Working with iMovie

    During the last few weeks, I made several videos for my lesson plan and it turned out to be a quite interesting experiencce. I was having fun and I believe my students will also have fun. Before the project began, we had written our video scripts which include the scenes, music, location, actors and even lines. In order to carry out the project, I need to check out a video camera and make a list of friends that I want to invite to act in the video. Because I was going to make a video of everyday conversations happened in students’ lives, I had to change shooting spots between different scenes.
    In order to achieve good effects, I need to make plans and write good script, and writing script is a writing activity as well. I must admit that my friends has supported and contributed to this video, and I couldn't have finished the movie without them. They have given me excellent comments and suggestions too.
    The most memorable thing during the filming process was to cooperate and communicate with others. We often worry that new technologies will keep children in front of a computer screen and interrupt their process of acquiring interpersonal communicating skills, but a simple case such as making a class video will suffice to prove that new technologies(web 2.0 tools) are beneficial for the class as well.

    I even think that it might be a good idea to assign students video-making homework so that they can learn creatively and find writing, speaking and interacting with other people to be fun.

Games in Secondary School

Games in Secondary School

      Speaking of games, people tend to refer them to just computer games. However, it's a big mistake that the "good-for-nothing" computer game is the only form of games, some games for educational use which incorporate some higher-order thinking skills can be beneficial to our students as long as we can use games properly.

      In order to play the game, students must learn to collaborate with their game partners, demonstrate problem-solving abilities and think up creative ways to complete a task. Students have to engage actively in the game in terms of understanding and obeying the rules and communicating with their peers. Games provide environments in which students might experience the simulated problems which are designed to develop certain level of higher-order thinking skills. It's just like the real life for them and it can prepare them for the future lives.

      Most games nowadays are for younger elementary kids, but there are games for secondary schools which are really valuable and helpful. Secondary students might concern more about the significance and outcome of the games than younger kids do. Students of this age group are more conscious of their role in the game and they might be more motivated if they are informed of the value of the games toward their ability development. Thus games for secondary school students are generally more sophisticated than those for elementary kids.

      In order to keep the teacher and parents in control of the situation, parents and teachers need to set out the expectations of the students so that students know exactly what they are supposed to accomplish. Parents and teacheres should also organize the links and suggest the content that the students should pay attention to or ignore.

      One thing that Doug Adams mentioned in his presentation is that frustration can contribute to the effectiveness of the games. Students get frustrated by some unfamiliar situations or problems and they in turn develop through various ways problem-solving skills and interpersonal skills.

      Despite the evident advantages of educational games, we still doubt that if it would be more efficient to teach students the higher-order thinking skills and problem-solving abilities through class activities in which students interact face-to-face in real situations. I do concerns about that question as well, but I think educational games is just a complimentary educational activity aside from in-class teaching and it is crucial that students need to be under teachers’ or parents’ supervision in order to keep the educational goals for using those games among students.

Xtranormal Taming of the Shrew

http://www.xtranormal.com/

My partner and I are going to use Xtranormal, a basic film making tool for this project. Our topic is Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew and we plan to let our students re-create some of the most impressive scenes of this play through Xtranormal to show their unique and creative understanding of the play. Every reader has his own Hamlet and this is true with every literature learning experience. I'm sure different students will have different understandings of the play and I value every opinion because the whole class is going to be benefit from diverse understandings. For example, the heroine "Katherine" might have totally different talking style in the beginning and end of the play and a dialogue created by student A is certainly not the same with that by student B. Owing to such differences, students might be evoked to think in depth of the characters they are trying to re-create. "Why is Petruchio (one of the main characters) considered as a loving husband who has built a happy marriage while what I'm thinking about him is that he is a chauvinist and materialist?" students might ask themselves like that. Therefore, the reason of using Xtranormal is to move the class toward a better grasp of the characters as well as the play.



Some guidelines:

Assume that there are 30 students in the class and the class time period is 40 minutes.

Students will work in pairs or individually and everyone is going to make a film of either 1 or 2 characters based on the scenes and acts they choose from the play. Each group or single person will have to come up with a short film, in which the character(s) they have chosen talk and move. Each presentation is about 2 to 3 minutes (might need more since voice producing in Xtranormal is not as quick as real conversations). Towards the end of the class, we will vote for the best short movie and the group that stands out will get extra credit for this class. We also thinks of giving students 2 weeks of preparation time for the project of the class which will be a more comprehensive demonstration of their reading skills gained through this class.

Languages in Schools

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/route21/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23&Itemid=169

       This article talks about a theory of multiple languages learning. According to the article, children need to be flexible to take different roles in different languages and adapt themselves to new language environment. By offering students a partial immersion of the language being learned, students get the chance to use the language in real situations like core subject studies, routines and conversations. This is a positive example of learning a foreign language because what the students learn is not just some idle vocabulary or stiff grammar in textbooks, but the ability to use the language, and I think using the language is one of the most difficult tasks of foreign language teaching.

       In the video, teachers in the school help student type Japanese words by tying combination of English letters, by helping them write Japanese emails to their pen pals in Japan and by engaging them with technology classes in a Japanese environment. Those methods contributes to the partial immersion environment, creating their self-portrait in Japanese helps their ability to write in Japanese and the emails especially engage students to communicate with native speakers of Japanese. In addition, the cultural exchange between Japanese children and American children not only improved their language ability but also developed their global perspective in some way. Just like one of the kindergarten teacher in the video has said, “They don’t even know this is special.” It is lucky for those children to have a partial language environment which is designed to strengthen their language abilities and to develop their global perspectives.

       I believe that real language situations really help a foreign language learner to develop flexibility and adaptability of using different languages and the use of technologies just makes it easier to get contact with the foreign language at any time and at any place. Without the student’s practice of writing through writing emails and self-portrait to Japanese children, students will not be able to get really familiar with the language in just a “man-made” environment. Their two-way language thinking patterns demonstrate their flexibility in different language contexts. However, this purely man-made school environment is really playing better role than traditional textbook teaching does. Fortunately, this environment has received social approval and is becoming closer to natural language environment through cultural exchange programs.

My Second Language Learning Experience

After the invention of World Wide Web, the Internet technology has been changing our lives at an unprecedented speed. Within a decade, the most widely mentioned Internet terms and companies today has emerged. Consequently people’s lives have been changed dramatically in terms of social networking, commercial relations, public administration as well as education. Though we seldom notice the dramatic changes, we are aware of them when comparing the life 10 years ago and the life now. In fact, our learning experience has become more convenient but at the same time, the Internet has also raised some problems for educators.

Students love new technologies because technologies provide them colorful and interesting learning resources. I am a foreign language learner of English and French, and I have witnessed the development of education technologies during my second language acquisition process. When I first learned English at the age of 10, I can only listen to native speakers’ recordings on a tape through a walkman or through a radio because there are not so much foreign language materials around. When I was a 9th grader, I had my mp3 and could download free textbook audio materials, various English songs, news broadcasts. I could watch English movies, read English websites, and even make friends with native speakers. The Internet just has opened a world of possibilities for me. Now I am learning French and I can certainly feel the technological advantages nowadays.

On the other hand, teachers should be conscious of the annoying advertisements around the specific piece of information which they want to share with the class. Students are mostly teenagers who are easily distracted by those animated or suggesting pop-ups, and therefore, as a teacher, it is crucial to know how to filter information.

As we can see from above, we are living in an information age when educators have taken advantage of the technological development in order to provide their learners more learning resources as well as more convenient and more interesting learning experience. It is my goal as a future teacher to know to to pick up and filter the most helpful information for my students and to create a more comfortable learning environment.