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.