Podcast and Education

Podcasting is basically the creation and distribution of amateur radio, plain and simple. It is the combination of personal, on, demand and cast. It has three main advantages: unlimited, subscription and gadgetry. First of all, anyone can do a podcasting with a microphone, a video camera, a computer, the internet and something to say. Secondly, through subscription, new shows could be saved automatically. The only thing you need is a receiver which could capture the shows; then, you can watch the shows whenever you want and at wherever you like. Thirdly, you can download the podcasting from the computer to your mp3 or any other portable devices to take it with you.

Podcasting can be used in education. First of all, Teachers can use it as a message board to announce upcoming events, interviews, reviews, and whatever else might be of interest.

Also, teachers could record and publish daily practice lessons that students could listen to at home. Minor Medical Injuries gives us an example about how teachers integrated podcasting and English learning.

Third, Teachers could have their students do oral presentations, interviews through podcast.

Enlighten by the ESL podcast Minor Medical Injuries, I would incorperate podcasting to the answer about my students questions. That means, I would collect my students questions every week (grammatical, semantic or pragmatic questions), and I would answer these questions with podcast because the class time is limited. And perhaps I have two sections with different students but the same teaching stuff, then I don't have to repeat my answer twice and all students can share more questions and answers.

ePals on Education

ePals is a free network that connects students, teachers as well as parents all over the world. It is a Global Community of collaborative learners, teachers, and academic experts in 200 countries and territories. It also provides Connections to students, classes, and school districts worldwide that are safe and secure. Moreover, it is the safe and protected solution for linking classes, schools, and school districts globally.

I have created an account and scan the teacher forums, student forums, family forums and the project forums. In these forums, I saw questions waiting for answers, and projects waiting for participating and cooperating. For example, in the teacher forums, I saw an ESL teacher, in Portugal, wanted to have his/her students trying video conferences with ESL learners or native speakers, in order to enable the use of the language in a real context. It is a very good activity and I would like to participate in my teaching. Another example is, when I was scanning the student forum, I saw a student’s question that whether Harry Potter or the Twilight Saga more suitable for off-class reading. Some native students recommended the Twilight Saga because it is more American and some people voted for the Harry Potter because it is more interesting and the author has a better control of English. One more thing, I saw a parent sought an English pen pal for her daughter from other countries.

Therefore, in my future teaching, I could use ePals to connect my students and myself to the world. I’d like students to communicate and change experience with people from other countries and regions. And for me, I could participate in funny projects and ask questions to other TESOL teachers around the world.

Flickr in teaching

Let's go to the market!

 

I made this photo book with Bookr. I think it could help my teaching about the “There be sentence”.

I’d like to share this photo book with the class, show them pictures, and let students make sentences with “There be…” to say something about these pictures. As I have already given sample sentences, it would not be very difficult to students. In class, students are asked to discuss what in the market orally. After class, the students would be assigned to work in groups and make their own photo book to introduce a place. They could describe what are in the summer beach. They could also talk about what are in the garden in the sunny spring. The students could acquire new grammar knowledge by making photo book, which is a more communicative way. If the teacher focus only on the linguistic items the class would be very boring.

Creative Commons License

The Rainbow Connection by Ani-Bee
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

As we all know, copyright protect your creativity against people you don’t consent to. You automatically won the copyright to anything you created. However, sometimes full copyright is too restrictive. What if you want to make contributions to others’ creativity and what if you want your works are shared by other people? Therefore, we come to the Creative Commons License. The Creative Commons License provides free copyright licenses you can use to tell people which parts of your copyright you are happy to give it to the public.

By answering several questions, the Creative Commons will choose the suitable license for you.



There are several types of licenses:

Attribution means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give you credit.

Noncommercial means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work - and derivative works based upon it - but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike means:
You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Twitter for Teachers





As I am not a tech person and I am not sensitive to the trend, although I heard about twitter long ago, it is the first time I have experienced the twitter and realized its benefits.

