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.

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.

 

"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?

Reactions to videos for Mod# 3

There are infinite uses of technology. Through using technology, both teachers and students can share knowledge, communicate efficiently, create our own learning community and, most importantly, take an active role on our learning. I watched two videos related to why technology is of importance to implement in our classroom-- it allows us to acquire tomorrow's skills today. The followings include my reactions and thoughts of those two videos.

The first video I watched is The Future Starts Now, which is about information and communication technology (ICT) in education. It provides insightful points on reasons for keeping technology in education, instead of keeping out. Students will feel interested and motivated to learn based on their interests, learn things in a different way, and, therefore, reduce the dropout rate. Though technology can help students' learning and cultivate skills that students need in future, I would say it may be oversimplify students' lack of interests in their learning. There are other reasons that cause students' dropout in schools, such as economic issues and peer pressure-- technology cannot be an effective treatment for those students.

Another video I watched is A Vision of 21st Century Teachers, focusing on numerous benefits of using technology in class. One of the points-- every student speak up even the shy one-- mentioned in this video truly opens my eyes. I have not thought that technology somehow provides chances for every students to speak up in an interactive community. I believe this can definitely benefit those students who are timid and need more time to think in class. I retrospect to my learning experience, I found out using technology, such as blog, and online discussion broad, is an more effective way for me to express my thoughts. Through using technology, I feel less nervous with expressing my thoughts because I know nobody will argue or confront with me in person. After watching this, it made me think about how to incorporate technology to curriculum wisely and how to create a place where everyone has equal chance to use it and to speak up for themselves.

To conclude, technology brings learning toward learner-centered. We all know it is important to incorporate technology to students' learning; however, other important things should also be considered are: how to use it smartly? how to let every student has equal chance to use it?