ESL podcast

In Korean elementary school English education, one of the main concerns is about teacher education. Thanks to the wide spread of internet and emphasis on English education, teachers today are armed with materials and methods that help with classroom activities and instruction. However, teaching a language always requires teachers to master the language to a certain level, and since the mastering one language is never an easy job, learning English has always been a money and time consuming challenge.

Now, here is podcast, online free potable broadcast at hand. I believe this could be a great tool for teacher education. Since when I go back to Korea, teaching English for elementary school teachers would be one of my responsibilities, I believe one of these podcast would be a good material for my class. ESL pod is designed for advanced level English learners in that each episode deals with specific situation or topic which gives useful expressions. Usually teachers are already advanced learners and have a good amount of grammar knowledge. However, in EFL environment, it is hard to learn authentic and pragmatic use of the language. With that sense, ESL pod is designed by Native English speakers and provides specific knowledge for more authentic language use. In the class, students and teachers listen to this podcast in advance and develop the language use in the class by doing various activities. Also, students can review just by listening to the episode with their potable devices which save a lot of time for doing that.

Animoto and Skype with ePals

Animoto is an online application that enables the users to put images or video clips together to make a short movie. In classrooms this can be used for introduction or summary of projects. For example, when students have a project, they can briefly present what they found and learned using their own creativity. They actually post their products to share other people on their blogs or through other means. With ePals where students exchange ideas and knowledge with students around the world, Animoto is a great tool to show diverse perspectives and ideas about the topic. There are some projects that really interest me and will likely to interest my future students as well such as “global worming” and “the way we are”. Students may make a movie to show what efforts their country is making to keep this planet green for global worming project. Moreover, to show their daily lives and culture, and to learn those of others’, students can also make short movie with photos and videos of themselves.

I am sure that while students are learning cooperatively, they probably have a desire to see and talk to each other more substantially. Skype would help in such case when the time zones of each classroom allow them to do so. This will promote students’ learning of other culture as well as the contents of the subject.

ePals, connect and learn

Features of ePals
ePals is a tool that is specialized for collaborative learning by connecting one classroom to another that is thousands miles away. The key features of ePals are that it provides school mail and school blog, and matches classrooms with the same project or learning interests. ePals’ email and blog have the same functions as the other email portals and blogs BUT are more applicable in classrooms with the following reasons:

• It has language translation function of 8 languages
• Teachers and school administrators can monitor students’ emails or postings
• Through ePals, parents also monitor and see the results’ of school activities

As a result, students can exchanges their ideas and knowledge with the other students in the world in a guided path.

In addition, ePals enables learners to develop autonomous learning habit. On the Web page, it provides 7 areas of subjects that students can work in collaboration (e.g. global worming). One think that really helpful for teachers and students is
For teachers: Learning sequence is given
For students: Relevant information and links are given
With the sequence and the information, a classroom connects to other classroom to share their learning experiences and information. Students can also discuss in an open forum for specific ideas and interests related to the topic they are learning.

In my teaching
While exploring ePals, I thought this tool could be a wonderful resource for Content-Based language teaching and learning (CBL). In CBL, content is carried with the means of language and language is acquired by learning the content. Even though ePals has a language translation function, posts and exchanges are written trough the medium of English. This prevailing use of English might pose some problems for non-English speaking classrooms; however, it is very feasible for language learners, especially in CBL classrooms. ePals will be great motivation for students to keep learning in both language and content area.

Great motivational tool

BIG HUGE LABS (BHL) : this simple but interesting application gives a lot of fun by just clicking and choosing photos from Flickr or from their own. There are two reaons that English teachers should use this tool in the language classroom. One is that this application is fun because it allows the users to creat their own poster which can motivate the students by including studetns ideas, thoughts and personal experiences. Second, it is easy. Students can create unique posters with some photos in a minute. Since the tool povides frame that the users can select within few options, no efforts or elaboration is needed for making the format.

Then, how can a teacher apply this tool in education? I would use BHL for pre or post activity of any kind. The puropse of poster is usually advertising or showing what will be on the show or exibition. The class may be preparing a play and making a poster would be one part or the preperation (I would ask them to do this during the preperation or after the show for various purposes). Also I would jsut ask each group to create a poster for an imaginary TV show and let the rest of group to guess the story from the poster. Guessing always make students excited.

When I had to ask students to creat posters, I used to be frustrated because it takes a long time to make. In addition, when photos are needed students are reluctant to put their photos on the poster because usually they are not reusable. However, with BHL and Flickr there would be no such worries.

Creative commons licenses

Creative commons licensing allows the photographers to decide to what extent their photos can be used by other people. There are four types of licensing which put different limitations on using photos.

