We need this for learning Real Culture

   I have learned about integrating content and language in our daily instruction, which means that content teachers and language teachers can work collaboratively. I like this teaching practice and I found podcasts is a perfect tool for this. Let’s talk back to the integration of language and content teaching: for instance, the art teacher’s course objective today is introducing British culture, while the language teacher can choose a similar topic at the same time. In this way, students would have some interest for language class and basic knowledge for art class. Podcasts is easy to target certain topics and incorporate more than one type of material: audio, video and images. I browsed a few links and attracted by BBC World News for Children. First, I like teaching children English in future and second, it is so detailed and comprehensive. Here is one image of its category.

As we can see from the image, it incorporates parts about news, sport, weather, autos, capitals, cultures and so on, which basically can satisfy what students interest and their subjects. And even its subcategories are also very organized, the following image is under culture category:

  I chose one episode Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Northern Soul to supplement the former example, which can nicely fit into a British culture class.  

  Even for teachers who do not collaborate with content teachers, it is still a impressive podcasts choice. From this Podcasts, student can learn the real culture. Language cannot be separated from culture and if so, it would be meaningless. Surely, there are more wonderful resources out there. Since we have podcasts, we do not need to worry about missing the critical part.

What is ePals for us?

In today's globalized world, people are connected to each other in every aspects. Americans are eating Chinese food; Chinese are watching English movies. We imported Japanese cars and export our products to every corner of the world. However, it is not only the concrete products. All things around us convey their unique culture and thoughts to us. we are in a time that listening to different voices from all around the world. Here, I am going to talk about an education online media,  ePals, which is allowed students and teachers from long distance. Major purposes of this site are to provide quality digital content and facilitate collaboration for effective learning.

     ePals has amazing projects. Teachers can design their own projects and students who are interested in can participate. Almost all the projects are authentic, meaningful and can be finished in teamwork. For instance, a teacher can initiate a project and incorporate students from India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China to explore ancient cultures of those countries. In the end, the project can be present in the form of Powerpoint.
                                                              

      "On My Plate" is listed on their website currently. I like this project because of its topic is interesting. It is encouraging students to discuss what is "on their plates", and read what is on the plates of kids around the world. I think most people will agree that we love food! In this way, people will like to share their opinion across the different culture.

     Moreover, you can join in whatever you like in ePals through the searching engine. You can type in you preferred language, region, project and so forth.

As a future ESL teacher, I suggest ePals a effective technology tool that help students to know a more comprehensive world outside of their small own community. This is no doubt will be a good way to convey authentic culture rather that receive the second hand resources that already biased in some way. Plus, teachers can explore rich experiences of other wonderful teachers. Especially for new teachers, this is a wonderful place to learn how to manage a good class.

GoAnimate

GoAnimate is a tool that you are going to love. I have been admire those people who can make their own cartoons and regard them as genius. Well, GoAnimate will make anyone of us become one of them in a pretty easy way. Even the teachers will be motivated to show a work in front of the students, not speak of the students! Instead of asking a student to write a dialogue and hand in, we can ask students to record their won voice using GoAnimate. It possess more fun and practice students from more aspects: speaking, listening and collaborative with others. Feared of being same with others? No, no. no. It has many characters and environments there. Everyone can create their own roles in any context.

In this Mod, I made a short cartoon named “no zuo no die”. It is amazing convenient and time-effective. I guess it is more vividly than a standing teacher explaining a phrase there. Students will love this and get a impressive of what was taught. Practicing dialogue and listening and writing a story will never get boring anymore, I guess.  

Animoto

I chose to use Animoto to create a video to practice "Many Thanks"  to express my feelings about this course. It is going to the end of the semester now and I am really appreciate Dr. Burgos`s detailed guidance and other classmates` help.

 I think it is a powerful internet tool that can serve an important function in a modern ESL classroom.  I was surprised at how quick and easy it was to make something interesting and aesthetically pleasing.  There are a couple ways that short videos can be used for ESL purposes.
 It can be used to reinforce students` memorization of different knowledge points: reading, writing and listening. Teachers can either create videos or have the students create their own videos.  It will be cool to master a foreign tool and follow the English directions to complete a task. I am sure this tool will increase students` interest and motivation.

Digital Story Telling: A Cool Tool for Your Projects

Meeting Digital Story Telling is an amazing surprise in my academic career. Who does not want to present a fresh and stunning project in his/her class? Digital Story Telling will satisfy your multiple requests for an interesting and comprehensive presentation. According to 7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling, Digital storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. Well, basically, Digital storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. From the scenario that provided by this article, we can see that David incorporated many sophisticated multimedia components- audio clips, narration of himself, as well as his family`s private photographs, which is very impressive to his classmates and let his classmates see another David.

