMS work performance, it does not mean that they are really acquiring and consolidating what is being given to them in textbooks and on the platform. Furthermore, the three reasons presented here may just be particular relevant to the teaching environment where I am currently working; it can perfectly differ from others. But what needs to be borne in mind is that these learners were not properly introduced to blended education and are now forcefully transitioning to a more blended learning-oriented use of the language platform they are using along with their textbooks.

References

Bilash, O. (2015, December 8). What is Cognitive Capacity? Retrieved from YouTube.Com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SczbF6UYiLk

Glick, D. (2016, August 16-19). Maximizing Learning Outcomes through Blended Learning: What Research Shows. 21st Century Challenges ABLA 2016 Convention Program. Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico: Instituto Mexicano Norteamericano de Relaciones Culturales.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

A 2nd Lesson Learned at ABLA 2016

ABLA, BNCs, Education Technologies, Hybrid and Blended Learning 0 comments

Taken from http://www.relacionesculturales.edu.mx/abla-2016/

A 2^nd Lesson Learned at ABLA 2016:

“Maximizing Learning Outcomes through Blended Learning: What Research Shows”

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Post 286

“English language acquisition around the world is increasingly being seen as a skill for personal as well as national development. English language skills are becoming increasingly more closely aligned with employability” (Glick, 2016). English has proven itself a means of instrumental motivation to find better jobs and opportunities in life in many Latin American countries. Seeing what it is happening in my home country, Costa Rica, I can see what Glick labels as the alignment with employability when referring to English language skills. But the problem is not the individual or national desire for people to be employed with a higher salary or with the provision of more perks for employees; the issue comes as to how make all these English learners become fluent in the target language.

Dr. Danny Glick, Edusoft Limited – ETS and University of California, Irvine’s Digital Learning Lab, California, USA

At ABLA 2016, Dr. Glick, -based on his research case study carried out in a university in Northwestern Mexico-, claims that Edusoft’s English Discoveries can provide a way to maximize student learning in a language course. The experience that Dr. Glick describes is not that new to me since, as an English Discoveries Online (EDO) user and administrator in the cultural center I work for, I was able to witness some of his claims: the outperformance of learners using the virtual platform, the gap in favor of the blended model of language learning, and the cost effectiveness of blended courses when compared to entirely F2F-taught courses. In spite of Dr. Glick’s quantitative analysis of the data gathered in Mexico and shown during his presentation at ABLA, the corpus of statistical data I processed at the binational center where I work was approached from a more qualitative frame of reference.

“Students taking blended English language courses using English Discoveries outperform students taking the same course in a face-to-face format” (Glick, 2016). At the binational center where I hold a curricular position, we started using EDO back in 2014. Part of the rationale we used to start using this online platform was the need to provide learners with a virtual space to practice course content outside the classroom. When we started analyzing the data coming from our electronic gradebooks, especially in final examinations, we started to see a difference in the way learners were performing prior the use of EDO and when they had had six months of EDO usage. There was a gradual improvement we could note in the way our students were performing. Our experience did not count with students who were solely taking our courses F2F since the transition to a blended format took place in about 4 months, but when compared to what had been happening before EDO started being used, learners were performing exceptionally. And as Dr. Glick stated in his ABLA presentation, the difference we could also see “did not happen due to chance” (2016); something was being gestating cognitively speaking in the minds of our students.

“The gap in favor of the blended model increases as the English proficiency level of the students increases” (Glick, 2016). EDO helped us improve our students’ performance in our binational center’s English program, but we did not get to see the gap spotted by Dr. Glick as the level of proficiency increased. Based on his quantitative analysis of data presented at ABLA 2016, the higher the level of mastery of the students the wider the gap between EDO users and non-users was. That is, higher proficiency levels were favoring the learners who were working with the blended format. What I basically observed in the samples of data gotten from the database of gradebooks was that final written exams were becoming better in terms of their grades when compared to what we used to do prior the implementation of EDO at our binational center. There was indeed a difference in test scores, but we did not quantify what was observed in the Mexican case study. Though I do not have evidence of this per se, what was noticeable in our database was an increase of final test performance and their corresponding grades.

“Blended courses were found to be more cost effective when compared with traditional fact-to-fact teaching” (Glick, 2016). Having learners transition from a F2F teaching format to a blended one was a great improvement in our teaching standards at our binational center; we found that having learners work on an online platform benefitted them especially because we decided to grade their work on it. Based on our national idiosyncrasy, we agreed on grading student platform work because otherwise they wouldn’t work on it autonomously. From this point of view, the course turned “cost effective” because the investment on the platform brought interesting changes in learner performance when we got to the program’s exit exams, the TOEIC test. Since differences in test scores do not “happen due to chance,” a blended format in our program produced a positive change in our students who –after more hours of language exposure- were able to get better grades in their exit exam tests. From a mere qualitative stand we can conclude that the effect of a blended cycle in which EDO played a great part positively affected learner performance on this exit test.

