Today, I finished adding content and organizing the Second Language Acquisition page for the class wiki - at least for the Principles of learning class!  My main goal was to leave this page organized to the point where other participants, who are interested in the field of SLA, can continue to work on it - present and future!  I feel the layout of the page is logical and effectively highlights the different theories that have developed in the field of SLA over time, at least the main ones!  During this process, I was able to link a lot of the theories to the content that already existed on the class wiki so I believe that this page is a great addition to the site as SLA is very multidisciplinary.

Looking at the finished content, I wish I could have completed more of the page, at least to the stage where I had a brief summary of each of the listed theories, not to mention, I was very eager to work on the Stephen Krashen section.  However, due to time limitations, I decided to focus on what I could finish at the start of the page which were sections 1 to 3.2.1.

Outside of changes to the main page, I was also able to add content to the following  links:

Grammar Translation Method
Series Method
Direct Method

My last edits of the day were to delete all the placeholders that I had on the page.

I feel learning about the class wiki was a great learning experience.  It was confusing at the start but it got easier as time went by.

 I look forward to seeing how my contributions lead to further developments on this site.

Today, I continued to organize the Second Language Acquisition page to cover the development of this field from the 1960s to the present.  I linked some more theories and theorists to other information pages, some which existed (green), others did not (blue).

The Grammar-Translation Model
The Direct Method
The Audio-Lingual Method
Larry Selinker
Cognitive Approach
Community Language Learning
The Natural Approach
Silent Period
Input Hypothesis
Total Physical Response (TPR)
Communicative Language Teaching
Functional-Notional Approach
Michael Long
Interaction Hypothesis
Merrill Swain
Output Hypothesis
Richard Schmidt
Noticing Hypothesis
Eclecticism
Sociocultural Theory

I feel that my overview of the development of SLA over the past 50+ years is a good start to this page. At this point, it is in no way comprehensive but over time other participants can improve upon it by adding to this page.  Over the next few days, I will start adding some information to the new links (highlighted in blue) while adding to and/or editing those links that already existed (highlighted in green).

Second Language Acquisition 

Today, I started to organize the Second Language Acquisition page by creating the following sections:

Applied Linguistics
Second Language Acquisition
Overview of Second Language Acquisition
Pre-1960's
1970's

Under the Overview of Second Language Acquisition, I created the links to the following pages:

S. Pit Corder 
Monitor Model
Stephen Krashen
Noam Chomsky
Universal Grammar
Skill Acquisition Theory
Connectionism

The links I highlighted in green were to pages that already existed on the class wiki.  The links, highlighted in blue, are new editions to the wiki.  For these new editions, I added content to S.Pit Corder today and will be adding content to the other ones at a later date.

My goal for the Second Language Acquisition is to give a summary of the major contributing theorists and theories in the field of SLA from 1960 to the present day.  I will try to do this in chronological order even though many of these developments span decades while others revisited from time to time due to the cylindrical nature of this field.

New Page Created for "Second Language Acquisition"

Today, Bill created a new Main Page entitled "Second Language Acquisition".  I wrote a message on the "Help Wanted (work to be done)" page as well as invited contributions by writing the following message on the Second Language Acquisition page:

"On June 26th, 2014 Bill was kind enough to create this Main Page for Second Language Acquisition as this academic discipline if very broad based and much of its history relates closely with the area of cognitive psychology.

My planned contribution (which can easily be adopted by others!)is to start organizing this page.  To kick start the page, I would like to see a brief introduction to SLA, followed by a list of key theorists and theories in the field.  The information presented on this page, can be easily linked to content already available in the "Theorists" and "Theories" pages which should aid in its development.

Thanks,

Tyler

I am hopeful that I will be able to generate some collaborative efforts from the class.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Dr. William Hunter

After tonight's lecture, I decided to do, as planned, a little background research about Dr. William Hunt.  I found the following video which is hosted at:  http://www.education.uoit.ca/research/researcher-profiles/dr.-william-hunter.php

I found out that his research areas include Leadership and change in higher education, online learning and social cohesion, teacher education, and technology and learning.  In the video, Bill talked about his current research which is focused on online communication as a way of enhancing community cohesion and about his interest in the ways telecommunications technologies can be used to bring people together across diverse religious, ethnic, and political boundaries.  He also talked about the "Dissolving Boundaries Project" (founded by Roger Austin) where teachers are working with children in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to improve the relationships of children in the north and south.  At the end of the video, Bill compared this work to other work being conducted in Newfoundland, Canada, the United States and in Europe.

