Use Podcast in teaching

I chose this Podcast from the website ESL Pod: English Cafe 498

I really like the podcast, in the following ways:

1. Speech speed: The podcaster speaks very slowly and clearly, perfect for English learners, especially for intermediate level students.

2. Content: The podcast clip I listened to consists of two parts, an introduction to a movie and an introduction to a website Craigslist. The two parts are totally relevant to students’ lives and fully cultural embedded. Students would learn so much from them.

3. Vocabulary and explanations: The podcaster would stress on new words, spell them and then give simple explanations and the contexts they could be used. This is the highlight of the podcast, which connects the podcast to my future teaching.

I would ask my students to subscribe the podcast. They can listen to the podcast whenever or wherever they feel comfortable. I want them to make notes when listening to the podcast. They should be writing down notes as such:

1. New words. Spell them correctly, simply explain them in one or two sentences and give one or two sample sentences where they can be used. Students don't have to write down all the new words they have heard in one podcast, but they should at least have five new words.

Objective: Students learn new words or expressions in contexts.

2. Summarize the content of one podcast. What does the podcaster mainly talk about? For example, for the podcast I heard, the podcaster talked about Craigslist. Then I would write something that I have learned about Craigslist. For example, it is a website for people to get or post information about apartment hunting or second-hand things. It now charges people a certain amount of fees, even though it was free before… The writing doesn't have to include all the things the podcaster said. Several sentences would do.

Objective: Students learn cultural facts about the United States.

3. Students keep notes and write short paragraphs in their journals. I will look into their journals once or twice a month, or everyone just shares their journals in class.

Objective: Students keep journals to accumulate knowledge and practice their oral English when sharing with classmates their journals.

Dvolver

My Dvolver comic strip: Let's go shopping

The comic strip creation for this week's mod is consistent with the photo story on Animoto. For the photo story, students should focus on the vocab and expressions that could be used in an social interaction, such as shopping. For the comic strip, students should make up a relatively social conversation with characters, plot, lines and social purposes. In real classrooms, the comic strip can be used to follow the photo story, and they both are part of one bigger module or theme. Therefore, the language performance indicator for the photo story and the comic strip should be the same.

Performance indicator - ESL.1.5-8.4.1.9 
Students use appropriate vocabulary, expressions, language, routines, and interaction styles for various audiences and formal and informal social or school situations, noticing how intention is realized through language.
May Include - ESL.1.5-8.4.1.9.MI
Expressions and routines such as asking permission, making and responding to request, greeting, making promises, thanking and apologizing. Such situations include chatting with friends, participating in group discussions, greeting a principal or other adult, and making purchases.

Assessment:
Students work in pairs or groups and make comic strips together, following the rubric that the teacher creates. Pairs or groups make presentations about their comic strips to the class, followed by several questions they design for the class to answer. Through the questions, the presenters assess how much the class understands their comic strips and the teacher assess how well the presenters could perform in the social interactions they set.

Animoto Video

My Animoto Video: Let's go shopping!
Background music: Pet Shop Boys, Shopping
Source of all photos: Google images

For this week's mod, I created an Animoto video with pictures and texts. It is in the setting of a social interaction: students learn words and expressions which could be used in shopping scenarios. Students may create their own photo stories with the Animoto videos. Language performance indicators and assessment are as follows:

Performance indicator - ESL.1.5-8.4.1.9 
Students use appropriate vocabulary, expressions, language, routines, and interaction styles for various audiences and formal and informal social or school situations, noticing how intention is realized through language.
May Include - ESL.1.5-8.4.1.9.MI
Expressions and routines such as asking permission, making and responding to request, greeting, making promises, thanking and apologizing. Such situations include chatting with friends, participating in group discussions, greeting a principal or other adult, and making purchases.

Assessment: 
1. I would create a rubric for students to follow before they create their own photo stories. The rubric can also be used as an assessment tool for me to identify students' strengths and weakness in their language performances. For example, the rubric may state that the photo story is set in a social interaction, involving an appropriate social conversation, or part of an appropriate social conversation. Students' followings to the rubric may be demonstrated in their choices of social settings and conversations, so they can be assessed.
2. Students may work in pairs or groups to finish photo stories together. All members shall receive the same score for one group.
3. Students may make presentations to the class, followed by a small quiz to the class. From the presentations and quizzes that students design, their use of language for social interaction purposes can be assessed.

