Podcast in Language Teaching Class

   

    I choose to use the Hobbit (BBCDramatization) as the podcast in my class. It is from the Arts & Entertainment section in BBC World News for Children.

    This podcast reminds me of one interesting experience when I was young. When I was still in primary school, I listened to the storytelling program from the radio for half an hour every day. The stories are produced from traditional Chinese martial stories. My mother often asks me to retell the story I heard from the radio. After a period of time, I gradually became the best story teller among the students in our class and all of my language skills benefited a lot from the story retelling experience.

    The Hobbits is also the most famous magic novel in English speaking countries, both the children and adults like it. By using this podcast, the students could also use it as a story telling resource. They can hear it every day without limitation of time and location. For the students who are in the low level, the teacher could ask them to listen to the story and retell it as much as they can, after that, they can get the reading sources to review the things they heard. For the students who are in the comparative high level, teacher could ask them to retell the story in front of the whole class. Students’ four language skills (listening, speaking, reading & writing) will be improved in this kind of practicing.

ePals： A Global Window

Nowadays, the internet has become the biggest net in the world, people could get news, share moments and buy anything on this net. There is also a raising trend of taking an online course in many countries. Students from different countries desire to learn from whole world and the ePals just feed this need perfectly.

Just ePals introduced itself, it is the leading provider of safe collaborative technology for schools to connect and learn in a protected, project-based learning network. With classrooms in 200 countries and territories, ePals makes it easy to connect learners locally, nationally or internationally. On this website, both teachers and students could join in a class or a project. For example, for the students they could join a project started by a teacher who is from Texas State in the U.S., the teacher hold this project for providing his students chances of communicating with  people from different countries. The students in his class could get close to the culture of his/her assigned country. They will present what they learnt at the end of the project. The students or teachers who join in this project from the other place could also get a chance to talk with a native English speaker. With this example, it is not hard to find that all the participants in this project got what they want to learn in this interactive, opening teaching environment.

I had learned in a university which locates in an undeveloped province in China. In my spare time, I had tutored the pupils for a long time. The biggest problem I found for the students is not the lacking of knowledge but their limited horizons. They didn’t know how big the world is and sometimes they even showed the emotion of resistance to discover the world. I believed that the world will be connected by the internet and one day the on-line class will also become the window for these students. Through the internet, they may know the world beyond the hills which are around them. And their teachers could also get the newest teaching materials for their students with visiting the online classes.

Amazed Tool: Stupeflix

I have to say that the Stupeflix is an amazed tool for making a short presentation with pictures and music. It is a really interesting when I found that I could also create a short movie with such several simple steps.

In L2 class, one of the biggest problems for teacher is to attract students. A good opening is necessary for this. With using the video produced by the Stupeflix, teacher could present the theme of the class perfectly and also catch the students’ attention. That’s why I said that the tool is convenient and perfect.

Using Voice Thread in L2 Class

In this mod, I have chosen Miao’s and Sugar’s voice thread for using, because they have a clear instruction in directing and one thing is more important is that both of them used the resource from students’ daily life. That could activate students’ motivation and lead the student to think.

From this course, I have learnt using a lot of tools of teaching and the voice thread is one of my favorite one. It solved a problem that the students could not communicate with others with their own voice after class in traditional teaching environment. There is a big difference between communicating in words and speech. The later one have a characteristic of immediacy, it could train not only the students’ speaking system but also their thinking system. For L2 learners, speaking out could also practice their mental quality and response speed, that’s what the writing down could not give to them.

Bookr: Tell Your Own Story

My Winter Vacation by Yuechen Sun :: bookr ::pimpampum  

    As a digital storytelling tool, Bookr do not allow oral narration and music, but I have to say it is really convenient for using. You can make a story book with very few steps. You just need to type what you want to say and then search and add a suitable picture for your words. 
    For most language learners, writing practice is difficult but avoidless. For young students, encouraging them to write their own story with pictures by using an online tool sounds like not so scared for them. In my class, with using the story I created on Bookr as a sample, students will be asked to practice using the past tense to describe their vacation experiences. Making story books could be their homework after a grammar class. It could also be their holiday tasks. Pictures will catch their attention and encourage them to create better story.

A Great Tool for Presentation: Digital Storytelling

    Today, I have read a an article named 7 things you should know about Digitalstorytelling, from it, the 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.” In fact, this is a simple way to present a group of pictures. We may saw this kind of things on YouTube or in many occasions for many times before. And today I found that it makes easy for everyone to tell a story vividly and we can also make one for our teaching using.

    For language teachers, in most classes, they may have a theme to develop. A true story of the teacher told with the digital storytelling method will be a perfect opening. It could catch the students’ attention immediately and help them to understand the theme of the class better. For students, they will use several different capacities when they are asked to do a presentation with digital story telling method. They need to write a script to be the structure of the presentation, choosing the suitable music and pictures to express their content is also a challenge to young students. Sometimes they also need to work together and they need to learn to discuss with their group members. All of these abilities are necessary for students and of course they will benefit from using this method.

