My experience of using blog

I wrote Chinese journals in blog to write down what happednd in my life before using Blogger this semester. This was my first time to use a blog to write down and do reflection on what I have learned in class. I wrote about three journals each week. There are more than 25 posts on my blog till the end of the semester. I wrote down my thoughts, experience and criticlal thinking of technology I have used. Theses journals are valuable to me. When memories fade away, these journals will remind me of what type technology might be useful for a particular setting.

As a prospective Chinese teacher, I may have students at intermediate to advanced level write weekly journal on the blog. I could take blog writing as the free-writing assignment. Students can write whatever they want to write, and I give them comments mainly focusing on meaning instead of forms. I could also invite my friend who is teaching EFL in China to join me. That way, American students who are learning Chinese and Chinese students who are learning English can correct each other’s journals. Student may easily get motivated to write when they know there are audiences looking forward to reading their writings. I believe this will be a good way to do free-writing and language-exchange by using blog.

'Makeuseof', a new method of editing photos in to comics

As teachers, we frequently find us in need of making interesting pictures, no matter in powerpoints used in classes or in handouts, to help students keep being interested and focusing in class. However, other than powerpoints, we don't actually have much of option to manipulate pictures. Now I have found a new method to do so: 'Makeuseof'. 


'Makeuseof' is a website that helps people to create comic strips out of their own photographs; enhance photo effects; add speech bubbles and text; and embed ready comics onto blogs or social networking profiles. 


To do so, it is fairly simple. All you need to do is register on their website: makeuseof.com; and start editing your photos as you like. There are many projects that are very interesting for teachers to do with the help with the website and present in class. For example: the teachers may keep the habit of taking pictures of their students when they are taking apart in course activities and presentations. At the end of the class, the teacher may choose one picture about each student and make all the photos into comics or video clips and present it to the students. Maybe the teacher can even post the video on websites, like 'youtube', so the parents of the teachers may appreciate it together with the students. 


To sum up, this new website: 'Makeuseof' is able to help teachers to edit photographs, make comics, and even make video clips. Therefore, it can be great help for teachers to keep their classrooms interesting by presenting funny pictures. 

Second life, might not be that suitable for teachers after all

The on-line 'game' Second Life has generated a huge fuss among people. Due to the nature of being a language teacher, I naturally considered the possibility of integrating this software to my teaching process through some approach. Therefore, I started my own experience in Second Life, only to find results that are not that optimistic. 


I have to agree that the introduction videos about Second Life is very cool. Just think about the fact you are able to experience the world without even going into the world is very exciting. After a rather simple design and tutorial about how to walk around, chat, sit and fly (!!) in the world, I directly started my exploration. 


The first impression of mine about this game is that it is not as easy to get started as you may imagine. One of the main concepts in the game is to communicate with other people. This is actually a great point that can be integrated into foreign language education. However, when I start talking to other virtual people, I was not responded warmly. The reason is rather simple, people tend to be less bounded by the morality in the virtual universe, and thus are more cautious about conversation with each other. 


The second thing I noticed about this game is that the lagging is quite problematic. The internet speed in my house is not very fast, so the problem might got aggravated. I wonder if other people are experiencing the same problem. However, judging from the animation in the welcome videos, everyone might be facing the same problem. It it not logical to require a free online software to be as fluent as a PC game that is from a disc or downloaded to the local computer. The only point here is that it might not be easy for students to use this program to practice language. 


In summary, I would like to say that Second Life might be a good choice is the goal is to relax and kill time, but it was not designed to meet the needs of educational purposes. Having students going into Second Life community to practice language might seem like an interesting idea in the beginning, but turns out suffering from serious problems mentioned above, beside the possibility of getting addicted to it and abandon study, which is the last thing we would like to see. 

Pixton: the World's best way to make comics

Everybody likes comics. From the most famous 'The Simpsons' to the nerdy type 'P.H.D', different kinds of comics are appreciated by different group of people. Integrating comics into classes in a very interesting idea, but not a practical one, considering the amount of work and effort one need to put into. But not now anymore!

