Podcast, making learning efficient

According to Wikipedia, Podcast is a digital medium consisting of an episodic series of audio, video, PDF or Epub files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile device. In order to explore the use of Podcast in English learning field, I chose ESL Pod, which is a website providing podcasts and transcripts for L2 learners of English. I didn't register it, but I can still listen to the podcast. After looking through these podcasts, I chose the one named English Cafe to listen to. It introduces two songs, specifically, the singers, backgrounds, stories behind the songs. So how can I use it in my teaching?

Firstly, the topic is interesting and relaxing, like popular songs, funny stories, etc. Therefore, I can let my students listen to it when they need to relax themselves. They don't need to be totally concentrated on it, because what I want is that they can develop their English sense and find interest of leaning English through listening to this podcast.

Also, students can know about some English culture and society by listening to the podcast. Like it tells me "Que Sera Sera" means "take it easy" because the song "Que Sera Sera". It's really practical for English learners because it is true to life. If students can insist on listening to it, I think they will benefit a lot.

ePals: global classroom

Generally, ePals is an online community of collaborative classrooms engaged in cross-cultural exchanges, project sharing and language learning. After exploring the website, I was impressed by the project: 2014 junior Folklorist Challenge. It is an activity that participants discover a tradition in their community and share the story with the world. There are four main steps in this project: research, document, interpret, present. Specifically, first of all, participants should identify a tradition, find a tradition bearer and develop your interview questions. Then, participants need interview and observe the tradition bearer and document the experience. Thirdly, they are supposed to review all of their notes, photos, video and audio, decide how to shape their story and share the tradition, and create and polish their presentation, like film a video, create a slideshow or record a podcast. The last step is to share their podcast, slide show or video with the world.

In my opinion, there are three key features of the project: practical ability, technology use, global communication. I think all of them are very important for today's students. What students need is not only book knowledge, but also hand-on skills, in other words, they need to transfer their knowledge to productivity. As a teacher, I should help my students to achieve this transition. Although this project, I can help my students open their minds to discover a tradition and use what they have learned to work on it, like designing their interviews and telling the stories. As for technology use, as far as we are concerned, our world and life are full of science and technology, so mastery of technical skills is critical for students. By joining in the project, they can know about some technical appliances and web tools, such as how to make videos and how to upload their presentation online. Last but not least, I think one of the highlights of the project is that it provides students around the world to communicate with each other. In this era of globalization, it's necessary to know about the world outside. Through sharing their own traditions, students can broaden their horizon.

Above are the features of the project
that I could use in my teaching. And there are many other interesting and meaningful projects on the site. I hope I can explore them with my students in future.

GoAnimate

GoAnimate is a interesting website which allows users to create their own comic. In this website, there are a lot of themes, like business, comedy world, wildlife, etc. You can choose characters according to your theme. Then, after you choose your characters, you should type their conversations that you make. After these two steps, your own comic is finished. It's really easy and funny. I made my own comic Relatives or friends . I think the comic can help beginning-level English learners learn some basic conversations like "what is your name", "nice to meet you" and some easy vocabularies like Zebra and Giraffe. In addition, the comic is really cute and the conversation is easy and interesting, so I think children will like it. Therefore, teachers can use this tool for their teaching. Specifically, we can make comics according to our teaching contents, in other words, we turn or add teaching contents to conversations, and choose relevant scenes and characters.

Although it may be not suitable for teaching complex and sophisticated knowledge, for beginning learners or intermediate learners, it's interesting and useful. Students can be easily attracted, so it's better than just telling them boring grammar or vocabularies. Even for advanced learners, it's still a good method to learn and relax.

My photo story

My photo story is about A little angel. She is a very cute Japanese girl, the photos are from her Instagram. After I finished the video, I was surprised by the outcome. What I did was just adding several pictures from my computer, and then chose a song as the background music. However, the video is so fancy and lovely. Here, we can see, Animoto is really a used-friendly and useful tool. So what if I use it for my teaching? I think I can make use of it in two main ways. Firstly, I can make my teaching contents a beautiful video with pictures, videos, music, therefore, students will be attracted and pay their attention to it, at the same time, they can learn something. In addition, I can ask my students make their own photo stories by using Animoto. However, they have to use some English vocabularies, make some English sentences, anyway, just make their own English stories. I think they will enjoy the process and learn some English.

