Pod Cast, it's useful technology for English learning!

There are a diversity of technologies that contribute to ESL teachers and students for effective teaching and learning!

A Podcast is a digital medium that consists of an episodic series of audio, video, digital radio, PDF, or ePub files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed on-line to a computer or mobile device. The word is a neologism and portmanteau derived from "broadcast" and "pod" from the success of the iPod, as audio podcasts are often listened to on portable media players.mp3

    

 I think that English language podcasts are one of excellent ways to learn English efficiently. First of all, students can listen to them anytime anywhere they want! This allows them to save time and money, which is beneficial. Also, with a little dedication, English language podcasts will help learners quickly improve especially their listening skills and proficiency. Podcasts often provide transcripts so learners are able to listen and read at the same time, or look at the transcript if they miss or fail catching some part of the listening.

For example, there is an episode about having a picnic. By listening to the conversation between a man and a woman from the podcast, students will be asked to find the vocabulary related to picnic objects such as picnic blanket, sandwiches, basket, dishes and so on. I will check their answers and provide supplementary explanation some vocabulary and expressions that they might encounter the first time. As a pair activity, they will draw a picture to imaging the circumstance. After the activity, they will be asked to display their pictures and see other groups’ pictures to choose the best one. For the homework to assess their understanding, I will ask them to write the journey related to a picnic they had or they want in the future with using the vocabulary they have learned. I believe that this lesson will help students develop 4 skills effectively and they definitely enjoy learning English with this pod cast!

※ This episode of pod cast links is : Having a picnic by ESL Pod

※ Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast

                  https://www.commoncraft.com/video/podcasting

Use Comic Strips! It's FUN!!

   It was first time to create comic strips on the internet! I strongly believe that this type of tool encourages students to learn a language as well as teachers to prepare for their lessons because it’s fun and even I, as a future teacher, really enjoyed it!!! A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. (from Wikipedia) 

      For my future class with this tool, I will make students create short conversations including today’s topic, vocabulary, and expressions that they learned. Take my strips for example. My topic is about a restaurant conversation between a server and a customer to teach how to order in a restaurant in America. To be specific, I will show the strip I created first and ask them to read it and think about the topic, who two speakers are in the conversation, and so on. And then I will introduce expressions and explain American culture related to restaurant. After my explanation, I will ask them to create a comic strip in pairs including what they learned to practice. In doing so, they will be able to talk about the context and specific conversation that they would like to and, finally, they will be asked to do role-play based on their strip. I will assess their understanding through their comic strip and role-play at first and then, in the next class, I will give some quiz about a restaurant conversation (filling in blanks) or American culture related to a restaurant (multiple choice). This will lead students not only to acquire a language but also to have a chance to encounter American culture. 

▶ Performance Indicator-ESL.I.5-8.5.1.1:

Students demonstrate an understanding of cultural and language patterns and norms in American English, including different regional and social varieties of English.

▶ Link of my comic strip : Soup or salad?

※ Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_strip

It's Easy! Making a digital story as a learning tool

How convenient! Recently, I have tried to make a photo story on the website. Actually, at first, I felt overwhelming before trying it. There are a lot of photo story tools and I chose ‘Animoto’ to create a story because, simply, I liked the name. 

According to Wikipedia, Animoto is a cloud-based video creation service that produces video from photos, video clips, and music into video slideshows. Moreover, this sophisticated tool can be used in education for countless projects and presentations. Students can use the tool to present a concept. A teacher could use the video not only as an introduction to a lesson but also as the tool to teach a concept or the tool itself to other educators. I think this tool is very elaborate but user-friendly. It takes minutes to create the video. I just simply add pictures, text, and the music. That’s all!

In my future class, I will definitely introduce students this nice tool. As I crated, I will assign some contexts to students and ask them to create a short clip related to the topic. For example, if a student is assigned a travel agency, the student might create a clip to introduce some places for vacation or to introduce a travel schedule targeting clients or tour members. In my video, I introduced my school with some features targeting new students. Finally, they will be asked to present their video with explaining details such as target audiences, reasons, purpose, and so on. Also they will submit an essay to write the information of one peer’s presentation clearly. Through these two outputs, I can assess how appropriate they produce and convey the information based on the assigned topic as well as their clear understanding about their peer’s presentation.  

