Digital native or digital immigrant?

After watching video "Digital Native vs. Digital Immigrant" by Sree Sreenivasan, I feel, most of the time, I am a digital native. Sreeivasan defines digital natives as those who "Are born into a hyper-connected world and they believe everything should be on demand in real time." I do born in this kinds of hyper-connected world, know the potential of technology, and feel frustrated if the technology is not used in both my studies and real life.

However, in the meantime, I would rather say I feel a bit uncomfortable (not frustrated) with not knowing how to use technology myself. I am afraid of embracing technology, but sometimes I am a bit lazy to learn how to use a new technology if there is nobody showing me how to use it. Therefore, it is a bit difficult for me to keep up with the latest technology.

To sum up, I like the conclusion made by Sreenivasan, "Let's look at each individual one at a time and consider what they bring to the table no matter what the age is." Indeed, what matters is not what age a person is or where they are coming from, but what a person can do to make this world better.

WHAT and HOW Can Podcasting Do?

Podcasting gives learners opportunities to access to any information they are interested in even when they are busy. Learners can also gain knowledge through listening Podcasting even outsides the classrooms. I believe Podcasting can meet students' learning needs and help them move from their current competent level to the next level.

The Podcasting software I chose was NPR. This Podcasting website covers a wide rage of topics from global issues, common knowledge to different types of music genres. Among those topics, I chose the episode named The World Is A Family Tree 'In Its All Relative'. I would use this as an after-class activity for my ESL students to practice their listening after having lessons about intercultural interactions.

The learning objective of this lesson falls under performance indicator- ESL. C.9-12.1.1.2: Students read, gather, view, listen to, organize, discuss, interpret, and analyze information related to academic content areas from various sources. When students are listening this Podcasting, students cannot only gain content knowledge on this topic but, in a meanwhile, develop their English competence and skills while engaging in content-based learning.

To sum up, I believe Podcasting can meet the needs of diverse levels of learners and can be applied to different kinds of lesson based on the chosen Podcasting topics. Podcasting enables learners to gain content knowledge almost anytime and anywhere, which is conducive for their learning.

TED-Ed: Flipping Your EL Classroom?

This is my first time to use TED-Ed to create a online lesson and I do think this is a good way for teachers to provide instruction to students outside of the classrooms. Students can not only gain content knowledge through watching videos but check their own understanding on those discussion questions, multiple choices questions and open-ending questions. My first TED-Ed lesson, The 5 Reasons Why You Should Visit Taiwan!!!, is aimed at providing insights on Eastern culture of Taiwan and developing students' multicultural competence.

The learning objective of this lesson fall under performance indicator- ESL. C.9-12.5.1: students will demonstrate cross-cultural knowledge and sensitivity in communicating with others of varied social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. They will develop and use culturally appropriate behaviors, and a knowledge of local and U.S cultures and practices, in their interactions with others in their new cultural environment. In this lesson, students will be able to compare and contrast Taiwanese culture with their own culture, and gain knowledge on both two cultures.

With regard to how I would test whether the objectives had been met by students, those multiple choices questions can be used to check students basic understanding of Taiwanese cultures, and discussion questions allow students to think deeply and gain cross-cultural knowledge by watching the video and reflecting their own cultures.  In this lesson, students can gain input of Taiwanese culture and stretch out their knowledge based on what they have learned in this lesson and their own cultural experience.

To sum up, I would definitely use TED-Ed in my future classroom. Teachers can both provide input to students through this tools and create a pleasant learning environment to students.

Flip your classroom

The concepts of flipped classroom seem totally opposite from the traditional classroom practice. After reading articles about flipped classroom, I think flipped classroom creates a more student-centered learning environment and, therefore, students will feel more motivated to learn comparing to  the traditional teaching and learning approaches. 

