LangoLAB
1. What is LangoLAB?
LangoLAB is a website that is designed in order to help people who want to learn a foreign language. The utmost aim of this website is to expose learners of a foreign language to the authentic cultural media from the internet in the language that they are learning. The tools are intended to help the learners understand as quickly as possible. It works like YouTube, by sharing videos with social networking and adding tools that will help students to create their own flash cards, transcription and share their comments on the videos and transcriptions.


2. How does it work?
In order to use LangoLAB you have to sign up. It is free to use LangoLAB; there is no charge to pay. It does not require any download, either. First go to website www.langolab.com you will see the screen above. Before signing up you can not do anything on the website so in order to see what is happening inside you need to sign up. As I said it is free to sign up. On the first page, the one above, you will see the button SIGN UP. Click there and you will see a screen like the one below:


You will fill in the blanks according to what is wanted. On the first part you will write your email, password etc. On the second part you will write the language you are speaking and the one you want to learn and you are writing your level in each language. After you have done all the requirements, just click on sign up. One thing that is really good about this site is not only for English; you can find videos, transcriptions and descriptions in other languages such as Spanish, French and so on. So it makes LangoLAB a multicultural website and a lot of people from different countries and from different language background can use this website and it forms a diverse community in itself.
When you click on the sign up button you will see a page like this. You need to put a photo of yourself. You can upload a photo or you can take photo with webcam. Also you can indicate your location on the map.

After you have uploaded your photo you need to click on DONE EDITING. That you are a member of the website you can use it as much as you want. When you are done with editing you will see the same screen when you first open the website but this time you will be able to reach the navigation part like videos, texts, games. For the videos you need to click on the button videos and you will see this page:


Here you can choose the languages of videos and their difficulty level like beginner, intermediate etc. On the right of the page you can choose the categories you want such as education, politics, people blogs so on. When you click on one of the videos it opens and you see a page like the one below:
When we click on the video, a page like this will be seen. In the info part there is the name of the video and description of it; the topic of the video, maybe the time it is recorded etc. If there is a word you do not understand just click on the word and the dictionary will show the definitions.

Just below the definitions button there is a button called as add to flash cards. With this button you can create your own flash cards and add the word or the expressions you do not know.

You can create your own flash cards and add extra notes for yourself. This will help you remember and revise the words. You can also add notes for yourself and for the others to see. You can also ask question for the parts you do not understand to the other users.



For example here I add the word KING to my flash cards so I can see it on my profile and I can reach it easily from my profile. In your user profile you can see all of your flashcards, videos uploaded by you, and your questions.
You can add you comments on the video or the text, too. The page below shows the transcription of the video. When you choose a part of it definition will come. Again you can add the word you do not know to the flash cards or you can add notes for them. With the transcription the students will be able to both listen and watch the video and they will be also looking at the transcription of the video.


Besides video, LangoLAB has two other parts. First one is the text part. Like videos you can add text on any language and you can find text uploaded by others. You can choose the difficulty level and the language of the texts. It works in the same way as the video works.

There is also a game part of the website which is also related to the language learning. The game is like that; you have a partner who speaks the language you are trying to learn. Both of you are describing the same picture. After the time is finished, 5 minutes for instance, your partner will correct your mistakes. You can also correct the things someone else wrote.




All in all I think LangoLAB is a great website for the people learning a foreign language. It uses authentic material in order to help people learn English. It will be useful for the people who want to develop their listening skill and their vocabulary. Also they can learn the pronunciation of the words while listening to the videos. Moreover the game is wonderful I think, it is also authentic and it gives the opportunity of developing your writing skills in the language you are learning.
Actually LangoLAB includes three of the skills that you need while learning a language: Listening, writing and reading; however the speaking part is missing so if there was a speaking related activity on the website, it would be perfect. So the first thing they lack is the speaking-oriented activity. They can add a video conferencing session for the students and they can talk to the native speaker of the language they are learning. Also the website lacks a crowded community. I see that there are limited users and limited videos and texts. If the number of the members of the website could be increased I think it will be much better for everyone. They will have different kind of people and different kind of topics from different languages. The number of languages could be increased, too. As far as I see there are only 6 or 7 languages on the website. If more languages are added there will be much more people trying to learn languages and trying to use the website.
If they can enhance the number of the languages and the videos and the texts, LangoLAB would be a perfect website for the language learners.