                          

Monopoly in L2 Class

    

  According to the Wikipedia, the serious game is designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. Serious game will sometimes sacrifice fun and entertainment. Serious games are not a game genre but a category of games with different purposes. 

    I chose a famous game called Monopoly. I’m familiar with this game because I have played this game in paper version for many times when I was young. I think this game could be used in the L2 teaching class. From the process of playing this game, the students would be able to know the vocabulary and foundational sentence structures in trading. From reading the clues on the card in this game, students need to listen to the others carefully and understand them completely. During the game, the teacher should walk around in classroom to answer the question from students, because they might feel difficult in understanding some sentences. After the game, the teacher could give the students a dictation with the vocabulary or sentences used in this game to assess whether the students have leant enough knowledge and skills.

Using ZUMA in L2 Class!

    In L2 teaching class, teachers need to spur the students’ concentration by using different kinds of method, sometimes include using games. Gamification has become a popular concept in teaching process. It is the concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging. Everyone loves game, because the design of game always satisfied human’s need for reward. Sometimes with playing games, second language students could learn with higher efficient.

    Today, I will introduce a famous casual game called “ZUMA” and the method of using it into a L2 teaching class. It is a famous game produced by Popcap Company, many people love it. I have played it for many times before. In my opinion, with using this game in the L2 class, students would be able to learn how to use the words of color and the word of locality correctly.

    In this class activities, the students could work in pairs and during one students handle the mouse to control, the other one could help him by giving instructions in English. Like: “Click the red one on the right side!” “The blue one on the bottom!” We all know that sometimes the audiences feel the same level of nervous as the player. Students can change in turn after one game. Before the game, the teacher could act as a model by using the images from the game to show how to help each other to finish the task in game. During the playing process, teacher could walk around and give advices for students. In the next class or after the gaming class, teacher could ask students to write down the sentence they used in the activities assess whether the students have learnt how to use the right word to describe the color and direction.

Teaching with Microblogs

    

    In this week, I read two articles: A must have guide on using twitter in yourclassroom and 6 best twitter tips every teacher should know about. Both of these two articles are about the using of the microblogs in language teaching class.

    In the former article, from five different perspectives: communication, organization, resources, writing skills and twitter exercises, the author showed us a lot of practical tips in microblogs using. For myself, I have been a microblog user for almost 3 years and I saw it changed our world with its special function: instant communication. No matter where you are, if your cellphone have signal, you will have chances to share the scene you see, the idea you think, even the video or the song you like. It certainly could be used in the language class, just as we know, the language learning process is based on the foundation of communication. The twitter could shorten the distance between the student and teacher. Just as mentioned in this article, ambient office hours, silencing blurters and attendance reminders and etc. these methods are all for the convenience of communication between teacher and students. And it also could be used as the bridge between student and students, teacher and students’ parents. It is a trend that everyone will be involved in social network in the future, we must accept it and use it as our tools.

    In another article, 6 best twitter tips every teacher should know about, the author showed us some advices of using twitter by a visual way. Based on the data collect from the twitter users, the author made a brief summary of the users’ using habit. Just as I mentioned above, in the future, the using of microblogs will become a common behavior in our life. The understanding of the using habit will also help the language teachers to use it effectively. I remembered that in China, the analysis of using microblogs become one of the most important issue for some famous enterprises and companies now. The deeper analysis of microblogs will help them know more about their customers’ preference. 

    All in all, as a language teacher, I will concentrate on the trend of the development of micoblogs and try to use it effectively in my class.

Social Networking Group: EFL Classroom 2.0

    EFL Classroom 2.0, this networking group is really useful for a EFL teacher. Over 27000 members are in this group and they are all EFL teachers from different places. The members could share the interesting or useful articles, videos in this group. And the searching function also makes the process of finding information become effective. For a language teacher, the teaching resource is a very important factor in teaching process. The creativeness is limited for one teacher, so we can hear the other's voice to find inspiration here.

Being a Smart Fish

    Today after read Siemens’s article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for theDigital Age, I find that nowadays, the learners are just like fish in river. The most important issue for them is not knowing how to eat small fish, but knowing where to find small fish to eat.

    In fact, many years before, when I was still in high school, I have thought about similar things. I was really interested in the language learning and reading literatures from different countries at that time and I planned to study in these fields in the future. But one thing that made me confused is why I have to deal with many difficulties in physics and chemistry every day. After passing the college entrance exam, I would not meet these things anymore in my whole life. Someone told me that the things in these fields might help me solve some problems in daily life. I disagreed because the things we learnt were not practical and one thing important is that I would rather learn how to find ways of solving problems effectively. With the development of the technology, we almost can find all the answers on Google.

