In which the audiolingual method looks sexy again
Posted By Kevin Gaugler on February 9, 2009
In a previous post Barbara and I interviewed Liz Kolb, author of the recently published Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education. Liz got me thinking about all the ways we can use cell phones in the language classroom. It’s surprising that phones are not used more in our teaching already. First, mobile phones are as close to ubiquitous computing as we can get with our students. Second, phones are tools specifically designed for oral communication. The problem with phones, until now, is that phone calls, unlike email and other written electronic communication, are difficult to manage. GrandCentral , a free service from Google, will change the way you think about phone calls, since it treats calls like email messages. No matter which internet-accessible device or telephone you use, you can get the message.
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I’m not one to assign simple recording assignments very often. I find that it’s a bit awkward for students to speak into a void. Too, most of my students tend to write what they would like to say first and then read that text into the microphone, rendering the task more mechanical than communicative. However, if you or your colleagues like to have your students create individual recordings, GrandCentral, a free service from Google, is certainly the tool for you. With GrandCentral you can create an account and generate a unique phone number to give to your students. GrandCentral provides you with a free, unlimited voicemail box. You can listen to your students’ messages, write feedback, and send it back to your students’ email address.
Taking the use of GrandCentral one step further, I can envision a scenario in which your students open individual GrandCentral accounts and then leave messages for each other on a variety of topics. Students can then build an oral portfolio by making selected recordings available to the instructor—forwarding the messages to the instructor’s GrandCentral account, uploading the files to a course management system, emailing their recordings, or saving them to a portable thumb drive. With a little creativity, GrandCentral could make the audiolingual method sexy again.
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The following tutorial from DemoGirl will give you more information about the basic features of GrandCentral. If you are unfamiliar with it, this video will certainly get you started.
You can also get your feet wet with GrandCentral by clicking my web button and leaving me a message about what you think of GrandCentral as a tool for the classroom or just call to say hello or anything else you might want to tell us. Perhaps Barbara and I can even take some of the messages and put them together into a podcast episode.
In which the audiolingual method looks sexy again by Kevin Gaugler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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About the author
Kevin Gaugler
Kevin Gaugler is Associate Professor of Spanish and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Technology has always been part of the DNA of his teaching. As a graduate student, Dr. Gaugler began working in The University of Connecticut's state-of-the-art multimedia language center to research relationships between the 5Cs and instructional technology. While at Marist, he has developed a a FIPSE-funded course entitled Spanish and Technology and has helped to create Identity Quest, a course that rethinks technology and study abroad. He has presented his pedagogical innovations at numerous conferences and colleges in the United States and is the author of several monographs.Comments
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[...] In a previous post post I wrote about how GrandCentral had much of the functionality of a $100,000 audio-lingual laboratory for about $100,000 less, making the audio-lingual method sexy again. Well, GrandCentral is now officially the super-sexy Google Voice. and after having the chance to play with the service for a few weeks, I’d like to list ten ways in which Google Voice might be used to manage student-to-student or student-to-teacher interactions. [...]