Reaction on Google Cultural Institution

This site is resourceful, comprehensive and educational. It makes the reading dynamic and appealing, therefore, it makes students more involved and engaged. What can we better with technology than without? I think this is the answer. Technology makes "seeing is believing" affordable and convenient.

If I can integrate this into my classroom, I think I will give students more time and freedom to discovery a given topic. This site allows users to create your own galleries, so students will be able to have an ongoing collection of cultural exploration.

Chapter 5&6

     Chapter 5 discusses information and digital citizenship. The information circulating on the Internet is astronomic in amount and unfetter in content. We don't lack information; we need wisely locate the information, and find ways to digest them and eventually enhance our understanding and problem-solving abilities. These resources, however, are fraught with uncensored, out-of-date, and even false content, making educational and academic outcome less appealing. We used to complain we had no too many choices; now we are inundated with options. In terms of search engines, most of us only use Google -- every time I visit St. John's official website, I google "stjohn."But Google by no means is the only search engine we as educators use. Many alternatives can be more effective educationally. Also, teaching children, adolescents, and adults how to "critical reading" is important, where they will be asked to evaluate the quality of works of literature and documents, and make their own judgements on the basis of  critical thinking and viewing. This certainly needs practice and professional guidances, as the example given in the textbook of searching "What year was the first Thanksgiving celebrated?" We need to find valid and reliable evidence to defend what we found on the Internet, which I think is why library cannot replaced by any means.

     Another important thing I learned from this chapter is the contributing factors and strategies of plagiarism and cheating. From my experience tutoring international students English, I found that most of them, newcomers, didn't know how to cite or whether the source they googled out should be cited, so that their papers can be considered as plagiarism. Also, teachers should make their assignments emphasis more on critical thinking and analysis instead of close-ended questions.

     Chapter 6 talks about information management. I'm a reckless manager: I am too lazy to label the marked page, so I have to edit and categorize them when the list is too long. Technology has made information stored and retrieved anywhere, anytime and easy to share. Pinterst is one of the best known "connector," from which users can exchange information and discovery further.

     Webquest is a great way for teachers to design classes and for students to garner academic information digitally. I hope after this class I can master the skills of how to design a good Webquest that navigates students to investigate and explore given topics. Distant learning is also a useful way-more clicks than bricks - such as MOOC, which is gaining popularity, and rivals to traditional education. I use Google Hangout a lot, teaching and learning English, where I can share my screen, record the activity and set up a commnunity. Google Helpouts is another good example of how internet can help people out simply through live videos.

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P.S. Today I read an article from TIME magazine " The Paperless Classroom Is Coming." Staring from a real case in a six-grade classroom, it discusses the difficulties and obstacles of using technology: parents who don't know too much about computer cannot help their kids when their assignments are all doing online; health concerns from overexpose blue-light from screens; and unsuccessful cases of investing money and effort in digital-learning. Though, the trend of applying technology in classroom is inexorable.  

Tips for using google more effectively

Oct.8 Takeaway Message

I just talked to Mandy that, "you always can find room to make it(the trailer) better." I love this class and all the projects we've done and we are doing now, in which we are reviewing and learning from each other. I like today's sharing by these producers talking about why they chose such topics and what kind of issues they want to address.

As the virtual world becomes a constant part of our lives, it is imperative to bear in mind of the importance of digital citizenship and information literacy.  When I was teaching English in China, I encouraged my students to use searching engines to expand their horizons and also practice reading skills, and I found that some information they obtained from the internet are biased or even false. It's necessary to develop our digital citizenship and be able to make judgements about the unfettered information. An internet slang "trolls", depicting people who are prone to picking up arguments and making snarky comments in virtual community, could well reveal the crisis of digital identity we are facing. The internet has given people more freedom to express themselves, and also help people get away with what they say. Thus, digital citizenship should be part of every school's curriculum.

Chapter 4

Although I always give credit to how technology has enhanced teaching and learning activities, I still don't know the exact how to start designing a lesson from scratch-- can using technology save me from lesson planning and student assessment? How these would be enhanced by technology? I think I have found the answers in chapter 4.

 The role of a teacher has shifted from a speaker to a facilitator, and accordingly teachers seem to do more job before the class than during -- to make the content well covered and intriguing, and make the learning engaging and active. Technology has enormously expended our teaching resources: simply put a keyword in the searching bar, comes out a huge web. However, we cannot just copy and paste and then throw them to students -- we learn how to re-create and re-define the already available and working resources to meet our own students' needs.

I took the assessment course last semester, in which we were asked to evaluate the reliability and validity of state second language achievement or replacement tests. Most problems discussed in our class was that standard tests are always given as one-size-fits-all solution, and not to be formative. Therefore, it is imperative for teachers to integrate multiple assessment resources and differentiated strategies to generate a complete picture of student performance. In China, the situation is much worse. As I mentioned in the previous blog, China so far has become the largest English spoken country in the world, and English has been a compulsory course over a decade;however, even now, speaking test of English is not emphasized as much as written test in school, and even to the point that speaking test doesn't matter in many cases, which has  caused an embarrassing "mute English" phenomena. As technology has become more affordable and handy, I think we can make a change -- as the example I mentioned before, students practice their English skills via social media.

We are not forced to use technology, instead, we use technology where the technology is due. We are learning from our experiences and also from our students. If we keep learning new things and discovering new ways, we will be avant-garde teachers.

Questions:

1. How would you incorporate technology into teaching a language?
2. What's the downside of using Duolingo, Rosetta Stone or other equivalents?

Takeaway Message for week 4th

First of all, different learning theories decide the way how would we teach, which part should be emphasized and what kind of activity be included. These theories should be flexibly applied to teaching with regard to different tasks and purposes, satisfying students' varied learning patterns. We need to equip us with different lens enabling us to see the whole picture with different shades of colors.