VOCABULARY TEACHING

One of the components of language teaching is vocabulary teaching. I think it is the first thing that most of the teachers start with. As technology has covered up all the issues in language teaching it has utilities for vocabulary teaching. There are a lot new web based activities of vocabulary teaching and new technologies on order to help teachers with vocabulary teaching. I will talk about three of them: Gerry’s vocabulary teacher, text to speech and www.wordchamp.com.
First one is Gerry’s vocabulary teacher. Gerry’s vocabulary teacher helps teacher in different ways. It has a lot of vocabulary activities like fill-in-the gaps, cross puzzles, quotations and proverbs etc. The teacher can review the vocabulary of the previous lesson; s/he can measure how much the vocabulary has been comprehended.
The second is wordchamp.com. This website helps teachers create online courses of English. It is like a virtual classroom; you can Access to your teacher and talk to other students taking this course. There are a number of activities for language learners and teachers. It has activities of reading, speaking, writing and listening. You can fin activities for these skills. This website is not free; you have to pay a fee in order to use this website.
The last one is text to speech which is a different technology for language learners. As it is understood from its name the focus of the technology is mostly on speaking and pronunciation. You simply write a word or two word an even an sentence and this website reads it according to the language you are learning. I think it is really useful for language learners as the problem of speaking is widely seen as the learners do not have so many opportunities to develop their speaking and pronunciation skills. One thing that is not good about this technology is that it does not read with emotion but it reads robot-like. However it is not such a big deal as long as you learn the pronunciation.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Content Management Systems (CMS) are the computer applications used for creating, managing and publishing specific contents such as websites, electronic documents, audio and video files. Dokeos, Nicenet and Moodle are three of the CMS.

Nicenet: It is one of the Content Management Systems that enables users e-learn the things they want to study. Nicenet gives a number of opportunities: You can create your online courses and organize your course by using this website. It is a free website that can be used by everyone in everywhere. Teachers can upload files and give assignments through this website. There is also a discussion forum for students.

Moodle: Moodle is also Content Management Systems. It is free and everybody can access it. Teachers can create online courses with the help of this website. Users of this website can publish their materials. You can create discussion forums on this website. The teachers can grade them and can give assignments and the students can easily upload their assignments.

Dokeos: Another Content Management System is Dokeos and it is widely used all over the world. This Content Management System helps users to have interaction with the other users. This interaction occurs by having virtual meetings and virtual classrooms. With this website you can create online activities and share files. You can also upload your PowerPoint Presentation and you can do videoconferencing.

TURNITIN
WHAT IS TURNITIN?
Turnitin is an online resource teachers and students who want to enhance their writing and research skills. It is a web based platform that finds and shows matching and unoriginal part of text. It makes use of data-mining to gather a huge databases of academic articles and written staff which are electronic and are stored by Turnitin.Turnitin simply controls the assignment against its database of materials to check the originality of the text and check the matches between the assignment and the materials in its database.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
Turnitin describes its role as follows: “while we never claim to replace the instructor as the final, most qualified decision-maker in assessing the originality of a student’s assignment, we narrow the research process – allowing the instructor to focus on the task of education, not investigation”.(turnitin.com)
Turnitin uses dat-mining to bring a number of electronic article together. It identifies the matches between the submitted assignment and the article in its database including student essays library sources etc. When an assignment submitted online to Turnitin an originality report is collected and this report is posted to the instructor’s site in a while. This report shows the parts that matches the source within Turnitin and provides links to these sources. So the instructor will be able to see the comparison made by Turnitin .com and judge whether the students did plagiarism or not
Originality Report
In originality report it shows the matches between the submitted text and the database and the percentages and the links are provided. The matching parts are shown in a different color so as to differentiate from others.
There are three databases used in order to identify the matches:
Both a current and an extensively archived copy of the publicly accessible internet
Commercial pages from books, newspapers, and journals
Student papers already submitted to Turnitin

This is a kind of class portfolio that shows the assignments that students submitted and this page also shows the textual matches.
This is the percentage of the matches that are found

HOW TO REGISTER IN TURNITIN.COM? HOW TO USE IT?
There are two faces of Turnitin for instructors and students.
For Instructors
Either the instructor or his/her institution get the license for Turnitin
The administrator of your account receives an account ıd number and creates an account password. These id and account passwords are given by Turnitin Administration to the institutions like high schools and universities.
3. After creating your user profile go Turnitin.Com and enter your email and password for your homepage as an instructor.
4. Setting up a class: When you log into your homepage you will see the button add a class and do the followings:
5. After setting your class you can add assignments and give due dates for the assignments.
For Students
For students to enroll :
1. You have to get the class id and the password from your instructors
2. Then go to Turnitin.com and create a user profile then use the class id and password
3. After creating your user profile go to turnitin.com and log in with your e mail address and password
4. On your profile you will see the buton enroll in a class, enter your class id and enrollment password for the class
5. When you are signed in your class you can submit your assignments.
Applications of Turnitin
1. Originality Checking: This application is one of the best way that lets educators check the students work in order to prevent the possibility of plagiarism and to teach them how to do proper in text citation.
2. Grademark: This tool frees the instructors from dealing with papers spending a lot of time. With this application instructors can follow the track of the develpoment of the students. They can put some comments on the assignments so that students can see and try to change their mistakes.
3. Peer Review: This application of Turnitin gives students the opportunity to review their friends’ works. With peer review students will be able to think critically and learn how to evaluate and make criticism of another work and also they will see their mistakes in their peers work so they will understand much more easily.

