English as a Second Language Podcast

I found an interesting podcast episode,"talking to a mechanic", from the ESLPOD website. I would like to use it in my ESL class for students’ practical English conversation. The episode itself does not directly teach us how to speak English perfectly in terms of grammar or structure. However, I think it is useful because it focuses more on our daily life conversation that could possibly happen anytime under certain circumstances. Here, the podcast introduces us how to speak to a mechanic, when we have a problem with a car. After providing an sample conversation, it also explains for the details on vocabulary and some informal expressions which are usually used in a colloquial language. It is going to be useful if I play this podcast episode as a resource of practicing English conversation in my classroom, and I might also ask learners to make their own conversation that they could use in a certain place or situation.  This can be used as a part of listening and speaking practices in learning English as a second language as well, and more interesting episodes regarding ‘everyday life conversation’ can be introduced for ESL learners in the same way.   

ePals..

ePals is a great learning space providing various resources and effective ways of learning for K-12 learners  all over the world. It is useful especially for today’s society, which is globalized digitally advanced because anyone can participate in the digital network learning and get information  from each other without paying too much money. To me, the most effective aspect of ePals seems that it is aiming for global community and leads a lot of collaborative classrooms over different countries. By joining a variety of classrooms learners benefit in finding their own interest field in wide learning areas and they communicate with other members. It also provides a map which allows learners to easily find the country they want to learn about and its characteristics as well. In terms of this collaborative learning system, it can  be very useful for language learners. Students can improve their language skills by communicating and exchanging resources via emails or blogs each other and get more insights of different cultural perspectives too. Thus, I would encourage my students to take advantages of finding information or resources they need for their second language learning. Also, I might share my own work and philosophy in teaching, as a teacher, with other teachers who have the same purposes of teaching as me. Such feature of ‘international reading association’ may provide me some good ideas that I can adopt for my own teaching.    

A digital story - four skills in language learning.

Try our video maker at Animoto.

In this video, I discussed four skills that I will be focusing on during my lessons. Since this is an ESL classroom for adults, I think that students need to be fluent in all areas of language skills, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. In terms of that, this video will work as an introduction in my first class to show and emphasize the four skills as a goal for this course.

Digital Storytelling (part 2)

Read my story here

I created a story which will open up my lesson in first day of the class. This is my own creative introduction to welcome my ESL students and to introduce the goals of learning a second language before beginning actual lessons. I think this story will encourage students by allowing them to have an idea of what they are expected to do in this classroom and to prepare accordingly. Although this is a short story, I hope it comprehends everything meaningful that I want to convey to my students.

Digital Storytelling

Illustration By Frits

According to The Educational Use of Digital Storytelling, “digital story telling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories”. In today’s education, it can be used in a wide range of learning content with various ways of exploring stories.

For example, we can use images, video, movie, audio or narration as a means of telling a story on our computer. Utilizing digital stories is a very effective way of learning especially in today’s globalized society because people from any cultures can share their stories and participate to collaborative learning freely through the computer-based tools, without border barrier.

7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling  talks about the functions of  digital stories, which can be “instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective, and the resources available to incorporate into a digital story are virtually limitless, giving the storyteller enormous creative latitude”. Although educators can use it for any topics and contents with his/her own creation, it might be especially useful in a language classroom because such tools like audio, video, or images allow students to learn more about cultural aspects and different perspectives of people from other cultures as well as to improve their listening ability.

Thus, we could use digital storytelling as one of teaching methods for following purposes:

-Illustrating cultural background in a language classroom.

-Providing visual aids to help students better understanding of learning contents     

-Encouraging learners to be more motivated to their learning with authentic and interesting materials.

-Providing opportunities for sharing one’s thoughts and experiences on a specific topic.

-Creating a space for communication and independent learning  outside the classroom.

