Introduction

Hello all, and welcome to my third attempt at a blog here on Blogger: Contemplating CALL!

I've never been very persistent when it comes to maintaining a blog, so most of my past efforts have fizzled out and faded from anyone's radar pretty quickly. This blog, however, is a part of my coursework in my latest graduate school class on computer assisted language learning (CALL), so at least I know it will be alive and active for at least the duration of the summer. Who knows, maybe being forced to update a blog for a few weeks will finally train me to regularly pay attention to my other blogs - both those I've sadly abandoned in the past and those I've merely thought about for the future.

For anyone who happens to stumble upon this blog, I suppose a short introduction is in store. My name is Danielle, and I'm currently in my 5th semester of pursuing an M.S.Ed. in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education through Indiana University Bloomington's online degree program. I currently live in southern Indiana, where I work as a paraprofessional in an elementary school computer lab. Up until this month I was known as the world language paraprofessional, where I worked with the students in grades K-4 to learn about various world languages and cultures when I wasn't helping them navigate the Rosetta Stone language-learning software. Unfortunately, due to various circumstances the world language program no longer exists, so it looks like I'll need to wait until I can start IU's Secondary Transition to Teaching program next year before I can get back into a second language classroom again. Until then, it looks like this upcoming school year will be spent helping students use reading software on the computers instead of anything related to second language - but at least I still tutor some Japanese English language learners (ELLs) on the side to keep myself busy!

I also still have an interest in learning more about using computers and technology to help students learn languages after my time as a world language para, hence I've decided to take this course on CALL to better understand how I might be able to efficiently use it in the classroom in the future. Hopefully this blog will be an interesting journey into the details of CALL - both for me and for anyone who happens to read this! Welcome to my blog, and thanks for reading!