The appearance of Pixton has changed almost everything we know about this field. Pixton brings the techniques that were normally used by profession people in the comics field to ordinary lives, and makes comic-drawing much easier than before. 


As can seen in the demo on Pixton's website, after a simple online registration process, you can get right started with the comic production process. The first things you might want to set for the whole comics is probably the main characters. The website has provided many different types of characters for your choice. If you are not satisfied with any of them, it is totally fine to start fresh and build your own characters from scratch. The best part of this software is that the characters are built in part and thus these parts can be reused easily in the future production. Therefore, you will be experiencing something that you can never get with paper and pencils. 



The website has integrate lots of functions to make your creation process easier. Many of the functions, like enlarging, rotation, are well known by people while using other software, like powerpoints. Thus, it is very easy to get started with. 


Imagine this, the students from a Mandarin course come to the class with their projects on drawing a full set of comics with all the conversation between the characters in Mandarin and present it to each other. In the process where they may read the comics drawn by each other, they are also reading Mandarin which is embedded in the conversation between characters. How cool is that! 

Skype: the education is just one click away

Skype, as a software for phone calls and communicating with friends, has been well know by people all over the world. It is probably one of the largest on-line communities for people to stay connected. Also, websites that provide online education services, particularly language education, for students and teachers have been introducing skype as one of the main communication tools between teachers and students. This idea has been carried out extremely successfully. 

However, the new program by Skype, Skype in the classroom, which is specifically designed for education, is not well known by people. This program, 'Skype in the classroom' is a free global community that invites teachers to collaborate on class projects where they mgiht use Skype, and share skills and inspiration around specific teaching needs. Teachers can easily join this community after the simple log-in process with the Skype account they already have. Afterwards, they are allowed to post any thing they maybe looking for help about online, and people will be able to see and perhaps respond.

The requests are in the project section. Right now, there are altogether 1941 teachers involved in the community and 28000 projects have been founded. Browsing the project names, you will be surprised to see how diverse the topics may be. It can range all the way from looking for people from Honduras to Skype with and learn about their lifestyle, to finding people to Skype with to understand how the weather condition in a particular region may impact their lives, to 7th grade New Jersey history class teacher interviewing people for the perspectives on the civil war. For each project, the request is specified for class or any individual person; the student ages, category of the subject and the communication language to avoid confusion. 

In summary, the program 'Skype in the classroom' is very helpful and beneficial for teachers looking for help that maybe found online. As a perspective teacher, I strongly encourage any one that might be involved to get look into this program and hopefully benefit from it. 

Classroom 2.0: a free, community-supported network

Classroom 2.0 is an excellent website for teachers who work in this technological society.
This website is a free, community-supported network. It's not only a supportive comfortable place for beginners to start using Web. 2.0, soial media and participative technologies in classroom setting, but also help educators who have been familiar with technology share experience and get new ideas. Users can find interesting discussions by tools (such as Google earth and PowerPoint), by subjects (such as arts, math, and foreign languages) and by areas (like elementary, Pre-K, and professional development).

One of the technological problems I did not know how to solve is that how to download Youtube videos. There are tons of great videos on Youtube.com which can be perfectly used in teaching. However, Youtube.com is blocked in some schools. Also, even though some schools can have access to Youtube.com, it's always safer to download the videos ahead of time. To seek for the solution to my problem, I typed two key words "Youtube, download" in the search bar of Classroom 2.0. To my surprise, there were a list of answers poping out. Some teachers suggested a website called Zamzar. I tried it and found that it is an amazing website. I just needed to paste the URL of the video, choose the format I prefer and leave my email address. After haft a minute, Zamzar sent me the converted video and I could easily download it.

If your problem has not been asked by other teachers, you could post your own questions on Classroom 2.0. I believe that there will be many experts willing to help out. I love Classroom 2.0, and I will definitely keep using it.