▶ Performance indicator – ESL.E.2-4.1.1.7:

   Students present information clearly in a variety of oral and written forms for different    audiences and purposes related to all academic content areas.

▶ Link of my photo story : My School, My UB

※ Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animoto

When TED: Technology, Entertainment and Design meets Education!

  TED-Ed provides creating lessons worth sharing. Within TED-Ed’s growing library of lessons, we might encounter carefully curated educational videos, many of which represent collaborations between talented educators and animators nominated through the TED-Ed platform. This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED’s, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. Users can then distribute TED-Ed lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student. TED-Ed lesson can be created by any website visitor, and involves adding questions, discussion topics and other supplementary materials to any educational video on YouTube. These lessons are used regularly in classrooms and homes to introduce new topics to learners in an exciting, curiosity-inspiring way.

  The lesson I created is to introduce the tips of healthy life. This includes 2 multiple choices and 1 discussion question.

The objectives are:
1. Student will be able to find main 7 tips to keep healthy life by watching the video several times.
2. Student will be able to grasp the details of each tip from the video.
3. Student will be able to give an opinion about the most important tip with reasons as a group activity.
4. Student will be able to summarize the content of video and present the group discussion.

The class goes like:
With this lesson, I will start the class by asking the question like what the healthy life looks like to warm up. Students already watched the video with answering questions before coming to the class, so I will have them talk about main tips and details which they found to review the video. And then I will go through the questions with answers and make students share their ideas of the discussion question in a group. Finally, they will be asked to summarize the content and make a chart or table to determine the ranking about the tips in order importance from their opinions. I think that, while engaging in this group activity, students will be able to listen, take turns speaking, and learn from others' ideas.

The assessment will be:
Also, to assess their learning, I will make each group have an oral presentation to summarize what they learned from the video and report the result they got through the discussion with the chart(or the table) that they created.


My lesson in TedEd: Tips for starting a healthy lifestyle


※ Resources : http://ed.ted.com/about

Flip Your Classroom!

Flipping the classroom is interesting. While I attended the TESOL convention 2015 in Toronto, a woman, who stayed in a same accommodation, told me about flipping the classroom and that she attended the presentations focused on this topic. Although I did not have a chance to listen to the presentation about flipping the classroom, these two articles reminded me of having short talk with her. The flipped classroom is a reversal of traditional teaching where students gain first exposure to new material outside of class, usually via reading or lecture videos, and then class time is used to do the harder work of assimilation that knowledge through strategies such as problem-solving, discussion or debates. In my understanding, this has a kind of 3 steps like working at home, working in class and working after class, and, in addition, this type of learning allows students to have better comprehension of the material, interact with instructor and peers more, and develop the critical thinking skill as a natural part of the learning process. From these two articles, I learned that the technology with various online tools is the decisive and indispensable factor to facilitate the flipped classroom. Moreover I think that this strategy is not only an extension of learning, but also a way of developing a high quality of lesson so teachers will not be able to overlook acquiring the new technology to educate students effectively. 

Flipped Learning Cycle

※ References: 

Flipping Your EL Classroom: A Primer by John Graney  

THREE REASONS TO FLIP YOUR CLASSROOM by Helaine Marshall

A Game in ESL Class

     I would like to introduce a game as a tool of ESL class. Pollekes Blue Room Escape is a click type room escape game created by Ruud for EscapeGames24. In this game, I was locked in a blue room and tried to escape the blue room by finding and using items. There were three spaces such as a living room with a sink, a front entrance and a computer room and I had to solve puzzles to escape. While playing the game, the game provided some instructions or hints. I played twice because the first time, it took long time and actually, I could not complete the task. So, I checked the walkthroughs before doing it the second time. 

