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.