From lojban+bncCJzE7b_XFxCpq4XtBBoEC5S3wA@googlegroups.com Sun Apr 10 00:01:15 2011 Received: from mail-gy0-f189.google.com ([209.85.160.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Q8odz-0008IK-Kg; Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:01:15 -0700 Received: by gyf1 with SMTP id 1sf8933138gyf.16 for ; Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:01:05 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:x-beenthere:mime-version:date:x-ip:user-agent :x-http-useragent:message-id:subject:from:to:x-original-sender :reply-to:precedence:mailing-list:list-id:x-google-group-id :list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender:list-subscribe :list-unsubscribe:content-type; bh=DMMnujEUCEqEPP/F15xdj77T+ab4Z1ltdNGagt5xZ7I=; b=56Xup+08gcI4eggmPMxP6OGxjw4f9ANLkfTBDTSGBa5tzFWb5k2Ckrs0T5rt/HewIV JaI9q+gYnkfkX7BGcBAWofk3nMY3mVGmeAro5xC2Ux42M8pBLnnYu+9MIDzmlz6LXN3Z 3hQj+nXJwyaT3uraRLl8fC5HWu/XXdRuI1hws= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:mime-version:date:x-ip:user-agent:x-http-useragent :message-id:subject:from:to:x-original-sender:reply-to:precedence :mailing-list:list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post:list-help :list-archive:sender:list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; b=59+3pQEELfnB5ehni04CwMKhXlEmEzjUBESCzzVXIQvF89xMmrRZ17N0yWuwoUUnLH uICzDzKg3l306+R8nNkSAK3Nap4xtNtnHNTCcVlAQNWmSYp3/EtxAZ/xgDh7qr67LNkC 76XPWkV9MSW5Ujaz2m2MfYqD7vva/XURL83vQ= Received: by 10.150.174.8 with SMTP id w8mr890590ybe.9.1302418857762; Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:00:57 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.151.2.5 with SMTP id e5ls3686797ybi.1.p; Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:00:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.236.109.17 with SMTP id r17mr1279486yhg.2.1302418857084; Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:00:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.151.127.19 with SMTP id e19msybn; Sat, 9 Apr 2011 13:30:53 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.91.203.35 with SMTP id f35mr590575agq.23.1302381053110; Sat, 09 Apr 2011 13:30:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: by n10g2000yqf.googlegroups.com with HTTP; Sat, 9 Apr 2011 13:30:53 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2011 13:30:53 -0700 (PDT) X-IP: 128.42.223.101 User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu/10.10 Chromium/10.0.648.133 Chrome/10.0.648.133 Safari/534.16,gzip(gfe) Message-ID: Subject: [lojban] Lojban Class at Rice University From: djandus To: lojban X-Original-Sender: jandew@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: X-Google-Group-Id: 1004133512417 List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 coi rodo So, I am Joe Anderson, an undergraduate at Rice, and am planning on teaching a class on Lojban in the fall. (http://courses.rice.edu/admweb/swkscat.main? p_action=COURSE&p_crn=16915&p_term=201210) I know a lot about Lojban, but I'm going to have to work like crazy to put this together, especially over the summer. I originally learned Lojban through Lojban for Beginners, about 3 years ago. I have started visiting the IRC only recently, learning a lot about how the language has been changing in Lojbanistan since that teaching aid was created. I've been playing around with many other teaching aids, especially Anki, and have many ideas for how to structure the class. I've also been working closely with a French professor here who studies teaching languages in general. With her help, I've already made a pretty accurate table of contents for the course, which I have uploaded here: http://jandew.ersoft.org/lojban/contents.pdf My main objectives are to teach proficiency in conversation and cover the grammar of approximately half of Lojban for Beginners. From my table of contents, you can note that this entails teaching everything up to tenses, where including the last chapter in my lesson plans is entirely up to how much lesson time I have. As for the time I have, I'm given a one-hour class a week for 14 weeks. My plan is to have as much talking as possible in class, with vocabulary and exercises being covered outside of class. To do that, I'm wanting to write up exercises that can be completed online (I'm currently investigating how much I can do with Owlspace) and require students to use Anki and somehow turn in their study results. (I know Anki keeps track of that very well.) There's obviously a lot of parts to this, but with everything so primordial, here's what I'd love to have help with: Lesson plans: The theory behind ordering the courses as I have, making sure the general plans are good What I'll be covering in class, how to keep students on their toes Exercises to give outside of class, creative