Happy Chinese New Year

2015 Chinese New Year Gala CCTV--Chinese Kungfu Show

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! 

Diigo and Pinterest

my Pinterest link
my Diigo link

I like both tools, although in different ways.

Features they share are:

multiple tags;

reference to resources;

following others and being followed.

Diigo is an integrated resource organizer, and Pinterest is a casual notepad. Diigo has multiple functions that Pinterest doesn't have: upload PDF, read PDF files in an editable reader, set up a mini-blog where you may interact with your friends, link to websites and message with your friends. Another thing I like to mention about Diigo is  that it has a special feature of PDF reading and editing. It is quite useful for us who have to read so many articles. It would be wonderful if we could upload them and organize them with tags so that we might be able to find them more easily later.

Pinterest is like a notepad I keep random things. It is a fragmentized resource manager, which is quite useful in a way that we can keep the pieces of ideas, inspirations or information which would just slip away if we couldn't find a good place to net them.  Since I have a habit of keeping such information on notepads, I find it a good fit for me to pin things I like while reading or pin useful sharing from others. It is a different way of integrating information.

Technology makes it fun!

When I first watched the animation of Sir Ken Robinson’s speech on Changing Paradigms, I was so impressed! I just couldn't describe for you how my eyes were glued to the computer screen, staring at the “hand” in the video and learning as it interpreted the speech. My understanding of the speech was enhanced and my interest was intrigued. When it stopped after 12 minutes, I went straight on YouTube trying to find the complete version of the speech. I could see how the new way of inputting made a change to my learning experience. The animated version re-organized the original script, made it compact and clear for learning, and improved efficiency of idea-expressing through an inspiring way. I believe that the effect of driving students to search for sources and learn themselves are more important than teaching knowledge itself. The animation set a perfect example!  
animated Changing Paradigms 

original Changing Paradigms

Invisible doctrine: the nightmare we don’t know we had

Future Learning Documentary

Every time I think about doctrine, order, power and authority, I would naturally play the “China” card, since we all know what the country has been through, thousands of years’ (still ongoing) centralization which is deeply rooted in education as well. However, I am not going to reflect on culture and policy today. Instead, I will take a retrospect journey back to my own teaching today. Have I ever realized that the key words of Foreign Language Educations are not only language but also education? Have I secretly criticize some other teachers who would do things differently or whose English proficiency is questionable? Have I even felt lucky when I got away from students’ questioning? Have I refused to use technology in classroom since technology has never been my thing and it would be too challenging and troublesome for me to go through it?

Unfortunately, I would have to say that I didn't do such a good job being a teacher. There is “traditional” idea in China that those who have better language proficiency would be better teachers. That’s why I decided to teach in the first place—people around me encouraged me to do so, since they kept saying: “why don't you do it? You majored in English!” So I did it. Since I majored in English in college and I also have a Master’s Degree in translation studies, I assumed that I would do well in the profession. That is the first doctrine I followed that I didn't know. Now I realized that the assumption was invalid at all. It’s natural to believe that a person who can speak a totally different language would teach the ability to others and she or he would be a good teacher. But actually, it is not.

Teachers have the power in classroom in China. When students misbehave in classrooms, like playing cellphones or iPads, they would be punished for that. Seldom would teachers talk about what students are doing with their electronic devices, let alone that teachers would encourage students to learn using such devices. Teachers would follow their own teaching plans, which is much easier for them to do; they wouldn't even want to share the plans with other teachers. Like bosses in classrooms, teachers are teaching from a distance far from students. That is the second doctrine that I didn't know before.

Above all, the biggest doctrine I followed but I didn't know is that education is a job. If it is a job to me, I would take the road which would spare me of all the troubles or difficulties on my side. That is the why I didn't use technology much in classroom, since it is hard to me, and more importantly, I followed the invisible doctrines. I always tell my students to open their eyes, their hearts and free themselves from ideological shackles. But I didn't practice what I preached. The video woke me up from dreams in which I followed all these invisible doctrines. I want my students to be free, but before that I need to free myself. There is no personal excuses for teachers to adopt one method over another just because the latter is inconvenient or new to them. Teachers are humans with personal preferences or strengths for sure, but such personal preferences can never be the reasons why we can stay in our comfort zones, neglect what would benefit students better and follow our own doctrines. The new era of foreign language education should be focused on the word “education”, for example, how we can help students acquire language skills using a wide variety of tools instead of cramming them with what we know about the languages.  Teachers who can feed students with the best organized grammatical rules and tips for examinations are not good teachers to me. The real good ones are those who would lead students through the learning process. Therefore, I am no longer a follower of the doctrines I had: I don't believe that someone who have better English levels can teach better and I don't think teachers should involve too many personal preferences in education. Teaching is education, no matter what subject we teach. As long as it is about education, we need to fight against doctrines built inside ourselves before we can teach students to fight against their own doctrines.  

Two ways to use blogs in language education

I taught and will teach writing to students. So I mainly reflect on how to use blogs on writing classes. I don’t think we can use blogs too much IN a typical Chinese writing class which is too large to have students use blogs in a limited time-frame. We may use blogs in writing workshops which may also take place in classrooms yet are not considered as typical Chinese writing classes. I will talk about two ways I would use blogs with my students outside the physical classroom.

1. Blog is a forum. Students may post anything in English, for example, stories they like, poems they wrote, interesting news recently, their own feelings and confusions and so on. Others can comment and interact with the bloggers. It is like the way we are doing at LAI 590. I would suggest students to create things of their own not only to practice their writing skills but also to attract more comments. For example, students may keep diaries on their blogs, describe interesting photos they took and expressed their confusions about life. Since I think I will be teaching teenagers, I believe they have a lot of confusions to talk about.

2. Blog is a wiki. I may create a public blog for a workshop or a class. Students can write together. It is a cooperative writing blog. Students contribute a part of one task, mostly a story, individually. It could be fun. I always want to try that with Chinese students. I did it once with one student, but not on blog but on paper. We wrote a story together: at first it was an ordinary daily conversation between two girls, then it lost control and turned into a horror story. The twists were fun. I want to use a public blog as a big platform to involve more students on such tasks.

Performance indicators: Standard ESL.1.5-8.2

Students will listen, speak, read and write in English for literary response, enjoyment and expression. 

A New Start！

Blogs were widely used in China before Weibo (Chinese twitter) came in. People like Weibo because it doesn't require a long essay to express feelings and opinions; instead, it forces people to write short comments and easy sentences. Literacy now is acquired through fragmentized input and output. As a matter of fact, I personally was a blogger, but I am not anymore. I am jumping around Weibo, reposting some else’s articles and saying some quick stuff about my days.

When I set up this blog as required by the course, I suddenly realized that I have left blogs behind for too long! I am really excited to have things back to ways they used to be! I love writing and this is how I am going to reacquaint myself to writing and to connect myself to blog learning.