ESL Podcast--to learn real English

         The Podcast I chose was from ESL Pod--the episode 885 Talking to a bank teller. Even though I have been in and out of Bank of America for several times, I am not sure I talked to the teller in a very right way. So I took this chance to learn some specific words, phrases and dialogues using in a bank. And what is more important is that I can use the series of ESL Podcast in my future teaching. It will be a very useful resource website for my students to learn and be familiar with real English conversations.
        In this Talking to a bank teller podcast, the speaker firstly presents a dialogue between a person who works in the bank and Antonio. It is a normal conversation about how to deposit and draw money and how to get cash check and pay bill. The conversation is based on real life so that students can imitate and remember all the words and phrases. The best part of the podcast is that the speaker gives a very well organized and clear explanation of the whole conversation. He points out key words like deposit,draw and cash and explain those words and phrases by real life examples. Thus, students will understand those new words and phrases by shown situations they may have been through rather than just recite them. And speakers also explain pronunciation and spelling of some complicated words like receipt,balance or transfer that may confuse beginning level English learners. Moreover, I like the way the speaker uses easier English language to explain more difficult English language. It is nice to immerse my students in a environment of English by using L1 to explain L1. In this case, students won't think about Chinese all the time.
      I like the aspect that the ESL Podcast based on real like conversation which lacks in Chinese official English textbooks. A lot of conversations I learned in China I have never heard of them in America. So what can a teacher once studying abroad bring to her students? I believe, at least, it is real English.
   

A new way to present your study--ePals

    

    Just like the website says, ePals is the place for teachers and classrooms for online collaboration. As a global community educational website, ePals provides a great stage for thousands of classrooms for students to select. Details like teachers' information, students age, location, language and brief introduction are presented  clear for students. 

    There is also an arsenal of projects for students to join in ePals. These projects are definitely interactive, cross-curricular and inclusive. For example, the project Class in New Jersey, USA Seeks Partners for Monster Writing Project. It asks students from different countries to draw pictures about monsters and narrate their pictures and exchange them with their partners in October to coincide with Halloween. It not only helps students to write and share their ideas but also gives them a chance to access to Halloween culture in a special way.Thus, in ePals, Students can research and share data with global peers. No matter what curricular students likes, such as math, sciences, languages, social and cultural studies, they can find their favorite projects to join. Furthermore, projects accomodate multiple learning styles and age ranges. If I will be an English teacher for young children, I won't worry about inadequate materials problem which is discussed a lot recently in China.

    EPals also helps students to construct their own learning communities by adding their families into their ePals network. Usually children grow up with consciousness of protecting their privacy by rejecting their parents to know their situations. And according to my experience, children get nervous when their parents try to know something from their teachers. EPals is nothing but a place to study and communicate online. It is a good place to present students' progress and success in an objective style. So it is probably better for students to share their studying outcomes with their parents.

Stupeflix--good presentation tool

    I am really happy to share my spring break vacation experience with everyone by the storytelling way. Thus, I can image how happy my students will be if they have chances to show their stories by this clear and cool way. In this way, Stupeflix can be a useful tool for students to show their periods presentations. Traditional presentations are more likely depending on memorize drafts and recite in front of peers. This is way much weaker than presentation of combination of pictures, words and even music. For me, I like this kind of romantic presentation way. And for boys who probably won't give a care about romantic, digital presentation is a nice chance to use their computer skills. Maybe girls will consult male friends.

Voice Thread--a wonderful learning tool

    I enjoyed Miao's and Fred's Voice Thread teaching very much.

    I chose Miao's Voice Thread and Fred's Voice Thread because they all selected the topic about abroad study life that allowed me have a lot to say.

    For teaching, Voice Thread fulfills several assessment requirements I just learned from assessment class. If I were a language teacher, I will use Voice Thread to assess my students. Firstly, I can assign assignment in the Voice Thread according to what I teach. For instance, if I teach words and phrases about directions, I can ask students to describe a picture of street by using words and phrases they just learned. It fulfills the content validity and give students a chance to practice oral expression ability. Secondly, Voice Thread won't take students a large amount of time to finish. It is very practical. Finally, Voice Thread allows students to hear from and comment on each other and allows teacher to comment on every student. It provides students with great washback. Excepts those rules, Voice Thread also offers a stage for students to play like students and teachers and to show themselves. They can learn from each other via the online communication. And the most important thing I want to mention is maybe Voice Thread provide students who live in remote places with opportunities to communicate with fresh teachers and students. As long as students have computers connected with internet, they can learn in digital classes.