  If I use this game in the class, I will teach some vocabulary provided by the game like a balloon, a fishnet, and so on and definitely it will be a good way for a speaking group work(three or four members).  Through this game, students would be able to be exposed to various vocabulary and some instructions from the game. Before starting the game, I will set the context to warm up the activity and introduce some vocabulary they might not be familiar. Also, I will provide a sheet of walkthroughs with a couple of sentences for the beginning part and have students complete their own walkthroughs with their members. This will allow students to practice speaking and writing to solve the task. During the game, I will walk around and monitor their performance to check their understanding and how they are doing the task. To motivate their participation more spontaneously, I will provide some rewards to the winner who escapes the room the first or I will limit the time to escape the room. After they finish the game, I will give the walkthroughs to compare their own walkthroughs and collect their walkthroughs to assess their performance. Also I can use walkthroughs as an assessment like filling in the blanks to check their learning.

Performance Indicator - ESL.E.2-4.4.1.8:
Students negotiate and manage interactions to accomplish social and classroom tasks.

Try this game! -> Polleke's Blue Room

Twitter as an educational tool

It was a great opportunity to learn various technologies which might play a significant role in teaching including Twitter! Also by reading two articles, I have learn more details to use Twitter in quality. One of two articles I chose introduces the uses of the popular micro-blogging tool in the instructional setting.  Since that brief posting, the writer has come across a lot of articles containing examples and suggestions for using Twitter in instructional applications. While there’s still going to be some overlap in the concepts presented in these articles, they clearly meet the goal of providing a thorough set of ideas and examples for leveraging Twitter in the educational process. Also the writer provided “6 Examples” from last June’s post to review to learn more and plan your approach to using Twitter in (and out of) the classroom.

Another article is about a steady stream of educational Twitter use. It makes sense: Twitter is free, easy to use, and most high school students are already on it. The writer mentioned some examples of Twitter functions which might be effective and authentic: Hold Tweet Chats and Conversations, Elicit Peer Feedback in Real Time, Have Students Tweet in Character, Involve the Community, Follow News and Issues, and Encourage Group Work

I agree with two articles and Twitter is one of the most powerful mediation tool in our society and education as well. This is because that twitter is an excellent mediator for students to access learning with various ways available such as enhancing the classroom network and communication, instant feedback between a teacher and students, positive washback and so on. Thus, I strongly believe that Twitter is greatly helpful for teachers to develop their professional. 

※ Article:

Over 100 ideas for using Twitter in the Classroom

Teaching with Twitter

Twitterchat, How COOOOOL!

 It was an interesting and great opportunity to participate in Twitterchat! I have attended Breakfast 530 and we shared about "What are you doing to keep spirits up during testing with an increase in tension & anxiety?"

The Breakfast Club is not about 1 person or group of people, but about the power of the community. Each time a new participant joins the chat we become a stronger, more connected community and can provide each other even greater value as part of a dynamic PLN. Founded in July, 2014 by Scott Capro,  BFC’s goal is to ensure that every educator who has an interest is supported in building their PLN, and that everyone who joins our chat knows the power of sharing their voice. We believe through elevating these voices and joining together as a community education can become truly transformative. With the help of the phenomenal #BFC530 community, Jessica manages the behind-the-scenes work of setting up topics and moderators each week. She loves to support all educators, regardless of position, tech skill or comfort level so they can be empowered to take their practice to the next level through global discussions, reflections, and connections rooted in interests and edu-passions.

This enables me and teachers to share the ideas and get some ideas. And I think this can inspire teachers with various topics and apply to their lessons and curriculum design. So I would take a look other communities and might have a chance to participate in the chatting!

Explore ePals!

I would like to say that ePals connects students to amazing learning experiences

ePals enriches K-12 learning in the classroom and at home with innovative web-based tools and the highest standard of children’s stories, games and digital media on the Web.

Teachers use the free ePals Global Classroom to create real world, culturally- enriching learning experiences for their students. With ePals classroom matching, a high school class studying Chinese can connect with a class studying English in China, or the classes can work on a special project together.

