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.