Using Photo Shows in Teaching and Learning

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

    This is a short video of Christmas song i've made using Animoto, which is a digital tool to tell stories using photos, texts, and videos.

    I can use this video to in an English as a second-language classroom. The level of the students will be Grade One children of elementary school. With such a video, I can not only teach students some vocabularies, but also teach them this interesting song which is named 'We wish you Merry Christmas'. In addition, I can also give some extra information about Christmas as an American holiday such as its orign, meaning, and ways of celebration.

    For those higher level students, I can show this video as a model of small project. I can let students to make a 2-3 minutes video to introduce one kind of American holidays using whatever pictures or informations related to it. They can make it by themselves or work as a groups.

    It's a good way to teach and learn by digital materials like this.

Twitter - a new way to teach!

    There are many different kinds of free technologies you can use in your teaching. Today, I want to introduce a excellent tools for you -- Twitter!

    Here's an article which can teach you 28 Creative Ways Teachers Are Using Twitter. It contains many functions you can use in blogs, for example, communicating with each other, making comments for others, and following others' posts.

    However, the most important thing is that Twitter also provides you with specific technologies teachers can use in education. One of them is 

2 Really Simple Ways To Send Audio Tweets To Twitter. With this, you can record a short instruction for the assignment or project and send it to Twitter for your students. In addition, you can also use Educational Twitter Chats Calendar as a syllabus. You can schedule each task of specific days for your students to discuss some topics or submit their assignments. Furthermore, teachers yourselves can also search the helpful information of teaching through Twitter. Here's an introduction which can tell you How To Use Twitter's Advanced Search Options to help you search things more effectively.

Useful Yahoo Group -- Learning with Computers

  

Today I found a very interesting and useful group in Yahoo Group, which is named Learning with Computers. There we can meet different kinds of teachers who teach different subjects and courses. And they all there to learn how to use computers more effecitively as a teaching tools. It's like a discussion board that every teacher can ask and answer questions of other teachers and discuss topics or subjects together. Through these ways, we can learn much more experiences and teaching tips with just sitting in front of a computer. I think it can be a powerful knowledge base for my future teaching.

Technology and Web give a channel to Everyone

Every teacher should be aware of the strong importance and benefits of using technologies in the classrooms. As Blake J. Robert said that, “All language professionals need to become acquaint with the potential advantages of using technology in their programs. Without some general claims to success and media superiority, chairs, deans, and other decision-making bodies won’t understand or support new ways of teaching second languages with technology.”(page4) For example, with a class blog, the teacher can review students’ learning capacity so that adjust his teaching methods.

Students also can receive different kinds of advantages through using technologies such as webs. “It is misleading to talk about technology as if one were dealing with just a single, homogeneous tool; different technologically based tools render different advantages for L2 learning.”(page4) With blogs, students can not only use discussion boards to discuss some questions and issues in the class, but also talk about interesting experiences and stories.

“More important, the web gives all peoples a channel to express their voice, promote their self-image, and legitimize their goals. This sense of authenticity provides endless topics for cross-cultural analysis and discussions in any content-driven classroom.”(page5) As Blake said, both teachers and students can be given a route to enforce their teaching and study.

Blake, Robert J. & Dorothy M. Chun. (2008). Brave New Digital Classroom: Technology and Foreign Language Learning. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

Using Blogs in TESOL Teaching

    Nowadays, people use more and more scientific techniques such as computers, internet, and websites. With this, teaching methods are also changing and many techniques and tools are used in teaching. One of the most popular and effective way is to use blogs in classrooms.

    Here's some standards about "national standards for foreign language education", which is from ACTFL(American Concil on the Teaching of Foreign Languages). Click the article name, you can see more information.

 

COMMUNICATION

• Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions
• Standard 1.2: Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics
• Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics

    It's a good way to encourage students show themselves and make progress through practice. Also, teacher can understand more about students' capability and choose a suitable way to teach them.

CULTURES

• Standard 2.1: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied
• Standard 2.2: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied

   It's a good place to meet all your classmates from different countries. Through blogging, students can share their personal experiences such as interesting stories, traditional culture, and special holidays.

COMMUNITIES

• Standard 3.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting
• Standard 3.2: Students show evidence of becoming life-long learners by using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment

   It's a good habit to blogging and sharing. Students can use their second language to communicate and discuss with each other on the blog. What's more, they can continue blogging after one course, the class blog gives them a platform to write and comment in a second language.

Through blogs, students can discuss everything including articles, texts and research. All the way, Teachers can track students assignments, discussions and improvement in order to adjust their teaching methods. This is why we teachers are suggested to use a blog in our teaching.