However some people say that it makes students feel guilty treating them as criminals. They say it promotes an atmosphere that all the students do plagiarism until it is detected.
One of my instructors used Turnitin in one of our class and I think it was really useful. We could see our mistakes and we could do peer review which enabled us to see our mistakes in a more real way. For its advantages first of all it is really deterrent to plagiarism. Moreover it is much more useful to the instructors than to the students because it frees the instructors from a lot of staff like grading, reduces the time necessary for checking plagiarism. Students and instructors get report of their work which makes them aware of their progress. Also it has a kind of color detecting system: It does not simply says there is a plagiarism but it has certain colors for certain percentages of plagiarism. In this way it does not just call students as guilty but tries to deter them from what they have done.
Even without Turnitin instructors are trying to detect the parts that may not belong to the students or referenced incorrectly. So Turnitin helps the instructors to review the assignments which reduces the percentage of the plagiarism done and the time spent on grading mark and searching for plagiarism.

BASICS OF VIDEO, AUDIO AND WEB BASED CONFERENCING

Conference in traditional terms means that the participants have to go to a common place, gather there and talk face to face. As the technology has covered all aspects of our lives; we have online conferencing nowadays which is easier and cheaper. People can access the conference from any place in the world. You can find some special software that is used for online conferencing. You can do the conference whenever and wherever you want. There are some websites that helps people do online conferences like followings:

WIZIQ is a web based platform that is for everyone who wants to learn online. You can form discussion groups with other people from different places all over the world. So everyone who is interested in online learning can sign up and use this program.

Another is Learning Times. It is a series of online learning communities. With learning times online conferencing teachers and students will have opportunity to make conferences throughout the world.

The last one is Alado Development. It was set as an internet telecommunications hub for Global Learning Day. Global Learning Day is an online conference in which a lot of people from almost every part of the world take part in it.

To sum up online conference is a very useful tool for language learners as it enables them to speak with the native speakers of the language, make discussion and share their ideas.

History of CALL

CALL is the shortened form of Computer Assisted Language Learning. Call is widely used for the part of the learning that computer takes place. As it is the era of technology and most specifically computer we can not think of language learning without computer. For language teaching it has been used for more than 40 years.
In broad sense call has two functions: one is tutor and the second is tool. In tutor use computer has a teaching function like online grammar exercises; for tool use computer has no teaching function ; for example if you use a word processor in one of your language learning activity you are using computer as a tool.
There are three stages of CALL: Behaviouristic CALL, Communicative CALL and Integrative CALL.
Behaviouristic CALL: This stage is the first form of CALL used in 1960’s and 1970’s.As we understand from its name it was based on behaviouristic model of language learning. The programs in this stage are mostly repetitive language and drill & practice. This stage is an example of the tutor function of computers.
Communicative CALL: In 1970’s communicative CALL emerged as a reaction to behaviouristic CALL. The proponents of this stage state that CALL should focus on using forms not the forms themselves. They said grammar should not be taught explicitly and students should be able to generate new structures. In this stage the computer is functioning as tutor but the students has much more control on it.
Integrative CALL: This is the last stage of CALL. Teachers quitted communicative CALL as it was unplanned and had no contribution to central elements. So the teachers moved to a socio-cognitive view that stresses on using language in an authentic context. It integrates all of the skills of language learning and technology in language teaching .
To sum up computer can be used in various ways in language teaching & learning .It is a tutor and tool according to the way you are using it. Everyone who uses computer technology will be able to improve the educational program and the learning opportunity of the students.






Online communities of practice
Community of practice is groups of people that come together to learn from each other and share the things they have in their minds. These people have a common interest and they come together to share problems, experiences, practices so on. Their utmost intention is to foster their own learning.
Online communities are the group of people who share their feeling experiences, problems etc. via internet. As organizations become geographically distributed the demand to expand the scope of communities of practice (COP), people moved to online communities. The common interest in online technologies let the people to search new strategies for online teaching and using tools such as skype, blogs, videos etc.
Instead of participating in concrete communities they prefer to be in groups via internet as in the normal type of community they will not be able to know new people because it has a limited area; but via internet they can meet new people they can look from the view of the other people who are in different parts of the world. They share their feeling; they ask questions and so on.

COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION

Internet is the utmost magic of the technology .You can almost do whatever you want via internet .The most important aspect of internet is communication. The first example that comes to our mind as the communication aspect of internet is e-mail & instant messaging .Any people from any part of the world can talk to each via internet , e-mail .Internet gives the opportunity to the students to speak and listen to the native speakers of the language which otherwise they lack in a learning process without internet .For this use of the internet there have been a lot of programs and some of them were successful and some were not.and one of them is eTandemEuropa .In this program in which telephone &internet audio used by the different native speakers .Recently there have been programs that you can see and talk to the other people via internet .So this is a really important thing for L2 learners as it enables them to speak language in a authentic context .There are three different communication types: a) Instant messaging b) conferences c)chat groups .In these programs both text and audio is used.
There are kind of programs that L2 students can use as an authentic material such as: AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Windows Messenger, PalTalk, Ivisit.