There are some projects from ePals. One of them is Class in Vermont, USA Seeks Cultural Exchange for The Way We Are PowerPoint Project.

To be specific, they are currently studying culture, focusing on ancient India, Greece, Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. The teacher would be interested in having the students communicate with other class to learn about the modern day culture as well as share theirs.

Also another one I was impressed is World War II on the Home Front: Civic Responsibility--Smithsonian in Your Classroom. In this lesson, students learn about life in a time of national emergency by examining five full-page reproductions of posters, each of which urges civilians to take some kind of voluntary action to buy savings bonds, to plant vegetable gardens, to conserve materials, to give their all at the factory. The class considers the meaning of citizenship by focusing on an essential question”: How does volunteering demonstrate civic responsibility?

The lesson is part of a unit created by the Comprehensive Social Studies Assessment Project of the Council of Chief State School Officers titled “Liberty and Citizenship.

Using the ePals/National Geographic Project, The Way We Are, students engage in a collaborative learning experience. Through email exchanges, students learn about the daily lives and culture of students in another region of the world. After exchanging four emails with a partner class, students work in groups to make a PowerPoint presentation showing the similarities and differences they have discovered and highlighting a selection of their ePals letters that they particularly liked. Moreover, ePals includes a diversity of programs like writing center and science center, which is almost a real school!

Through ePal, I will be able to utilize authentic resources provided by different centers. For example, I can introduce my students various thoughts from Global Citizens and make them read some articles so that my students would be exposed to global people and cultures! 

Explore ePals! Click this-> ePals

Let’s get involved in Social Networking!

Let’s get involved in Social Networking!

Let me introduce Classroom 2.0! 

This social network is great for people who are interested in social media and participative technologies in the classroom. I can participate in the great discussions here, to receive event notifications, and to find and connect with colleagues around the world. They provide various functions such as search engine, resources, and sharing information! 

Now visit the website! Click this -> CLASSROOM 2.0

Enjoy the privileges from Network!

Enjoy the privileges from Network! 

It is evident that in our current society network has a tremendous importance in our education. Some people side with that there is low correlation between network and education while others do not. I however, believe that network is playing a significant role in our education and will become a more powerful mean in the future.

Firstly, a learner is like a tourist. This is because we can see and learn the world through network. Network has become part of our life. It is true and, personally,, I always carry the network like my backpack to go to school every day. According to George Siemens for the video that I have watched, We have a technology available. Through social software, we are able to connect individuals around world. Like his mention and examples that he can connect to someone in Australia or Canada, our connection individually as well as collectively is broader and allows us to embrace the diversity. I think that our education should not overlook this flow in our current society and take advantage of this, because learning is also the important part of our life!

Secondly, a learner is like a cell of a human body because learners consistently need nutrition to grow. To be specific, the writer mentioned that “Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning. I agree with this and network is one of the most powerful tools to facilitate this and I admit, therefore, network is important to forward the content.

Personally, it was the first time to encounter 'Connectivism' theoretically. Learning is not individual activity anymore and it is obvious that we are able to access to various knowledge on line around the world. This article and video motivate me to utilize Connectivism in my teaching in the future.

Article: Connectivism: A Learning Theory for theDigital Age, George Siemens
Video : The Network is the Learning,George Siemens

Future Learning in Our World!

Video Clip ->  FutureLearning Documentary 2012 

We have to consider the NEXT GENERATION who is the FUTURE!  To arm it with the relevant, timeless skills for our rapidly changing world, we need to revolutionize what it means to learn.
This clip shows about how technology plays a significant role in education. In this video, some educators mentions the function of technology like computer in our learning. They are redefining how we engage young minds for a creatively and technologically-advanced future. For example, one thing I was impressed is that, according to Seth Weinberger, we need to connect a computer to classroom itself. The goal of this is that  teachers do more higher order things and let the computers do more basic thing like all the practice. 
Through watching this clip, I think that technology can teach us many great things and this will definitely influence on our learning environment as well as life styles.