Flipping Your EL Classroom: A Primer provides insights on how flipped classroom works. Flipped classroom moves instruction outside the classroom. In other words, students access content knowledge outside of the classroom. After students access those content knowledge, they interact with their teachers and peers for deeper comprehensive input. The role of teaches is not just to instruct content knowledge to students but to scaffold students' learning when they need help. 

Another article named Three Reasons To Flip Your classroom focuses on benefits of flipped classroom and how flipped classroom can benefit students' learning. After reading this article, I find flipped classroom provides more opportunities for students to take control of their learning. Moreover, through in-class interaction with their peers, students can clarify their misunderstanding on the concepts due to the fact that their peers can use the similar "ways of talks" while explaining, applying, and creating the new knowledge. Peer interaction can make the complex concepts more understandable, and teachers can check for students' understanding in in-class interaction. 

To conclude, flipped classroom definitely motivates students' learning; allows students to learn on their own pace; enables students to practice their use of language in meaningful communication. I believe flipped classroom provides a new effective way for students' learning. 

Twitter in education

As I look through more articles about Twitter in teaching, I realize Twitter is a powerful tool to improve my teaching. To be honest, I have not thought about how useful a social networking is to change or improve our education until I got started to use the Twitterchat and hashtag to search for what I am interested in and fond of. There are two articles which provide insightful thoughts about ways to use Twitter in education.

Stephanie Norman provides fifteen ways to use Twitter in education. She points out that "By using Twitter in education, you can post only a few short sentences, but that is exactly enough to transmit the essence of your message (2016)." She also mentions ways to incorporate Twitter in education. Among them, I have not thought of using Twitter to "survey students" and "write mini reviews." Teachers can create a survey and invite students to do a survey via Twitter. Also, Twitter can be a tool for students to write short reviews of a book or movie. Due to the fact that users can only post few short sentences, students can develop their skills on writing and eliciting the essence of their thoughts. I think it is a important skill that students should acquire because most of the time, we should know and be selective about which information is important or unimportant.

In addition to numerous ways to use Twitter in education, this article provides not only methods to apply Twitter in education but things that teachers should be cautious about when using Twitter in their teaching. One of the suggestions, which made me quite surprised, is that "vary the time of day of the posts." Because students may not have the same "twitter time" as teachers and students may come from different time zone, teachers should vary the post time to maximize everyone's chances of accessing the posts.

To conclude, I would definitely use Twitter in my future classroom. It provides a platform not only for teachers to make important announcement, but for both students and parents to get involved in students' learning. I think Twitter gives opportunities for teachers and students to share, inform, create and advertise anything they want in online settings-- those critical features cannot be ignored in education.

 

#LearnLAP

The Twitterchat I chose to attend to #LearnLAP at 8p.m. on Oct. 9, Monday. This was a totally new experience to me; however, I found it was good to know what others educators and teachers think and  do in their classroom across the world. The followings I would like to share the main points of this Twitterchat and my thoughts about how this chat could influence my professional development.

The Twitterchat #LearnLAP provided insights on practices, tools and methods which can help students' learning. The first question asked in this chat was "what are you passionate about outside teaching?" When seeing this question at first sight, I had no idea about why this question was asked. However, as I interacting with other participants and seeing more questions, I finally realized the reasons for raising the first question-- because the chat went deeper to discuss about what and how teachers bring their passion to class, and what factors hold teachers back from showing their passion in classroom.

Though I do not have much teaching experience, I found the comments made by participants truly open my eyes. For example, principles and parents may wonder why teachers teach using comic and movie in their classroom. They may not feel pleasant about it due to the fact that they may not see the benefits of incorporating them in lessons. Also, there are other factors that prevent teachers from showing their passion to their class, such as time and budget constraints. All of those comments and questions got me prepared for the problems that I might face in my future teaching. For me, one of the key takeaways from this chat was that teachers should not be afraid of sharing their failure with students-- which was rarely seen in my educational experience. I believe through sharing failure with students, students and teachers can build stronger connections with each other and, most importantly, students will not feel alone when they get lost on their learning process.

