Online Smart School

When the University of Southern California partnered with 2tor Inc., this online learning collaboration has garnered praise from those still skeptical of this new advancement in education. Others have been more cautious when it comes to online learning. According to an article in The Chronicle for Higher Education, Frank Donoghue addresses some lingering concerns that he has for the future of higher education and this new pedagogical tool of online learning. Donoghue posits that the streamlined nature of online learning may make the courses too sterile and devoid of the creative uncertainty that fosters meaningful learning.

According to the article, Donoghue discusses two pressing issues for professors as well. With many universities using learning management systems or partnering with publishing companies, professors may face greater difficulty gaining the intellectual rights to their courses or the right to choose which textbook to use. Donoghue worries that professors may lose some of the autonomy when it comes to designing courses as well as losing their right to the courses once posted on an LMS. Even with these concerns, Donoghue acknowledges that online learning has established itself as a viable pedagogical tool, but he believes that further discussions should take place about online learning’s impact on the professors and their rights.

You can read more at The Chronicle for Higher Education. 

Using translation is surely a natural and obvious means of teaching someone a new language. It has lots of good effects. It can be used to aid learning, practise what has been learned, diagnose problems, and test proficiency.  In any case, teachers cant stop students translating it is such a fundamental basis for language learning.

Translation is also useful skill in itself. And not just for professional translators and interpreters. In multilingual societies and a globalised world, translation is all around us as an authentic act of communication: from families, schools, hospitals, courts, and clinics, to business meetings and the United Nations. We find it in notices, labels, menus, subtitles, news interviews and many other places.

In addition, it allows learners to relate new knowledge to existing knowledge , promotes  noticing and language awareness, and highlights the differences and similarities between the new and existing language. Many people also find the tackling of translation problems intellectually stimulating and aesthetically satisfying. In addition, it helps create and maintain good relations between teacher and student, facilitates classroom management and control, and allows students to maintain their own sense of first language identity, while also building a new bilingual identity. It does not seem to impede efficient language use many students who began their studies through translation go on to become fluent and accurate users of the new language.

So what is wrong with it? Given all these apparent advantages, it seems most peculiar that the mainstream literature on language pedagogy and second language acquisition, has routinely dismissed translation as a desirable component of language teaching and learning for over a hundred years without research, reasoning or evidence. Is there perhaps some other reasons that translation has been villainised in this way?

In my webinar next week, I shall be asking what happened to translation, and why. I shall be making a case for reinstating translation as a major component of language teaching and learning. Whether you agree or disagree, I hope you will join us, tell us of your own experiences, and put forward your own views.

Today weve published the first of six papers, commissioned by the Fordham Institute, on the topic of digital learning/virtual schooling. The rest of the papers – each exploring a different angle of this issue – are set to be released on a rolling basis later this year. In this first paper, Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute explores the challenges of quality control.

As Hess notes, “one of the great advantages of online learning is that it makes unbundling school provision possible—that is, it allows children to be served by providers from almost anywhere, in new and more customized ways.  But taking advantage of all the opportunities online learning offers means that there is no longer one conventional school to hold accountable. Instead, students in a given building or district may be taking courses (or just sections of courses) from a variety of providers, each with varying approaches to technology, instruction, mastery, and so forth….Finding ways to define, monitor, and police quality in this brave new world is one of the central challenges in realizing the potential of digital learning.”

Hess goes on to present an interesting and thought-provoking paper! to learn more.