Podcasting

Fun English Lessons is a comedy style talk show done by two Canadian brothers living in Shanghai, China. It's fun to listen to and a great way to improve English. Although I am already an advanced English learner, there is still something to learn from their talk. It's also a great material to adopt for classroom teaching. Up till now, there are 119 eposides and each episode has a topic. Take the first one for example, the topic is "humor" and they focus on several words and expressions such as hilarious, sense of humor, absolutely, awsome, suck and etc. followed by specific explanation, examples and dialogues. I found it very authentic, colloquial and contexturized. It works as a perfect supplement to formal classroom lecture. Each episode lasts about 15 minutes, neither too long or too short. I could incoporate this talk show into my lessons on a daily basis. My English lesson doesn't necessarily focus on the same topic with each episode they created. This talk show can be used to practice listening comprehension, expand vocabulary and enhance cultural understanding. I will prepare some worksheets based on each episode for students to do while listening or for further reference. I can also give some additional explanation if necessay, but I won't spend too much time on it. This talk show is downloadable, so students can listen to it repetitively on their spare time. I hope my students will enjoy the show and their English get improved with time going on.

Global Collaboration Part 2

Among those tools I've explored in the last mod, I think I will integrate Voxopop in a project for global cooperation. Actually, I am thinking of integrate Voxopop with either ePals or TalkingITGlobal. Voxopop(formally Chinswing) is a short of audio-based discussion board: it’s a place where you can post your question or thought to create a conversation (or to answer an existing one) and wait for others to reply in the same fashion. I choose global warming as the topic of my project, for instance. This topic is listed on both ePals and TalkingITGlobal and there are many threads there. Also, there are some classes around the world are doing the same project right now. I can either connect with another class through ePal or just work independently. I can ask my students to read through some posts posted by people coming from different areas, and then to summerize what they've read and post their own opinions. Then I will create a discussion topic about global warming on Voxopop. Students are required to respond to the topic orally. Also, they are required to respond to other students' responses (around 3 students) at the same time.

Global Collaboration Part 1

Among listed sites for global cooperation, I explored ePals and Talkingitglobal.

ePALS is not only the place where you can chat with people around the world and make friends. More importanly, it's an educational website which connects students, teachers and parents around the world for cross-cultural and interactive projects. ePals provides learning units, instructional resources, practices and member-created projects all arranged by topic. This makes it easier for the teacher to match her classroom with another by finding whoever is intereted in writing about the same topic. One unique feature of ePals is that families are invloved. Many parents left messages there looking for epals/penpals for their children, which I think greatly encourages global cooperation.

Talkingitglobal uses an online social network aimed primarily at youth to raise awareness and discussion on a number of global issues such as animal rights and sustainable development. It also encourages youth to take action that affects their local and global communities.

Both websites provide ways for students and teachers to communicate around the world much more quickly. People can make friends, practice writing and get to know other countries and cultures. I like both of them.

From my own experience, it is often difficult to motivate EFL students to readand write. ePals can serve as a platform to motivate and inspire studentsin language learning. By integrating a letter-exchange program in the classroom,students will be excited about literacy learning. As a teacher, I can selecte-pals for my students and develop real-life writing and learning experiences forthem. Students learn the format of a friendly letter and the parts of an e-mailmessage. With carefulselection of an e-pal group, students can also learn about other cultures,languages, and geographic areas that align with the curriculum in your school.

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.

Using skype to collaborate

For me, skype is just used as an alternative of phone. I use it to call my parents sometime and we could see each other through webcamera. I've never thought of using skype as a tool to collaborate, teach and learn until I saw Using Skype to Collaborate (Classroom 2.0 Live this Saturday morning)on Moving at the speed of creativity. This post leads to another post Skype Virtual Guest Speakers and Collaboration wiki written by the same author earlier. He or she mentioned that skype can be used to bring in visual guest speakers to classroom. One person replied that he or she has invited several well-known children’s authors into the classroom via Skype. They spent time talking with students and answering questions. A great learning opportunity has been created. It connects the classroom with the outside world. I was so excited when I saw this and I definitely will try this in my future classroom.