On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 2:30 PM, djandus
<jandew@gmail.com> wrote:
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
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