Like in any case study, we need to keep in the lookout that it pertains to a very specific group of individuals with very specific teaching and learning conditions. Dr. Glick’s “case study” learners were located in a Mexican university where they were using English Discoveries as part of their courses. However, as it was explained by him, there were other groups who did not participate and who were used as a basis for comparison. In my particular situation, we were migrating our whole F2F program to a blended format by means of EDO, and we did not have controlled groups or anything like that. What we can attest and corroborate with the school’s course databases is that there was an improvement in language proficiency.

I must agree 100% with Dr. Glick that phenomena like these do not happen just by chance; something triggers these changes in student behavior. I am more than certain that EDO (English Discoveries Online by Edusoft) must have played a role in the improvement of student language proficiency, but there are other factors that also need to be considered in our particular case: the amount of blended learning training hours invested on instructors, a marked change in the recruitment policies our institution had to look for more suitable teaching candidates with some electracy traits in their teaching profile, the continuous guidance given to students in the use of the platform by our teaching staff, the weekly class performance reports issued by Edusoft that allowed us to pinpoint courses where supervisors needed to help the instructor with the blended learning cycle implementation, the inclusion of test items coming from lexical component extracted directly from EDO, and so on. There were and continue being changes in our blended program that make it more robust and competitive in our local teaching market.

Reference

Glick, D. (2016, August 16-19). Maximizing Learning Outcomes through Blended Learning: What Research Shows. 21st Century Challenges ABLA 2016 Convention Program . Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico: Instituto Mexicano Norteamericano de Relaciones Culturales.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Educational Apps for Language Learners

Apps for Education, Hybrid and Blended Learning, Online Instruction, online learning, Online Teaching Practices, VLE, VLEs 1comments

Educational Apps for Language Learners

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Post 217

Due to the fact that I am an English language teacher with some 20 years of teaching experience and some 7 years of hybrid language instruction, most of the apps that I always like to spot and then share with my students are connected to language learning and English skills reinforcement and consolidation.

Keeping in mind my current students, the ones enrolled in the English Language Teaching (ELT) Major, I have always suggested learners to make good use of these three apps: Sounds: Pronunciation App by Macmillan Publishers, OneStopEnglish by Macmillan Publishers, and LearnEnglish Grammar by the British Council.

	Sounds: Pronunciation App
	Type of App: English Pronunciation for Android devices
	1) Sounds is an app created by Macmillan Publishers Ltd. It can help students better their pronunciation skills why taking courses on phonetics or phonology. 2) The app includes interactive phonetic charts to practice American or British English pronunciation with high quality audio. 3) Students have the chance to change from one English variation to the other.
	Target Student: Taking Pronunciation, Phonetics, & Phonology
	OneStopEnglish by Macmillan Publishers Ltd. for Android
	Type of App: ELT Activities for teaching staff
	1) It is a resource and community website for English teachers. 2) It features lots of activities, articles, tips, and even lesson plan in common thematic units. 3) It now includes a teaching tip section when one runs of ideas for planning or for practice. 4) It will make teachers keep current on what it is going on in ELT.
	Target Student: Taking Didactics, Teaching Practicum, Assessment & Evaluation
	LearnEnglish Grammar (UK Ed.) by British Council for Android
	Type of App: Graded grammar exercises for ELL
	1) It can help the student to review troublesome grammar with lots of questions along with explanations. 2) It has four levels depending on how advanced the student is: Beginners, Intermediate, High Intermediate, and Advanced. 3) Its archive of exercises holds over 1000 questions to practice one’s grammar.
	Target Student: Taking grammar or syntax courses, general English classes, or for independent study or review

If these material is out there for free for our students, what are we waiting for to incorporate them into our online or hybrid teaching?

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Online Trends and Advanced Tools

#LTTO, Hybrid and Blended Learning, Online Instruction, online learning, Online Teaching Practices, VLE, VLEs 0 comments

Online Trends and Advanced Tools

A community of practice reflection
Revisted!

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Post 216

As one progresses in the exploration of asynchronous tools for online courses, it is very important to evaluate how these tools can eventually affect the learning environment one is trying to create for one’s learners. This exploration of potential challenges takes us to examine the process of creating wikis, blogs, or a simple video message for one’s learners. Nevertheless, in spite of the challenges one can face, there are potential benefits that one is to identify in the usage of any of these tools.

Let us explore the challenges, benefits, and questions one may have concerning asynchronous tools for online courses. Here are reproduced three questions regarding tools that I intend to answer based on my current teaching. Nevertheless, it is also for you, my reader, to ask yourself the very same questions and reflect upon them, too.

· What do you feel is the most challenging feature of asynchronous tools?

