Podcasting in ESL class!

Podcasting (or non-streamed webcast), is a new and popular way to share and watch shows or create your own program episode. Recently it has become a more popular and acceptable way for students to learn. The word "Podcasting" stands for “Personal On Demand Casting”, you can download the show, all you need is a show catcher like iTunes, then when you can subscribe and download it on your computer or mobile device and pocket it with you and enjoy the show when every you want. This of course can be used in education; a teacher can post his or her show on the podcasting and allow students or other teachers to download it.

I would use ESL Podcast 743 – Writing a Story for an example for the students. It not only talks about how to create a story, it also introduces the meaning of the idioms used in the short conversation; what is more, it is spoken in an unnaturally slow speed so students will have no problem catching on. With this podcast, I can ask them how to create a good story, I can even assign them to write their own story and list out the settings like what he mentioned in the conversation for a big project. I can ask them to either write their own story or do cooperative writing. I can also ask them to listen and repeat the conversation with the podcast and try to write them down, then I can ask them the meanings of the idioms used in the conversation and tell them to make sentences with them. There are so many ideas of how I can do with podcasting, and this is only the starting of everything.

Bookr your own story!

I decided to use Harry Potter because it is my favorite series. Although there were not many pictures to choose from, I still tried to make the most of it. I will use my bookr story for an example for them to create their own digital story. Bookr is a good starting for creating a digital storytelling because it is easy to create. The example of my favorite novel is to show students that digital storytelling is not so difficult and motivate students to accept and create their own stories with their own photos and experiences.

With bookr, I wish to motivate students to learn more about the technologies and combine them with their lives and their academic studies.

Digital storytelling

 Photo by Ben Cooper

Digital storytelling is very common now a day, movies, pop singer, commercial advertising, politics and many others use this type of media to share information or experience with others. What is digital storytelling? In 7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling, it explained as the practice of combining narrative with digital content including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. Beginning with a script, the storyteller then assembles rich media to support the ideas and emotions in that script, including music or other audio effects, personal or public domain images, animations or video, and other electronic elements.

I would assign my students to try making digital story on some specific topics to keep them familiar with the multimedia and technologies. This not only teaches students that technologies can be combined in all fields, but also gives them a chance to present themselves and explore in other possibilities. Students will also be more motivated in the subject, and while they are searching more materials, they gain more insight of the topic they are researching..

I would use digital story telling in both individual and group project.  The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling mentioned that the storytelling range from personal tales to the recounting of historical events, from exploring life in one's own community to the search for life in other corners of the universe, and literally, everything in between. Thus, students can

Individual work: I will assign students individual project before trying group project. I will assign them topics such like introducing their favorite movie star or pop singer, introduce their favorite or special hobby, tell a story about your most unforgettable experience or memory, a wonderful trip they took before or so on. I want every one of them to try their best to make their own stories and get more familiar with digital storytelling.

Group work: After everyone had made their own project and showed to the rest of the class, I will assign them a more difficult and longer storytelling with topics related to the course subjects. Topics will be like WWII, Gandhi, Pompeii, the great canyon and many others. Students in groups are required to gather information about the topic, including interviews, videos, songs or other manners they can find. The video must contain everyone’s work and the quality of the film must meet a certain standard.

Let’s tweet in class

Twitter kind of reminds me of msn and chat rooms which I am more familiar with, where people discuss and chat with others. But Twitter offers something different, something that can be formally used in classes and more importantly, allow more people and even for outsiders you do not know personally to join in the discussions.

Unlike the e-learning platform that takes time to response and wait for responses, Twitters allow people to communicate with each other immediately on topics. Although most of the Time more that 40% of the tweets are babbling nonsenses, the use of it on the academic use can be very beneficial. In the article,  How Twitter will revolutionize academic research and teaching, it tells us this kind of micro-blogging is a revolution in all fields, academic is not only printed books and articles, but also a window to “facilitate the development of specialized audiences. People read your articles, give feedbacks and even write about your articles and breach more ideas from them. The unidirectional  day are over, and the seminar room of communication had taken the place the auditorium of working alone.

But the biggest drawback of Twitter is that too many people are tweeting on the discussion board, and the tweets becomes very short-life and is “expired” about a week and a half and is getting shorter every day. The post may “disappear” in the huge amount of  tweets, and this is a serious problem that has to be solved if we are using it to discuss important class works and not some pointless chatting. Luckily,  in 10 Ways to Archive Your Tweets and Teach with Twitter? Read This!, they teach us how to fish back the hashes that is needed. This basic function must be mastered before we can tweet and broad our subject and dive in the ocean of knowledge.

Web group for teachers

I have to say Classroom 2.0 really is an amazing web group. I have yet to read all the post or be familiar with all the functions, but I can already say that it is a great web filled with priceless treasures of experiences. More than sixty thousands of people from all fields and all over the world visit and contribute on this site and share their experiences, knowledge and engage in discussions with others. For a teacher, a student or a learner eager to immerse and explore new aspects and share their own experiences, what can be better than getting involved in such a great and organized web group?

I think this web group will be very useful for me because for a teacher, staying in a lab or studying theories is never the case. Especially for language teachers who require constant interactions with students. Teachers learn by a mass amount of experiences and communications of teaching, sharing, evaluating and reconstructing. For example, I can post my lesson plan, and activity I would like to do during class, videos filmed in classes, or a question I don’t understand on the board to ask for opinions and suggestions. I can also read through other posts and find new ideas or give my own opinion. Classroom 2.0 allows all these communication for teachers from all fields to stay updated and share information for improvement and suggestions.

Reaching students with technology

Now a day we live in a world of technologies, while we are bathing in the convenience of the technologies in hand, how should we prepare our next generation to face this ever changing world?

Pay attention to what children need

And what do students need

We are living in an era when mass media, information and technology expend in geometric progressions. Four or more decades ago computers were not popular because they were heavy and expensive, their function were mainly to calculate large statistic numbers. Two decades ago, the internet started to open up to publics, and the computer had shrank smaller. I remember when I was a kid the teacher took us to the computer room once a week, but we just went there and play some computer games and print some pictures. Twenty years later, the TV, iPod, iPhone, iPad, laptops, cell phones, DVD and CD ROMS, Bluetooth, optical network, Wii, wireless communication…and so on. Firefox, Google, Wiki, blogs, Podcasts, Online Collaboration, Skype, MSN, GPS and Google Maps, YouTube, e-Portfolios and countless others were born according to the internet and new technologies. Everything had advance so quickly that it became harder and harder to keep up with the trend. The question is, how are we going to prepare our children and students to use these new tools?

  Statistics show that unlike the generation of young people who probably started to use computers and cell phones in their high school or university, the younger generation started to get a hand on the technologies in an early age, some even started when they were infants. They inevitably will have a better hand on the new technology than their parents or teachers. As teachers or parents, the first issue we have to face is how are we going to reach to them? Students nowadays spend even more time on TVs, internets, texting, iPad, iPods, and Facebook and less time in studying because only some of them think studying is important, others don’t see why they need to learn the things that seem to have no use in the future. Needless to say about the students that have difficulties in graduating. Further disappointment will only drive them further away.

  The film suggests that we reach them with the tools they already have, like giving an activity about texting in class, Google Mapping the places we study in geography class, or YouTube some songs and operas in music classes. These are good way to reach out to them since they can feel the connection of the curriculum and everyday life, and perhaps more of them will be willing to study and reach back to the teachers. But first thing first, the teacher has to take the first step of the leads, so it is best for teachers to learn and master as much technologies as they can to use them as tools to reach out.