Going Global: Using italki to Connect with Native Speakers

Typical Apps/Tools

• Vocabulary “Games”

• Quizzes

• Videos

• Podcasts

• Blogs

• Tablet Textbooks

course / content …

us (the teacher) and …

themselves. TECH

Learner

Content

Class

Teacher

What is missing?

How did you fall in love

with and learn your

second language?

Why aren’t we more focused on

technology that can replicate

that experience?

This was simply not possible

when many of us were in school.

TECH

Learner

Content

Class Teacher

*

Garrison & Archer, 2003

Communication Medium: 3 Spheres

• Social Presence: Interaction with Peers

• Cognitive Presence: Interaction with Content

• Teaching Presence: Interaction with Instructors

Which is most important?

More and more people are using new technologies for self teaching.

Let’s look at language learning for example. Over 100 million people

all over the world are learning languages online today — and only a

fraction of them would ever have considered using traditional learning

materials or courses to do so. … It would never have occurred to the

nurse in Louisville to buy a textbook or an expensive CD to learn a

language — but now, she’s studying German on her tablet after her

shift.

http://www.wired.com/insights/2014/01/learning-revolution-education/

• Focusing on communication

• Encouraging peer interaction

• Taking full advantage of access to native speakers, native

teachers, native tutors, native peer-group

• Generating interest and motivation from real opportunities for

communication

• Pushing cross cultural understanding through international

friendships

• Chatroom participants have significantly higher proficiency

than ss in traditional oral classrooms (Payne & Whitney,

2002)

• Known transfer between skill modalities for ss who

participate in SCMC (Lund, 2006)

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzN_U79rMpI

What it does

• italki connects learners and teachers for 1-on-1 online

language lessons

Online Teachers

• Two types of teachers - professional teachers and community

tutors

• Students looking for opportunities to practice speaking

• Pre-/Returning exchange students

• College students preparing for proficiency tests

• Homeschool students

• School districts with limited FL programs

What:

• Get help from native teachers and tutors

• Peer-to-peer learning (language exchange, corrections)

• Complementary to classroom work

• Refreshing L2 skills

• Accent reduction or reaching native level

• Teacher-to-teacher dialogues

• International cultural exchanges

• Sharing educational techniques

• Connecting classes (language exchange)

• Broaden network

• Learner-Learner

• Learner-Teacher

• Learner-Content (Moore, 1989)

*

• Teachers/Language

Exchange Partners

• Notebook

• Discussion

• Instant Tutoring

•Software:

• Skype (most widely-used)

• Dropbox (Blocked Websites & Slow Connections)

• TinyUrl

• YouTube

Textbooks/Classes: What else are learners doing?

Methodology:

• Lesson Plan

• Learner Objectives

• Guide for Learners

• Move away from high-tech, low-pedagogy

• “Go online and chat” doesn’t work

• Wait times & turn-taking vary – this is not face-to-face

communication

• Use of photos & videos can decrease pressure for constant

communication

(O’Dowd, 2004)

• Difficult to see non-verbal behavior

• Debrief chats with teacher/partner to check intercultural

mis/understanding

(Schlikau, 2000)