So how twitter can benefit to teachers? First of all, twitter is a discussion board which gathers teachers from all over the world, other educators in other areas and people from other specialties. They come up with fresh ideas, exchange opinions, give suggestion and leave comments as well as reflections. I followed Greg, an ESL teacher in Taiwan. Because he had tweeted a topic that how to bring fun to class, I learned a great many of good ideas and funny methods to make my class more interesting. Second of all, as the saying goes “no one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity”, we can ask questions and get answers on twitter. People you followed and those who have followed you can see your question and contribute some ideas. Then you will gather an idea pool, how fantastic! Third, as we follow those people we are interested in and people who follow us share more or less common interest with us, we act as an information filter for others. Rise versa. Last but not the least, retweeting and replying a tweet is like creating a conversation. By joining and engaging in the conversation, we create a positive spiral of social networks. It flows like this:

Accumulation   →   value

           ↑                       ↓

contribution    ←  reciprocity

In sum, twitter works as a personal learning network for teachers, it links to good websites, tools, books, it gives space for people to ask questions and get answers, it offers an opportunity for people to share ideas, opinions and suggestion, and it always leads you to topics you like and are interested in.

References:

Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom: Twitter for teachers

http://langwitches.org/blog/2010/07/23/what-about-that-twitter-thing/

Blog - A good way for teachers

why teachers should not blog and why I do is a thoughtful and interesting post. It is an reflection on why he blogs after reading a student's letter to the teacher.
Here's an excerpt of the letter :

You see… you don’t teach English. You teach kids. Flawed, messed-up, never perfect, wonderful, amazing kids.

Every child you denigrated has something wonderful about them, even when you didn’t see it.

Every child you insulted has worked hard at something, even if it wasn’t on the assignment you wanted them to work hard on.

Every child you mocked has aspirations, even if they don’t match up with the ones you want them to have.



I thought a lot after reading this post. When I was a student in China, none of my teachers had teaching blogs. Actually, they did not encourage students surf the internet at all, because they thought students are too young to control themselves, thus students would spend too much time playing games or chatting online. That becomes my belief gradually because I was raised in that culture. However, I begin to think that teachers need a way to reflect what they have learned from teaching and from the students' feelings and behaviors, to share ideas and thoughts with other teachers and students and to show who they are in their blogs. As a Chinese student, I thought with typical Chinese logic in the first semester after I came to the States. I respected my teachers but do not have any involvement with teachers after class. I worked very hard to reach my own expectations which I thought would also be my teachers’ expectations. I was very tired in that semester. I knew my teacher’s blog but I never viewed it because I think blogs do not have any influence on learning or on teaching. One day, I accidentally opened my teacher’s blog, and to my surprise, I found that my teacher is a very lovely lady, although she is a little bit tough in class. She has a bunch of ideas about teaching, she posted reflections about her teaching, and she does not have such unreachable expectations to students as what I thought before. After that, I dare to talk with her after class and ask questions during office hours.

In sum, blog is a very good way for teachers to challenge, reflect, show themselves and communicate with students.

Social Network Group

classroom 2.0

      Classroom 2.0 is an open, free and community-supported network which welcom everyone who is interested in web 2.0 and social media in education.

      First of all, I found that it offers special help for beginners. Therefore, if people who are interested in online teaching but do not know how to do, then they can seek help from the group. Secondly, it has a lot of activities, such as comment on an educator's website. Then members can learn through visiting others' blogs. Third, it has links to famous educators who would give suggestions online for certain questions.

      In sum, classroom 2.0 is perfect for teachers who is interested in social media in education.  

A learner is like an ant -- Connectivism in learning

      Connectivism is a learning theory based on the acknowledge than knowledge exists in the world rather than in the heads of individuals. People learn through contact and interaction. In the digital age, people can learn from others via internet, which accelerates the speed of knowledge transmition as well as the obsoleteness of knowledge.

