Listen to Me

Podcast is an online tool for people to get information they they want. Unlike broadcast, podcast bring a lot of convenience to people. They can create podcast just with a microphone and a computer. They can download the podcasts to their computer and listen to them whenever they want, not worrying about missing a podcast. They can also transfer podcasts to other devices, such as ipod, thus they can listen to it wherever they want.

I listened to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow on BBC World News for Children, and I realized that it is a great tool for practicing listening. In my future teaching, I will mainly use podcast for teaching listening to advanced level students. For example, I can ask students to listen to a podcast, and try to write down the story they have heard. Such activity will be mainly applied to teaching advanced level English to adults. I can also ask students to retell the story after they have heard it.    

I Want To Teach

  

ePals is an education media company and a global learning network. Three main parts are included in ePal: Globalcommunity, Criket,and Tools for School. And each part has its own sub-parts. Basically, the website offers educators and students a platform of building communities, sharing resources and exchanging ideas.
     

One special thing of this website for me is that it contains culture, which is very important in teaching. And i can connect to a class around the world, which is really cool. I can also contact the teachers privately.

There are many projects created by educators, either. For example, Class in Texas, USA Seeks Partners for Life in Our Countries Project is a culture project, aiming at helping students see more about the world.

Through the website, I can get teaching resources. The website provides kinds of resources, for example books or magazines for teaching reading, writing, or listening. I can also communicate with teachers around the world, exchanging ideas about teaching.

Games Can Be Serious

The game I played was Third World Farmer. The game requires people to experience the life of poor farmers, earning money and raising kids. All I do is to make the family survive from year to year. I played it for twice, and I found it uneasy, even frustrating sometimes, especially when I just realized that a kid somehow disappeared (I guess he died. Oh God...I am so sorry.). I grew up in a big city, and I have never experienced such life. This game gave me an illusion of struggling to live a little bit.

Comparing to casual games, such serious game might do a better job in improving students' ability of solving problems. Instead of simply enjoying the fun given by games, such games might actually offer students opportunities to solve real problems.

With this game, I can teach counting numbers in English, because there are plenty of numbers available in it. Besides the numbers, I can also teach other words appear in the game, such as hen, pig, and corn. In addition, I can make a competition based on this game. For example, students will be asked to play the game individually to see who survive the longest time. The winner will have to present his/her "blueprint". To see whether the objectives have been met, I can just ask students to present their solutions, in which target words will be used.

Learn Through Play

It is important to make learning fun, especially for kids. Therefore, applying game to teaching is an amazing way to reach that goal. According to the article THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT GAMIFICATION, gamification is the application of game elements in non-game situations. Through games, children will be able to comprehend what they are learning or have learned, apply knowledge to problem solving, as well as enjoy learning new knowledge or skills.

The game I played was Polleke's Blue Room, and I played it for twice. It is a nice game for teaching, because it supply many English words for players, which is good for them to learn vocabulary. It also provides many sentences. Therefore, it will be a nice tool for grammar teaching, either.

When the teacher use this game for teaching, it would be better if the teacher pretends to be a person "who needs help". Standing in front of the classroom, the teacher controls the game which is shown to the whole class and asks "what should I do next". Students will have to tell the teacher what should be clicked or dragged. In other words, students have to help the teacher finish the game.

Walk through is necessarily used in such activity, especially when students are stuck in the game. However, it does not mean that the teacher should show the walk through directly to students. Instead, the teacher learns the walk through, and orally offer hints. Images, on the other hand, are not necessary in this activity, since the teacher can use the pic in the game for teaching.

To assess whether the objectives are achieved, the teacher can use pictures to make an Q & A activity, either asking students to speak the names of pictures, or asking them to make sentences on the pictures.

Twitter for Teaching

     

     Known as an efficient and effective tool for communication, twitter can help with teaching and learning as well. Based on my experience, it is not rare to see that students forget due dates and thus lose points on their homework. And twitter will do me a great favor. According to Teaching HUB, twitter can help with posting due dates. Reminding due dates via twitter can be a good solution to such problem. Twitter can also work as a tool for assignments. Teachers can also post homework on the twitter, and let students post comments. Besides using twitter as a tool for reminding due dates and post assignments, I will use it as a tool for question answering. It is amazing that twitter can be a place for Q & A, according to Teaching HUB, especially during the lecture. 

     Education should not be limited in the classroom. It will be awesome if students who are not able to attend class learn together with their fellow students. In my future teaching, I will use it to help students catch up with class. According to the article, Twitter - Expanding our Classroom - Shrinking the World, "it broke down the walls of our classroom and allowed students in classrooms across the country to interact and learn from each other." There should not be walls between in-the-class and -out-of-the-class. And breaking the wall is one of the responsibilities of teachers.

Tweetchat - Reflection

I attended #langchat.In the chat room, different topics were developed.I can either post my questions, or reply other people's post.It is a nice place to share ideas and suggestions with each other.I can get immediate response from other educators, which is awesome!

A problem with tweet chat is that since it is a chat room, things can look a little bit messy. Sometimes I lost track on the topic I am interested, because people kept posting and changing topics at any time.

Networking group

The group I have joined is Google Tools of NYSCATE. Known as a the most powerful online searching engine in the world, google has developed kinds of tools for its customer, such as google map. As a teacher, it is also important to be familiar with the tools, in order to improve teaching. It is also essential to improve students' learning experience. Therefore, being sensitive and willing to exploring new tools is a very good quality for a teacher.



Google Tools

Spider Web

The whole world seems to be a big chaos, in which all kinds of information connect and twist with each other like a huge mess.However,we human seem to be perfectly fine living in the overwhelming mess. Why? Because we have spider-web-like minds.

Our minds works in certain patterns.In other words, as I quote from What Is Connectivism,our mind is a patterning mind. No matter how messy and overwhelming the information is, our minds deal with with in patterns. The information will always be sorted. For example, when we saw kinds of fruit that we don't know, we will focus on the label that they are all fruit, and whether we can actually remember their names does not really matter, because we know they are fruit, and that is enough for most of the time.

It is because of the feature of connecting of the spider web, the spider can catch as many insect as possible.When an insect bumps into a tiny part of the web, the whole web will shake, thus the spider knows that it is time for food. The network we have built help us to learning more. According to Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age,Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual.That is to say, new knowledge is always connected to the old one.  

However, without the mucus, the web will lose its function. To learn knowledge, our minds need aids. And tools we have developed nowadays are the aids of learning.In addition, technology is altering (rewriting) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking.Our knowledge has helped us develop tools, at the same time tools have changed our ways to learn.For example, instead of doing homework by writing on paper like 10 years ago, we use computer and hand homework in online.