The use of Instagram, Tumblr and so forth is great, if well conducted. I think social networking has been encouraging users to showcase their work and ideas. For example, the momentum of writing this blog for me is not because of what the class requirement calls for, but I'm excited someone else is going to read it and probably leave comments. I always think about the reason why selfie went viral, especially among young people. On top of the truth that technology has made taking pictures easy and enhanced, another contributing factor may be that people are seeking for reassurance and praise. Other than posting spur-of-the-moment captions of what you are eating and doing, we can use social media to make thinking and learning and sharing become a contagious habit.

Should students be taught differently? 

Today on the way to school, I was listening to a radio. Not sure what kind of program it was, they were talking about education. What shocked me was when the speaker talked: "MOST (may be more than 90%) students are bored at school -- because they think school is boring and teaching is repetitive", and it reminded me of my academic experience. I dropped out of high school, simply because I thought the things I was being taught had no value, and the only purpose for cramming knowledge was to score high at the giant test. Why I had to learn about things that I'm not going to use?  or where on earth could I apply them?  I actually scored high by then, but I felt I was just sitting there and wasting my talents. 

Under the pressure of my family, I had to go to college, where I was taking up Business and English as my major. I basically couldn't speak any English in the first year, and what I wanted was to graduate as soon as possible so that I could get the degree and perhaps a job. However, my life has changed in the second year, when we started our literature class. Mrs. Lee was our British Literature professor, who had studied in U.K.  Though the content was totally over my head, I fell in love with literature, or rather, her class.She taught us poetry at first-- from Beowulf to Shakespeare's sonnets, and to Shelly, Keats and Byron-- using videos and music to demonstrate the rhythm of the verses and the beauty of poems; discussing topics from different perspectives and encouraging us to have our own interpretation. She set up a forum, where we were asked to read more books than what the course asked and make comments about it. She encouraged me to watch American TV shows, to read classic literature, and to use iPad as a learning tool. I had never thought I would be intrigued by English, let alone poetry; however, her class has empowered and enlightened me to read, to think, and to share, and inspired me to come to the States and pursue a career in education filed. 

So, from my story, I would argue that students should be taught differently. Of course, students will be given same content and instruction for the most part; however, it's necessary to include different modalities and integrate multiple tools and strategies to make the learning experience interesting and real. I said in my first blog that I want to be Steve Jobs in education. Yet another role model for me is from my all-time favorite movie Dead Poets Society -- John Keating, the English teacher. We have to try different ways to encourage and inspire our students to think and to create; make them believe we trust them and expect their progresses, and thus they will be able to find their own expectations and inspirations, that is, composing their own verses. No one will have exact same takeaway from a poem due to different background and experiences, and what we can help is to value and well consider their differences and diversities. 

Chapter 3 & 9

Chapter 3 is quite informational and also inspirational for me. I actually spent a whole day reading through it, checking out most tech tools it mentions, which are mind-blowing and thought-provoking. I never thought technology could be so well connected with content knowledge, to the extent that it has changed the learning experience and transformed the learning style.

Upon viewing a TED video recommended by Mandy, I was touched by what speaker in the end quoted from Seymour Papert :"school should be like a Rio pre-carnival," which is very true when we have so many tools available to students to pick up and perform with, when students are free from the restrictions of static print materials and start creating their own repertoire. Computer technology enables and promotes student-centered, constructivist teaching, and offers teachers and students a rapid self-correcting feedback. This summer, for example, when I was having vocation in China, I set up two English clubs where people can practice  their English skills and also participate some cultural events. In order to help members to improve their pronunciation skills, we set up an online file storage (like Dropbox) where we uploaded audio and video materials and website resources for members to download and self-study; also we built up a chatting group, including  ELLs and also volunteers of English native speakers,on Wechat (a Chinese-based equivalent of Whatsapp) where they were able to interact and get feedback instantaneously. Now, in this chatting group, I still see more people joining in, and actively share out their lives and thoughts in English with others -- a simple use of technology makes a better communication and reciprocal learning.

The four teaching and learning theories are important to bear in mind that how we define learning would shape the way how we teach and what we would like to incorporate in. As for students, teachers should encourage them to use technology to evaluate and create their work on top of using technology as a tool to find and understand information. They should learn how to ask questions, and where to locate and how to validate the answers, which definitely is challenging and demanding for teachers to work out. Therefore, digital citizenship is fundamentally pivotal to make students life-long beneficiaries of using technology and also take the responsibilities to a larger society.

One big takeaway from Chapter 9 , on top of multimodal approaches, is Tufte's Critique of PowerPoint that points out the potential underperformance in regard to engaging audiences and provoking in-depth interaction. Nevertheless, incorporating multiple combined strategies into presentation could minimize the side effects. For example, I observed a teacher start a social study class about "people have different perspectives" by showing an image that students would perceive differently based on viewing angle, which could smoothly generate a discussion and lead to the core topic. Prezi, one of the next-generation tools, features visual displays and online-based platform, which makes collaborative work easier -- by sharing, group members are able to contribute their own ideas on one template and view the whole group work in no time. Animoto and Glogster make video-making easy and appealing, and greatly encourage students to think and create -- when I was viewing these websites, I was amazed by those students' work.

I'm so happy for knocking down such number of inspiring resources. "A journey of a thousand miles starts beneath one's feet," I hope after this semester I will finally gain the confidence and ability to incorporate my teaching ideas into these fancy digital tools. I can't stop imagining one day I would have my teaching videos and podcasts, and also help my students to develop their digital citizenship and to enjoy the wealth of this wonderful tech-world.

Questions
1, How does technology make learning natural?
2, How will you go about teaching creativity to students?