Learning or playing: It's your choice!

Many people view Twitter as a waste of time including me. This bias may result from the fact that most people use Twitter to follow celebrities and interesting stories. However after reading articles concerning this bias together with my personal experience of using Twitter, I found out that Twitter can be a very useful tool in education especially language teaching and learning process.

First of all, to effectively use Twitter as a knowledge resource, we should use hashtags to filter the information needed. For example, if you want to search for language learning, simply putting language learning as keywords with # in the front, you can view how other people learn language and what solutions to the problems that are commonly encountered by learners.

Second, we can join in Twitter chat to make realtime chatting with others. We can ask questions or give answers to other persons' questions. Twitter creates multi-media environment in which pictures, videos and links to other useful websites are mixed together.

Last, by following other people in a particular field, we can observe a long term development. Tweets by other people offer the perspectives of how they view this field. Thus we can see changes in this field or in this person by browsing his or her tweets in a period of time.

In my future teaching, I might use Twitter in classroom when I want to discuss a topic with my students. Seeing other people's opinions especially from all around the world can broaden their views and stimulate their creative and cognitive thinkings. One more thing about using Twitter in classroom that inspired me is the idea of creating a class account as a platform to include the ideas and feelings shared by the students. That works like a profile of the class which can record the development of the students. I will definitely try it in my future classroom.

Twitterchat: An interesting Experience

This week I tried the twitter chat for the first time. I found it really interesting. Twitterchat is different from other communicative approaches that I had ever experienced. It is more open and more social. By using the hashtag, people who are interested in a same topic can discuss together.

I followed the #ntchat (new teacher chat) which discuss the importance and current place of social studies in the classroom. We mainly discussed four questions about the application of social studies. The questions are the following:

I replied those four questions with my own opinions.

During and after the chat, I realized how the social community provide resources that we can use in the future teaching. People would offer links to which they consider useful for this question or share personal experience about the certain topic. For example, some people suggested to use mysteryskype with the combination of textbook to better facilitate students with the understanding of social studies. I enjoyed this casual and informal way of communication. 

Global Learning

Students are living in the global village thanks to the internet. In addition to knowing others lives and cultures, learning together globally is also another important advantage that we can take from this network. Being in a same environment, you may share the same learning style and perspectives on many issues. However, seeing how people from other countries and cultures work on certain problems can broaden your horizon and make you more creative and critical on problem solving.

There are many websites that provides the platforms allowing students around the world to communicate to each other. Today I want to share my experience using one of them - ePals.

It provides many programs and activities concerning many topics within which students from around the world can share their own opinions, solutions and suggestions.

Take the first activities as an example. 

It encourages the students to share stories about protecting the environment and improving the world. Once a student submits a piece of work, they will turn the country on the map where the student comes from into green.

I just like the way it motivate the students. Besides, students can choose between individual activities and group activities which get the students more involved as a group. They can build up a team across countries. 

In my future teaching, I really want to introduce this website to my students. This is a place that can really have the students experience the importance and pleasure of global communication. Thus can motivate them to learn more about the language itself. With the better language ability, students may have more possibility to learn from others all around the world. Moreover, if I want to have my students work on a program and help them to compare their works with other students from other countries, I may even create that program by myself. It really is a great place to learn and communicate globally.

The Future depends on it: Learning through Technology!

As we live in the technological century, we use high-tech tools as smart phones and computers almost everyday.  Have you ever thought about using these tools in schools? Exactly how technologies improve education smartly?

This video The Future Starts Now - 2012 edition talks about how to improve education better by introducing ICT, information and communication technology, to schools. It takes Norway as an example. Norway is a country that relies on oil which is said to be gone by 2030 after which people would be living off knowledge. However students can hardly be motivated to study just by the thought of rescuing the nation. While ICT can make school more relevant and motivating to students, there will be less dropping out of school and naturally creating a knowledge-base community. ICT provides students with multiple ways of study. Instead of reading a book, seeing an animate picture like a DNA molecule will actually help students visualize the knowledge and understand what they are learning.

This video gets me thinking how we can improve education better by using high technology. Teacher is the one that stay closest to students. Though ICT has become the 5th basic skill in school curriculums, more support is still in need, for example teachers' push. What we do in class will make a huge difference. We as teachers have the responsibility to improve the students' motivation.

One interesting thing about this video is that there are drawings appear synchronously with narration which makes it more understandable and entertaining as well as attractive.

There is another video A Vision of 21st Century Teachers 2010 that provides us many possibilities that students can have with the help of 21st century teachers. By using new technologies, study becomes more effective. Students can access to the knowledge with more resources and get involved in a global community. Multimedia bring in different learning styles.

Find out more about how technology change future learning!