Bookr, a nice tool

        My winter vacation

        I used Bookr to display my winter vacation in New York. Even though I met lots of problems when I tries to create the digital brochure, I still find bookr is very useful tool for my future teaching.

        I will let my students to use bookr to create stories. I will group them and assign them different tasks to finish assignments. I prefer to let students tell stories about Greek Methodology. Because tons of English words are originated from Greek Gods' names or Gods' exclusive abilities. During the preparation time, I hope students can learn stories behind words from their materials. I hope a storytelling assignment like this can lead students to learn something new both in online tools and English knowledge. And via the activity, they can learn how work together and present their productions to others.

Digital Storytelling creates creation

Audience at the Los Lupeños de San José exhibit., a photo by San José Library on Flickr.

        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". Digital Storytelling allows various resources as its materials. Thus, storytellers can be as creative as they can to design stories. Some curriculum experts even believe that digital storytelling can be applied to nearly any subjects because of their virtually limitless in resources requirement. And digital storytelling can also be complicated as sophisticated one. As I quoted from 7 things you should know about Digital Storytelling, "sophisticated digital stories can be interactive movies that include highly produced audio and visual effects, but a set of slides with corresponding narration or music constitutes a basic digital story". From this point of view, proficient level of digital storytelling requires high level of students' various abilities.
        Since digital storytelling is not the simple traditional oral story delivering, I can use it to improve several learning abilities of my future students. A well-formed digital storytelling needs a script. Students have to think what methods they will employ to support their stories in digital way. Which music is best? What kind of images to use? Is video better or animation? Students have to go through all trivial elements to design a practical plan. It is very helpful to improve students' organization ability. For the story telling part, students' are forced to choose a topic of their stories. Not like old days that teachers prepare everything, this time, students should choose appropriate stories which can be conveyed to particular audience, with electronic elements, in the time available. Thus, digital storytelling let students to express themselves not only with their own words but also with their own creation.

Let us be virtual farmers

      The game I chose is Farmgame on facebook. It is pretty close to Third World Farmer. But I really do not like the name which includes third world. When I was in China, I have played Happy Farm in RENREN (A Chinese style facebook) for a long time. I cannot count how many times I played the game. I grew flowers in my virtual farm and sent them to my friends.

      The first one it my facebook farm. And the second one is my RENREN farm.

      The language learning objective of the game is still vocabulary learning. I learned a large number of vegetation words through the game. And because pictures designed by facebook and RENREN are pretty close to real vegetation products. So students growing up in cities have a chance to familiar with plants, flowers and vegetables. The game also has a requirement of mathematics. Players have to run their farms well and sell their products in right seasons to earn money to buy expensive products' seeds and cultivate new farmland.

      It is a out-classroom game. So for me to assess students conveniently, and that is another reason I choose farmgame on facebook or RENREN, I will add my students as my facebook or RENREN friends. Then I can visit their farmlands all the time. After playing the game for a while, I can also hold a vegetation words competition in my class to assess students' learning outcome. Of course, I won't tell them when I am going to conduct the competition.

Let us escape from museum

      Gamification, as I quoted from Gamification, is a novice education which typically involves applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging. Gamification has been called one of the most important trends in technology by several industry experts. Gamification can potentially be applied to any industry and almost anything to create fun and engaging experiences, converting users into players.
      Teacher could use language games to enhance the interesting of learning. And students usually remember very well the knowledge they have learned via playing games.
      The game I choose today is an escape game---Museum Escape. Firstly, I tried to play the game without walkthrough. Then I found I was too positive about my escaping ability. I just could not get out of the museum. So I opened Museum Escape Walkthrough and read the instruction carefully. Then I played the game twice with a lot of fun.

