serious games

    I played the Budget Hero, which cost me around 1 hours. Through the game, I realize the importance of serious games for my future students. I will apply serious games into my future teaching. My language learning objectives are that students can solve the real problems in the real world and they can find effective and various ways to solve common problems in the real world through playing serious games. After playing serious games, I will let students solve similar problems in classroom. For example, after students playing Budget Hero, I will let them do some accounting and to see if they know how to balance and control their budget.

Escap games

    Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics to engage users in solving problems. Gamification is used in applications and processes to improve user engagement, return on investment, data quality, timeliness, and learning.

     Nowadays, many researchers have found that game player's regularly exhibit persistence, risk-taking, attention to detail and problem solving skills, all behaviors that ideally would be regularly demonstrated in school. They also believed that game environments enable players to build understanding actively and at paces. Moreover, well-designed games let players to advance on various ways at various rates in response to each player's interests and abilities and foster collaboration and just-in-time learning. 

     I played Polleke's Blue Room, which cost me 45 minutes to escape the room. After playing the game, I found that game can rise great interest in learning. I think I will apply the gamification into my future teaching. The language learning objectives would be to  encourage my students to exercise more effectively and improve their overall health and to make education more engaging. I think students will be actively involved because the attractive video scene and students are awarded varying numbers of points for activities they perform in their workouts and gain levels based on points collected. Moreover, students will love getting ahead of others and then stop to help their classmates to show off their learning competence. I think the role of the teacher would be designing proper games according to their students' language level and make proper instructions to attract students' attention. Moreover, teachers need to do assessment through games. I will use a walk through for the game. I will write several steps and hints which are relative to how to escape the room. Through the walk trough, students will notice some important vocabularies they need to learn and those vocabularies will be showed by playing the game. I will use images from the game. I will choose some attractive and funny images to put to the game. Moreover, I may print these images and put them in the classroom with vocabularies, then students can learn everywhere. After the game, I will let students do vocabulary dictation to see how many words they can remember, and then I will adjust the difficulty of the game according to their performance.

social working stie

I think Teacher 2.0 will be useful to my future teaching. Because Teacher 2.0 is an independent community for educators to explore their interests and passions, and to build a network of support for educators at all levels. Through this community, with online events, interviews, and workshops, I can help my students re-energized in their study and in their contributions to the world. Moreover, through the community, I can let my career become easier and more convenient. I can save a lot of time to manage technology problem and spend more time to pay more attention to my students. Furthermore, through the community, I can keep contact in my students’ study and give my feedback to them in time.

using Twitter for my teaching

     I will use Twitter for my future teaching. After reading the articles free technology for teachers and What you wanted to know about student blogging, I get some ideas about how to apply the Twitter to my future teaching.

     Firstly, the Twitter  could become a central location for all of the online materials I use in my classes.I can use Twitter not only to keep a record of my lessons, students ideas, I can also use Twitter to share my lesson resources and give my feedback to students.Through the Twitter, I can share my ideas with my students, and I can get feedback from my students in time.

     Secondly, I will make a detailed rubric for the score standard for using Twitter. I will let students get some grades by using Twitter, which can motivate them studying together by using Twitter. For example, I will let them respond at least one article I post, and they should reply one of their classmates' ideas, just like what we do through discussion board. Then students can share their opinions and I can notice whether students understand what I teach.

The Twitterchat that I followed

     I followed the Twitterchat of #edchat. I think the #edchat  can be a good form of professional development for me in the future teaching. Through the #edchat, I can be informed of many useful resources about teaching, such as the useful websites for the teaching, some useful strategies teachers shared, some interesting class demonstration videos and so on. Thus, I can learn a lot from those teaching resources. I can apply those useful teaching strategies to my future teaching, and I can make some improvements through learning from others.

Personal Knowledge

     knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual. This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.” Just as Siemens says, nowadays, learning is not individual or internal activity, however, learning is connectivism. People work through different perspectives, then they share their various perspectives through network. The learning also depends on non-human appliances, such as computers, personal blogs, internet and so on. So the learning needs continually maintenance and nurturing. Moreover, learners now have the decision to decide what to learn, because the information of learning is up date from time to time.

      “The network is the learning, ways we are connecting to other individuals is a  large relative to our ability to continually stay current merit.” Just as the video illustrates, network is the learning nowadays. People, groups, nodes can be connected to an integrated whole. So we can share our different ideas, opinions or perspectives through network. The network is a short connection between information. The network makes learning easier to access.

Connectivism

The comparison with DIIGO and Scoop

Comparison with DIIGO and Scoop.it

I can highlight text in saved articles by using DIIGO, but I can not highlight text in saved articles by using Scoop.it. I can use multiple tags by using DIIGO and Scoop.it. I can copy and paste from original article to appear in comments about site by using DIIGO and Scoop, and others can post comments on my site. I can follow others by using Scoop.it and others can follow me as well. I offered suggestions for related articles.I will continue to use DIIGO and Scoop. Because both of them are easy to use. It is very convenient to use DIIGO  to save information. I can use folder to search my information and it can save a lot of time. And from DIIGO and Scoop, teachers and classmates are more likely to interact. They can save a lot of time in selecting, filtering and finding information they want to and it is easy for them to use.

Classroom of Tomorrow

Classroom of Tomorrow

From the Video, I see many different scenes of the classrooms in the future. Students use smart phones, ipad, Projecter and so on to have class. They take the photos instead of taking notes. One of the amazing scene is that students can use the windows as information board to find information. 

    I think the classroom in the future has close relation to high technologies. With the development of high technology, the classroom in the future will be very interesting and attractive. However, meanwhile students may be easy to be distracted by high technology. So from my opinion, teachers should not depend too much on high technology.

Educational Change Challenge

Educational Change Challenge
  There is doubt that whether it is effective way for using technology to educate students. I think it is good ways of using online as one way of educating students. Just as the video displayed, there are many students in one big classroom and just have one teacher, so how teachers can every students attention. Thus to use technology can attract students attention and teachers can try their best to pay attention to all students in the class.

Reasons for using blogs to teach students

1.TESOL teachers can use blog to let students do some journals as feedback. For example, students can post their journals by creating blog and other classmates can post their comments on their blogs, then students can share their opinions about the classes and their feelings. Moreover, teachers can get feedback from students as soon as possible. The learning environment is more comfortable and easier to access.

2.TESOL teachers can use blog to reach every students. Some students may have some reason can not attend class. Teachers can post class content in his or her blog, then every student knows the process of the class and important learning content taught by teachers.

ACTFL STANDARDS 

COMMUNICATION

COMMUNICATE IN LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH

Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions

Standard 1.2: Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics

Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.

CULTURES

GAIN KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF OTHER CULTURES

Standard 2.1: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied

Standard 2.2: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied

CONNECTIONS

CONNECT WITH OTHER DISCIPLINES AND ACQUIRE INFORMATION

Standard 3.1: Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language

Standard 3.2: Students acquire information and recognize the distinctive viewpoints that are only available through the foreign language and its cultures

COMPARISONS

DEVELOP INSIGHT INTO THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Standard 4.1: Students demonstrate understanding of the nature of language through comparisons of the language studied and their own

Standard 4.2: Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.

COMMUNITIES

PARTICIPATE IN MULTILINGUAL COMMUNITIES AT HOME & AROUND THE WORLD

Standard 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting

Standard 5.2: Students show evidence of becoming life-long learners by using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment.

ACTFL STANDARD