Digital Storytelling?

Storytelling is one of the most common activities we carry out in class, but how about Digital storytelling? It might be unfamiliar for most of us. According to Wikipedia, Digital storytelling refers to a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to share aspects of their life story. So how can we apply digital storytelling into education?

According to The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling, digital storytelling as its most basic core is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. As the name implies, digital stories usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded narration, video clips and/or music. As far as we are concerned, our world is filled with science and technology. In our teaching and learning, we use multimedia, internet these technology to achieve our goals better and efficiently. Likewise, we can use digital storytelling in our classroom to facilitate students' learning.

Firstly, according to Penny, Ur(2009), interest is an essential feature of successful practice. Through incorporate digital storytelling into curriculum, it can help teachers generate students' interest, attention and motivation. For example, teachers can let students use digital storytelling as a presentation tool, in this way, students may feel interested because they can talk about their own experiences and they can all many colorful contents to their story like pictures, video and music.

In addition, teachers can introduce digital storytelling in combination with social networking to increase students' global participation, collaboration and communication skills. Teachers and students can use small handheld devices like iPad,  to create short digital stories without the need for expensive editing software. Therefore, people can view and critique each other's stories, which allows us communicate with people around the world, so we can get more feedback and advice.

Above are two aspects that teachers can use digital storytelling, but I believe there are many other ways we can use digital story to enrich our teaching.

Become a farmer?

The serious game I chose for the autonomous learning is Third World Farmer. The game is about managing an African farm by overcoming different kinds of difficulties. Therefore, it can help students build their problem-solving abilities. Also, most students from city are not familiar with the farm life and the third world, so the game can broaden their horizon. That's why I think the game is suitable for my students.

I played the game for 34 times. In the process of playing, I met a lot of challenges, like natural disasters, financial crisis, wars, etc. In addition, I have to settle the families' health and living issues. It's not easy to win the game, but it's easy to handle the game. Besides, I learned a lot related vocabularies, like some crops' names, animals' names, farming tools, etc. Therefore, the first learning objective is to enlarge students' vocabulary, which can be achieved through using these words repeatedly when playing the game. Moreover, the game contains a clear storyline, which concerns the second learning objective: to foster the story-telling ability.

As for the assessment of the learning objectives, I can ask students retell what they meet and do in the game. In this way, I will know whether they grasp the vocabularies and understand the contents of the game or not.

Game? Study? Or two in one?

Traditionally, playing games and studying are different even opposite from each other for most people. However, teachers sometimes organize games in class to facilitate students' learning. Recently, there is a new term can explain this phenomenon, that is gamification. According to Wiki, gamification typically involves applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging.

According to Chen, I-Jung, games offer students a fun-filled and relaxing learning atmosphere. In a game-oriented context, anxiety is reduced and speech fluency is generated. I cannot agree this more. Taking myself as an example, I am shy, hence loath to speak in public. However, when there is game time in class, like Yes Or No game, I become very active and engaged. It's because I pay attention to the game, instead of the language, so I am not fear of negative evaluation and can speak out.

As for choosing a game to use in class, I usually play Escape the room, and I think MOTAS is one good choice. The followings are my learning objectives.
1. Learning related vocabularies. In the game, the players have to click the objects to get the clues, so they can know the English names of the subjects.
2. Understanding the contexts. Likewise, the objects are annotated, the players need to understand these annotation to process in the game.

In my opinion, the rules of the game are brief, so students can master the gist easily. In addition, the game is interesting for students, because most of them are curious and have the desire to win. In this way, I think they can be actively involved. As for me, the teacher, I think I am a prompter and a observer. This is because that I have to read and explain the clues for them to help them find walkthroughs or just tell them walkthroughs. Also, I have to check their movements in the game to know their language levels. In order to show walkthroughs clear to students, I think I will use images fro the game.

At last, I can assess whether students achieve the learning objectives or not by checking their moving in the game, because if they understand the walkthrough, they know what to do next.

