Tuesday 19 March 2013

Why do I choose technology?

This is a pure reflection on the whole ICT&MM course. Instead of the actual content of those technologies, I would prefer to talk about something deeper. Why do I choose to learn ICT? What changes can technologies bring to us as English teachers? What can technologies bring to me as a Chinese English teacher? 

A couple of months ago, I had one trial lesson about ICT, because of which, I made a decision to totally change into ICT because I believe that is the future of education, though still new but truly promising. Back then, I didn't quite know what changes technologies can bring to education, but somehow I did believe that technology could help me make a difference.

I have been watching many inspiring TED talks on language, education and technology. The most impressive one for me is the talk given by Daphne Koller from Stanford University about 'What can we learn from technology?'. They have built up an online free course program for anyone who wants to take it. And that idea reminds of my dream as an Chinese English teacher.




I have to admit that I am one of the luckiest students in China, who had the opportunity to enjoy the best high school education in our province, and then successfully got admitted into a very good university in Beijing for undergraduate study, and was luckily enough to have wonderful parents who are able to pay for high tuition for me to pursue a master degree abroad, here in Warwick, UK.

However, I have constantly been reminded that there are millions of children in remote rural areas of China who can not even have the opportunity to finish primary school because they don't have good teachers, they don't have enough textbooks, exercise materials, even pencils or erasers, not to mention any computers or high technologies. The unequal distribution of good educational resources and good teachers between Chinese urban and rural areas has long been a problem and there has been an increasing needs from poor children in rural areas for a chance to study. 




As Koller quotes, a breakthrough happen when what is massively needed meets with what is suddenly possible. 

I have already talked about what is needed. And fortunately, through what I have learned in ICT course, I know that technologies are ready. Then, what is left to do for us, who have received the best education home and abroad? To implement those technologies in real EFL classrooms, especially in those remote areas where students cannot receive good education because of unequal educational resource distribution. 

So my dream is, as long as we equip students in rural areas with computers and internet, with the help of ICT, they could enjoy equally good educational resources with pupils in Beijing or Shanghai.

This is going to be a huge project, which takes joint efforts of  many different sectors including governments, schools, companies, teachers, computer technicians, and even volunteers. But I firmly believe that it can be realized and it's time for us to move! One of the biggest problems in China, unequal education distribution, can be and will be solved, through and only through technology.

As a lucky student who majors in education field, and as a future English teacher in China, I do feel responsible to make a difference as much as I can. Having graduated from university, I started to realize the importance of having high education and how it has changed my life and my future and my way of thinking. Therefore, I would love to, in return, try my best to help those children to go to college and make a difference of their own life.

Wednesday 13 March 2013

Technologies of Different Functions

1. Collaborative Learning (Group work)

  • Today's Meet
  • Lino It
  • Wall Wisher/ Padlet
  • Tricider

2. Audio/ Video making

  • Vocaroo
  • Dvolver
  • Toondoo
  • Voki
  • Present Me

3. Screen Casting/ Presentation/ Feedback Tools

  • Jing
  • Cam Studio
  • Prensent Me
  • My Brain Shark
  • Prezi
  • Pimpampum (especially for Story Making and Telling)

4. Cartoon/ Animation/ Avatar

  • Dvolver
  • Toondoo
  • Voki
  • Second Life

5. Online Quizzes and Tasks/ Autonomous Learning

  • Breaking news
  • Listen a minute
  • Webquest/ Quest Garden
  • Hot Potatoes
  • Elllo
  • Lyrics Training
  • English Central

6. Speaking 

  • Vocaroo
  • Voki
  • Present Me
  • My Brain Shark
  • Jing 
  • Cam Studio
  • English Central

7. Listening

  • Breaking News English
  • Listen a Minute
  • Lyrics Training
  • English Central
  • Hot Potatoes
  • Elllo

8. Vocabulary/ Words

  • Learning Chocolate
  • Language Guide
  • Wordle
  • Wordsift
  • other online quiz websites

9. Authentic Elements

  • Lyrics Training
  • English Central
  • Web Quest
  • Mentormob
  • Wordsift
  • Pimpampum

10. Personal Learning Network

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Edmodo
  • E-portfolio

11. Virtual Learning Environment

  • Adobe Connect
  • Webex
  • Wiz IQ
  • Join us
  • E-letca

Sunday 10 March 2013

A list of all the technologies we have learned!