      A learner is like an ant, which cannot live without community. Ants work together, exchange information and have clear allocation of jobs: the queen gives birth to babies, some ants go out and find food, some take care of babies and some guard the nest. As Siemens (2005) pointed in the article that Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing. I experienced the advantage of collectivism in learning. As we all know that TOFEL test is computer-based, and some of the exercises may exist first in the test in States and then in China. We have a forum that students who take the test in States would post the exercises on the internet by memorizing them and students in China can learn about it. And students exchange experience about how to practice writing, listening, reading and speaking. I found I made greater progress after I entered the forum and studied with others.
      In the vedio, Semens said that The learners themselves, the connections they formed each other, the connections they formed databases with other sources of knowledge is really the primary point of learning. Nowadays, people will search on the internet for solutions to problems. That's why Yahoo questions is so popular in the States and Baidu answers is popular in China. People go to online forum for suggestions about job interview, and even about how to chase a girl. In a word, in today's world, in the digital age, people will rely more and more on internet and they learn through contact and interaction via the internet.

Connectivism:A Learning Theory for the Digital Age
The Changing Nature of Knowledge

Social Media Revolution & Changing Education Paradigms

    
 Social media has grown exponetially in a short time, it has great influence on people's life at every aspect. Social Media Revolution
      It amazed me in 3 aspects.
      First of all, we have  96% of millennials have joined a social network.
      Second, facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year.
      Third, if facebook were a country, it would be the world's 3rd largest.
      The three aspects above show that social media has great influence on people's life. Teachers should take advantage of the influence. For example, add students as friends on facebook and see what they are interested in. Also, teachers can post their thoughts on blogs and share them with students. In sum, as more and more people visit social network, teachers can use it as a powerful tool to communicate with students, rather than consider it as an annoyying thing which may distract students' concentration.

      As for the vedio Changing Education Paradigms (Chinging Education Paradigms), I was interested in the animation rather than the content of it. I felt that animation is a great way to illustrate comparatively boring staff, and animation is typically suitable for on-line education. Teachers can link an teaching animation on blogs and students can see it and learn from it.

Blog Safety

As teachers, we can do something to guarantee our kids a safety weblog.

1. Make sure students use private settings to protect their personal information. Make sure that they do not share information with strangers online, such as their full names, home address, phone number, phone numbers of parents and friends, and credit card information.

2. Tell students do not share schedules about where they are or will be on blogs if they are alone or will be alone.

3. Blogs are places that the students tend to let their guard down. Share with students the importance of not telling everyone exactly what they are doing, or do on a regular basis through their blog. Encourage them instead to stick to “social” information, such as music, movie and other wide spread interests.

4. Establish rules for online use with your kids and be diligent.

5. Save the Web address of your child's blog and review it on a regular basis.

6. Check out other blogs to find positive examples for your kids to emulate.For more information, please take a look at Be a Good Digital Citizen: Tips for Teens and Parents

Using Blogs in Teaching

It's a very creative idea to use blogs in teaching. I have never experienced it before neither as a student or as a teacher. Actually, in China, teachers do not encourage students to use blogs because they think students, especially young kids, do not have a good control of their deeds. They may spend too much time surfing on the internet, playing online games and so on. However, after reading the first 3 chapters, I found that blogs can be very helpful in teaching.

First of all, blogs can be an online filing cabinet.students have all of their works organized in one place makes for great opportunities for reflection. Students can look back over their work to see the improvement they have achieved. I love to trace back my previous posts to see how naive I was and how silly I used tobe. Also, students can see and give comments on others' posts, which is more convenient for students learning from others' work on blogs than in tranditional paper work ways.

Second of all, blogs expand the walls of the classroom. Students can discuss and chat with group members by comment on their posts or by online chatting rooms. Students can share pictures, texts audio and vedio materials via weblogs, which is hard to achieve in clasroom settings.

Last but not least, blogs can help develop students' expertise in one particular field. Students who blog in psychological healthy fucus their reading and writing on this topic and students blog in TESOL materials and nethods would collect many teaching activities and practical stategies.

In sum, blogs can be a tool for teachers to deliver their curriculum. It can improve students' learning if used in a proper way.