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.