Lore: another excellent free "blackboard"

When this website was introduced by Mimi and Anna for the first time, its name was Coursekit. Now, it has a new name: Lore. Although I like the old name better, the convenience the website provides stays the same. I remember that when I student taught in a high school last semester, one day, my cooperation teacher looked depressed and asked me if there is anyway she could upload assignments' instruction and everyday's powerpoint slides so that students could download them for review. I asked her why the school did not provide students and teachers with the class management system like "Blackboard" used by NYU. My CT told me that due to budget cuts, the school cannot afford this kind of class management system any more. We tried different websites, but none of them was designed for classroom education. As a result, we were not satisfied with any of them. From then on, I noticed that how important a free class management system it is! After Anna and Mimi introduced several wonderful websites like Lore to us, I sent my CT an email and shared what I learned in the class. After trying out two of them, my CT called me and said she was so excited to find such useful websites!

I chose Lore to use for my own class. I am teaching in a language school at weekends. Every week, I teach kids Chinese songs, and we watch Chinese vedio together. Parents usually ask me if I can send teaching materials to them so that they can help kids review them. Although I would like to share all the teaching materials with them, I cannot say "ok, no problem". The reason is that some files are to big to be sent by emails. Now, I upload all the textbooks I use, songs I teach and many other stuff on Lore. Parents can easily download these documents. In addition, some of my adult students use Lore as a good community to discuss their learning experience with others.

In a word, as a teacher, I really benefit from using Lore. I want to thank my educators for introducing such a fantastic tool to us!

ePortfolios, a new perfect form of resume

Students are always facing the problems of finding the perfect way to present their resume, once they come to the end of campus life and start looking into their opportunities in the society. There have been endless efforts made in the process of designning the perfect resume. However, the appearance of ePortolios saves countless efforts and time of future students in terms of writing their resumes and present themselves.

The website of ePortolios basically provides people with a platform of designning their websites to introduce their personalities, educational backgrounds, goals, and almost anything else they like to present. There are many advantages of using this website comparing with conventional ways of writing resumes.

Firstly, it is easy for people to get know you before they actually have the chance of meeting you in person, and it is much simpler to carry around. Consider the situation below: if you are in California, while there is a job in Massachusettes that you are very interested in. Instead of sending over a word file writing everything about you in paper, it is so much better if you are able to send over just one simple link, so the recruiting people can know almost everything about you and see if you are a good fit.

Furthermore, many students, for example those majoring in arts and education, are required to provide materials that are very hard to present in conventional resumes. The platform of ePortofolios provides so much better opportunities to present materials, like art works, and videos of teaching in class.

However, it is equally important to realize that the website is not as useful if people are not able to design their website professionally and with highlights. I have come across some websites with lots and lots words in it, while almost no figures about anything. It becomes very exhausting and not much different from traditional resumes in that sense.

In summary, ePortofolios definitely provide people better chances to present themselves and get hired. However, people need to pay attentions what they put on the website: they need to make sure that it is attracting as well as professional.

Everybody can be from New York

People always say that it is best to learn from the most authentic environments. However, as we discussed before, it is always hard to overcomes the difficulties, both financial and time related, to create such environments for all learners. 'We Are New York' provides such excellent environments to aid language learners. 


As the project says on the website, 'We Are New York' is an Emmy Award-winning half hour TV show created to help people practice English. Each story highlights important and realistic situations, like go seeing to the doctor or talking with a professor. The stories capture the spirit of people who have come from all over the world that have made the Big Apple their home. The characters speak every day English, but at a slower pace. They also provide subtitles to help facilitate understanding of sentence formation and context. 


The project, 'We Are New York' uses conversation groups throughout the five boroughs to help immigrant New Yorkers practice English and learn about helpful City services. These groups are led by volunteers who are trained by the We Are New York staff. 


Besides all these TV shows people can watch, this project also provides opportunities for ESL learner to practice speaking English with volunteers from New York City for free. Detailed schedules can be found on their website. If ESL learners are able to make full use of all these features of this project, I am sure that they will benefit a lot during the process.  

Digital Stories

It is in a workshop for developing Chinese teacher in the US that I got to know how to use digital stories to teach languages. The presenter in that workshop showed us the video on the left hand side. This vedio was about the Latern Festival in China.  Since the objective of this course was to review different colors and learn the structure "color + item", there were many phrases such as "red latern", "green latern", "yellow latern", "grey latern" and so on. When a yellow latern appeared, the words "yellow latern" were sounded out. Different pictures enabled the drills not boring at all.
I once used this digital stories to teach kids after the workshop. After watching the video, kids could be able to figure out the structure "color + item". Also, since words were associated with images, students remembered the words very firmly.

