Where Turkey Is The Guest, Not The Entree

Thanks to my teacher, I have used NPR to practice my listening skill before. I found out it is quite interesting and amazing to gain so many news and information by this prod casting website. Although sometimes I could not get the meaning clearly, it has summary for the story under the title. It made easier for me to get the story itself after I keep listening for few times. Therefore, I think I would introduce it and include it into my lesson plans in the future.

After I found couples of different themes in this website, I wanted to do this topic if I could use in my class "Where Turkey Is The Guest, Not The Entree." Since Thanksgiving is coming, I would like to use some special news or stories that related to this famous holiday. Turkey is a well known meal in Thanksgiving, but this news does not show the same way as peoples' traditional view of turkey. Based on the reporter's saying, there is a farm that the host treat these turkeys as their pets just like other treat dogs or cats at their house. This house does not eat turkey because they believe turkeys will feel hurt. In addition, every turkey has different personality. Therefore, the host want people to interact with turkey and realize how friendly they are.

In the activity, I would ask students to listen to this procast several times. Then make them to fill in the blanks that I prepare for them based on the scripts. After making sure they understand what it is saying in this news, I will make them start to share their experience about their own Thanksgiving or how they imagine Thanksgiving is. I think it will be fun!

ePals

         After I look over the website named ePals, I feel quite impressed about this social learning network. It makes the world smaller and closer by building a global community in this platform. It contains many functions that not only can make teachers exchange their lesson plans and materials but also make students have chances to realize how other people feel or experience in other countries or millions miles away. Teachers can find the projects that are related to their lesson and ask students to prepare. After they do the research, students may present on the website by uploading their project or combine  all the experiences they've got to present in the class. 

         

        In addition, I found out there is a pretty interesting work named eFilms. Basically, ePals will provide a film that showing different theme and topic per month by their partner SnagLearning. And I've seen the video for this month "why Do White People Have Black Spots?" I think it inspired me to think more about this kind of culture difference and the curious of the stereotype. I am wondering if I use it in my future teaching, will my students get chance to think more and deeply? Even though there is a question mark in my mind, I still want to try this method to put my students to obtain more variety information from different area and realize why other people think in other ways. Making them to learn respects and knowledge in the same time!

Digital Story (The Journey)

 

I created this digital story via Animoto. Through this short preview, I want students to recall their memory that they first came to the place with these kind of questions, such as what kind of feeling did they have before? What do they want themselves to gain here? How do they feel right now...etc?
At first, I will show my story to them with the pictures I took and share the experiences. And after that, I would invite them to talk about their stories, their journies to their classmates. I think it is a warm activity and at the same time, they can practice their speaking skill.

Digital Storytelling (part 2)

Friendship

The reason that I want to use this topic for the digital storybook is that I want to make those students who are the beginner of English learners to be comfortable. Through the photos I chose, they can share experiences with their classmates from the most basic and warm part of their life to reduce the nervous and pressure for starting a new language. Also, they can talk about the relationship between the characters in each photos based on their creation and knowledge of the words. I think it is a good way to use in the future class.

Digital Storytelling

Photo by: Davide Restivo

According to the article 7 Things You Should Know About 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." It is very popular for the teachers' teaching methods and students' learning methods in today's education.

In my future teaching, I will make my students to think of a simple story or a unforgettable experience and make the script which is the digital storytelling's first step. Then let them to find the pictures or videos that related to their topic. They may cooperate in groups if their topics are similar to each other. For the first time, I would rather them to enjoy fun of doing this rather than making perfect project. Therefore, the digital storytelling won't be too long and may be created around 3 to 5 minutes. If they can learn and have interests of doing this project, then they will be willing to do the advanced narrative story or more detailed digital project in the future. 

I especially like the way that the video (The Education Uses of Digital Storytelling) said about the digital telling. He said that the project is like a "time machine" from both teachers' and students' creations via a clip to interesting images, audios and videos. Digital storytelling can be an important component of higher education because it includes an effective integration of technology with learning, an emotional connection to content, and increased ease of sharing content. These are the benefits that other project may miss.

Also, in this website, it shared some goals that both teachers and students can use through this method. For example,

Teachers can: Create a digital story for use as an anticipatory set or hook for a lesson; Enhance current lesson plans with the use of a digital story within a unit; Assign student-created stories which requires students to research a topic from a particular point of view. Students can: Learn to use the Internet to research rich, deep content while analyzing and synthesizing a wide range of content; Develop communication skills by learning to ask questions, express opinions, construct narratives and write for an audience; Increase their computer skills using software that combines a variety of multimedia including: text, still images, audio, video and web publishing.

Let's Tweet

This is my first time to use Twitter and it really surprised me by those functions that a teacher can use in the class. According to the article, 28 Creative Ways Teachers Are Using Twitter, this new social microblogging seems really can help both teachers' teaching and students' learning. Through this article, I think I may let my students to "follow conferences" from some professionals' views or reflection and then require them to write down their thoughts on the twitter. Since Twitter has "TwitLit," students need to consider which part is the most important goal that in those paragraphs and make the specific points in 140-character. In this way, students not only can learn how to grab the main point of the certain articles, but also can decrease the job for teachers that looking at the long essay papers without main point. Also, based on the other article, Free Techonology for Teachers: Educational Twitter Chats Calendar, I can create some Twitter chats monthly for the students. With the Twitter Chats calendar, it can remind both I and my students to pay attention on this workshop. After I looked at these articles, I found out there are really a lot of educators using Twitter as a teaching tool and I hope I would use it in my future career, too.



EFL Classroom 2.0

           EFL classroom 2.0 is a website that can let people learn from each other by sharing their experiences on it or their own blogs. The function of it is just like the motto on the top of its own page "when one teaches, two learn." It has a lot of gadgets on both sides of the websites, includes links to related websites,members' facebook, quick announcement, twitter, etc. You can also find some interesting videos, lesson plans, stories, or even karaoke via this website.This is really attractive social networking website.