Podcast for EFL Learners

                   Among the podcasts listed on the syllabus, I found ESL Pod will be the most useful and level appropriate for the students in Taiwan, especially middle school or intermediate learners. I personally think that the others such as  BBC World News for Children, Education Podcast Network and NPR podcast directory are more for advanced learners in Taiwan, since English is a foreign language there. ESL Pod offers podcasts for ESL learners, the listening is slower which is good for practicing listening,  there is also explanation for each podcast which I think is a great learning material, and the equally important thing is that there are scripts.
             The one Ordering Soups and Salads is practical for the students to learn how to order something in a restaurant. Not until I came to the states that I knew the rule of ordering something in a restaurant. It is sad that I never learned that in schools even it is really a daily life and a must when we are in an English spoken country.
            I teach in elementary school, accordingly, this learning material is more suitable for sixth grade students. For this episode, I would like to spend ten minutes in the beginning for each class as class routines, and complete in around four times of classes.  First of all, I would like my students talk about what kind of soups or salads they like to eat and then have them listen to the podcast without looking at the script; after listening, I would like my students share what they have listened, in the mean time, I would show the script and have them listen once again. The second time, I would like my students listen for certain kinds of soup or salads without script, for example, chicken noodle, mushroom, chef salad, or Ceasar salad, and then listen with script. As for the explanation, I will assign it as homework and also play it in the class and ask questions from it. The fourth time of the class, I would ask my students to role play in class. This learning activity will not be included in the formal exam but will be a part of bonus exam. Cultivating listening habit, get used to paying attention to listen to English and learn how to interact with waiter and waitress are the objectives of the activity. 

ePals

The most amazing and useful part for me in epals is that the collaboration of classroom project.  Under the collaborate tab we could search by country, project, and teacher forum. It is easy for teachers to look for what they want depend on their needs.   Since there are lots of teachers looking for cooperative classrooms with a variety of topics, in the future, I would minimize my search by choosing a project first and then choose a partner classroom. I would have the project last for around three months and have an assignment once a week. When I go back to Taiwan I am going to teach elementary school, thus, I would like my students work in groups or as a class to come up with more ideas and not feel too stressful. In addition, I would also like to follow the essential questions based on the epal projects as my guideline to provoke the discussions. Afterwards, when my students get used to these form of discussion, I would like them practice storytelling via video instead of writing email back and forth.  

Have Fun with Photos

              I made this comic style caption photo by one functions of  Big Huge Labs. It is amazing that Big Huge Labs offer various of  applications that could have fun with photos.
             Since I teach in elementary school, adding comic book style captions to the photo by Captioner would be appropriate for students, they could create photos with ease. One the one hand, they can choose a photo and creat a dialogue. Students can use their imagination and add any captions they want. On the other hand, they can choose a photo that is related to them such as with family or friends, and then create a dialogue or write a dialogue according to what have happend in the picture. Creating a conversation is fun and makes the photo comes to life. In addition, the function of stamp makes Captioner even attractive. To sum up, by using Captioner students would definitely output what they have learned and involved their life into learning.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons licenses are released by Creative Commons(CC), a non-profit organization. Users on Flickr or other sharing platforms could publish or access resources legally by adding or knowing these. Unlike “all rights reserved”, Creative Commons licenses is a more flexible copyright model and could be “some rights reserved.” Starting with the most accommodating license type to the most restrictive license type, there are six main types of Creative Commons licenses:

Attribution License 

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give you credit.

Attribution-ShareAlike License

You lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Attribution-NoDerivs License

It allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

Attribution-NonCommercial License

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

Twitter Implement

             The article Nine-great-reasons-why-teachers-should-use-twitter/ gave me the background of learning and teaching based on twitter, since I am a novice of Twitter. I love the idea of "Together we are better." TrAuely, in school, it is hard to have enough time to talk with colleagues. Accordingly, teachers might loss the oppurtunity to share the great experience with others. I had the feeling of that when I was teaching in Taiwan. With Twitter, I can not only note down the reflection of the class or day but also share the experience with others and vice versa. The amazing part is that we could read the instant feedback by twitter. For my professional development, I would like to share Twitter with my colleagues who are on the same boat as me. The advantage of having discussions and sharing with homogeneous group could make me figure out the problem and solve it efficiently. Neverthless, I will also be the followers of other Twitters in order to expand more ideas.
            As for the article 7 ThingsYou Should Know About Assessing on-line Team-based learning. I'm glad to know the assesment of the on-line team based learning. In order to have my students cooperative learning, I do like to implement this. In my opinion, teachers might be interested in trying new skills of teaching, however, assesment is always a difficult part. Since I teach in elementary school. Based on this article, what I would like to do is have a project-based task and problem-solving task for my students, such as giving a situation and have them discuss on Twitter. From the discussion, though it is group work, I could still see how each individual contribute to the final project which is important for a teacher to assess how the individual works. At the same time, having on-line team-based learning, the process is much important than the result.
           To sum up, Twitter is a useful tool for me to develop my professional field and for my students. I will have respective Twitter, one for my own and the other for my students.

How often do you get your students to read aloud in class?

How often do you get your students to read aloud in class? From this statistics, it's interesting to find out that there are still some teachers never let their students read aloud in class. There's an interesting reading technique "Reader's Theater" that could be applied in class. I think teachers who know this would be willing to try this. Reader's theater is a way of reading in a meaningful and fluent way. Readers have their voice go up and down to bring the characters to life. However, there's study pointed out that it's better not to read aloud because if students try to read aloud they would focus on the pronunciation itself  but not comprehending the content. In my opinion, the way to comprimise these two contrary perceptions is to have students read the materials by themself first to comprehend the content, and then have groups practice reading aloud to make the content more meaningful. Not only readers feel interesting but also audiences feel amazing. In this way, learners have a sense of achievement to reading. As a result, they are more willing to read more and more, and this is what teachers looking for.

EFL CLASSROOM 2.0

One of the groups I visited is EFL CLASSROOM 2.0. As an EFL teacher, it definitely a must visit platform. The group provides materials not only from teachers’ perspective but also from students’ perspective. For instance, from the tag –TEACH and LEARN at the top, no matter teachers or learners could fit in this EFL CLASSROOM 2.0. One of the categories I love is TEACH phonics, on the one hand, it has flashcards as teaching aids to print out, and on the other hand, it has interactive function for learners to learn it online. Under a certain category, it has lots of resources such as links to the other website, interactive program; in addition, it has attached files sometimes. Besides, visitors could comment every subgroup in this group. Moreover, it is a platform for everyone to discuss different issues. I also found that Teacher’s tool box is really amazing. It is well organized into different categories. There are interactive learning programs, power points, office documents as well. I love interactive learning programs a lot because they could be very vivid teaching aids in class. Because everyone could share information and discuss on this group, thus, what we can get is fresh. The group has the properties of knowledge economy: creating, preserving, and utilizing.