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.