 One of the earliest large-scale digital storytelling projects is sponsored by the BBC to capture and share stories from around the United Kingdom that reflect different local histories and cultures. Today the use of digital storytelling is being practiced in neighborhood community centers, schools, libraries and businesses, by novice technology users to those with advanced skills. The oral tradition of knowledge transfer and exchange has served as the basis for education and digital stories also build on this model by incorporating rich, dynamic media. “This dynamic creates an opportunity to reflect on life and find deep connections with the subject matter of a course or with an out -of-class experience, such as a trip abroad.”(7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling) It will be much more fun to be an editor who organized his own experience than just being a speaker in front of the classroom.

 From the website The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling, you can see many amazing examples made by others. And I believe you will be glad to have a try after you watched those interesting works. Technology is no longer a tangential part of education and actually, I can`t wait to applying Digital Storytelling in my next presentation now. I believe it will not disappoint us.   

Third World Farmer: a game that improve students' ability and personality

       Third World Game is a serious game and it has a clearly story line about a family survive through many hardship. According to  A Comparison of Computer Game and Language-Learning Task Design Using Flow Theory, computer-mediated activities seem to offer clear advantages over conventional classroom lessons in providing on-task feedback. This is also one big advantage of this game: whenever you finish a turn, you will get a feedback immediately. I played 36 turns and I finally won.

        The success is really not that easy: they may encounter natural disaster, civil war and economic crisis and so on. Therefore, the family’s income is very unstable. Plus, I need to cure the family member’s health problem and life problem. It is just so hard to let the family live avoid suffering and live a happy life. However, it is not boring anyway. It not only has plantings like corn, wheat and nuts and so on. It also can make money through raising chicken, pigs or cattle. You can also use the farm appliance to explore the new farm. In a word, you never get bored of doing the same stuff. Through this procedure, students can learn large numbers of vocabulary, especially farm words like corn, wheat, pigs, cattle, chicken and peanuts… also the words like civil war, economic crisis or pig disease and so on. The students totally will enjoy the game outside the classroom without teachers’ guidance. Besides the acquiring the large vocabulary, the students can also learn about how hard to support a family in third world and how lucky they are and how wars can be harmful to a normal family. In a word, this game will enhance students’ description ability in an ESL classroom as well as broaden their vocabulary.I will assess the students by letting them write a reflection about their experience while using the vocabulary they acquired during the game.
       This game would be very useful in ESL classroom and  I would like to implement this game in my future teaching career.

Phantasy Quest: the Desire to Keep You Going on

Gamification is a brand new definition to me. As in what is gamification, It refers to the concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging. Adding game components to a course can result in several real benefits. Simulations can help students sharpen ability or work out a novel solution. But perhaps the most commonly cited benefit of gamification is that it fosters student engagement. Where it functions well, gamification facilitates the formation of learning communities, giving new opportunities online or during course discussions to socialize or work as teams. In this sense, gamification has the potential to help build connections among members of the academic community, drawing in shy students, supporting collaboration, and engendering interest in course content that students might not have otherwise explored.( 7 Things You Should Know About Gamification)

In this mod, I played the Phantasy Quest which is really engaging. I played the escape games several times before since I like the way it appealing people to keep going on. It activates the people’s curiosity and I enjoyed this game. Actually, I tried seven times and failed. I solved this by the walkthrough at last anyway. I think I can set the keywords (the objects) as the necessary vocabulary in this game. In this way, the students will pay attention to the vocabulary they need to learn. What’s more, students can learn how to describe a story or give the direction to others. Let’s take vocabulary object for example; the subject in this game needs to pick the coconut, rope, and lantern and so on. Then these necessary words will become the words the learners need to acquire. When the learners need these objects to complete the game, naturally they will pay attention to these words. The teachers should give the clues at the beginning since this is really a time-consuming game. The vocabulary need to be told ahead of the game. I will use the images in this game because it will surely impress the students’ memorization. After then finish the game, I would ask them to retell how they get through this game. In this way, I can tell if the students master the objective vocabulary. 

How many benefits can you imagine educators can gain from micro-blogging?

       Social media offers some great opportunities for learning in the classroom, bringing together the ability to collaborate, access worldwide resources, and find new and interesting ways to communicate in one easily accessible place. Teachers and educators around the world have found innovative ways to use Twitter as a teaching tool, and I would like to share many of these great ideas here with you.

