Completed this week

I read 7 articles this week and added my notes to the Article Notes document in Google Docs. I found an article that included a rubric for creating content on YouTube and I plan to use that for any videos I create to teach culture. Most of the articles I have found so far have statistics on social media use or mobile learning.

Here are the articles that I will be removing from my literature review since they are not related:
Impact of learner engagement on attrition rates and student success in online learning: http://www.itdl.org/Journal/May_10/article01.htm - removing this from the study as it is unrelated
Open and distance education through Wireless mobile Internet: A learning model : http://itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article04.htm - removing this from the study as it is unrelated

Additionally, I'm putting an article on hold: Story thread analysis :storied lives in an online learning community of practice.  This article could be great if discussions are utilized in the social media, but at this moment I am not planning to use discussions: http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article06.HTM

To do this week
Read more articles and take notes on those articles. I still need to review my project proposal. I focused more on reading articles this past week instead of getting to the project proposal.

Completed this week
I pulled new articles from all journals except for the first two on the list.

I listed the journal names for the articles from the various journals last week. Most of those were unrelated to language learning, but still related to social media as a means of communication or instruction.

I read three articles and posted my thought, concerns, questions, and quotes I foun useful in a shared Google Document.


To do next week
I need to read more articles and look at the last two journals. Ideally I will review the project proposal this week too.

Completed this week
I searched through the journals starting from the bottom of the list. I've posted the articles I found so far and from which journals online. I was hoping to get a chance to read some of the articles but I didn't get the chance. I realize I was searching for articles in a journal incorrectly and I pulled articles from other journals. I need to reevaluate those articles to make sure they are applicable.

This week I also wrote a draft proposal for this study and posted the copyright of the study and of the paper on the study on the web page. The draft proposal is public, but must be downloaded with a software. Those involved with the study have access to the proposal directly through Google Docs.

I updated the web page for the study to include an about section, the copyright, and the proposal.


To Do Next Week
I need to review the articles and find out which journals they were from to correct my mistake. I also need to look for more articles in the journals that I selected.
I hope to have time to read several articles as well.

Completed this week
I reviewed the article: Social Media and ELT. The article explains that the brain releases dopamine when a person learns small bits of information, such as what students can find in social media. The article explains that this creates an addiction to social media. There is a video in this article where the speaker states that the instructor should ask the students which social media outlets they use and how they use it. I hadn't considered asking Spanish students this, but it might be a good idea to survey Spanish students in the Spanish department to see what social media they use now, how they use it, how often they use it, and how they feel about it being used to teach culture. This article also had some great ideas on how to use social media to teach a language. The language focus in this article was to teach English, but the same principles can be applied to Spanish.

Search ideas: social media for Spanish learner/students, social media to teach/ instructSpanish, social media for language learners/students, social media to teach/instruct languages, social media in linguistics

I also read the article: Social media, language learning tool. It descibes a major drop of interest in learning languages. It suggests several social media options and gives ideas on how to use them. I wasn't aware that Facebook had translation capability through bing. I like that the example use of social media has students use the translation and explain what went wrong in translation. It's another great idea for using social media. I was considering using most of the social media tools mentioned in this article and I'm very glad to see them mentioned. According to this article, there are few language instructors using social media.

To do next week
Find articles by using the search words I selected. Search the social media tools that I am interested in using and see if the article was correct that there are few instructors there. Put together a survey for students to see which social media tools they use, how they use them, when they use them, and how they feel about using them to learn Spanish culture. I would like to hold onto the survey until I read more articles to see what other questions I might have and the survey has been reviewed. I would also like to complete the about this study on this website.