Technologies, to love or to hate…
November 27, 2007
The interesting thing about technologies is that I love and hate it at the same time. I love it because it brings a cool way to get things done; I hate it because the process of getting things figured out sometimes is annoying and frustrating. Fortunately, my curiosity and eagerness always beat my frustration.
I still remember the frustration and time-consuming process to get my blog set up with little information. At work, I need to deal with the difference between a Mac and a PC. I am using both now to teach. There is a Web site where I can play audio clips in a PC, however, it doesn’t play on my Mac. Frustrating! I could easily use partial capture function on my Mac to make a tutorial while I need to do more capturing editing on a PC. Frustrating! I just learned to do movie editing using iLife software on my Mac, however, it is a different world to do the same thing on a PC.
I hope the time spent on figuring out technology can be shortened just like calling technology tech. Unfortunately, it couldn’t. Well, I do enjoy learning about new technologies. Now my Mac is equipped with a parallel system in which I can work with Windows XP platform. How exciting!
New challenges come with new technologies. However, when I accomplish one task and figure out something new, it is always worth all the frustration and time. Now I feel I love it more than I hate it. 
My thoughts, here and there
November 14, 2007Nowadays many students’ best friend is their ipods instead of backpack. I see my students take any chance they can get during class break time to listen to it. It becomes a habit now and I am just wondering: Can they live without it?
We hear that cows can produce more milk when listening to music, but students don’t seem to produce more work in good quality when they listen to their ipods. While we are using ipods for education purpose, I wonder if it is good or bad. When they get tired of ipods, do we have to use other media to stimulate their interest? What if they cannot be stimulated any more? Most of us grew up learning many things without any help from advanced technologies. Now when we face new technologies, we feel excited about using them and wish we could have those in the old days. Our students are surrounded by technologies, but in the mean time, technologies are becoming a big distraction.
Good or bad, as educators, we face the challenge how to make the best use of technologies to serve the education.
Education in the Virtual World?
November 4, 2007第二人生 (Second Life)
Lots of people are living a second life in this world – Second Life, an internet-based virtual world. Many universities and colleges bought land for their students to complete their assignments or projects. Now, how about K-12 education in this virtual world?
I think it will be very interesting to have students engaged in their version of Second Life – virtual school. We can develop all kinds of subjects we need and then we just bring our kids into the world of knowledge. They get rewards in the virtual school whenever they use what they have learned in the subject. I teach the Chinese language, so my focus will be asking my students to speak Chinese when communicating with other residents. I, act as a random resident, try to get my students to talk with me in the virtual environment. Of course, students get to type the language. When they have learned enough, we can do IM or chatting so that everybody can hear the actual talking.
For each class, I give a focus on what students need to practice such as buying or selling things and greeting. If they achieve that goal, they get to travel further and explore more.
Maybe this is the game we have been looking for. However, we do have other questions to ask first. Can students come back to their real life? What if they just wander around in the world? There is a lot to solve before we go into the virtual school.
Maybe someday I can start my class saying, “Let’s go virtual today.”
IT – 5730 App Demos
October 20, 2007Objectives: Make a series of three application demos (ILT program).
Tutorials: Three demos on how to edit video footage in imovie.
Learners: Middle school and high school students in my Chinese class.
Hardware/Software used: video camera, Snapz Pro (exported with Sorenson 3 video setting and IMA audio setting), imovie (exported as ipod file), internal mic on Mac.
My Experience: First-time, newbie.
Only encouragement comments accepted.
From Newbie to Distinguished Educator
October 14, 2007
(retrieved from http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6227144)
I am a newbie in the field of IDT and the story (http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=72284) I read might be inspiring for us.
Sherri Clemens, “one of only 100 nationwide and the only one in Colorado to receive the Distinguished Educator Award from Apple Computers” in 2007, started her master’s program in 2001, when she didn’t even know “how to plug her mouse into her computer” and was “scared to death of it”. She majored in computer science and now she is helping integrate technologies in classrooms.
