Podcast--Absolutely Intercultural

Absolutely Intercultural

This podcast involves 4 interviews which talked about the culture difference that the interviewees experienced in the target language countries. During the time of learning a language, the acquisition of the target culture is significant as well. Therefore, as an aural material, podcast could offer learners a easier way to understand diverse culture, simultaneously, it could promote their interest of learning the target language. In addition, many language learners have the willing of studying abroad to learn the most authentic language in the target country. It also could let them to have the awareness of how to live and study there smoothly.

ePals

ePal is like a huge school community including students and teachers from all over the world. They can communicate and collaborate with each other which benefits both sides.

People could search the projects according to region and language, it really helps teachers to improve their pedagogy by learning from other teachers, at the same time, and they could share resources on line as a reference. Not only teachers, but also students could communicate with their peers, meanwhile, their parents could be involved to their children's work. It makes interaction among teachers, students, and parents much easier, therefore, they could understand each other better to do a better job.

In my opinion, the best way to make an improvement is imitating others first and then to innovate on the basis of imitating. So since I want to teach Chinese in the future, learning and communicating with teachers who teach Chinese in the States is a good way in my future teaching. However, learning from the teachers who teach a foreign language to English-speakers is a good way as well. Since most of them are English native speakers, they understood the psychology much better then a non-native speaker speaks English as their first language. Teachers who see things from the angle of students could work in an effective way and get a better result.
 

Photo story

A short trip of China

This is a video for beginner students in a Chinese class

It is an introduction of China. I will play the video for them first and ask them what the video shows them. And then I'll ask them why they want to learn Chinese. It could promote their interests and offer them a visual and aural material to satisfy their curiosity of what they can learn from the class.

Voice Thread

In Meng's Voice Thread, she used pictures to let her students choose a part of it to make sentence, using adjectives as many as they can. To be one of her students, I think it's a really good way to motivate students by some visual materials. Meanwhile, students could use their imagination to create their own sentence without a limitation. Also, the teacher asked to choose a part and circle it by using the colors, which means they can pick any part they prefer and circle it in the color they like. The activity is like a game that including pictures and colors which usually students like the most. According to the above, it's really an appropriate way for practicing vocabulary for young learners.

In Ye's Voice Thread, she offered a picture full of words significant for L2 learning, and let her students to choose one which is the most important for them and make comments about it. I think it's much appropriate for advanced L2 learners who will teach the language in the future. Comparing to give a list using the Word, a picture with colors and distinct size of words looks more interesting.

The two Voice Threads above share a lot of features in common. By using Voice Thread, instructors could give their direction in word, recording or video. And students can answer it in the same way which seems more diversity for both of them to teach and learn the language. Meanwhile, students can see the other answers which offers a way to communicate with their peers.

Create your own book -- Bookr

Story: I'm a panda from China

Bookr is really an interesting tool, by using it, I created my first "book" in my life.

It encourages people to use abundant pictures, consequently, it's much appropriate for young learners to learn vocabulary and perfect to help them with their memory, since young learners are much sensitive with visual issues.

So I would like my students to create their own stories with the new vocabulary. It not only provides them an opportunity to involve their own ideas but also makes them feel like they are not always a follower but a leader, and their enthusiasm could be motivated at the same time.In addition, they could use it to communicate with their peers in order to reinforce their perception of the meaning of the vocabulary.

Digital storytelling

Students may have difficulties to understand or memorize something new, particularly for L2 learning. Nonetheless, it might become easier for them if the knowledge could be memorized through telling a story. And the new way to tell a story which I want to introduce here is called “digital storytelling”.

In the article “7Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling”, the author gave a description of it like this,“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.”

According to the above, "digital storytelling" offers students an opportunity of creating a tailor-made tool for themselves. Meanwhile, the author also stated in the article that " The process of creating a digital story forces storytellers to choose a topic that can be appropriately conveyed to a particular audience, with electronic elements, in the time available."

In addition, as it is said in The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling,  "As the name implies, digital stories usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips and/or music."  Students could apply abundant ways to express their ideas, simultaneously; they could be motivated by doing this kind of creation as well. Furthermore, teachers could use it to give instructions to make the content more interesting and easy to be accepted.

To sum up, "digital storytelling" benefits both teachers and students in a creative and comfortable way.

  by  yewenyi 

To be a fashion teacher

In the article How One Teacher Uses Twitter in the Classroom, the author introduced how Rankin, a history professor apply Twitter to her class. Usually, it's difficult for large size class to be learner-centered. But fortunately, Twitter helps to involve more students to participate into the class discussion or activity. Since they don't have to worry about being shy to speak in front of 200 people, also, instructor doesn't have to consider about using too much time to collect students' opinions. It’s truly a paradigm shaking technology platform which lets the interaction between students and teachers much more effective. I'm really exciting for applying it to my future teaching, therefore, I could get the responses from students immediately. Simultaneously, they would get my comments at the same time. It's a popular microblog among young generation; consequently, the students will unconsciously be involved to the classroom activities.

Meanwhile, another article called Nine Reasons to Twitter in Schools introduced several reasons why educators should apply Twitter to their classroom, as the author cited in the article, it's an effective tool for students to get the latest information from all over the world. In my opinion, keeping pace with the time is a significant portion of our education. In addition, Twitter offers a platform for all the students to communicate at the same time; it is also possible for them to give comments to each other. Last but not least, it's really simple to be used. I like simple but effective ways to teach my future students, and Twitter seems a perfect one to help me.

