“Absolutely intercultural”- To obtain different cultures from different countries

 

The podcast of “Absolutely intercultural” is the first podcast in the world to deal with intercultural issues, it is looking at all intercultural aspects of human intercultural communication. For example, we will be hearing from students on foreign work placements, asking how teachers can make use of intercultural exercises and simulations in their classroom and sharing with us any intercultural gossip we come across.

We could obtain many different cultures from each part of the “intercultural”, they have absolutely reciprocal, absolutely inexperienced, absolutely open-minded, absolutely entrepreneurial and so on. For example, in the part of absolutely reciprocal, a girl named Elena from Spain, where the majority of people are Christians. Through her international volunteer work she has developed an intercultural sensitivity and awareness of different traditions and ways of thinking. She tells us how she embarked on this intercultural learning journey thanks to her parents, who encouraged her to get involved in a volunteering project at high school. Later she collaborated in an association in the South of Spain whose aim it is to support children and young homeless and unprotected migrants from the Northern and Sub Saharan Africa. Also, a couple of years ago she was nominated to participate in a work camp in the region of Kurdistan, in South Eastern Turkey. She is convinced that volunteering is a great recipe for reciprocal learning.

I will use this podcast in my future teaching to inspire the thoughts of interaction to the kids through exploring the different cultures from different countries. And we can also inspire the thoughts of helping to the kids, use the different examples to teach the kids that helping is a great thing in human activity and could build our world more beautiful.

Epals for Education

Epals for Education

 

EPals is one of the innovative education organizations in the world to connect people worldwide together. It is an online platform for both students and teachers. Students can use the search tools to seek ideal partners to join a teaching project in which they cooperate from global aspects, learn from each other, and reach a consensus. Teachers are able to create a project for students to broadcast his/her thoughts or teach practical skills, solely or together with others. Also, They can gather together to form a learning a group or community to discuss opinions, share files and ask questions. EPal also provides teaching resources, such as textbook, on specific subjects and topics and edublogs for teachers to express and share their thoughts on teaching and learning.

One project in the EPals is seeking cultural e-mail exchange partner for 3rd grade class. They seek and then afford their students opportunities to correspond with other 3rd grade classes around the world. Students can learn about what the difference or similarity is between their lives and other children around the world including China and Brazil. By e-mail exchange, the communication skill and teamwork spirits of the students are cultivated. Another project is group of 50 USA students aging from 11-17. They want to find pen pals with students from other places. Through e-mail exchange, they will gain knowledge and experiences of daily lives and culture of students around the word. Contrary to the previous project, these students need to work in groups to perform a PowerPoint presentation to show what they have discovered.

In practical teaching, I will create a cultural exchange project for my students online and make each of them seek a learning partner from other regions in the world. Each student and his/her partner form a group to learn together, discuss some topics, and solve questions for each other. For different groups, students will make the presentation in the class to tell what they have learned in the daily discussions with his/her partner and find the differences and reasons in their thoughts on the same topics. At the same time, I will invite a foreign teacher on the ePals site to join our online class, which provides the students a different horizon to understand global culture.

"Animoto" for Teaching

"Animoto" for Teaching

 

 

In part two, I used Animoto to created a Photo Story about my Winter holiday, It memorized the great time with my good friends in the vacation. I could use pictures, music and text to memorize the great things.
As for education, We could use Animoto to remember the important knowledge which we should know from the book or anywhere else.  At the end of the semester, I will let my students to make an Animoto to show us what is the most important knowledge I taught them and what they thought is the most important content they considered. And they can also add the interesting activities during this class or this semester. I think through this way, with the pictures and music, students could memorized the knowledge more impressed instead of just an uninteresting test.