Twitter for professonal development

Twitter is an excellent tool for teacher to teach English, and here are the 3 ways I am going to use Twitter to teach English.

The first way is using Twitter as a search engine. As mentioned in the Edudemic website The Teacher's Guide To Twitter, Hashtags are useful tools for us to find the materials we are interested at. I will be helpful for learner to learn some new words. For instance, I will give my students ten new words without meaning, and they can use Twitter as a search engine, they can find all the useful information about the new words and also they will memorize the words quickly. I can also allocate a presentation for my students, and they can use the Twitter to get as much as information as they can, so they can find enough material to present.

After read the article 60 Inspiring Examples of Twitter in the classroom, the second way is using Twitter as a journal. Sharing is an important function in Twitter. As a teacher, I can save all the valued materials, and share all of them once a week, so students can read all the materials like reading a journal. They can choose the aspects that they are interested at to read. Moreover, they can also leave down the comments, which is impossible in reading journal.

The last way is using Twitter as a quiz sheet. I can post quiz on my Twitter every day and ask students to answer it in their comment. Like Staff Writers stated in his blog, I can also set the quiz as a bonus. As the result, student will enjoy the learning while they are refreshing their Twitter.

Twitter chat for professional development

I followed the twitter chat Catholic Ed Chat started at 9am  on Saturday. This is the first time I use twitter and join in a twitter chat. At first, I felt a little bit confused about what they are talking about and how could I participant in the chatting. Then I decided to begin with the topics I was interested in. I found a man said he had a brief love affair with Nearpod and a woman said she knew teachers who love it and those who hate it. Therefore, I was wondering what the Nearpod is, is it a web tool for teachers? So I googled it, and I was really surprised about it. It is an APP by which teachers can interact with students, monitor classroom and control students' devices, in distance learning. Besides, teachers and students can download lessons from distinguished teachers. It's looks really cool, thanks for the twitter chat letting me know about it!

In addition, a woman shared a story about digital learning. I read the essay and the comments. I think, in the process, I got many useful informations and profound insights from these education peers. The twitter chat, really impressed me. As a green hand in education field, I always felt that I know little about practical teaching and real education environment. However, after this experience of twitter chat, I found that I could be greatly involved in practical education through the platform. Like I just joined this one twitter chat, I have already got some useful informations. Therefore, if I join in more twitter chat about education in future, I will benefit a great deal.

What is the learner like?

A learner is like a computer. Hardware is like the internal knowledge, and software is like the external knowledge. As the video "What is Connectivism" claims that “knowledge is networked and distributed” , a high-powered computer not only needs high-profile hardware, but also requires useful software. Similarly, a good learner also should be able to handle both methods which are individual learning and communicating learning. According to Vogostky, learners need other regulation, which means learners need parents, teachers or other older people to teach them some knowledge. In this process, a learner are like a computer that is receiving external knowledge. Then, a learner will internalize these knowledge and realize self regulation. In other words, the learner is like a computer which uses hardware to transfer external knowledge into internal knowledge and keep it, and achieve self function.

In addition, as Siemens states in his article Connectivism:A Learning Theory for the Digital Age,  “Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.” Nowadays, with the development of technology, a large amount of knowledge has been exposed to us, including useful or beneficial knowledge and useless or harmful knowledge. A good learner are supposed to distinguish between good and bed, and make right choices about accepting knowledge. In my view, setting up a goal will be a good way to help us learn knowledge, because at the same time, we are thinking about what target knowledge we should get from the learning activity. Besides, it helps us filter useless information directly. In conclusion, to be a good learner, we should set up a clear and reasonable objective and learn the relative knowledge via both individual learning and communicating learning.

About Flipped Learning Network

According to Alan Levine-New Media Consortium, "that's more or less when I don't know something I have a network of colleagues and people that I can put out my ignorance to they respond and help me out". Therefore, it's necessary and helpful to establish connections in our learning. Based on this claim, I joined Flipped Learning Network, which is a professional learning community for teachers using screencasting in education.