I also found further information at the following links:

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/bill-hunter/30/9a3/a97
http://www.thestar.com/news/2007/03/12/teacher_colleges_face_glut.html

I also took some time to read his journal article he wrote with Roger Austin entitled "ICT Policy and Implementation in Education: cases in Canada, Northern Ireland and Ireland which is located in the European Journal of Education, Vol. 48, No. 1, 2013.

After researching more about Bill, I went to the "Bill Hunter" page on the class wiki to add/edit some content about our professor only to find that this page is locked.  I will ask Bill to unlock it so that I may make some improvements.  Hopefully, he's in agreement as this is one of my planned contributions!

My contributions to the class wiki today consisted of:

1) Adding Rod Ellis and Michael Long to the "Theorists" page and linking each name to a content page.

Rod Ellis  
Michael Long

For now, I copied and pasted a bio for each theorist from wikipedia.com as a placeholder.  I will come back later to edit this page.  I would like to provide more detailed information about each individual and introduce the key theories they made to the field of SLA, most notably Task-based Learning (Ellis) and Interaction Hypothesis (Long).  

2) Provided a few links under "Jing" on the following page. My first link was a video interviewing Russel Standard about how he uses Jing to provide feedback to his ELLs.  Interesting enough, Russel is the person who I give most credit to for getting me interested in the field of Educational Technology.  I have been been watching his inspiring demo videos for about 5 years now including the one on how to use blogger, the platform for creating and hosting this blog.

Planned Contributions

To familiarize myself with the content of the class wiki, I navigated through the different links present on the main page. 

The first tab that drew my attention was the "Educational Thinkers" page located at http://wikis.apa.uoit.ca/wikis/EDUC5001-SEP10/index.php/Educational_Thinkers I followed a link to a page dedicated to Bill Hunter http://wikis.apa.uoit.ca/wikis/EDUC5001-SEP10/index.php/Bill_Hunter  One of my planned contributions is to check the UOIT website, as well as the class blackboard, for any additional information about our Principle of Learning professor and update this information. 

On the Educational Thinkers page, I didn't notice many key names in the field of SLA so I decided to continue my search on the "Theorists" page located at: http://wikis.apa.uoit.ca/wikis/EDUC5001-SEP10/index.php/Theorists  However, there weren't many names present on this page either although I did notice a few names including Krashen and Vygotsky.  At this time, I decided that part of my planned contributions will be to add some notable theorists in area of SLA. 

To decide on a list key theorists and their theories to add to the class wiki, I did a search for "SLA" in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Language_Acquisition I was impressed by the amount of information on this page including language transfer, differences between 1st and 2nd language acquisition, learner language, interlanguage, sequences of acquisition, comprehensible input, Universal Grammar, Long's Interactional Hypothesis etc and other theories/theorists.  This page, also described the cognitive approach to SLA and the Computational Model (which is in direct contrast with linguistic theories) as well as sociocultural factors. 

My other planned contributions, are to add the following names to the "Theorists" page:  Michael Long, Rod Ellis, Gardner.  I would also like to ask Dr. Hunter, if he would like to add a main page for SLA to the class Wiki. If he is in agreement, I could use this page to start the work of introducing SLA and how it is tied closely with the fields of psychology and education.  By organizing this page for present and future contributions, it would allow for key theories/theories to be inputted for SLA.  My vision is to have this information provided through links to the other pages that already exist on the class wiki especially the "Theorists" and "Theories"  previously mentioned.  

My last planned contribution, to the class wiki, is to edit and add content to the Learning Technologies Page at: http://wikis.apa.uoit.ca/wikis/EDUC5001-SEP10/index.php/Learning_Technologies  As technology is continually changing and adapting, I see a need for this information to be continually reviewed and updated. 

    

 

Initial Contributions

My first blog contribution, was to add a page to introduce myself http://wikis.apa.uoit.ca/wikis/EDUC5001-SEP10/index.php/Tyler_Pollard which I linked to my name on the author's page http://wikis.apa.uoit.ca/wikis/EDUC5001-SEP10/index.php/Authors 

To learn how to navigate the site and post/edit content, I watched the following youtube video: