About
I'm Charles Nelson, an assistant professor of ESL writing at Kean University, Union, NJ, USA, and I've been here teaching first-year and second-year composition to non-native speakers of English--mostly immigrants who have attended U.S. public schools--since September, 2002. Before that, I taught basically the same course to international students at The University of Texas at Austin (1997-2002) and a mix of reading and writing to students in the Preparatory Program of Marmara University, Istanbul (1990-1994).
Teaching first-year composition to non-native speakers of English and researching how people learn in general, and more specifically learn to write, is a lot of fun. Much of this fun is trying to formulate a theory to guide my practice. Theories influencing me considerably are radical constructivism (Ernst von Glasersfeld), activity theory (Yrjö Engeström), and complexity theory (John Holland). None of these theorists research second language writing; however, their theories have great potential to help us understand, rather than merely describe, how students learn to write.
Thus, I'm very much interested in how technology can facilitate students learning: learning to read and write, learning other languages, and learning in general. One important point is to keep the learning in the forefront and the technology in the background. Technology should support our learning goals, not be the learning goal. And technology should not simply replicate what we're already doing in the classroom. It's too expensive for that. Rather, we need to take advantage of technology's affordances in promoting interaction and social learning.
topics
blogroll
- A difference
- bgblogging
- Blogging pedagogy
- Bud the Teacher
- Edublog Insights
- educause
- Educational Weblogs
- EFL Geek
- EFL in Japan
- elgg
- Explorations in Learning
- incorporated subversion
- Kairosnews
- Linguistic LIfe
- Neil Whitfield's English and ESL Blog
- Stephen's Web
- Using Wiki in Education
- Weblogg-ed
- www tools for education
websites
- ACTFL
- CCCC
- EducationNews.Org
- electronicportfolios
- NABE
- NCTE
- NECSI
- NJTESOL/NJBE
- TESOL
- Miscellaneous links
events
- May 22: The New Jersey Writing Alliance
- May 23-24: NJTESOL/NJBE Spring Conference
- Jun 8-10: Symposium on Second Language Writing
- Jun 27-28: Transforming Teaching with Technology
- Jun 29: NJTESOL/NJBE Summer Seminar with Fred Carrigg
- Aug 4-6: Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences Conference
- Aug 7-9: NJ Dept of Education conference
- Sep 30: Tinderbox Weekend Boston
- Oct 5-7: Thomas R. Watson Conference on Rhetoric and Composition
- Oct 20: Michigan College English Assoc Conference
- Nov 16-19: ACTFL 2006
- Nov 16-21: NCTE 2006
acknowledgements
This resource was made possible in part by a grant from the New Jersey Education for Language Minority Students Program awarded to the ESL Program at Kean University.colophon
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