Flipped Learning Network is like other online communication communities such as blog, Facebook,etc. For instance, a user can invite friends and share ideas or videos there. However, as its name, the website is concentrated on flipped learning. After exploring the website, I think it has three main features: discussion forum, groups and videos. After signing in, we can join in the discussion forums we are interested in. There are a lot of discussion forums with certain topics, like Student Excuses, Flipped not working, etc. In addition, there are also many groups users can participate in. Obviously, groups are composed of some members, and the members of the same group have similarities with each other. For example, the members of the group Mathematics may be math teachers. Also, there are other groups like Middle School, First Time Flippers, etc. As for the last feature, videos, there are all kinds of videos about flipping teaching on the website, like How to flip a classroom, Prepare students for a flipped classroom. We can find out related videos according to our needs.

In sum, I think this social networking site is really helpful for teachers what to explore flipped learning.

Diigo VS Scoop.it

Diigo is a social bookmarking website which allows signed-up users to bookmark and tag web-pages. Scoop.it is a social network community where users can get contents and keep them, as well as share your ideas. Here, I would like to compare these two useful web tools.

First of all, they have some similar functions. Like both of them allow use to use multiple tags. Also, their users can copy and paste from original article to appear in comments about site. In addition, they both provide following service, which means users can follow each others to know others' updates. And, they provide users with some Apps.

Of course, there are still some differences between these two tools. Firstly, Diigo users can highlight text in saved articles, which cannot be achieved through Scoop.it. Secondly, on your Diigo site, others can post comments, but Scoop.it does not have this function.

In summary, both of them are useful web tools. Diigo is better for managing websites and contents, and Scoop.it is wonderful with smart search. I think I will use both of them for their different conveniences.

USE IT OR LOSE IT?

       "In education the use it or lose it may mean, if you don't use technology for learning, you may lose relevance. An educator must be relevant." The words are from the video Educational Change Challenge, which impressed me a lot. Indeed, nowadays, education cannot be carried out without technology. Like teachers use Powerpoint, projector to lecture, students send their homework by emails, and both teachers and students use all kinds of technology tools in their teaching and studying, such as Microsoft Word, Excel, Endnote, Photoshop,etc. Also, we search information from the internet, google, Wikipedia, Youtube, etc. Take this online course as an example, we do everything through computer. Therefore, I cannot image the education without technology in modern time. 

Classroom of tomorrow： The  video shows us some common technology tools we use in our class,  like iPad, smartphone, tablets. However, this phenomenon may only appears in advanced areas, I mean in most rural areas or poor areas, teachers and students don't have much access to these technology tools. However, we know, realizing IT-enabled classroom is the trend of education development. Therefore, I believe, classroom of tomorrow should be IT-enabled, which means teachers and students fully make use of information and technology to have classes.

Sharing and refining

Actually, I have never used blog before, but I used to visit other's blogs a lot, like some food blogs, fashion blogs, etc. These bloggers share their experiences, skills, ideas in their blogs, and the people who are interested in the contents can get informations and give feedback through blogs, and then the bloggers can communication with their audiences and develop their blogs. Therefore, in my opinion, the main function of blog is providing a place where people can share and refine their ideas.

As a future English teacher, I think I can use blog for my professional development in the following two aspects. First of all, I will use it as a public diary to record my teaching activities, like the objectives of my classes, the problems I meet during the process of lecturing, the students' reaction in the class and my understandings or findings of some teaching issues. As " seven reasons teachers should blog" says, blogging causes teachers to reflect. Through recoding, I can have a better idea about what happens in my class and areas for improvement. Absolutely, only recoding is not enough to realize reflection, we need valuable feedback, which can also be get from blogging, such as reviews from my peers and my students.

Besides, I can use blog as a platform where I can communicate with my students. In my opinion, some students prefer indirect communication with their teachers, like using e-mails. And blog is a more interesting and effective tool for exchange. I can build a blog for my class and circle all my students in. Then, I can post all related materials on the blog, such as class assignments, useful resources. Besides, my students can tell me their queries, and give me their advices and share their ideas with the whole class. In this way, we can know each other better and make our class more effective.

According to ISTE standards, student blogging meets the following one:
communication and collaboration.
ISTE NETS Student Standard 2007

Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:

a. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media. b. communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats. c. develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures. d. contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.