      Because it is not a very difficult game which we have to admit. If I am an English teacher and try to employ the game to facilitate my students, I think the objective must be vocabulary. Even for me--an advanced L2 learner, I still learned some new words and phrases I am not familiar with. Traditional English words learning, especially in China in which the English education system is test-taking system, is reciting words and remember them. If students cannot remember them, teachers will tell them they should repeat more and more to engrave English words in their brains. I am not going to say it is a bad method. But it is better if students recite words after they understand words and can visualize words. The game provide students with great 3D pictures to visualize words. It also trigger the curiosity and ambition of winning of students, they will try their best to remember these words because they want to win. And there are different kinds of escape games online. Specific to this game, I think it s helpful for students to learn knowledge about museum and history.
      The teacher can play the role as man-made walkthrough. Because the whole walkthrough sheet may be a little bit difficult for low level students to follow. Teachers can give instruction and hints. After all, it is a game. Teachers, in my opinion, are not willing to daunt students and strike their self-confidence. I will definitely give my students walkthrough. I will prompt them with hints consistently. I hope I can use equipment like computer to play the game with students in the classroom. I prefer dynamic pictures than still pictures. For assessment part, I would like to use a competition to see whether my students have learned words. I can group them and organize a competition. At last, I will reward the winning team for their cooperation and endeavor.

Be a teacher found of learning

     

       The two blogs I read were A Must Have Guide on Using Twitter in Your Classroom and BLOGS & MICROBLOGS IN THE CLASSROOM. The formal one reads like a instruction of microblogs which is twitter's potential education usage. The later one is written from the author's personal experience to show how to use microblogs in teaching.

      I like the categories of effects of twitter that A Must Have Guide on Using Twitter in Your Classroom shows to readers. Even though I did not agree every piece of advantage of twitter in this article, I still learned a lot from it. This article classifies twitter's functions into five categories. They are separately communication, organization, resources, writing skills, and twitter exercises. My favorite function which will definitely benefit my future teaching career is resources. As I mentioned in my previous blogs, in the information era, teachers are obligated to deliver useful and helpful learning resources or tools to their students, which is better being delivered in relatively fashionable and up-to-date ways. At the same time of sharing, teachers themselves are playing the role of sponges to absorb new information all the time. For example, as mentioned in the article, teachers can ask for recommended books, teaching tools, and ideals of lessons, crowdsourcing resources for the classroom. 

      I believe even the very experienced teacher also needs to contact with  new educational information all the time. Twitter is definitely a great online public forum for teachers to learn, to follow up-to-date information. When teachers expect that students have a great attitude of learning, we should have it first.  After that, students will be affected by this attitude not from teachers' repeatedly advice but from teachers' behavior. And it is true that more and more public departments and experts are running their own twitter or microblogs. Through twitter, teachers can grab newest information from the most official statements. Or teachers can consult with experts some difficult questions even we do not have chances to meet them personally.

      The first article did not convince me of twitter's function in the field of writing skills. I remembered that I debated the topic--Can Weibo Improve Chinese Writing Level? (Weibo is like Chinese style Twitter) when I was a sophomore. I supported CAN but I lost the debate. However, in the second article BLOGS & MICROBLOGS IN THE CLASSROOM, I found the real answer. In this article, Maggie suggested that when improve writing skills, writers could use microblogs to character figure's development, gather evidence for and idea, debate an idea, and give feedback to other writers. But what I can think about year ago was that how to use 140 characters to write a fabulous passage. Now I know that I employed a wrong perspective. The key is not writing itself but information. Writing is an academic activity needs large amount of information. And twitter is great place to obtain information effectively. Once I am enlightened the way to use twitter in improving writing skills, I can teach myself with more confidence.

A Good Tool -- Classroom 2.0

      I went Through all the websites and I think Classroom 2.0 is the most useful one for me.
      In this website, I have the chance to access to different teachers blogs and know events happening in the field of L2 teaching. I can also join groups I interested in and discuss with other teachers in the forum.

      On the homepage of Classroom 2.0, I can see the latest statement in the forum. Some teachers ask some questions. If I know the answer, I can post it. If I do not know, I think go through others' answers is a kind of learning. There are also some good recommendations such as useful books, related websites and interesting apps. It is definitely a good resource for teachers to build up their own teaching exchequers. It is a information era and technology tools alter the traditional teaching modality. Teachers, especially teacher like me will teach another language in non-native-speaking countries, can not just rely on prescriptive textbooks. When I have digital tools which are very helpful for me, I can recommend them to my students to facilitate their English learning in multiple aspects. I also hope I can use some advanced tools to open their horizons to let them know that English can be learned in this way.

      Go back to Classroom 2.0, I also appreciate the latest activities apart. I find a lot of activities I am interested in. Maybe taking apart in these activities is a good opportunity for me know friends and experience something new.
      

A learner is like an iCloud

      A learner is an iCloud. But what is iCloud? ICloud is firstly used, as far as I know, in apple products such as iphone, ipad, ipod and macbook. As a courtesy for users to share any information such as photos, apps, digital notepad, music within all their apple products without the inconvenience of inputting everything to separate products again and again, iCloud has the function to store all the information in the user's personal digital cloud. If users open the cloud, they will find that a picture taken by their iphones shows up in their macbook and ipad. And it is the same route for other information I mentioned above.

      According to George Siemens wrote in A Learning Theory of the Digital Age: Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months.Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience. Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Faced to such a huge amount of updated information, learners definitely will learn to select and classify information and try to store what they consider is  useful or interesting. Learners' brain are more likely colorful clouds floating around upon the information era. These clouds can have different shapes and different size. What in common is that they stand for the outcome of individual's occupied information. Or to be more accurate, iCloud is not only a form of outcome but also the process of cognizing and constructing information.

      But iCould is not a static object. The amazing place of iCloud is that it construct a networld for your abiotic digital products. In terms of iCloud, they can share information just like people do. And in such an information era, sharing information is of great significant just like The Network is Learning. However, only focusing on sharing will lead to chaos. The difference between apple's iCloud and learns' iCloud is that human beings have the ability of self-organization. Like George Siemens quoted in A Learning Theory of the Digital Age: self-organization is the spontaneous formation of well organized structures, patterns, or behaviors, from random initial conditions. He also mentioned that self-organization on a personal level is a micro-process of the larger self-organizing knowledge constructs created within corporate or institutional environments. Thus, learners' iCould is intelligent.

Learn from comparison

    I read the post Paperman from blog Film-English.

   












    I watched the short film several times before and I enjoyed it very much.  I do not why. But I always like the cartoon much more than real show. Maybe it dues to the magical element in cartoon show which remains me of  my childhood fantasy dreams. I also like the way that the blogger employs paperpman in his teaching plan, especially the narration of predictive story.

    Based on such an interesting story, students will have a lot imaginary stories to fill in. The smart spot of the lesson plan is that the teachers gives students guidance via ask students to discuss several questions such as How does the young man feel? What does he feel about his job? What do you think he is going to do now? How is he going to try to communicate with the young woman? These questions will clarify the mood of this short film. Students can make up new stories with the mood.

    When students finish the short film, the teacher asks students to write down information using specific categories such as locations, characters, music, story, actions, emotions and messages. At this time, the guidance is not the mood of the story but the indispensable features in a narrative story. After watching the romantic film, students will quite know locations, characters, music, story, actions, emotions and messages of the story. It is easy for them to translate what they saw into written words. Then they can compare their original make-up stories to final editions. The differences between casual writing and methodical writing will appeal automatically. Students can learn from their own writings to make improvement.

Teach us to think and create

A Vision of K-12 Students Today and Networked Student.

    Two videos above use very vivid pictures to show us the need of K-12 students today and what teachers can teach to fulfill students' needs.