When confronted with trying to give an answer to this question, I can barely think of an appropriate answer. The point I am trying to make in terms of challenges can be directly connected to the instructor or to the learner. At the beginning the neophyte teacher can find him/herself in a dead-on street if help is not asked from some experienced users of the tool(s) s/he wants to use in his/her online or hybrid course. As soon as this shocking experience is over and expertise and confidence are gained, the instructor is even ready to help students use the desired tool. At this point, the teacher is to train learners on how to use a given tool, so they can also gain confidence in its use and become effective users of the tool.

To put it simple, teachers can find it difficult at the beginning, but as soon as they get the knack of how something is made, they are on the go. As for students, who are more technologically oriented, the transition to start using a new tool can be just a matter of a short lapse but with proper and effective training.

· What do you feel is the greatest benefit of these tools?

Asynchronous tools benefit today’s learners beyond what can be really measured. Firstly, tools like these provide a certain kind of freedom that working students cannot experienced due to their tight schedules. With asynchronous tools, they can find some room in their busy agendas to do what is requested in the course chronogram. Secondly, it terms of m-Learning, these tools offer them the chance of working on their assignments while commuting back and forth from home to work. With their mobile devices they are also aligned with the course content and with the teacher’s feedback and new materials.

With tools like these, we need to stop being skeptical and understand that blended and mobile learning can be ideal ways of earning a degree, as it already happens around the globe and in which thousands of individuals are part of this way of learning. Asynchronous tools provided by the course instructor are the last ingredient needed to help all these students to get a university degree or additional training for their working life.

· What questions do you still have about using asynchronous tools in your online course?

When asked the above question, I must admit that I have already overcome my initial skepticism of online, hybrid, and blended learning. I feel certain that education can be attained in different ways, and that our technological societies and citizens are looking for extra alternatives that can allow them to work, have a family, enjoy their social life, and also get a degree in a higher education institution. The use of all these asynchronous tools connected to an LMS platform can be the long-awaited answer that many individual in our home countries have been waiting for.

To conclude, as suggested above, ask yourself the same questions provided here. I am sure we can have either similar or different answers due to our personal teaching conditions and settings. Blended learning at Universidad Latina where I am currently working is still in a very developing stage. It is not a common practice in all courses where more traditional ways of teaching are still favored by many faculty members. With the pass of time, it is bound to be a slow but forceful revelation in education at the higher level, and more and more professors will start joining those of us who already combine F2F instruction with lots of blended activities to have learner exposed to class content beyond the classroom boundaries.

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Social Bookmarking: Why to Do it

#LTTO, Hybrid and Blended Learning, Online Teaching Practices 4 comments

Managing Online Resources

Social Bookmarking: Why to Do it

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Twitter: @jonacuso

Post 207

Though I had been keeping Web sites that I found and considered useful in an email folder, I was fortunately introduced to social bookmarking about 8 years ago when I was taking a course with the University of Oregon (UO). As a way to keep track of all those great Webpages one gets to run into while browsing for information for my language courses and for one’s research papers, our UO instructors asked us to open an account at http://www.delicious.com. Later on, a colleague of mine, Stephen Thergesen, an English teacher based in Denver, Colorado, introduced me to http://www.paper.li, and by means of that site I was able to “fatten” my Delicious account with more useful sites for my teaching, research interests, and life-long learning.

I must confess that I have somehow neglected my Delicious account because I found, thanks to Stephen Thergesen –again-, another much more dynamic site to keep track of my Internet findings: http://www.scoop.it. But anyhow, those sites are now part of my daily professional life and sharing with my college students. And how have I been using them with my university students? Let me share a couple of ideas with you:

1	Bookmarking in language classes	· To list webpages for language practice aiming at working with vocabulary or grammar structures · To have a list of monolingual dictionaries and thesaurus for writing tasks or reading exercises
2	Bookmarking in content classes	· To keep track of webpages for research purposes: speeches, papers, WebQuests, etc. · To keep record of pages that can be eventually used in one’s teaching practicum

There are more benefits than challenges in terms of encouraging students to sign up for a bookmarking account. In terms of educational benefits, students will take advantage of social bookmarking by keeping a record of pages they can really profit from. Anything they get to find online and that they consider useful for their future professional practicum and later on practice, it is a plus for all students. It will be up to them to keep on adding more and more sites to their bookmarks to keep themselves current and updated with the new trends in their fields.

The challenge of keeping a social bookmarking account is not connected to an instructor, but it is more linked to the students. As a language teacher I am much into sharing stuff I find on my regular browsing through the Web and enjoy sparing those sites with my pupils, but it is in the end the learners’ decision to keep on feeding their bookmarks and sharing them with their peers. And the only way to mitigate that is by having students regularly share their findings in a link-sharing section that might be curated by all learners as a wiki.