1. Attribution: Users basically can copy and post selected photos of others. Derivative works are allowed only when it gives credit.


2. Noncommercial: Users can copy, post and do derivative works but for noncommercial purposes.
   
3. No Derivative Works: Users can copy and post only the original copies of photos. No derivative works can be done.


4. Share Alike: Distributing derivative works are allowed only under the same license.

By Koinos Zoi

The photographers can combine one or more types licensing according to how they want their picture to be used. In this way Creative commons licenses protect copy right of the photos.

Potential of microblogging in education

There are lots of tools and technology that enable people to connect with each other, such as mobile-phones and blogs. One of the powerful tools for networking is Twitter which has a lot of potential for its use. People can use Twitter both professional and personal purposes. As a teacher, I would like to use this in my language class for teaching platform as well as my professional development.

Here is the video for using Twitter for educational purpose

Grosseck and Holotescu (2008) introduce the use of Twitter in education in their article by providing pros and cons of using it as well. Among the suggestions, I believe Twitter can be mainly used to establish classroom community in that students can ask questions and have discussions, and teachers provide additional information outside the classroom. This microblog, Twitter is especially beneficial when the class has a project, so ideas and information need to be shared by all the students. Anyone in the class can provide useful resources with the help of Twitter.

I could explore additional tool for microblogging as well, among which I am very interested in Edmodo. Edmodo is specialized for classroom use with useful functions that reflect teachers’ needs. What I like the most about this tool is its high practicality by putting very essential and core functions such as grouping students and creating polls, in a well-organized format. I also like this tool giving more control to teachers and blocking any harmful effects from random outsiders. I can use this tool for classroom announcement, assignment, managing students, giving group and individual feedback as well as information, and for grading. This is just perfect for me as a teacher.

Teaching writing through movie maker

In ESL classroom setting, teachers usually ask to students practice language by putting them into groups and assigning role-plays or simulations. It is considered to be important and effective for students actually produce the target language. As one of the interesting and innovative way of producing language collaboratively, I reommand a powerful tool, Zimmer Twins movie maker.

I found this website from one of the 2009 blog wards winner's blog: Free Technology for teachers. In the post Creat Simple Animated movies with Zimmer Twins, the bloger introduces Zimmer Twins as a powerful tool, letting elementary students creat their own stories just by clicking the pictures and typing the texts. One of the good thing is, the website provides promts for the story with which students can make up the following stories.



In the classroom, I think teachers, using this tool, can ask students to make up stories in groups and share thier movies either during the class or after the class. It is very interesting enough to motivate students and yielding a lot of communication and interaction between students.

Looking for a classroom reading material?

When I first visited this blog and looked around for useful information, I was overwhelmed. It seems that this blog deals with a lot of things on English learning and teaching. After more than one hour of investigation, I could find some useful resources for me as and English teacher. What I think the handiest for me is flash stories under TEACH category. Reading in language education has a number of benefits especially to child learners providing more natural setting of acquisition of the target language. However, in Korea, in public schools, the curriculum or English syllabus do not provide reading opportunities to kids because they densely focus on oral and aural aspects of English learning. I could not find many resources or materials for reading and even though we have some English books at the library, they were not very useful in classroom teaching because of its limited numbers for every students and small size to present in front of the class.


The flash stories I found on this blog is very useful for two reasons. First, every student can get access to the web site so I can ask them to watch and read for homework. Second, I can use this during my class. We have pretty big TV in every classroom so that everyone can watch and read at the same time just like the text books we have. Besides these reading materials this blog also forms broad network of English teachers across countries which enables teacher and learners to share variety of ideas. Also, I think this blog would help my learners gain learning autonomy by providing self-learning tools and games and stuffs.

EFL English classroom 2.0

Learners of Today

As a way of getting information changes, the construct on learning has been changed as well. Now, people create and share knowledge, so the previous learning theories that perceive learning occurs inside a person is challenged since the learning could occur outside of a person with the help of technology. Using computers, learners need not memorize and manipulate certain knowledge by themselves. Instead, they need to search and evaluate new knowledge by connecting to each other. Siemens (2005) says, in his theory connectivism, “the pipe is more important than the content within the pipe”, which means it is more important to build connection to new source of knowledge than what you really have in your hand. According to this new way of perceiving learning, we could analogize new type of learner as follows.