1.Today's Meet

http://todaysmeet.com

TodaysMeet helps you embrace the back channel and connect with your audience in real time. Encourage the room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions, and use that feedback to tailor your presentation, sharpen your points, and address audience needs.

2. Vocaroo

http://vocaroo.com/

Vocaroo is an online voice recorder.  It allows people to record their voices and email it to others or download the document or embed it in a blog.

3. Dvolver

http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/make.html

Dvolver is a free online digital movie maker. Teachers, as well as students, can use this website to create your own cartoon movies, and send them to others' email or embed them in blogs.

4. Learning Chocolate

http://www.learningchocolate.com/

Learning Chocolate is a free online vocabulary learning platform. This website aims to help students, especially young language learners to memorize English vocabulary in an easy and efficient way, by using images, pronunciation and flash games. 

5. Language Guide

http://www.languageguide.org/english/

Language Guide is a free online vocabulary and grammar learning platform. It provides language learners with 'Pictorial Vocabulary Guides', 'Interactive Readings' and 'Grammar Guides'.

6. Breaking News English

http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/

Breaking News English is mainly a free online English quiz website. All the reading materials are based on up-to-date news, There are mp3. recordings of each piece of news as well as a whole set of lesson plan and different types of exercise on vocabulary, reading, listening, spelling and grammar.

7. Listen a minute

http://listenaminute.com/

One minute a day is all you need to improve your listening skills.Focus on new words, grammar and pronunciation in these short texts. Doing the online activities, discussion, survey and writing will help. Listen many times - enough for you to you understand everything.

8. Lyrics Training

http://www.lyricstraining.com/


Lyrics Training is an easy and fun method to learn and improve

your foreign language skills, through the music videos and lyrics
of your favorite songs.

9. Wolfram Alpha

http://www.wolframalpha.com/


Wolfram Alpha introduces a fundamentally new way to get knowledge and answers—not by searching the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms, and methods.

10. Webquest
11. Pimpampum
12. Jing
13. Cam Studio
14. Wordle
15. Wordsift
16. Lino It
17. Wall Wisher/Padlet (new version)
18. Spider Scribe
19. Present Me
20. My Brain Shark
21. Prezi
22. Tricider
23. Mentormob
24. Slide Share
25. Scirbd
26. edmodo
27. English Central
28. Voki
29. Hot Potatoes
30. Elllo
31. 3B
32. Toondoo
33. Adobe Connect
34. Webex
35. Join us
36. Wiz IQ
37. E-portfolio
38. Teacher Training Videos


Monday 4 March 2013

Mentormob——Create your multimedia playlist for your students!

What is Mentormob?

Mentormob is an online platform where teachers can create your own multimedia learning playlist for students to go through in a certain predetermined sequence.

As Bernie Dodge recommends for Web Quests, learners can spend 

time using the Internet, not searching for stuff, which can be a 

waste of time for many students. (Thanks to Tilly, who suggested 

this point.)

For more information about Mentormob, please watch the video below.


How to use Mentormob?

Teachers can put or create various kinds of learning materials or resources on their Mentormob. You can paste links, upload files, write articles and even add a pop quiz in your learning playlist. Besides, teacher can decide in which order students should go through these materials. 

For a video tutorial on how to create your own learning playlist, please watch this video.

For an example of what Mentormob looks like, please click here. This is my own learning playlist that introduces Edmodo. I created 7 steps as follows:

Step 1: Insert a video to give a brief introduction about Edmodo.


Step 2: Give a little quiz based on the video in Step 1 to check how well students watched and understood the video.


Step 3: Insert a link from Russell's Teacher Training Videos website that provides a detailed tutorial of how to use Edmodo.

