I hope everyone was successful in their most important homework assignment (having a good weekend).  I had a nice time with my wife's family (photos here), but it was challenging being offline for almost 24 hours, and I was very glad to get home.  I had downloaded most of your work so was able to read through some of it while offline and finished looking through it all last night.  I will be sending you some individual comments later today, but a couple of general comments...

• You are a great class!  I've been very impressed with the determination, positive learning attitude, and collaborative spirit you have shown as a class. As an educator, I find my job most satisfying when I'm able to help people learn something that is meaningful and useful to them.  This has been a very satisfying teaching experience for me. 
• As some of you mentioned, it's impossible to learn all the material covered in this course in only two weeks. So True!  When I taught this course in New Hampshire during a 12 week session, students found it overwhelming, so to condense everything into only 10 days makes it even more impossible to absorb everything. Just a reminder to enjoy sampling  from the 'CALL buffet' and don't expect to finish everything you put on your plate. All of the materials on EFL537.com will remain where they are for the foreseeable future, so you can always come back after the course when you're hungry again. 

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The goal of week#2 is for you to focus on the aspects of CALL that you find most interesting and potentially useful in your teaching and to 'document your learning'.  By 'documenting your learning' I mean using all of this week's assignments (reading reviews, delicious bookmarks, daily reflections, etc.) to show and tell me what you've learned.  I will be available from 9am~noon each day to answer questions - please skype text the group chat or (if that's not working) use the EFL537 chat room to make contact.

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Week#2 Assignments  these are assignments for the whole week, not just today - please don't worry :)

• Complete the  Week#2 Questionnaire

• Continue Exploring  the CALL Buffet and adding bookmarks to your Delicious account. 
  By the end of this week you should have at least 30 websites bookmarked and properly tagged  in your Delicious account.  Feel free to share information with your classmates as you make interesting discoveries. (I'm especially impressed when I see someone has added a few bookmarks each day as opposed to adding all 30 in a day or two - looks more like the student used the tool as intended and bookmarked sites as he/she discovered them as opposed to thinking, "OK, I want to finish the Delicious assignment - I'll bookmark 30 sites now and be done with it". )

• This week's readings: Updated
  You will need to find two one more reading that are about a topic (or topics) in which you are especially interested.  Originally, there was going to be two more reading reviews required during Week#2, but I've changed that only one more, so that if you prefer to spend time on other assignments, you can. If you want to do two (or more) additional reading reviews, that's great. Follow your learning passions.
  To find the readings, you will need to look at the EFL537 Reading List, the LearningCall.net Readings Index, or the Custom Search of CALL related journals.
   Before writing your Reading Reviews, please  let me know which readings you plan to review by posting a brief description and the website address (URL) of the article here: http://www.efl537.com/forum/week2-readings-topics
   Reading Review#3 is due July 28. 
  
  
• Continue writing daily reflections on your Posterous.com blog.
  By the end of the course, you should have at least 8 reflections.  Feel free to post additional reflections and other material there, but only 8 reflections are required. 

• Final Report/Presentation - This is a summary of what you spent most of Week#2 focusing on. It can be a written report, slide presentation, and/or audio recording discussing the area of CALL you focused on during Week#2.  Include links to any relevant  readings, resources, or websites. Please focus on one or more of these questions:
  
  • Which aspects of CALL are you most likely to use in your current (or near future) teaching environment? Tell me some specifics about how you will implement it. 
  • Which CALL skills/tools are you most interested in learning more about after this course? How can you do so? 
  • What are the biggest obstacles you face in actually making use of CALL tools?  How can you (and the entire educational system) overcome these obstacles?
  There is no fixed length requirement, but if you submit a basic written report, I suggest keeping it between 600~1000 words. The size of other types of submissions (slideshow, audio, video) is up to you - however much you need to say what you want to say.
  Due August 2. 
  
• Week#2  Skills  
  All Week#2 Technical Skills are OPTIONAL !  I will still present one Skill Training Unit each day which will include an optional task.  
  Today's optional skill is Image & Image Editing 
  
  If you would prefer to focus on other skills or Week#2 tasks, please feel free to do so.  These guides are here so that you can learn about these skills if you wish, but if you are not interested in a particular skill or you find it very difficult or stressful, I don't want you to waste your time and energy on it.  I'd much rather you focus on further developing skills you've already learned or focusing on other Week#2 assignments that are more meaningful to you. 
  
  
  The chart below is still being updated

Skill Guide	Screencast	Optional Task (see bottom of each Skill Guide)
Image Editing	Watch	Take a screenshot, crop it and resize it. Then attach it to a blog post on EFL537.com
Video	(none)	(no task)
Digital StoryTelling
Social Networking	(none)	Register for a few social networks and reflect on your experiences on your blog
Skills we probably won't cover during the course, but you may be interested in exploring
Google Tools
Blogging & RSS	(none)	Subscribe to several blogs using Google reader
Chat	(none)	(no task)
File Storage	Watch Download	Create an Esnips account, upload files there, and update your EFl537.com profile
Site Building Options	(none)	Create a site at Posterous.com, Wikispaces.com, or other free site hosts.
Slidecasting