Voice Thread for Teaching

Students on Voice Thread can be both producers andconsumers of the content within each digital container, referred to as a thread. Each page features apicture, video, word document, PowerPoint slide, etc. Creators of a VoiceThread can act as a presenter by using recordings, called comments, which are captured on audio through a microphoneor telephone, through video using a web camera, or through text. Alternately, the creator can inviteother users to leave their own comments or input on the thread. A VoiceThread is navigated somewhat like an online book, where users can skip to any page of the thread and even draw or write over top of the media while leaving a comment. It may have only one page or as many as a hundred.Viewers can turn the pages manually or can passively watch and listen to the thread, similar to a slideshow. Viewers also have in their control the ability to skip to any slide at any time, listen to or see anycomment at any time, and zoom in on any portion of the slide.

The most two interesting Voice Thead from our classmates are Suger's The TV shows we watch all the time and Ying's The princess in the Disney World.

In Suger's "The TV shows we watch all the time", She give us many picuture's about the movies in America, that are popular movies in our daily life, I think students may be very interested in the movies, while waching the movies, students can not only learn some american culture but also pracitice their listening while listen to what the actors saying, because they want know what happened next, and they have to listening, at this time, their listening is improing. They can also learn some slang which they seldom know from their daily life and then improve their oral English.

On Ying's "The princess in the Disney World". We could know all kinds of pricess through the student's disscusstion. Student's could share information about what they want to know from what they discussed, sometimes they may not know other roles of the princesses, but through the disscusion, they may rewatch the moives and changed their ideas and then learned the story more specifically.  

Digital Storytelling on bookr

Digital Story telling on bookr

 



   

Bookr is a simple web2.0 publishing tool that allows the author to add their own text to an image from flickr. It can make the story more vivid and easy understood, especially for the younger students, you can use it in history education, the pictures and words combination could encourage the students' interests to obtain the knowledge. 
For my future education, I will use it for some words explanation, When I use Bookr to illustrate a word, students would be attracted by the vivid picture, if it is possible, I would like to add some voices into it. The pictures with voices with texts must give the students a deeply impression. So that they could remember the words firmly. For example, I worte a simple Love story on the Bookr, which tells a love between a boy and a girl, through this digital story, I think they will remember this word firmly, instead just translate it form English to Chinese.

Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling

 

 

 

Digital Storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. Sophisticated digital stories can be interactive movies that include highly produced audio and visual effects, but a set of slides with corresponding narration or music constitutes a basic digital story. Digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective. The resources available to incorporate into a digital story are virtually limitless, giving the storyteller enormous creative latitude.

According to The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling, Digital Storytelling can be a potent tool for students who are taught to create their own stories. After viewing example digital stories created by their teachers or other story developers, students may be given assignments in which they are first asked to research a topic and then choose a particular point of view. This type of activity can generate interest, attention and motivation for the "digital generation" students in today’s classrooms. The process can capitalize on the creative talents of students as they begin to research and tell stories of their own as they learn to use the library and the Internet to research rich, deep content while analyzing and synthesizing a wide range of content. In addition, students who participate in the creation of digital stories may develop enhanced communications skills by learning to organize their ideas, ask questions, express opinions, and construct narratives. It also can help students as they learn to create stories for an audience, and present their ideas and knowledge in an individual and meaningful way.

“Third World Farm” Using in Teaching

                    “Third World Farm” Using in Teaching

In this topic, I choose the game of Third World Farm, This game is like a QQ game which I used to play in China called QQ Farm, I think it is a serious game. I used to played it during my high school, it is about three more years.  It was really popular that years that a lot of Mom wanted to play it. Because it may achieve a desire for people who lived in the city to have a own farm in the virtual world. People there could grow many different vegetables and fruit. Firstly, they need to buy the seeds to grow, when the trees grow up, they could sale them and get the experience then get to a higher level, after that, as the level goes up, they could buy houses around the farm, and can also decorate farm use all kinds of tools whatever they want.

The game I would like to use is because I thought it is suitable for the young kids whom are learning the basic words, like vegetables, animals and so on.  The vegetables are very lovely and vivid, it is much better than the pictures that teachers showed in the class. The young kids could obtain the new words while playing the game, because they need to know what they want to buy and which kind of vegetable could sell for a high price.  They have to remember each of the words.  And this game is very easy to handle .

