UserPage:PennyROK

Personal Introduction.

Hi, my name is Penelope Thompson and I live in Busan, Korea where I work as a contemporary artist and a university lecturer.
My learning blog for this course is http://explore-learning-tech.blogspot.com/
|Penelope Thompson|Skypename:pennythompson |MSN Messenger: |FET8611 blog:Exploring Emerging Environments for Learning|Twitter name: penelopet

I also have an artist's website: www.penelopethompson.com
and an artist's blog: http://penelopethompson.blogspot.com

Life/work in a Nutshell

• Born in Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia
• Riverina College of Advanced Education - Diploma Visual Arts
• Various jobs around Australia and involved in many community arts projects, including theatre, video, writing, music, visual arts.
• University of Adelaide - studied Educational Theatre and Jazz
• Lived for a year in a Tibetan-style Buddhist community- Chenrezig Institute in Queensland
• University of the Sunshine Coast- B.A. Visual Art & Design, minor in Communication.
• Moved to Korea to teach English in 2001
• 2002 - one year in UK & Europe.
• 2003 - returned to Korea. Employed as a writer/editor for a religious organisation
• 2004 - recommenced EFL teaching at universities in Busan, Korea and began active art career in Korea.
• 2005 - commenced Master's degree studies at USQ by distance education
• 2006 - changed jobs to Pusan University of Foreign Studies where I have more latitude to develop content-based courses and explore educational technology
• 2007 - USQ - awarded Graduate Certificate of Teaching Second languages

Study at USQ

I began study at USQ because I needed to get some actual qualifications in English teaching to get better jobs in Korea - the one's that give you long vacations! I started in Applied Linguistics and have changed my major to Education as I believe it will be more broadly useful to me as an art educator. I hope to finish all the coursework in February 2008. The units:

• LIN 5000 The nature of language
• LIN 8001 Principles of Second language learning
• LIN 5002 Teaching Methodology
• LIN 8006 Computer assisted language learning
• LIN 8009 Immersion language teaching
• FET 5621 Intro to Web Design (webpage created for Intro to Web Design in S1, 2007:www.penelopethompson.com)

Currently studying:

• FET 8611 Emerging Environments for Learning
• LIN 8007 Language Testing

Facilitated Page/s in Knowledge Garden

Wikis & tikis for Dummies
FET 8611 Workgroup : Exploring online virtual environments-just a workgroup page to allow interested students to communicate about the topic.

Websites/Resources that interest me

FET8611 Coursework

Assignment 1: Progress report

• My facilitated page is Wikis & tikis for Dummies.

I also set up the page FET 8611 Workgroup : Exploring online virtual environments but it is just a workgroup page to allow interested students to communicate about the topic.

• Contributions in Knowledge Garden

FET 8611 Workgroup : Exploring online virtual environments
Twitter
FET 8611 Workgroup: The Time Machine
Glossary for knowledgeGarden and emerging technologies
WikiWhys

• Facilitation strategy

I think using the Shoutbox to mention the page is successful. I have posed questions on the wikipage itself, and also included a section titled "Dumb Questions that need answers". In a week I have had a couple of major contributions but obviously I need to be more active in encouraging more contributions. Another way would be to post questions on the FET8611 Moodle Forum to invite more contributions. I feel that for the students like myself who are fairly new to all the latest emerging technology my wikipage is quite useful.

• Problems ahead

I can see that as I become more familiar with the kG environment and the jargon, I may easily forget how hard it was at the beginning, and lose my enthusiasm to post helpful information, links or questions.The same may happen for other students too. Also simply finding time to be maintaining a facilitated page, regular blog updates, keeping up with the daily volume of information on The FET8611 Moodle site, and doing Assignment 2 , and trialling new technologies for the Workgroups is a lot of work.

• What's important

My page shouldn't replicate other existing pages in kG.

Assignment 1 - Final report

Assignment 2:

Proposal for Assignment 2.

I would like to look at ways of improving my use of phpBB forum http://www.phpbb.com/ as a university teaching tool, including exploring replacements such as Moodle or other more secure forums.

I am currently using phpBB for the first time for my English composition class (48 students) and my Practical English class (31 students) at my Korean university (second-year English major students).

Some issues I have had so far include:
• Major sign-up issues for foreign students who are using English as a foreign language and have not tried on-line learning before. As step –by-step written instruction as printed handouts, or on-line instructions, have had little beneficial effect, I feel I need to make an instructional video (eg. using free software like Wink) to post on my welcome page. This would also give students more practice in listening and using the Internet as a tool for multimedia language learning. Research has shown that low-level language learners are more dependent on visual cues for comprehension.
• Serious security issues with outsiders signing up and posting pornography or links to gambling sites. Also potential privacy and safety issues with personal information.

• There are some other steps I would investigate to get the onlinne EFL environment working better:

1. using the system hosted on my own website so I can have administrator privileges
2. investigating ways of incorporating image and sound files directly, rather than as URL links
3. setting up class User lists so that administration of class data is more efficient
4. more attractive layout options
5. using private messaging function so students do not have to sign up for a separate English language email account like Yahoo! (PM was disabled this time by administrator)
6. any other useful options that I may discover in my closer assessment of phpBB and/or its alternatives.

What I can try to implement by Feb 2008:
a) Host the online EFL environment on my own site – get another domain name and have administrator privileges.
b) set up the new forum with my preferred layout
c) make a training video for use online as a sign up aid.
d) ) test out the improved sign up process including an online training video with another class of intermediate level Korean English teacher trainees that I am teaching until Jan 29.

NOTE: Over a period of 2 months of research into these issues it became clear that Moodle www.moodle.org was by far the best option for university course use, as it is secure and it is designed specially as a Learning Management System.
My assignment then became a rationale and description of the set-up process for using Moodle as a Korean university EFL learning environment. You can view the finished assignment attached at the bottom of this page as a Word doc file.

Assignment 3:

References

e.g. Intext citations and reference list, (2006). In KnowledgeGarden: Our Learning Community. Retrieved April 20 2006, from http://knowledgeGarden.usq.edu.au/tiki-index.php?page_id=323}

Contributing to and using this page

Contributors to this page

Name	Comment	Date
Penelope Thompson	User page setup	Nov 23, 2007

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