After the first successful experience of using digital stories, I made quite a few digital stories myself. The reason why I made stories myself was that I was not quite satisfied with some textbooks, particularlly some textbooks for children. Those textbooks usually lack picutres, and therefore it's hard to attrat children's attention and interests. Even though some textbooks have some pictures, what I desired was to have each sentence or phrase correspond to each picture, which was hard to be realized. Thanks to digital stories, I can create my own textbooks. There are tons of amazing picutres accessible online, and I can select whatever I want to make the digital stories. Sometimes I even invite my friends to read the scripts, and my students are always excited to hear different voices. I really enjoy creating digital stories and also using them to teach students. Of coures, students love them as well.

QuestGarden: where great WebQuests grow

To be honest, I did not know anything about WebQuests until professors introduced QuestGarden to the class. After exploring QuestGaren, I was really impressed with tons of well-designed, thought-provoking and creative WebQuests, which can undoubtedly help our students deepen the understanding of what they have learned, develop research skills and critical thinking. Generally speaking, each WebQuest has six parts: introduction, task, process, resources, evaluation and conclusion.

In the part of introduction, teachers provide the description of the project students are going to finish. In the part of procss, teachers list the necessary procedures students need to go through in order to finish the project. I think this part is very important, because the list of procedures could guide students and enables them to be on the right track. The third part is resources, where teachers provide students with the websites they might use in the process of doing research. These websites are examined by teachers, therefore, the value of which for the project is guaranteed. Students only need to browse the websites recommended by teachers, and much time that might be spent in searching for information will be saved as a result. In the part of evaluation, teachers usually post a detailed rubric, which helps students to assess their work during the whole process. Overall, WebQuests can stimulate students' creativity and critical thinking. In the meanwhile, what they have done with the project are guided by teachers.

In addition, although it will take a lot of efforts to create WebQuests, teachers can use the WebQuest each year for different students after creating a WebQuest at WebGarden.One of my friend, who is teaching history in China, told me that he and his colleagues had started to use WebQuests to teach. Students really learned a lot in the process of doing WebQuests. I believe that more and more students will benefit WebQuests.

'Friends', a practice material for speaking English that never fade away (2)

In the last blog, I talked about my own experiences using 'Friends' as a supplementary material to improve listening and speaking, together with some of the suggestions to ESL teachers. Here I would like to argue about why I still think that 'Friends' is a good practice material for student. 


Some people may argue that this material is no more helpful or even a bit weird considering the whole show ended more than 10 years ago. However, if we look back in the lines in the show and think carefully: has English evolved that much during the past ten years? I agree there are new words generated everyday. I would not assume that some one knows about tweeter ten years ago, however, this has nothing whatsoever to do with helping ESL students learning English. It is the most basic and fundamental idioms and phrases that are used by ordinary Americans everyday that ESL students have problems with, not the fancy new words. On the contrary, they might know these new words better considering they have more access to what is generate in their ages. 


If judging by this rule, it is very simple for us to rule out many famous shows that some people might consider for the same purposes. 'House' is indeed a good show, and I like it a lot. However, with too many medical terms and jargon, it is very difficult for students to follow and pick out the ordinary-life conversations that are truly useful for them, let alone about the fact that I am not sure if everyone will like this arrogant, cranky, weird-looking doctor House. (no offense, I am still a huge fan of his, and it is killing me hearing that the show is coming to an end). For the same reason, we can rule out 'Grey's Anatomy'. Detective shows are also very popular, such as 'Castle' and 'White collar'. There is nothing wrong using them, but considering each show is about 40-50 minutes long, and most of the time the actors are following leads trying to crack some case, they might be better materials for students to have fun and relax themselves instead of trying to learn English with. 