Today, learners are like bees. Bees who are in charge of finding food sources make their journey to look for honey. When they find a good food source, they signal to other bees by dancing. Then, other bees come to carry the honey but also share their information about other food sources and their qualities. In this way, bees create a network of food supplies in which they keep giving and receiving information about the state of resources found. Depending on the resource available this network can expand or decrease in size. And sometimes it just dies out If all the food supplies were depleted. Likewise, learners make their way to look for the information. When they find good information, now they share it by connecting to other learners. However, this information sharing is both ways since learners are giving and receiving what they found, namely, they communicate. Also, like the food sources of bees, information today is not absolute. It keeps changing and disappearing as the society and technology change. And this is why networking is important as the video “the network is the learning” says. One needs to link to others “to stay in current” in ones’ field since if one is disconnected, he or she does not adapt to change, namely, might possess out of date knowledge. These days, we all need to be aware of this trait of information and navigate ourselves to look for what we want and make a connection each other, instead of only believing knowledge in our hand.

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

Today, technology is everywhere. It has changed the way we live, communicate and learn. The majority of populations who are known to adapt to and manipulate these technologies are children or adolescence. As the video shows, now, they are requiring that instructors use this new method in their teaching.


During the period that I taught elementary school kids, I was the one who used the computer and software in teaching but hardly let my students use them. I was afraid that these young kids become addicted to computers and the internet, since I have witnessed many students who suffer from chatting, game and the internet addiction. I believe that children should go out and explore by running and playing. However, these new technologies are so fascinating and powerful, children are easily absorbed in it, not knowing that how to control themselves.


This video might have changed the way I think about children using technology in learning. It says we need to actively adopt the benefits of it so that our kids explore the world outside, communicate for more information and keep the pace with new changes. I feel I need to teach how to benefit from the technology. Saying them not to be too friendly with the computer is not enough. They need to know how to use it more wisely.

Safe blogging

When I read about safety tips for blogging, I remembered big mistakes that I made. I was a bad role model that shows how personal information can be invaded. Me and my studnets had a small classroom homepage on the Web and students needed their username and password to get access to the site. However, most of them forgot thier usernames or password since they created the account years ago. So, I let them know mine so that they can post their homework on the classroom homepage. Well, I was very disappointed when I found that one of them had changed my password. So, my number one for safe blogging will be,

• Teaching the importance of keeping personal information safe: invasion of personal information can result in getting spam mails everyday or more seriously cyber crimes.
  
  
  The details are as follows.

• Do not share information about themselves with people that they meet on the internet especially through instant messages or chat rooms.
• Be careful about commercial sites that require one’s personal information by offering things such as lottery. (at the same time teachers should guide kids to the safe, non-commercial and beneficial sites.)
• Avoid using their real names for username, or nickname that can be identifiable the gender.

Most of all, parents and teachers always talk about safe blogging with their kids so that they can help them when something happens. And as myself, I will never give my username and password even for good purpose to my students to become a good model of safe blogging.

Using blogs in my teaching

1. to reflect on my teaching experiences
Since I became a teacher, many predecessors have recommended me to write a journal that records daily classroom events so that I can get closer look at my students as well as improve my classroom management skills through reflection. However, in my five years of teaching experience, I never wrote a journal, making excuses that I was too busy with more important works to do. Last semester, I could realize the importance of recording what happens during the class through my own experience of meta-cognitive learning: writing weekly journal about my English learning. While I was reading the chapter 2, I thought that I can use my blog for this purpose. In this case, I believe this blog is to be very personal, so I won’t let anybody read my postings. I can make use of the posting when I consult with parents for reference.

2. to communicate with parents
Elementary school students are needed parents’ help. Sometimes I give them homework which requires their parents’ participants or help. I do write down detailed instruction on the blackboard giving them oral explanation at the same time, however, some of students just miss things or cannot understand, especially when they are younger students. If I had my blog that enable myself to communicate with parents, I did not need to spend as much time to explain what my students should do for homework. In addition, I can use the blog to announce my philosophy as an educator and the classroom policy & system to parents at the beginning of the semester. Each year, when new semester starts, we have open classes and have time to talk to the parents. But majority of parents could not come to school on the day. We exchange the ideas for better education but that is only one time event at the beginning of the year. In my culture, parents can be never comfortable when talking to their children’s teacher. Blogs can be a good method that relieves the uncomfortableness of saying their opinion at any time of the year.

3. to create a dynamic teaching site
I am kind of a teacher that always tries to spend more time with students who are slow or have some problems. Those students are usually behind in terms of their schoolwork, so I ask fast students to help these students. I give more feedback on these students. But on the other hand, I am very sorry for who cannot get my attention, those who are smart and can do things by themselves. For these students, a blog as a dynamic teaching site will provide good feedback: further information that they could dig in. I do not want to use blogs for something that all students should participate in. I want to use it for extension of what we learned by linking the real world, for something that we want to discuss from our own interest. The contents will vary according to what’s happening in the world and the classroom and students can participate in freely with their interests.