Incorporating a Smartphone Video in a Theatrical Activity to Promote an Authentic Language Learning Environment in a Lower Secondary School Classroom Theatrical activities have been used to promote an authentic learning environment. However, the incorporation of simple daily technology, like smartphones, to enable students to produce a video of their theatrical activities has not been explored in the Indonesian language learning classroom. This paper documents a video project conducted by lower secondary school students at a private school in Jakarta, Indonesia to examine whether a video project task could help create an authentic learning environment in a language classroom setting. Although the benefits of theatrical activities to promote authenticity in studentsxe2x80x99 learning experiences are evident in the literature, only a few students have access to such benefits. Many students were reluctant to get involved in the theatrical activities prepared by the teachers and only one cohort of students successfully completed the advertisement video assignment. Teachersxe2x80x99 instructional issues as well as studentsxe2x80x99 motivation and commitment to work collaboratively were identified as the barriers to produce the video.

Collaborating with xe2x80x98familiarxe2x80x99 strangers in mobileassisted environments: The effect of socializing activities on learning EFL writing Abstract   Learners in computer or mobileassisted collaborative learning environments could remain anonymous or unfamiliar, as educators might not provide explicit socializing activities with the assumption that effective interactions could happen naturally in these situations. However, from the perspectives of social presence, it was hypothesized that for learners who were unfamiliar to their peers in online collaborative learning environments, performing explicit socializing activities prior to learning phases would help them have better learning performance, experience lower levels of working memory load, and experience higher levels of social presence than performing implicit socializing activities. This research was conducted to test the hypotheses with 60 participants. The results showed that providing explicit socializing activities to unfamiliar learners in mobileassisted collaborative learning environments increased the level of social presence, facilitated their acquisition of complex cognitive skills such as EFL argument essay writing skills, and reduced the level of cognitive load in learning. These results are discussed in light of human cognitive architecture and the social presence theory.