Step 4: Insert another video from YouTube that shares 20 ideas of how to use edmodo to promote students' learning.

Step 5: Write some instructions to my students to encourage them to create their own Edmodo account.

Step 6: Upload a file in 'PDF', which I think is very helpful for students and ask students to read it.

Step 7: Upload a picture of the App of Edmodo on iPhone and ask students to download this app.


How does Mentormob foster language teaching and learning?

  • Teachers can use it as a repository tool.
  • Teachers can create their own quizzes to check if students have actually read the article or watched the video.
  • Teachers can share a collection of high quality materials of all kinds, including files, pictures, powerpoints, pdf, videos, links.
  • Teachers can write their own instructions to make it clear how to use these materials for students.
  • It promotes students' autonomous learning.
  • As long as the playlist is public, everyone can go and search for information here without logging in. And it is likely that the information here is of better quality than that you find on Google since people tend to be selective when they put materials on their learning playlist.
  • As long as the playlist is public, everyone can leave comments on a certain playlist or a certain step of it. And the auther or other viewers can reply. Therefore, it is interactive to some extent.
  • Students can write their questions on a certain article or a quiz or a video as comments and teachers can give them answers by replying those comments.
  • You don't have to go through all the steps. There's a list on the left side of the screen where you can choose which step do you want to focus on and you can always go back and forth.


What are the limitations?

  •  Sometimes the internet speed is too slow, especially when you insert some videos.
  • Although there are places for quizzes, the types of quizzed are only limited to 'True or False' questions and mutiple choice questions.
  • You can at most create 16 steps. (But I think it's enough.)

Tuesday 5 February 2013

Wordle——Make your own beautiful word clouds!

What is Wordle?

Wordle is a website that can quickly calculate the word frequency of your chosen text and make it into different types of beautiful word clouds based on their relevant frequency.

How to use Wordle?

Wordle is very easy to use. Basically, here are the steps you'll need to do.
1. Go to Wordle. Click the 'Create' button.
2. Paste your chosen text and click 'Go'.
3. Wait for a few seconds and you'll get your word clouds.
4. Make certain adjustments by choosing your the font, color, layout and some language to make it look better.
5. Give it a name and save the url address and the code.

For further instruction on how to use Wordle, please watch this tutorial video.

How does Wordle foster language teaching and learning?

1. Pre-reading Tasks. Before introducing a piece of reading to students, teachers could show them the word cloud first and do the following tasks.

  • Ask students to guess the general idea or the topic of the text.
  • Ask students to discuss this topic so as to activate their schemata. 
  • Ask students to make up some sentences with the most frequently used words. 

2. Post-reading Tasks. After students have read the text, put the text away and do some follow-up activities based on the word cloud.

  • Ask students to write down the topic sentence of the text based on their memory and the word cloud.
  • If students have higher level of proficiency, the teacher could ask students to reconstruct the text. 
In both pre-reading and post-reading activities, this tool can help students to construct their own language, during which process, they will have to pay attention to not only vocabulary, but also collocation and grammar in order to reconstruct the text. It encourages students to do a lot of language processing, through which language acquisition is achieved.



What are the good points?


  • Easy to use, no need to register.
  • Highly customized and very beautiful formats of the word clouds.
  • Calculate word frequency very fast.
  • Result in beautiful final product.


What are the limitations?

  • You have to have Java in your computer for Wordle to work. Ipad is not available.
  • Every time you change the font, the whole cloud changes. So once you see a cloud you like, save it ASAP.
  • When I embed it into my blog, the picture was too vague. The one below is captured by Jing.
  • It does't concern any further vocabulary exercise except the frequency.


An example

This is a piece of news from Warwick official website, reporting that University of Warwick the 'Top Target' for graduate employers.
Please click here for the news.

I set up all the colors, chose a favorable font and crossed out those most frequently used English words such as 'the' and 'is'. I also canceled some words which I think is not quite relevant to this topic. And the picture below is what I've got. You can also check it out by the specific url address which I forgot to save. So, always remember to save the url and the code.