My First TED Lesson & Reflections

Behold! My first Ted Lesson:)
William Shakespeare: Mini Biography

Objectives	Assessments
Students should be able to --Identify some basic facts about Shakespeare: including his personal information, experiences, as well as historical and cultural roles and so on.	In-classroom assessment: --Students answer multiple-choice questions correctly after self-study at home and in-class group discussion; --Each group indicates evidences of their choices in the video, and the teacher goes around the classroom and takes notes on how many correct evidences they can find in the video.
--Name some of his great works and identify in which periods they were finished	In-classroom Assessment: --Students answer the second question correctly in the lesson. After-class Assessment: --Students organize a given list of some of Shakespeare’s great works in a chronicle order, early, middle and later periods.
--Mainly understand how Shakespeare influenced the development of English language and literature	In-classroom Assessment: --Students discuss Shakespeare’s influences on English Language in groups, and the teacher go around the classroom, observe and assess individually. The group comes up with a list of the influences and share with the class. The teacher grades the list for each group. After-class Assessment: --Students post responses to discussion board online. One response should be at least two paragraphs, describing explicitly on one of Shakespeare’s main legacies on English language. The teacher should design a rubric for students to refer to.

Reflections on flipping a class:

1. I was concerned about how to make flipped classes aligned over a period of time. After creating a lesson myself, I changed my mind. I think flipped classes are not to be adopted for a whole semester or a certain period. They can be an integral part of a complete course. For example, in one course, there can be two or three flipped classes involved, with materials echoing the knowledge being taught at that time in a course. If we should try to make the entire course a flipped style, it would be extremely hard for teachers to find materials from the internet which are consistent and sequential in syllabus.

2. I was concerned about the quality of teaching materials for students to work on at home. My concern is solved now, since I have tried TED-Ed and realized that it can be used as a format or a rubric itself to make sure the teaching materials wouldn't fail to meet the demands for effective teaching outcomes. I am not saying that TED-Ed is the ultimate answer, but it is a good start to build up my confidence in solving the problem with the help of technologies.

3. I was concerned about the lack of supervision over students at home. With specific assessments in-classroom and after-class, the concern is gone. We can never supervise our students all the time, right? We should give them credits and give them the power, the power of learning and the power of self-regulating. Online learning is still not popular in China not because families can’t afford computers but because parents don't believe that their kids would use computers to study instead of playing games. If I keep thinking about how to control rather than how to trust, I would never be a good teacher. I was wrong, and I have learned from my own lesson.

Flipping your class

To flip a class is like to shuffle the order of teaching a course. The traditional order: the teacher teaches in class, students go back home and do homework and the teacher assesses students’ understandings and skills from students’ assignments and classroom performances. However, the flipped class order puts the homework-doing part ahead of the in-classroom teaching. The problem would be: how could students be able to finish the assignments before the teacher even teaches them the knowledge? The key point here is that the teacher must prepare students with sufficient and effective teaching materials for students to learn from at home. Therefore, the order of a flipped class is: students work at home (with teaching materials and home assignments), students work with peers and the teacher in class, and students continue to work after class. (references: Flipping Your EL Classroom: A Primer and Three Reasons to Flip Your Classroom

I haven’t flipped a class yet. But here are some concerns of mine:

1. How can we as teachers make sure that materials (video, audio and texts) we create for students to work at home before class are guiding them in the right way? Unlike teaching in class when we can see students’ responses while teaching, teaching a flipped class may cause extra time and energy at students’ costs if they couldn't make the most use of the materials if the materials are not designed to-the-point. The students may spend lots of time trying to figure out something on their own, only to find that they are thinking in the wrong way when they are communicating with the teacher in class. It is possible because for some knowledge, it could be hard to be explained in materials rather than teacher’s in-person instruction. Flipping a class relies hugely on the quality of materials given by the teacher, yet the materials are hard to be designed and aligned through a period of time.

2. Since students work on their own at home, it is hard for the teacher to supervise the process. If in a large class, it is hard for the teacher to assess the learning outcome of each student in class. If a student doesn't study at home and the teacher fails to assess that in class, the teacher would lose the control of tracking the learning of the student. How can we make sure that all students would go through all materials and study on their own at home?

3. How does the teacher assess the outcomes of students’ learning at home in class observations and after-class assignments?

4. Time is a big concern, too. The teacher may have to commit a lot of time to preparing the materials, not only keeping in mind the learning habits of his/her students but also taking into account the different proficiency levels of the students. Is there a rubric for designing materials for a flipped class?  

I hope I can answer these questions after I have flipped a lesion myself with TED. 

Toronto 2015

April, 2015, Toronto. With dresses and high heels in my suitcase, I had to wear the long jacket during my entire stay in the city which was boldly colder than Buffalo. You thought it would be a perfect season for some lady look...but NO! You were being naive.