How to use Twitter for teaching: a communicative function

Twitter is one of  social media  that teachers can utilize for their teaching, and there are several ways that the teachers can consider to use it more creatively and effectively. The article 28 Creative Ways Teachers Are using Twitter introduces some specific roles of Twitter that provide teachers valuable information to be utilized for their teaching. To me, the most interesting and important function of Twitter among the 28 is “communication between classes”. This might be one of the most obvious functions of any social networks. I like the fact that we can share our ideas and exchange information with people from outside of the course, as well as students within the course.

Another other article, Developing a Personal Sharing Network talks about changing a term of PLN (Personal Learning Network) to PSN (Personal Sharing Network). I think this is also an interesting idea that emphasizes the function of social networks in a field of learning, as a communicative opportunities provider. Therefore, social media we use today are a means of cooperative learning through communication rather than providing knowledge only, and I would  utilize this strength of social networks for my future teaching.

Classroom 2.0 - a useful social network

                                                         

Classroom 2.0 is a social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and social media in education. I like it because it introduces many other edublogs that seem to be useful for my future blogging to be inspired. It was good to see several interesting teaching materials introduced through the forum discussions. In the section of “group”, I saw various groups that are formed for different purposes of education. It also has  many articles and resources that might be effective in learning how to manage the classroom integrating Web 2.0 technology. For any future teachers who want to know more about web teaching might be interested in this social network.   

A Teacher is Like a Compass..

The development of technology enriches our life styles in many ways. The way we communicate, spend our leisure time, work, and learn is hugely affected by a variety of technical changes. In the field of learning, a formal schooling is no more the only way we could teach and learn. Beyond the teaching knowledge at a school, today’s teachers must be prepared to guide the learners to experience and adapt many different fields of knowlege during the learning process. Within the use of technology,  lots of chances are available for leaners to find the most suited field to themselves. Moreover, the roles of teacher became much more important than in the past. According to the  article,  Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital AGE, “Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime”. As this trend is continuing, a teacher is responsible for learners joining into the new learning space such as blogs, wikis, and other networks. The Impact of Social Media on Learning also emphasizes the influence of social software in learning, “The social software that we see today in form of blogs and wikis developed in order to enable the individuals to quickly change knowledge field to continue learning from each other”.

  Like this, in the digital world, we could learn more than just one knowledge field. There are a lot of opportunities to see and learn many other areas that we could utilize in the future life as well. In terms of that, a teacher must help the learners to find the field where they are interested in and suitable the most. By providing sources related to various knowledge fields  through the social media and technology, a teacher plays an important role in leading the learners to find the right path of their lives. That is why I compare a teacher of today to a compass in respect of  navigating the right direction.  

A comment on Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog Post: Learning how to comment!

At Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog, I found an interesting post that describes how to comment on the classroom blog for students who might be unfamiliar with the world of blogging.  The post starts with a kind explanation about the aspects of blogging and what students can do in the space. It also presents some tips for creating a quality comment and provides a lot of beneficial information with interesting images and video. The instruction seems to be easy to follow and clear enough for those who are “novices to the world of blogging”.

                                                       

                           

 Since this is a digital learning space, it is necessary for students to be able to compose a comment in order to participate in the class for their learning. Thus prior to the assessment of students’ activities, giving them a clear instruction of how to utilize the blog is one of the tasks that teacher must to do for students’ effective learning. In terms of that, I found Mrs. Yollis’ post very valuable for me to develop my own digital learning space more efficiently as well as for her students.

(To view the post, go to
http://yollisclassblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/learning-how-to-comment.html)

Students are Eager for Digital Learning!

     K-12 students today are using Internet for most of the time they spend a day. They blog, play games, write a letter, listen to the music, and watch TV online. These things happen all the time in students’ lives and the Internet is always involved in their digital activities.

     However, students still want to learn things more digitally, getting away from taking classes in which technology does not exist and makes them to merely pay attention to teachers. This is not the way of creative learning that we expect from our educational system either. What we really need for today's digital learners is to provide them a digital classroom. In this type of classroom, learners will finally be comfortable and happy with learning and thinking creatively. 