"Museum Escape" using in Teaching

                        "Museum Escape" using in Teaching

Gamification typically involves applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging. Gamification has been called one of the most important trends in technology by several industry experts. Gamification can potentially be applied to any industry and almost anything to create fun and engaging experiences, converting users into players.

Nowadays, In the class of language learning, the time of the class is getting longer, and the content of the class is getting more than before, some of the class is getting boring during the traditional teaching methods. While the technology is developing in our daily life, I recommend teachers to use games in the class, it can not only attract the attention of the students, but also can let the students learn the new language while playing the game.

Today, I choose the game of Museum Escape, Which is a interesting game that a fourteen year boy enters into a historical museum to collect information. In the enthusiasm; he forgot the closing time and keeps on showing interest in historical thins. The securities did not notice the boy and close the museum. And the boy needs to find the way and use the skills to escape from the museum.

I played this game for about two hours, and finally I find the way to escape, it is a long time, if I will use this game in my future class, I will devide it into several parts to use it to introduce the history of the museum, each of the status and or the weapon or the dinosaur will come from a story. While the step to get out of the museum one by one. The learning of the knowledge by the students is more and more, students can not only learn the history of the museum, but also can learn a lot of new words from the story. I think in this way, students could remember the words and the history more steady. Because it includes voices and images that can enhance the impression of the words and history to the mind of the students. Especially while they playing the game, we all know that the nature of the children is playing. Because this game is not easy, especially for the young kids. So I will give them some hints from the walkthrough while they are playing the game. But I am not giving them the walkthrough before the game. Because it may reduce the positivity of the students. If they did not know what it is about the game, They are eager for getting the ways to find the solution of the game. So the impression of the word and history will be more steady in their brain.

Teaching methods on microblog

Twitter is a great website that we could share information on it. Especially for us teachers, there are 6 best twitter tips every teacher should know about , here is the image of the 6 tips:

 

Besides, there are a lot of new technologies used in our daily life, such as mobile, I-pad, nookbook and so on. From the Great free text messaging tools to use with your students , we know that mobile devices are ubiquitous among students. The majority of them use a cell phone of some sort to be a smart phone or just a plain one. While solid scientific research on the potential use of these tools in education is still lacking. On this article, there are some ways of mobile using in classroom the article propose us to use. One of them is Remind 101, it is a safe way for teachers to text message students and stay in touch with parents. And there also have CELLY, this is a private communication network that works with any mobile phone or device, members can join instantly with one text and exchange group message, polls, reminders,and web alerts. I think I could use these technologies in my future teaching.

Classroom 2.0.

                                       Classroom 2.0

Classroom 2.0 is a social network for the people who are interested in Web 2.0, Social Media, and Participative Technologies in the classroom. It encourage people to participate in the discussions there, to receive event notifications, and to find and connect with colleagues and students. It is a free, community-supported network. It is a great place to have a conversation on the internet.

A learner is like a moneybox

                               A learner is like a moneybox

 

A learner is like a moneybox, when the moneybox comes to your home, it’s empty. Just like a learner whose brain is empty before he or she starts to learn. As you put the money into the moneybox, the money is becoming more and more, just like the learner is learning, with the knowledge gaining day by day, the brain is adding more and more resources. If you want to use the money, you can just take it from the moneybox, just like if you want to use the knowledge, for example, you are teaching your child how to spell “apple”, it is from your basic memorize in your childhood. Or if you want to use a lot of money, you can just take it from the money box. Just like if someday you becoming a teacher, you will use your full knowledge to teach your student, no matter what the knowledge it is.

According to the A learning theory from the digital age ,  It says that Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same. Just like the moneybox, in your lifetime, you need to use the money, so that you need to refill your moneybox for a lifetime, it is a continual process.

According to the video of  The conflict of the learning theories with the human nature, it

says that we have since earliest recording history, had the desire to externalize our thoughts. Yes, in the earliest history, people do use a tool to exchange food and clothes. Nowadays, people find a convenient tool to exchange the stuff that people need. Just like we externalize our thoughts  into knowledge, as a learner should have.