    I thought that A Vision of K-12 Students Today may represent the need of K-12 Students today about how they need teachers to use technology tools to teach them. However, after watching the videos, I have been lost in thought. At the beginning of this video, different young students use numeral information to prove how they need technology in their daily life. For instance, "I game 3.5 hours a week","5.5 hours homework on computer", "I listened to 5 hours of Harry Potter on my ipod this week". That is the difference place of 21 century students. Every aspect of our life is more likely rely on technology, even the test modality transfers from PBT (Paper Based Test) to IBT (Internet Based Test). I thought this data mentioned by those students must lead to a topic of how to teach with technology tools. However, for the next turn, students start to represent a kind of unexpected appeals. For example, "We expect to be able to create", "We expect to share information with others", "76% of my teachers have never used blog", "63% of teachers have never asked me to create something new with technology". Then students start to posting questions about the teaching methodology such as "What kind of education would you want me to have?" At last, students ask teachers to teach them to think, to create, to analyze, to evaluate, to apply, to tell story digitally. They hope teachers can engage them with technology. But students' goal is far beyond using technology tools. What they want is to be creative learners via the use of digital tools. It impressed me a lot. It also reminds me again the learning outcome of this course. It is not just showing some interesting international tools. Through the study of this course, we should realize that we are talents who can jump out of the traditional teaching box and solve problems in new ways.

    The second video Networked Student gives brief introduction of several networked tools which are very useful for study. Such as what we have already learned--blog. The most interesting tool I learned from this video is the use of iTunes. I used to listen to music or watch movies through iTunes. But I do not know that I can download university courses by iTunes for free. Many of these open courses are conducted by top universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford. These courses cover multiple disciplines from sociology to scientific knowledge. Even you do not go to these universities, you can have a chance to listen to world best professors' courses. This is one of most amazing thing the internet can fulfill -- sharing. Maybe sharing information is the first step to teach students how to think and create.

Using Web Tools To Be A Fashionable Teacher

    Technologies have already changing the way of teaching, learning and education. I did not realize that until I started applying universities in America. I got many emails about online courses from different universities including University of Southern California. I went through the introductions of several online courses and thought that if I could not go to school physically for some reasons, online course was a good chance to take.

    Now here I am, studying in UB, for only one semester, I have already experienced the benefits of technologies in studying. For example, the discussion board in UB Learns helped me communicate with classmates without the limitation of time and place. And Google doc helped my team accomplish Micro-teaching successfully when my team members were coming from different countries and did not have common tools to communicate online.

    I can feel that the use of digital files and technological  tools in studying is a learning tread we cannot go against with. I will definitely use technological tools in my future classroom. However, before I look forward to my tech-future in teaching, I would like to answer the four questions mentioned in textbook. What are your passions? My passions are language, teaching, movies and travel. Who are your teachers?Are they all in physical space? Most of my teachers teach in a traditional way. How are you building your own learning networks using these books? In this new environment, how are you modeling your learning for your students? That are the questions I will answer in detailed in my blog later.

    Based on my experiences, interests always play a role of a good teacher. As a language teacher, I can combine anything attract students with the language, which is English, I am going to teach. I may not be able to be experts in different areas such as music, sport or science at the same time. But blogs can be. I will recommend RSS--Really Simple Symdication to my students. With the help of RSS, they can book anything, which has be written in English, they would like to spend some time to read. Through RSS, the content will come to the reader instead of the reader retrieving the content. Every time readers open their emails, they can go through the information they are interested and also read something written in English at the same time. Combining students' passions and  learning and making it work is one of my goals as a language teacher.

    The other tool I would like to use in my future teaching career is Social Bookmarking. To be honest, today is the first time for me to contact this tool. Through the resource list of Dr. Burgos in Diigo.com, I learned information about TESOL PreK-12 English Language Proficiency Standards Framework and ISTE | NETS Student Standards 2007 systematically. This information is helpful for me to acquire certifications in the field of English teaching. What I want to say is: teachers can share useful online information with their students via Social Bookmarking. With the help of Social Bookmarking, teachers do not have to print out files for each students. And students have the chance to choose what they want to see.
    Talking about what the tool I am using. I definitely use it in my future teaching career. The first way occurs to me is that I can use blog to post teaching syllabus, homework and assignment. And students can also use blogs to post their writing assignment. It is environmentally friendly way to do homework. And the second way is to encourage students to communicate via blogs.I will teach them to create blogrolls and leave a specific blog list for their classmates. Then they can read each other's blog and comment it. I want to say that it is going to be different and fashionable. And I would like to learn to be a "fashionable" teacher.