assignments The vocabulary I will cover -- how much per week, what order, etc. Any ideas about study materials -- I'm going to keep it simple, with vocabulary in one place, (Anki,) and other exercises in another. (online, probably Owlspace) If anyone has interesting ideas on cool study materials I could put it, I'd love to try to fit it in somewhere. I also need support in teaching me -- I need to get more proficient in speaking Lojban in the areas I will be teaching. I am not lacking so much in the concepts as the vocabulary. I want to get the students used to Lojban conversation, and I'm still not used to it, yet! There is a strong possibility that I can organize one day to have a computer lab trip for a videoconference with other Lojbanists! I think this would be a really fun way to end things, making sure that the students get connected with Lojbanistan. Any interested in helping with that may need to do the same as I, practicing conversation with the basic tools I will end up teaching over the semester. One day must be spent "outside of class" as a requirement for student-taught courses at Rice. Ideas for this are welcome -- right now, the best I've got is something like a scavenger hunt on campus. (note that with a videoconference and a day-outside-of-class, that means I really only have 12 weeks of class that I can count on) Any suggestions on communication. Right now, I'm only really accustomed to email and the IRC. This is my first post on the mailing list. I have browsed around a lot on lojban.org, but there's a lot of information there, and if anyone recognizes some great online resource for anything, even talking about this, (in case this discussion clutters up the mailing list or something,) then feel free to speak up about it. I happen to know how to program in python, and I've been working on a few study programs to help, say, learn the numbers. I'd love people to help suggest improvements for those as well, as I write them. In working through this, I will for certain be able to have the resources associated with Owlspace, which basically entails easy communication with students and ability to have assignments on there, in a variety of ways. I will be investigating its capabilities as soon as possible. I probably will have access to it after Fall Registration, which begins tomorrow. I will also start getting numbers of people signed up for the course then. For those eager to learn more about that resource: https://owlspace-ccm.rice.edu/portal/site/!gateway/page/!gateway-300 I may end up also having access to the the Language Resource Center on campus, which means computer lab access with built-in speaking capabilities and any associated online resources. This means I could give assignments with audio or video interaction -- things which may not exist yet for Lojban. (These resources are normally used in ways like having a test with the last question being "Speak for at least one minute about {your family..., what you do on the weekend..., etc.}" or giving an assignment where students watch a video of a weatherman speaking and then answer questions about the weather.) These sorts of assignments/tests can be given online, if necessary. I might be able to have Anki installed in the lab in a lojban folder, so that students have access to it there, etc. Oh, and I need to explain student-taught courses! So, at Rice, they work like this: it's counted as a one-credit course, as well as being a special type of pass-fail, called satisfactory-unsatisfactory, where the difference is in how GPA is calculated. Basically, this all means that even though I will have to have grades and whatnot, the grade will be rather unimportant. As a con, students will be rather unmotivated by bad grades. As a pro, the students who sign up will probably be extremely motivated by desire to learn the language itself. So, I can actually put very little focus on grading. (Also, note that at Rice it's really common for students to change around their schedule quite a lot for the first two weeks. I've been factoring that in to exactly how my lesson plans will work.) Many of my plans are very flexible, so I'm welcoming as many criticisms and new ideas as possible right now. For now, I think that's best done through this mailing list, but I'm sure people will eventually need my direct email address: jandew+lojban@gmail.com (don't worry about cluttering my email -- gmail will tag anything you send to the "+lojban" email address) Also, I will probably be on the IRC almost all the time after school's out, around May 4th. Thanks to the awesome Lojbanists who have already helped me so much, and to the help I know I'll get in the future! (This community is pretty excellent, in my opinion.) co'o djandus -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.