"Critical Thinking" improved through "playing games"

The name of the post which I commented on is “Ten ipad apps to enhance critical thinking teachers should not miss” On the blog named “Educational Technology and Mobile learning”. The part of the post which really attracted me is that the Critical thinking, Critical thinking is an important skill in the 21st century learning. Education's overall goal is to produce students that will be able to think critically and not just take in things like a parrot.

In that post, the author provide us ten useful tools on ipad apps to enhance critical thinking for students, here I would like two introduce  two of them which are very interesting and useful:

 The first one is Math-lands:

 

Math Lands was designed by game lovers and teachers to remedy this problem. In this interactive app, kids will be asked to exercise logical and critical thinking but in the context of game play and puzzle-solving. The concept is called "learning through play" and it will change children's attitudes towards math.



 The second one is Simple physics :

 

Simple Physics lets you design complex structures for everything from tree houses to ferris wheels and then simulates your design with a sophisticated physics engine.

The third one is Ibrain food:

IBrain-Food Gives our mind a work out on our devious collection of puzzles. There are various puzzles, ranging from word games to logic problems to Crossword. Some are tricky. Some require innovation. All require thinking power.
These apps above are really useful to improve the Critical thinking among students, Nowadays most of the students are interested in the games on ipad apps, while through these games, they can improve their critical thinking through playing games without any pressure from homework.

Reactions for the videos

The first video I watched was Educational Change Challenge

Education is changing in nowadays. Moving from a one room school house to one world school house is our reality.Teachers need to exist in the space that student exist, understand their culture, because the generational of the students know a lot of new knowledges from the website, newspapers and so on. If we put a Doctor of a hundred year ago in today's operating room, The Doctor may be lost, if a teacher of a hundread year's ago of today's classromm, The teacher may not be successful.
So teachers must be well knowledged to keep the students interest and to inspire them to and creative curiosity in nowaways.


The Second video I watched was Social Media Revolution

Nowadays, Internet take a large number of time in our daily life, at first, some senteces I saw was very funny, such as:"1 in 5 couples meet online","3 in 5 gay couples meet online". But it certified that internet do changed our life. We obtainted a lot of information from the internet, even though a lot of study materials the teachers suggested we read are also from the internet. I think in the future, the internet and the technology will affect us more in the world. No matter in Entertainment, Education or Bussiness.

Language teaching with Technology

                                               Language teaching with technology

 

 

As the development of modern society, technology has been widely used in our daily life. For instance, the transportation can shorten the distance from people to people, at ancient times, if people want to go to America from China, The only transportation that people can use is the ship, and it will spent several month for people to get to their destination. But now, with the developing of airplane, it only cost several hours for people to go to a country from a long distance.

 As for teaching, we also have many technologies nowadays, such as Power point, Overhead projector, Slide projector to improve the efficiency for teaching in the classroom. Today, I want talk about the weblogs that teacher can use in their teaching, I used to teach Chinese to speakers of other language, the discussion method I used was just on class discussion, if students have questions, they methods they can use are just call me or e-mail me. But if we use weblogs in the class, students can ask their questions whenever they have troubles. they do not need to worry about the time of whether they may disturb the teacher on the phone. And sometimes, through weblogs communication, students may also find the solution to help the others. Sometimes the ideas they provide are better than teachers. as we all know, teachers are also learning on their life no matter from what kind of people in their life. And also, they can express their emotions and share some resources that can help students learn more about what they studied.

 Another way to better use blog in language teaching is to absorb many different teaching resources from different blogs. For example, some blogs of Education may have the ideas for language games or language activities we can use in our class room, as a future teacher of teaching English to speaker of other language, we can also find useful resources on International Society for Technology in Education and American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language. This information is helpful for us to acquire certifications in the field of English teaching.

Weblogs is really a good way for us to learning, sharing and get a new level in our field!