Where will we be 5 or 7 years from now? To which level are we going to be in the field of IDT? I wasn’t scared to death when I started to blog, but felt a little nervous starting this new thing. Now I am on the road to learn about the IDT and looking forward to using it in the near future in my classroom. I may not be the future distinguished educator, but the story does give me (actually to every one of us) some encouragement.
We enroll in this program in order to do something with the knowledge we are going to learn. It is this desire that is going to keep us motivated and succeed eventually in what we do. I am sure we are better than knowing plugging a mouse into a computer.
Now we just need to get the bug, and as Sherri said, “It’s going to be there forever.”
Video – Trailer, YouTube & Blogs
October 7, 2007I cannot imagine that I posted my recut trailer (IT 5730) on YouTube.com and my blog! Two months ago, I knew little about them, and now it is time to find some fireworks.
What will I use it for in my teaching? I can show off a little bit for sure. Then I will let my students to show off by making their own video. It will take a while to get the project done, but isn’t it one of the current trends to go online and share things? With a little bit of pepper and salt, it might become a project students are interested in – making their own video for the Chinese program.
Current ideas:
1. Students make their own trailers to promote the Chinese program! It might not be as fun as promoting their own likes, but it is definitely more interesting to do their own video. I quite enjoy the high school TV programs and students could be very creative. I can consider this as a little spark and see how this spark turns into.
2. The dialogues and texts in the textbooks could be boring. Students can make their own dialogues or texts during the learning process.
3. Students can also make their own trailers – all in Chinese! It could be about anything (movie, TV series, or out of their own) they are interested in.
Of course, there are always blocks: time, equipment, technique skills, etc. Preparation probably takes a longer time. However, it is always good to try things out in the field of education. As long as we think it will help students learn, we should try it. We do improve and learn things through failure.
Let’s have some fun!
Ready for your istudents?
September 30, 2007
[Retrieved from apple.com]
We always think about how to integrate technologies into classrooms. However, technologies are not cheap. I visited a teacher today in her elementary school building. She was unpacking 120 brand new ipods provided to the school through a grant. These ipods will be used for students to learn a foreign language such as Chinese, Spanish.
Whoever saw the ipods lining up on the desk couldn’t help saying, “Cool. It is such a cool thing.” Yes, technologies are always cool. They appear in front of us with beautiful faces, multi-functioning skills and creative ideas.
With ipods, students can do podcasting or share their video clips during the process of learning a foreign language, thus to be further motivated to learn. Imagine playing a dialogue of their own or a situational video clip of students using the language. It brings so much interest and fun during the process. No doubt, the use of ipods can help students learn a language. Then podcasts can be shared and reused again and again for all kinds of purposes: listening, imitating, presentation, etc.
Ipods are more like toys to students nowadays, so how to use it is not a problem. These students will be great istudents, knowing how to make dialogues and videos.
While thinking how I would use ipods to help with the learning of a foreign language, a thought came to my mind. Here is the technology, an expensive one, waiting to be used for the learning of a language, or speaking, to be more specific.
Will it achieve the effect we are expecting? Is the money worth on this? It is hard to tell because a student might learn the skill to make podcast and use it for other purposes later. That is something we cannot measure.
Can we achieve the same goal without using expensive technologies? We can. We can ask students to draw comic strips to make their own dialogues. We can ask students to act out their dialogue. Traditional methods still work, however, new technologies just look better and attractive. In real life, I prefer my LCD monitor screen to my old bulky CRT monitor. They both work, but the difference is the LCD monitor is more beautiful and leaves much space on the desk. However, they do the same job. So is it worth the money to change the old monitor to a thin and flat monitor?
Will the use of ipods become similar to having a LCD monitor? We don’t know yet. But I do see the beautiful part of it: students learn from their own dialogues more effectively. To make a great podcast, students tend to practice more and speak the language better. These istudents may have the interest of using this technology for future use, which is a great thing if they can put the skill into use.
Maybe we should so some analysis on the result of using a technology before investing money. To help with istudents, we need to be iteachers first, so that we can evaluate the practical effectiveness of the technology.
I am very interested to see what role ipods are going to play in the process of learning a foreign language in the elementary school. To be or not to be, let’s test it.
