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.