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

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

Try a game as a language learning activity!

   I believe that using games a great activity for students to learn a second language because it is easy to motivate student to get involved in the activity and, finally, they encounter the lesson which a teacher would like to teach.

For example, Phantasy Quest1 was interesting! Although I complete the tasks a little, I was able to see various vocabulary with having fun! Phantasy Quest 1 is a point and click type adventure game, where you awaken to find yourself alone on a beach. Nearby is the wreck of your ship. All I need to do is that using the mouse and clicking anywhere on the game screen. Some things I can activate simply by clicking on them, while others I may have to use an item that you have collected in your inventory. From this game, teachers might pick and teach some vocabulary or make students the sentences popped up and check the walkthroughs. To complete each tasks, students have to read the sentences so I believe that this is a good way for students to be exposed to new words or sentences. Also, by making this game as a pair work, they can negotiate and talk about the tasks which would lead them to practice the speaking skill.

    Also, the name of another game I played is ‘Juiceand Fruit’ and I played the game three times. At the beginning I could not connect to language learning, however, as time goes by, I recognize the vocabulary related to a serving beverage store. So this game is to show the skills as a juice maker and serve the beverages requested by customers within a limited time. If a user achieves the specific score, the number of customer is raised. I can choose some vocabulary related to such as a type of glass, fruit flavor, various straws, strip pattern, and so on. For the teacher’s role, we can guide or give more specific instructions when teachers encounter students who are in stuck by monitoring their performance. Above all, this game is very simple and addictive so I think that students probably enjoy this game to win the higher score. And before starting this game, I can encourage students to play this game with the competition. So the student who gets the highest score will get the juice as a reward. I will definitely use a walk through for the game because it can be helpful for students to learn the game. With a walk through, I can make them guess the walk through first and then provide the answers. Also, the images from the games are very helpful and simple for students to remember the vocabulary. To assess students, I can make some pop quiz of vocabulary like filling in the blanks to check their understanding or make them engage in a cooperative activity as a writing activity to create the instructions how to play the game. One more thing as an assessment, I can provide the images of each vocabulary and play the role as a customer to make the student pick the right image from my beverage requests. 

Performance Indicator - ESL.E. PK-1.4.1.8:
Students negotiate and manage interactions to accomplish social and classroom tasks.

Game Link: Juiceand Fruit

Do you know Gamification?

Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage users in solving problems and increase users' self contributions.

Gamification has been studied and applied in several domains, with some of the main purposes being to engage, teach in classrooms, entertain, measure, and to improve the perceived ease of use of information systems. A review of research on gamification shows that a majority of studies on gamification find positive effects from gamification. Gamification inspires students to develop competencies and skills as they focus on the activities of the game. And the game mechanics encourage students to compete against themselves, looking to reach a personal best or to satisfy their own learning goals. By participating in these types of activities, students acquire information and hone abilities while achieving interim goals that provide a clear sense of progress, rather than simply focusing on completing the course. Game mechanics reinforce the fact that failure indicates that more work is needed to master the skill or knowledge at hand.

According to Tom Chatfield, In terms of education, perhaps most obviously of all, we can transform how we engage people. We can offer people the grand continuity of experience and personal investment. We can break things down into highly calibrated small tasks. We can use calculated randomness. We can reward effort consistently as everything fields together. And we can use the kind of group behaviorsthat we see evolving when people are at play together, these really quite unprecedentedly complexcooperative mechanisms. He provides a video game called EverQuest(Killing dragons) as an example to support the importance of Gamification. This is a player-developed,self-enforcing, voluntary currency, and it's incredibly sophisticated player behavior. Also he emphasized that ‘engagement’ can be transformed by the psychological and the neurological lessons we can learn from watching people that are playing games. But it's also about collective engagement and about the unprecedented laboratory for observing what makes people tick and work and play and engage on a grand scale in games.

To use games in an L2 class, we need to consider 3 elements: commercial and educational games, to play or to design, and integration. Classroom activities using commercial games might include analysis of the game play experience targeting specific vocabulary, language functions, or cultural themes. For example, learners could be directed to keep a game journal in which they are asked to record relevant information such as characters, setting, language, and/ or reflect on their in-game choices. This experience then serves as background knowledge for other classroom activities such as speaking tasks or writing assignments. By creating goals, narratives, and content, learners must engage in the language at a level beyond that of playing the game Integration can include, for example, the use of game content as pre-writing content for a writing task or as an impetus for a classroom debate. In addition, a design task might take the place of a more traditional writing task, following the same multi-draft process to teaching writing skills and strategies.

※ References:

7 Things You Should Know About Games andLearning

Tom Chatfield: 7 Ways Games Reward theBrain

"Just Playing Games? A Look at the Useof Digital Games for Language Learning"

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!

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

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.