For three days, we had to run quickly between two buildings which were connected by a long bridge and eight escalators. The schedule for the convention was so tight that there was only 15 minutes for us to shuttle between sessions. I felt like a journalist, trying to dig as deep as I could in the shortest period of time. Computer, iPad, iPhone, notepad... I used everything that I could fit into my backpack to record, take notes and make the most of the session time.

The convention was impressive in two ways. First, at the speech by the end of the Master Students' Forum, some student asked Dr. Nieto how she managed to balance her life and work, she said that she didn't have a personal life to balance with. She didn't like night clubs or parties, and she worked like a dog. I suddenly realized that for all the days I had been struggling, I wasted my time by neglecting one simple truth: we choose our own life, and the result will always be "win some and lose some". I had been going back and forth on whether I should go on and spend another 4 or 5 years in academia, and I had so many concerns, family, money and friends. I tried to find the best path to solve all problems once and for all. But it was not the way that life was supposed to be. Life is like, make the choice and take all the consequences. If I really want to do something, I should be strong enough to take all the shadow parts of it. During the convention, I saw so many scholars enjoying every session: it was their choice for life. Maybe they had their own problems back home, but at the convention, they made everything worth it. We don't have to balance; we just need to make the choice and take everything that comes along with it.

The convention taught me a lot for my professional development. Equally importantly, I learned a lot from the academic sessions. There were so many sessions everyday, and we got to choose whichever interested us personally. I was attracted to sessions concerning writing and technology. I was extremely amazed by how technology was being used in writing teaching, like MOOC and some other tools that teachers introduced, e.g. Crocodoc. They were both eye-opening tools. Writing is being taught to students in a totally new way. Teachers and students are interacting with a variety of online tools and making writing a fun job. Teachers may find technology extremely helpful in giving feedback and even pre and after writing. I am totally confident that I may be able to establish my own online writing center some day.

Teaching is becoming not only a career but also a life to me. I am really glad that I made the decision. I will move ahead until the day when students don't need me any more. Toronto is my starting point.

Good night, Toronto. Tomorrow is gonna be great!

Mission US, A Game that Blows My Mind!

I never thought that history could be taught this way! I can still remember how we used to bury our heads in history textbooks memorizing who did what in which year. This was how we studied history. To be honest, I don't remember much about the textbooks now.

Mission US is a game, but it is much more serious than any textbooks about history that I have ever read. The reason is that it is not about bulky books trying to cram students with facts but about stories that would happen to an ordinary person in a certain historical and cultural context. It is truly amazing!

I played the game twice, each time for an hour. I tried two missions, one in the context of 1770 and one in 1848. Through two animated teenagers’ roles, I got to live their lives in history, talked to different people, learned about the world back then and relived the key moments in history. Each role is set in a different identity in a different era in history. Players would play as these teenagers, experience their lives, finish their tasks and more importantly, learn about society in history during the process.

(see how the roles are culturally diversified!)

To me, the game is more meaningful in cultural education than linguistic education. To be honest, I myself have many words that I have no clues what the meanings are in a certain history context. So I would be concerned that the words in the games are extremely demanding to L2 learners, maybe except for college students who major in English language and literature. If asked to learn every detail of the stories, hidden historical facts and social status, students would lose the interests due to the totally demanding culture-embedded texts. However, it doesn't mean we can’t use it in language teaching.

I would use it as an extensive cultural class. Here are what my objectives would be:

1. For each mission, students should be able to summarize the main social classes and conflicts in the historical contexts, different parties and their different interests.

2. For each mission, students should be able to identify the key features of the specific era in American history and why it is so important in history.

3. For each mission, students should be able to understand at least 10 new words that are embedded with cultural meanings.

4. For each mission, students should be able to identify reasons for why choosing some answers over others to at least 5 interactions with different roles.

(These objectives are constructed by myself, but I did refer to Kyle Mawer's task types)

How to assess if students have achieved these goals?

For objectives 1 and 2, I would have students write short essays to respond to a series of prompts I have designed for them, mainly on historical significance and social conflicts in a certain period. For objective 3 and 4, I would pick up some conversations from the plot and go through them with students. During the process, I can access them orally. Since the contents are mostly about conversations, the dialogic communication of the game is quite helpful. However, the communication is achieved by oral expressions from the roles in the game and the multiple choice questions for the students. I would have students to perform the conversations in real life, so that they can also produce outputs, and meanwhile, I could assess whether they have made the right choices and what their understandings are towards the different choices.

Language performance indicators: ESL.C.9-12.5.1.2

Students demonstrate an understanding of a broad range of US cultural and political referents through institutions, functions and processes at the local and national levels, and compare/contrast these with parallels in the student’ native community.