Using Videos in Classroom

The speech made by President-Elect Barack Obama in Chicago serves as a great material for English teaching and learning. It can be integrated into English course to practice four skills through careful planning. For instance, the lesson can be divided into three phases. Before watching the video, students are given several questions regarding presidential election campaign to think about, or discuss about. Also, students can be given a vocabulary list with some key words which will be heard in the video. When they are watching the video, they may be required to do a part of dictation or listening comprehension. After watching the video, the teacher may ask students questions to check their understanding and hold a class discussion. A transcript of the speech may be passed around for students' better understanding. For take home assginment, students can be asked to do some research about historical references Obama made in the speech such as the Dust Bowl, the New Deal, the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham and etc.
Also, this video can be used to teach students how to make a public speech. It's also a great example for writing.

Microblogging

Twitter is a compeletly new tool for me and I am still working on it although it's quite simple and self-explained. I didn't really like at first because I felt like it's quite similar with facebook and other tools. Also, many tweets I read are quite useless. But I started to see the postive side of Twitter. Usually the people you followed are those you are interested. Take me for example, my main interest is Teaching English to Non-native English Speakers. Therefore, I followed EFL Classroom 2.0 and several EFL teachers. Those people and I form a small network. In this small network, it's very easy to have an interactive conversation. "The effective part of Twitter is the immediate feedback when you have a question or comment that you need to 'get out there. " Therefore, I am thinking if I encounter any problem in teaching or any other areas, I could just post it on Twitter and I might be suprised by those responses given by my followers. Twitter serves as a great platform for teachers to exchange ideas and materials.

Frankly speaking, before I read those articles provided by Dr. Burgos, I have no idea of how to incorporate Twitter into teaching and learning. Since there is a word limitation for every tweet, I thought it wouldn't have much use in classroom. However, when I read Can we use Twitter for educational activities?, I was so suprised to find out so many usages. For instance, "It promotes writing as a fun activity. It fosters writing skills and develops literacy skills" All those educational uses mentioned in that article are great and I am willing to try them in my future classroom. But Twiiter also has limitations for classroom use. In Educators Test the Limits of Twitter Microblogging Tool, whether Twitter is safe for kid is discussed. Youth Twitter, a revised version of Twitter will allow teachers to edit students' tweets by granting them "adminstrator status". In this way, "teacher controls will allow educators to feel comfortable using the Twitter platform and to take advantage of its educational benefits."
http://tesl-ej.org/ej45/int.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2286799/Can-we-use-Twitter-for-educational-activities
http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2008/06/24/01twitter_web.h02.html

Tweets

It's so good to know such a great platform!! People post their thoughts, what they find interesting or useful , or what they are doing right now, which are so-called tweets on twitter. You will never know what responses people will pop up with. Also, you might be suprised to find out your friends are interested in the same thing just as you are.
I didn't twitter too much in the past two weeks, since I don't have much information to share with my friends. But I spent a long time looking at others' tweets. The more people you follow, the more tweets you have to read. The function of "following" is amazing!! By following the people you are interested, you will always get the up-to-date information of their thoughts, their readings, and some links they've posted. I should say, most the tweets are useless, which are usually about weather, what they are doing and etc. But there are also some informative tweets. For example, I followed EFL Classroom 2.0 and it provided very useful links about various activities that can be used in EFL classroom. Quite fun!!
The thing I don't like about Twitter is that there is a limitation of words you could type. You can only post a few sentences and that's the only function Twitter gets. You can not upload audio or video files. Also, I feel that twitter is like facebook in a certain way.