     Therefore, it is an important task for teachers to be able to plan their lessons involved in technology so that learners could consider learning as an interesting process of constructing knowledge, just like playing with the Internet. We can only make it possible within the active engagement of technology.  The video, A Vision of K-12 Students Today, has a great inspiration in students' desire for digital learning.

(To view this video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8)

Roles of Technology in Language Teaching

The first chapter of Brave New Digital Classroom emphasizes on the reasons why we need technology in L2 curriculum. I strongly agree with what the book suggests in terms of the role of technology in L2 learning. As Blake says that “Language learning is assisted through social interaction of learners and their interlocutors”, I also think that technology is a very essential tool for communicators who want to share information and their ideas with other people over the world. Since learning L2 is not just understanding of the language but also requires intercultural communication with others, it should especially be integrated with digital technology. According to the book, the most obvious reason why we need to pay attention to the development of technology in L2 classroom is because “84 percent of teenagers today use the Internet primarily as a tool for communications through instant messaging and text messaging”. In other words, today’s students are already accustomed to use the Internet for almost any kinds of activity they do in their daily lives. This means that engagement of technology in our L2 classrooms is a great opportunity to gather students’ attention to digital learning world thereby students can be encouraged to enjoy learning and find their interests on it. The main points of this book are very much alike to my own thoughts on L2 learning environment, and I found this chapter very effective for those, who are currently preparing for future L2 teachers, as a reminder of the importance of technology in L2 curriculum.

Tips for Web Safety

As the world is getting be globalized, Internet becomes a largest tool that almost everyone uses for information and commutity. It provides everything humanly impossible in temrs of resources, technology, knowlege to enrich our lives. In other words, using the Internet is inevitable for us to survive the modern world because it is just another means of communication and also the reason why you are at the computer right now.

Then, does the Internet always satisfy us? The answer might be NO. Internet is definitely a greatest tool for most of us, but not for those who do not aware of the danger lurking in it. In order to keep yourself safe against any risks of cyber crime, you must keep the following tips in your mind when you use the Internet. These tips are not only important for language learning at this space, but it helps you to protect yourself from privacy invasions in general use of the Internet as well.

•  Do not fill out forms and enter contests on commercial Web sites

• Do not provide information when registering for Internet services or software (i.e. file-sharing, instant messaging, e-mail)
• Do not complete a personal profile for an e-mail or instant messaging account
• Do not give personal information to strangers in chat rooms or through instant messaging

Please don't lose your privacy due to neglect of those tips and just adhere to them. For more information about web safety, refer to the article; Protecting Personal Privacy Online .



Reference

Safe Passage Know the Risks- Privacy Invasions
www.media-awareness.ca/...risks_privacy.cfm

Blogging Guidelines for ESL Students

Using a blog for learning and teaching language becomes more and more popular among the ESL students and teachers. Thus, it is required for them to make clear understading  of how they are using the blog and what they could do in this digital world. Here are tips for those of you who want to take advantages of this blog.

COMMUNICATION

Since communication is one of the aims why are learning a language, it is important to use this space as a tool for sharing thoughts and experessing feelings about any aspects of learning language. 

•  Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions
•  Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics
•  Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics

CULTURES

Beyond the language learning, having communication with people from various countries here would help you to get a better understanding of cultures and have more insights to the cultural differences and similarities. Learn more about cultures! 

• Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between language and culture
• Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products/practices and perspectives of the culture studied
  

STRATEGIES

Utilizing a blog in learning will allow students to gain technical knowedge as well as knowlege in the language. Also, this is a great chance for students to find their own methods and materials that would be effective for them the msot. For example, they could do any acitivities such as reading, writing, listening, viewing, and even replying on the bolg, and this would enable them to learn deep into a use of technology and to find their intersts on a particular learning method.

• Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, and video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
• Students find the best way for language lenaring while they approach different types and methods of participation (e.g., writing journals, posting comments, and watching video)  at the blog.
  

References

ACTFL National Standards for Foreing Language Education
www.actfl.org/...FLNCATEStandardsRevised713.pdf
Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis.../ Standards related to digital writing
digitalwriting.pbwiki.com/rds+related+to+digital+writing