      The first thing came up to my mind is we can involve every student into the discussion. Since Buffalo's winter can be really tough sometimes, I really think acquiring knowledge at home is  inevitable for most of us. One example from 60 Inspiring Examples of Twitter in the Classroom also mentioned this aspects: Keep students in the loop- Using hashtags on Twitter, students who were not able to make it to class can follow along and stay on top of the conversation. I also will benefit from the functions of Parent communication in my future career in which parents can sign up for twitters and communicate with teachers anywhere conveniently since not every parent will have certain time to drop by school to attend a meeting. 

       Another interesting application of Twitter I found in the article 35 interesting ways to use Twitter in the classroom is that we can even use it to play academic games,such as the word game showed in this article. what is the most amazing part is we can download the App into our portable device and acquire the game everywhere, such as on the bus, subway and during one class break. 

       All in all , technology will inevitably grow into our daily learning. I believe it will show more valuable features as we explore more about it.  

Edtechchat and me

Edtechchat and me

        Twitter-chat is a brand new technology for me. I wish I could use earlier since I found it was convenient, comprehensive and effective. What a great communication device to benefit our professional development. First, everyone interested in this topic can attend to this chat group. People from different background offered their own valuable perspectives. It truly broaden my horizon and friend circle. Secondly, everyone can ask a question and you can get an immediate answer to the question. Although the answers may not authentic, you can get a hint from others' inspiration. Also, I like the the simple, quick exchange of the information.  As a second language learner, I really not good at reading a long article to grab one simple subject. Long articles really cost me so much time while twitter-chat is way too much better than that. We can acquire huge amount of information in a  brief and relax way.  However, though I admit we can acquire different opinions from all over the world, I found the interface sometimes is too chaotic. I know maybe I am not familiar to this new educational tool. Still, I think some change need to be done to improve the clarity of a chat "room".

Classroom 2.0

Classroom 2.0is very beneficial for we TESOL students. It offers social network for those interested in Web 2.0, Social Media, and Participative Technologies in the classroom. we can participate in the great discussions here, to receive event notifications, and to find and connect with colleagues. It include over 77,000 members from 188 countries! Classroom 2.0 is a free, community-supported network. We "beginners" will find this a supportive comfortable place to start being part of the digital dialog. I cannot wait for the next exploration in this group!

What does a Learner like in Nowadays?

       A leaner is like a board of a boat. Boards join together to across the river and arrive the destination. Small number of boards may also can get us across the river but you never know what part of boat is leaking and may lead to danger in future. While with more boards and larger boat, you may arrive the destination loaded with much more treasures. If just one board, it will be lost in the river--no direction and can carry nothing to anywhere. That is what I realized from the Connectivism: A Learning Theory for a Digital Age. In this article,Siemens posits that Our small world networks are generally populated with people whose interests and knowledge are similar to ours. Finding a new job, as an example, often occurs through weak ties. This principle has great merit in the notion of serendipity, innovation, and creativity. That is to say, more boards can create more treasures.

       I also agree with one point in his video The Network is the Learning. It says that the network is learning, the way we connect to either individuals is largely responsible for our ability to continue to stay current in the future. What I know nowadays is not as much as important as my ability to stay current since knowledge change rapidly. It is true that if i am not continue learning, i will become obsolete in my particular field or within a particular knowledge space. Network enable us to get in touch with individuals in similar field around the world, no matter in Canada, US or China.  Since the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete is shorter and shorter now, the ability of know how to gain knowledge surely act a foundation part of our learning.

Diigo and Scoop.it : Which one do you like?

Recently, Diigo and Scoop came to my life. They are both endearing technologies which will surely help me a lot in the future. Which one is "better"? or more suitable for you? I would like to compare them in the following paragraph.



For a start, let’s talk about their similarity. Scoop it. and DIIGO allow you to access information you have stored online from anywhere-not just your home computer. Both of them are very straightforward and easy to navigate. Besides, both of them can be followed by your partners and to follow others.

For DIIGO, It allows articles to be highlighted to reflect on significant passages or ideas.  This is an excellent tool for remembering significant pieces form the articles.  Websites are listed on your home library and are easily accessible to your followers.  DIIGO also allows for very easy annotation and website addition to your library, so it is easy to continue to add new articles, websites and ideas. For Scoop.it, it will suggest related materials for you automatically such as videos, articles and interviews.

DIIGO and Scoop it. cannot replace each other's place. There is no better or worse. What can you consider is which one is more suitable for certain individual. I hope we will explore more benefits from teaching technologies in the future.

Are You Already Outdated for Your Students?

I also want to ask: who seriously believe that locking twenty-five students and an adult in one small room for several hours a day, every day is the best way for students to acquire knowledge?  In China, there are far more than this number in one small classroom. I suffered more than 15 years of this to get into university. When I become a teacher, I do not want to let the next generation to replicate my experience.