I do believe this Twitterchat can definitely benefit my professional development. It provides a platform for educators around the world to share their thoughts about education. Sometimes it allows us to step back and listen to others educators voices, and to see things from the different perspectives. Twitterchat provides different ideas from educators, which allows me to gain deeper and diverse insights with regard to education.

The filter bubbles

Eli Pariser's video explains the effects of filter bubbles, which reduces our opportunities to expose to diverse information and confine us to restricted information. This video opened my eyes to the extent to which search engine limits our horizons to see this world from different perspectives. I do find this effect, filter bubbles, prevails while I was using search engine; however, I have not thought of how huge impact of this effect is. Pariser talked about the personalized results on Google, which quite surprised me. I think those "chosen" information shown on Google may somehow help users to gain a deeper understanding on what they are interested in and what they are fond of; However, it fails to take the importance of diverse news and information into consideration. Consequently, people may end up with information junk food instead of balanced information diet.

Mariella's article, Facebook: if your feed is an echo chamber, you need more friends, points out that the filter bubble effect is real, but it does not play that big of a part. However, I do believe that filter bubble effect plays an important role in our life. For example, I remembered few years ago I googled and watched a video about same sex marriage in Taiwan. After viewing that video, I found some recommended articles which are related to proponents of same sex marriage popped up on my laptop. From my experience of using search bar, I think google does filter what kinds of information that users are going to get and plays a big role when we are using the Internet.

Another article, Facebook redesigns trending topics in its war on filter bubbles, seems to show that Facebook takes an active role in combating filter bubbles.  Nonetheless, as a constant user of Facebook, I have not found any difference on my Facebook trending topics. For example, though hurricane in Puerto Rico is a headline news for these few days, I have not seen any of these related trending topics shown in my Facebook. Instead, trending topics are mostly about news of animals which is the one that I am usually paying attention to. To sum up, users may get information merely based on their own preferences without gaining contradictory information due to the filer bubble effect, which results in isolating from diverse viewpoints and staying in our own bubble communities.

Flipped learning network

The social network group that I chose is Flipped Learning. I have heard flipped education; however, I have not tapped into it until this mod. Flipped learning is more learner-centered than traditional education. Learning is not limited to classroom anymore; instead, learners can learn both inside and outside classrooms with supports of technology in their learning, which can meet learners' different preferences on learning.

I found it exciting to know this approach which I will definitely incorporate in my future classroom. After having checked the website, I found another website which is categorized under flipped education-- PaGamO.  PaGamO, an online platform, designed by Dr. Yeh and his students, enables learners to learn through playing online games. Learners can choose games according to their levels and grades, and use this tool to gain knowledge through competing with others. Unlike traditional learning, learners will find interesting to acquire knowledge through playing games.

To conclude, Flipped Learning provides information about how to use flipped learning and what features are of flipped learning. Before incorporating flipped learning in my future classroom, I will definitely check this website to see if there are anything that I should be cautious about.

ePals: Learning on A Global Community

Not until this mod did I know there is such a useful website which allows students' to learn in a global community. ePals provides a platform for students to learn differences and similarities of areas world wide without boundaries. Besides, students can learn about local and world wide issues of both countries when interacting with each other. I would incorporate ePals in my future classroom as follows:

To begin, I would incorporate Pen Pal Exchange into my classroom. I would invite students to have one to one message with other students from a different cultural background. In this Pen Pal Exchange, I would invite them to have project and share local problems and issues of their own countries. After expressing problems of their own countries and knowing issues of other countries, students should think about possible solutions for those problems for their pen pal. Through this project, students can not only practice their writing skills but improve their critical thinking skills. 

Besides, I believe it is also practical to use ePals when teaching about race issues. For example, after reading articles about America, students can truly get in touch with Americans and discuss about race issues from both American and Taiwanese perspectives. From this project, I believe students can learn differences and similarities between two nations concerning race issues. Also, students can learn those issues not merely from textbooks but from real interactions with those people, which will leave a deep impression. 