    In Siemens’s article, several sentences impressed me, “The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe”. Nowadays, with a laptop and Wi-Fi signal, we know everything in the world. It is much more important to know how to use those searching tools effectively than know the knowledge itself. Learners are like fish in a river. The necessary competence for living is not knowing how to eat and digest small fish, but where and how to find their food. Like the sentence in the video The Changing Nature ofKnowledge by George Siemens, “The network becomes learning.” This short sentence concludes the trend both in the Cyberworld and the teaching field. If we want to be a good teacher, we need to get start in the network using from now.

Teaching language through watching films

    It is not surprised for me to see that two of my friends have also created their posts which are written based on the same post with me. The name of the post on which I commented is on the blog named Film English, its name is Paperman. We have watched it together and all of us were moved by its story. Today, I have found that the post writer who is called Kieran created a lesson plan with using two short films and one of them is the Paperman.

    The teaching skills I have learnt from this post are unique and useful. In fact, several of my language teachers have also used the way of watching films in their class. But the following activities were always the discussion of the content or writing a summary of the story. The teachers would not pause during the process of playing. From this writer’s lesson plan, I have drawn my inspiration that using instructions to guide the students through the discussion to understanding of communication skills. Depend on different purposes of teaching, teachers could adjust their strategies. Like in this lesson plan, asking students to predict the story according to the characters’ body language and facial expression may be a good way to practice the students’ communication skills. Anyway, combining the elements of film watching and language teaching might be a good way for learners.

The Changing World

 

Several years before, a Chinese internet expert has made a prediction that the internet world will be much powerful in the future with three steps. The first step is related to the web portals, internet users can watch the things which was produced by the editor of the web portals, just like Yahoo in the world. And then, it comes to the second step which is belonged to the web search tools, like Google and Bing. People can find what they want to see in the result of searching.Social network websites will play an important role in the third period of time. We can see the things we want to see just by clicking into these websites. 

This prediction has became a truth today, the video posted on Youtube by Erik Qualman (Social Media Revolution 2011) showed us the stunned influence of the Social Network. It is 2013 now, the data in the video are still growing up everyday. Weibo and Wechat, two different tools of Social Network in China, both have over 300,000,000 users now. One thing interesting is that no one knows these two tools before 2009. The high speed of the growth of the amount of the users means an urgent need for users. The fact that we can communicate with all of our friends just by clicking several buttons is really cool!

The traditional idea of education was also challenged by this change, according to the video Educational Change Challenge (posted by Darren Cannell), we can find that joining into the social network and combining the traditional teaching method with the new elements has become challenges to educators.

Education is not as simple as teaching skills to others, it is also related to the society and culture. It is also relied on the communication between teachers and students. The world is changing, the educators also should change themselves in this trend.

Two Web Tools in Language Teaching

Nowadays, using technologies in the language teaching process has become a trend among teachers and students. With the development of the wire-less technology, youngsters have spent more time on their cell phones every day. They could meet friends, find restaurants and even book film tickets in a few minutes. In school, the digital resources are popular in class for their convenience of transfer. More and more students also prefer to read PDF files on their tablet.

In my mind, compared with the other study fields, learning a language is more likely to be learning a skill, but not knowledge, so, using language with higher frequency will help students to handle it faster. The combination of language learning and internet technology will be more attractive than the traditional teaching way for the young students. They might also pay more time on it. I intend to be a Chinese or English language teacher in the future. According to the National Standards for Foreign Language Education, it emphasized the importance of language skills learning and  the importance of learning the culture background of the target language was also mentioned. But in the traditional teaching process, the time limitation of the class lessens the learners’ time of exposure to the target language.

From the Will Richard’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcast and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, in its first three chapters, the importance of using weblog are described in details. In recent years, there was a boom is the amount of Weibo’s user both by using cell phones and personal computers. Weibo, in fact, is a kind of weblog with a limitation of 140 Chinese characters (similar with Twitter). With more functions in smartphones, people can also share their pictures, voices, the music they like, even the video or the game they like. Almost every cell phone user has registered in Weibo. I noticed that in Weibo world, not only the people, but also some organizations or companies also opened accounts to share some professional knowledge for their followers. With these functions, I think that a language teacher can also build a connection with his or her students by using Weibo. Teachers can give notifications, homework and some educational resource by texting a Weibo. Students will get them instantly and give responses to teacher easily.

Another technology I would like to use is the Collaborative Space. As mentioned above, the Weibo helps build the connection between teacher and students, the Collaborative Space will provide a place for students to help each other. From a language learners’ perspective, the discussions with peers are always have great efficiencies in understanding. The combination of the use of these two internet tools might provide a new way to help the students in language learning.