I do not mean studying in classrooms is negative. However, the new generation is growing up in a totally different environment, which is more dynamic, colorful and more technical---they are living driven by smart phone, drive through, microwave,download-it-from-the internet,media. I know I must be innovative to keep their interest and to inspire them. Comparing to their spare time, it would be normal to show impatience to lectures for students.

  I really agree one sentence in the video"Educational Change Challenge": if you put a doctor of  a hundred years ago in today`s operating room, she would be lost; yet if you placed a teacher of  a hundred years ago into one of today`s classroom, she would n`t skip a beat. Education model`s change was dwarfed by the great change of technology. Teacher need to exist in the space the students exist, understand their culture.You have no credibility if you are not where they are. Therefore, multimedia teaching is an unavoidable tendency  in nowadays.

Bloggers for Students and Teachers

I am sure there is a popular saying that the Internet adversely impact the relationship between individuals. While, at least, for blog, i need to say it help us to build a closer relationship with students.

As Rita Zeinstejer said in Blogging in Language Learning, few students will say no if you ask them to surf the Internet. students will not only like to surf the Internet, but also like to display their own voice on the Internet. Everyone can has his/her audience. 

For example, if you distributed handouts of a literature and ask the students to prepare their own point of view in next class, you may not receive many valuable ones. But if you post a literature on your blog, and ask your students come to comment. That would be different.  They know their view will be viewed by teachers, friends and even the one they have a crush on. they may probably forward this literature and dig it in a deeper way to show their intelligence.

       Students can also display their private stories and pictures to get others know them better. So do the teachers. in this way, the teacher may find one silent student in classroom actually have many amazing shining points. and this will become one very valuable material to apply in your classroom. While for students, they will see a out-of- class teacher, surely teacher's personal stuff like teachers' beautiful vacation pictures will short their distance and enhance improve the efficiency of the class.

      Besides, using bloggers to keep your teaching journals is also a great idea.  What you experienced today in class and what have you learned about one article? Students probably like to see a passage about their real life and see themselves from a different perspective. All these can be one step to a higher proficiency of your teaching career.However, when you publish your class experience you may think about others' feelings who involved in your story. 

        Also, blogger is a way of communication, which is an important in Language teaching, it can engaged your students in a relax and free way. The ACTFL -- American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, also suggests communication as a standard in foreign language teaching. It requires the students to provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions and exchange opinions.  all these standards can be satisfied in bloggers. While I believe the more you get familiar with this language teaching tool, the more benefits you will get in your teaching career,  More language teaching standards can be found in ACTFL Standards. In this website, you can explore more teaching requirements and may find bloggers can help you to achieve that.

Teachers' Benefits and Standards of Blog

As a teacher, keeping a teaching journal will help you to analyze your professional skill and have a better understanding of your students.

What you experienced today in class and what have you learned about one article? all these can be one step to a higher proficiency of your teaching career.However, when you publish your class experience you may think about others' feelings who involved in your story. 

Publishing words also need to meet some standard for you aim of building a blog. I  will teach English as a second language in future and therefore need to satisfy the following standards:

COMMUNICATION
Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions
Standard 1.2: Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics
Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.　( from ACTFL  standards)

More standards can be seen from the following URL:

http://www.actfl.org/advocacy/discover-languages/advocacy/discover-languages/advocacy/discover-languages/resources-1?pageid=3392

If as a teacher you can help your students achieve this, you are succeed in creating a meaningful teaching tool .

Closer Relationship between Teachers and Students

 I am sure there is a popular saying that the Internet adversely impact the relationship between individuals. While, at least, for blog, i need to say it help us to build a closer relationship with students.

 As Rita Zeinstejer said in Blogging in Language Learning, few students will say no if you ask them to surf the Internet. students will not only like to surf the Internet, but also like to display their own voice on the Internet. Everyone can has his/her audience. 

For example, if you distributed handouts of a literature and ask the students to prepare their own point of view in next class, you may not receive many valuable ones. But if you post a literature on your blog, and ask your students come to comment. That would be different.  They know their view will be viewed by teachers, friends and even the one they have a crush on. they may probably forward this literature and dig it in a deeper way to show their intelligence.

Students can also display their private stories and pictures to get others know them better. So do the teachers. in this way, the teacher may find one silent student in classroom actually have many amazing shining points. and this will become one very valuable material to apply in your classroom. While for students, they will see a out-of- class teacher, surely teacher's personal stuff like teachers' beautiful vacation pictures will short their distance and enhance improve the efficiency of the class.

LAI 590! i am coming ~

happy horse year~ everyone~