To conclude, in this global village, our learning community does not need to be confined to an area. Through using ePals, students can not only improve their writing but learn global issues from different perspectives and, thus, become a global citizen. 

"A learner is like a..."

It takes long time to think about the analogy to describe the learner of today. After reading the article and watching those videos, I think learner of today is like a leaf on a tree. Leaf cannot stay healthy and strong without helps from others, such as sun, water, and branch. Similar to learners of today, hardly can they gain knowledge without building connections with each other. In other words, learning can only happen when learners form network with others.

Likewise, Siemen (2005) gives an insight into learners' learning nowadays. According to Siemen (2005) Connectivism: A Learning Theory for Digital Age, "Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within in an organization or database), is focused on connecting on specialized information sets, and the connections that make us to learn are more important than our current state of knowing." The term connectivism can explain learning is not an individualistic activity anymore but a collaboration and connections with each other.

Also, one of the videos from Siemen, the changing nature of knowledge, clearly illustrates that due to the fact that knowledge is being changed so rapidly, it would be difficult for us to learn it merely from books. To gain this fast-changed knowledge, Siemen considers both internal and external networks as critical elements for learners of today. Internal network is defined as how learners' mind create learning itself. As for external network, it emphasizes when learners form and make connections with each other, knowledge exists external to the individuals. In short, knowledge cannot be gained if learners fail to make connections with others but when learners form networks with others.

To conclude, back to the analogy: A learner is like a leaf. A learner cannot gain knowledge (as a leaf which needs soil, water, sun, branches) if he or she fails to make connections with each other. How can a tree grow healthily without connecting to soil, getting close to water and sun, and having strong branches?

A comparison: Pinterest vs Diigo

What kinds of social media have you used? Which social media platforms are more preferable for leisure business? After using Diigo and Pinterest, I found out both of them provide useful but different functions for users. The followings are about those usefulness and differences on Diigo and Pinterest.

First, both of them give users a platform to organize information they are interested in for future use.  Diigo, a social bookmarking, allows users to save links, write down notes, and highlight texts if needed. It is time-saving for users of Diigo to look back for important information. As for Pinterest, users can use it as a curating, create various boards to organize topics. In short, users can use Diigo and Pinterest to categorize information that they are into. 

Moreover, though both of them enable users to save information that they are interested in, I would say Diigo seems more academic than Pinterest. Diigo is more suitable for the professional to save links for future use because users can just look back those notes that they have taken. Also, users can get main points of articles by viewing descriptions they made. Unlike Diigo, Pinterest can only show images associated with the page. Users will only see images at first sight and, therefore, it would be difficult for users to show and get too many details or information on merely an image; however, it would be good for users to share and follow what they like in their daily lives, which, in my point of view, is more similar to Facebook or Instagram-- for leisure use. 

The following chart compares distinguishing features of Pinterest and Diigo :

Can you highlight text in saved sites?	No.	Yes, users can highlight texts and write down notes.
Can you use multiple tags?	No.	Yes.
Can you copy and paste from original article to appear in comments about site?	Yes.	Yes.
Can others post comments on your site?	Yes.	Yes.
Can you follow others?  Can they follow you?	Yes.	Yes.
Can you message people you follow?	Yes.	Yes.
Are you offered suggestions for related articles?	Yes.	Yes.
Would you continue to use either of these?  Which?  Why?	I would use Pinterest to record what I am interested in for my leisure time. As for Diigo, if I am a master degree student again or doing some research for academic purposes, I would definitely use Diigo.

To sum up, both Pinterest and Diigo provide interaction environment for users to share resources and make comments. It is definitely beneficial for teachers to gain information they want, and for students to interact with their classmates through either creating a group on Diigo or commenting on classmates' posts on Pinterest. I believe both of them have potential for educational use.