Life Long Learning

I tried out Chinswing and it is very simple to set up and start using.

There is a nice interface with a search feature so I immediately searched for EFL and
left a message on a discussion about using Chinswing in EFL/ESL teaching. It was nice to listen to some of the webheads there.

Main elements are learners need a reason to post, topic should be compelling, this could be a good area for practice.

It made me think that it would be excellent for EXAM practice too (aaagh!) . Some of my learners are preparing for IELTS and we could try to get some international learners
involved to share ideas on the “Speaking Topics”. They do the oral alone and
one part requires a one minute monologue following a prompt the examiner gives.

For example:

• What makes some people sound boring?
• Can you give examples of effective speakers, perhaps a salesperson or one of your friends?
• How do effective speakers keep the attention of their listeners?
• How important is non-verbal communication, such as facial expressions and gestures, when speaking?

This I think would lead to interesting points and hopefully provide them with some
useful ideas for sounding more interesting too

Chinswing is useful because you can listen on the website, by simply returning to (or bookmarking) the discussion that you wish to follow, and seeing what’s new. You
can also add any discussion to your “watch list”. This watch list is easily placed on your user page (to access user page just click on your or someone else’s icon). This
means all the discussions your interested in can be easily accessed from one
place. Useful because I can see that sending some students off to sites like
this could easily lead to disaster with them getting lost and energy might be
dispersed.

You can also Subscribe using the RSS/Podcast feed link. By using RSS reader/aggregator or podcast receiver software, you can be automatically
alerted when someone adds a message to that particular discussion. It says this method is for more advanced users!!!

I like the fact that using podcast receiver software, you can have any new messages automatically transferred to your mp3 player for listening on-the-go! iTunes/iPod users should use the one-click “Add to iTunes” link. So that makes it highly compatible.

I think it looks interesting and worth exploring in a little more depth but I’m wondering how necessary something like this is for the majority of our “audio” projects.

I think we often find ourselves setting things up with a limited group of learners who are possibly exchange audio comments with another class and this could be better served by some of te other software we have seen.

Chinswing does allow them to listen to other discussions and you will get a wider range of topics and accents but I think in many learning contexts we would need to be careful – they might listen to something they should be and it’s difficult to know exactly how “censored” recording are. Just a thought to bear in mind.

I also noticed that some of the channels haven’t got any discussions. So when I clicked on World Travel there was nothing to listen to.

My search for two random words “Vesuvius! (I live 30kms away from this active volcano ! and “cooking” returned no audio recordings either – a teacher would need to check then which topics were appropriate and available. Maybe empty themes would motivate learners even more! And one could work on creating an audio wikipedia…