In general, I would say that sit-com, like 'Friends', are usually better choices for fulfilling this purpose. 'Hot in Cleveland', 'Modern Family', or even 'Desperate Housewives' are all fine choices. With proper use and careful designs, I am sure that ESL teachers will be able to make the best use of all these materials and help their students improving their listening and speaking. Hopefully they will do better in English than Joey did in speaking French, Ross in playing electric piano, Monica in controlling her temper, Chandler in restraining himself from bad jokes, Phoebe in playing guitar, and Rachael in playing football...

'Friends', a practice material for speaking English that never fade away (1)

When I was in my senior year in college, preparing for TOEFL test, this show 'Friends' was recommended to me as a supplementary material to practice speaking English. I watched the whole ten seasons, once, twice and three times. Before watching this show, my TOEFL score was around 8,90; and it becomes 106 afterwards. I would not think that it is fair to say that this improvement is wholly due to watching this tv show, but I do think that it helped out big time. Many people nowadays find it useless or even weird to go back to this show which ended ten years ago, but I don't agree. Here is how I practice speaking and listening with this material, and why I think it still helps. 


I bought these the whole set of dvd from a seller, and I watched them on my laptop. The first time when I watched it, I had both the Chinese and English subtitle one, such that I can understand what is going on. It was easy and fun, which is nothing much different from watching TV series in Chinese. The second time was a lot more difficult. I had the Chinese subtitle removed, while still leaving the English subtitle on. This time, I tried to understand each sentence the actors and the actresses were talking. There are numerous idioms and phrases that I didn't understand yet would simply ignore if not checking so carefully. That is when I actually starts to learn the phrases, like 'let's play it by the ear', or 'I am just pulling your leg'. It always takes me a lot of time after each episode to look up phrases in dictionary and internet. The third time becomes easy again. I will still have the English subtitle one, but this time, I will try to read out loud the lines together with the actor. It was not easy at the beginning, but became much easier once I got used to it. 


It was not easy to go through all these three procedures, and I don't think it is appropriate for each ESL teacher to ask their students to repeat. However, there are certain lessons we are able to learn. Firstly, it is much more useful to ask students to watch one episode three times than to watch three different episodes one time. Secondly, during the second time of watching, students should focus on the details of the lines each actors say. ESL teachers can ask their students to write down what they have learned and share in class. Finally, during the third time of watching, students should follow the lead of the actors and actually say the lines out loud, which helps their speaking a lot. Another possible task ESL teachers may assign at this stage is actually asking a group of students to act out a few scenes or even the whole episode in front of the class. There is no need to focus on the details of acting, but repeating the lines should be the main point of this task. 


These are my own procedures of using this material, and some suggestions to the ESL teachers. In the next passage, I will be talking about why, to me, this material seems to be the most appropriate one in terms of improving English. 

Epals: World's Largest K-12 Social Learning Network!

For every foreign language teacher, there is a problem that has always been torturing and haunting them: how to make what students directly use what they have learned in classroom in the real life? There are some answers to it. Some teachers choose to make up conversations between students. In the process of listening, understanding, and responding to each other's words, students are able to learn foreign languages. Some teachers turn to the help of summer camps: by taking students where the language was originally from, students are presented with precious chances of talking to people speaking that language as mother tongue. However, it is not hard to find problems with these solutions. The make-believe conversation between students is not authentic enough, while dragging all students abroad presses high requirements on time and money. Is there a way to solve this problem? 


The answer is Yes. The appearance of Epal made all these possible. Epal is by far the largest K-12 social learning network in the world. After a short registration, you will have the access to many precious opportunities to social and communicate with all kinds of K-12 students and their teachers all over the world. My niece, for example, is a primary student in Beijing China. One day, she told me that one of her English teachers had assigned a project to them. The students have to register on the website of 'Epal' and get connected to their teachers' account. Their teacher has already found a Mandarin teacher from Boston looking for opportunities for her students to practice Mandarin with native speakers. My niece told me that the two classes had a social one day, and they were able to talk to each other with whatever language they like as if the two groups are right next to each other. 


There is no doubt that learning from the native speakers is the best way to improve, although this is an opportunity that people normally are lack to access to. The existence of Epal bring hope and solution to this problem. Therefore, as a future foreign language teacher, I would like to share with everyone that is interested in this subject and hopefully Epal will be of help to you as well.