Learning with computers

Learning with computers is one of the Yahoo Groups which concentrate on the aspect of language teaching.As a foriegn language teacher to be, this is exactly the group for me to learn from other experienced teachers and share informations with them.The most attractive section of the group is we could ask questions and get diverse answers or suggestions from all angles of view which offer us a fantastic approach to solve the problem we may have. Also, we could go throught the group to see their posts, there might be something we never thought about but could be very useful and effective to our teaching. One more significant benefit of it is, it will save a lot of time and is possible no matter where we are.

A learner is like a ...

In my point of view, a learner is like a tourist.

 

It does not merely show the view in the picture which is taken by the tourist, the more significant issue is the story behind the camera.Meanwhile, the reason why s/he takes picture is that s/he wants to remember the view in front of his/her eys and then goes on with his/her trip to see the view at next stop.As Siemens states in his article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, "The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today." 


Also, like George Siemens mentioned in the video The Changing Nature of Knowledge, that "It's not what we know today is important; it's our ability to continue to stay current as knowledge changes." Every time a tourist starts his/her journey, s/he is accumulating the ability to discover new landscape and experience new adventure.As a teacher to be, our responsibility is not to give the fish to students, but to teach them how to fish. In addition, in this digital world, it's significant to master the ability of discovering people we can learn from, in another word, having the awareness of establishing a network is dramatically crucial.

Meet the interest of student to motivate them in L2 learning

I commented on a post named Blue Bird in the blog Film-english. It interested me a lot as the reason of I myself don't like the way of learning a language just to do exercise of the 4 aspect of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.Since it's boring and  However, I do love watching movies of talk-shows in the target language. The auther shared a great idea which has very detailed procedures of how we teachers could address this method to our lesson plan in the future,it will be very helpful for students to create something by themselves after imitating from the film. Also, it could be used in group activities which engage students to practice speaking at the same time.

This idea applied all of the four elements of language learning at the same time without making it complicated to students. The most significant benefit is, it combined input and output of language perfectly and enhanced the students' motivation.

I would love to address this method into my future teaching. 

Education Needs Change

Educational Change Challenge 

As a student for 18 years, I seldom thought that sitting in a class room and listening to the teachers over 8 hours a day is not something we must do to be educated. Since everybody is doing the samething as above.

However, by watching this video, I realize that we do have another option along with the time changes.As an instructor, teachers should have the perspective of how do the students want to be educated instead of considering the pedagogy all the time, and try to find out a best way for students to gain knowledge in an effective way. The most significant consideration is the knowledge students need is changing all the time, therefore,education is challenged at the same time.

Teacher is not a leader, but a helper and friend of students to help them figuring out how to use the knowledge they learn at school.

 

 

Internet safety

Interet could be a great resource for all of us, no matter for learning, working or entertaining, as long as we use it appropriately. Here are some tips for keeping yourself safe when using it.

 

1. Privacy

- Use a complex password for login
- never share your password
- always check the web site status and privacy policy before offering your personal information

2. Safety

- never add a stranger to your Facebook or MSN, particularly those you don't have common friends
- never download an attachment with an email you don't know
- make sure to log out after using a public computer

3. For children

- ask for permission from your parents before using the internet
- tell your parents if there is anything make you feel uncomfortable online
- never meet people you get to know online without your parents

4. For parents

- keep the comupter in a open area
- monitor when your children are using the internet
- teach your children what they can do and cannot do online before they start to use the internet

Additional link for Internet Safety

Meeting standards via blogging

Blog is a new way for people to share news, ideas, and anything they would like to communicate with others. In addition, blog is a much more effective way to exchange information rather than any other paper media.

The following are three standards for foriegn language learning.

1. Communication
     
      Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions

Students use their target language to communicate via blogging,it makes it possible for them to exchange ideas, perspectives,and information. Many students who are learning foriegn languages are afraid to communicate with others by using their target languages. Sometimes, they are just shy and feel anxious to make mistakes during a face to face conversation. However, blog doesn't have these kind of problem, students could be engaged to any conversations without worrying to be laughed at since they can do rehearsal before posting. Also they could add new topics they like to share they own opinions at the same time and there is noe limit time and place for them to make it. Last but not least, blog offers an opportunity to train their ability of both input and output of the target language.

ACTFL

2. Culures
 

     Standard 2.1: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied

Foriegn language learning could never be isolated from its culture background. Learners who learn a language must have the awareness to understand the relationship between the target language and culture.Therefore, blog is a great platform where students can find variety kinds of information about culture diversity.What's more, they could post their own perspective and than share their ideas with each other, also, they could find some demonstration like video, movie or news. Instructors would be able to make comments and see students' comments at the same time to make sure that they have a furture understanding about the language and culture.

ACTFL 


3. Communities 
    
     Standard 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting

For cyber citizens to date, communicate is no longer limited within making a phone call, or sending a email, people want to make their life more interesting and more creative, and blog is one of the outcomes itself. Through blogging,students could post anything they think it may interest others, such as the information of a basketball game, a new movie, or a funny TV show in the target language, and teacher may give comment and recommend other students to see it as well. Nothing must be connected to school setting, and these kind of reaction make the language learning much vivid and attractive,on the other hand, it helps learners to  use the target language as often as possible but without feeling pressure.

ACTFL