Do you know podcast?

Podcast is the one of the greates invention among morder technologies. I have iphone so I have already used the podcast. The thing I found is NPR potcast directory
which is the news podcast categorized by the topics. In there there are lots of podcast news.
One that I heard was The environment Report Podcast which was telling about the environment report. The story was about like below.  "We're revisiting a Michigan farmer who raises heritage turkeys. Those are turkeys that have a little bit of a wilder history than the usual supermarket bird. Some farmers are trying to keep these older turkey breeds from going extinct. But as we'll hear, it's not the easiest job in the world."
Some special turkey is going extinct so they gave thier opinion how and why we have to stop this for keeping our tradition.
In my future teaching, I will make the students hear some news and make them summarize the news or if they are enough to have high language skills(ex. college or adult adavanced class), they could make the comprehension questions for the other students.
Through this activity, the students can imporve their language skills and have background knowledge for various news. If I can find more sources in podcasts, this would be wonderful tool for teaching English.

How can I use ePaL in my future teaching?

I think the most useful thing in ePaL program and an idea on how I could use this program are giving the opportunities for the students to improve and practice their second and foreign language in several ways.

Students need to and desire to communicate, collaborative and use computer. I think e-PaLs is satisfying these needs. In this program has projects and collaboration sections. First, in projects section, there are some projects can share the students' ideas. I want to make my students participate in this projects. This can be a good writing lesson for them because we need readers when we write something. If the students can write their idea in the forum, they can practice their writings in the meaningful way.

Second, using the collaborate section, teacher forum, I will find the right groups who can exchange emails and exchange feedback for my students. If students can send and receive emails from other students, especially from other countries, it would be an interesting experience.

Third, I can help my students' independent learning using this program. In this program, there is In2Books. Student can be matched with one adult and then the students choose the book and discussed about the book with the adult through online penpals. I think this can be an big help for my students to improve their reading and writing skills.

In EFL situation, the student needs more chances to practice their target language. This kind of program is very much learner-centered program and it can expand their parts of learning outside the classroom in authentic ways.

My Animoto about Endangered Species

Make your own slideshow at Animoto.
I made the digital story about Endangered Species in Animoto. Nowadays many animals are endangered. They need our help and I want to teach this to my future students because I want them to make better world for our sons and daughters.
Actually I made over 20 scenes but for free version I can use only 30 seconds so it didn't be showed at the end. However at the end, I wrote some sentences like, "You might not see these animal soon. Please help them."
I think this kind of tool would be very powerful because if the students could see that visually because young students are very used to this kind of tool. After we watched this digital story, we can talk about the endangered species and we can discuss how we can help them. Also we can search what the reason for this disaster. For the post activity, the students can make their own animoto about how they can help them and other endangered speices or our country's endangered speices. I think this can be very helpful for their educational goal and improving their language skills and vocaburaries.

My Digital story!

http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/index.php?id=31608


I made the book about Enlgand and this book is for children(Beginner level, 7-8 year old Korean). My teaching goal for this book is 2 things. First, I want to teach them the pattern "I can see something in England." Second, I want to teach the culture of England with famous tourist attractions.
For my first objective, I will show this book to children and read the sentence to them first and then I am going to let them read the sentence. After this, I will remove the sentence and then make them remember the setences. The students have to match the picture and sentence. This process can make the students learn about the sentence pattern throughly.
For my second objective, I will give more information of each page. For example, what is Big Ben and who the British queen is and what nickname the British police man have etc. This can make the students interests about England. Also I can teach some cultures naturally with live photos.
After this acitivity, I will give homework for students make their own digital story book about Korea. The students choose the famous place or things that can represent the Korean culture or they can make other countries books. Otherwise, they can make any kinds of books using the 'I can see~' sentence pattern. I think children would love this activity!

What is Digital Storytelling?

Photo by Jeff Mottle

What is Digital Storytelling?

The article( 7 things you should know about) is saying that Digital Storytelling is 'the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to creat a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. And another article(The Education Uses of Digital Storytelling) is saying that Digital Storytelling is the practice of using computer-bease tools to tell stories.

In fact, every story has many effects to people's mind. That can pursuade other people, make them think about some subject and give some lessons. That means it has intention for pursuading or impanting their thoughts. According to the article of 'The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling', digital stories usually focus on a specific topic and contain a particlular point of view. Also the article of 7 things you should know about Digital Storytelling is telling that people tell stories to teach beliefs and values to others. Therefore this tool is a good way to spreading storyteller's idea because it includes various materials such as images, video, sounds, etc.


How can I use this tool in my class?

The most effective and strongest way for the students to improve their language skill is make them have interest about learning the language. How could we make this possible? I think one of the solution is using the digital storytelling. Children love stories and of course the adults love stories, too. If they can make their own stories about their own intrests, its result would be quite amazing.
Even though the students have to spend much time to make this Digital storytelling, I think if they can feel intrests, they would not care about the time. While they are making digital stories, they can practice vocabularies, listening, reading, writing and speaking skills in meaningful ways. Also teacher would enjoy reading the students stories and the students can learn many thing through reading other students' digital stories. Also this can be enhance the students' social interaction skills.
If I can teach the students, I will ask the students to make their own digital stories and share them within the class. The whole class give feedback to other classmates' digital stories and I will give the feedbacks too. And also we can find the most wonderful digital stories in a class, and then I can give the prize the winner. That can also give motivation for the students.

How I can use microblogs for my own professional development or for teaching

Microblogs( especially Twitter) can be the good way for teaching second language. When I am going to teach English, I will  use  microblogs  like below.

First, I am going to use Twitter for practicing translation like Ideas for Twitter in the Foreign language classroom. This can be a part of reading class. If I write one target sentence in the Twitter, the students have to translate it in their first language. Also I can make the students practice vocabulary and grammar with this sentence. For example, the students can write the new words in the sentence and they also can make the other sentences using this target structure of this sentence. With only one sentence, I can make the students practice a lot using the Twitter. In addition, I can give the feedback instantly in Twitter.

Also, I am going to use this  as a class announcement board like 28 creative ways teachers using Twitter. We don’t have to write down in the blackboard and we don’t have to say them in class. If some students miss the class or were absent, they could read the announcement in Twitter. The more fantastic thing is that we can change them whenever I need that. In addition, I can ask the students to give feedback of the announcement for checking them whether they read or not. This can be a very convenient medium for class announcement. Furthermore the parents can see the class announcement, they can help their children if they were young.

Lastly, I am going to use Twitter as a tool of communication between classes. When I do this, I can use hastag for them to discuss about the topics. If set up a certain hastag, the students could say their opinions there. Even though they are shy students, they can say their opinions without hesitation in Twitter. Therefore this is an wonderful tool for class discussion. Of course the teacher and other students can comment their opinions to the student’s opinion.

There are so many other ways to use microblogs, I will find out and try to make my own methods. Of course If I could think of new methods, I will spread this out using my Twitter.

How can Social networking group
help you as a language teacher?


Social networking is quite amazing tool for language teachers. IT can connect us with other teachers and from that it can help each other and make us get useful information from that.
Ning service is very famous one that provides free social community for everyone.
I am very interested in this group, "Teacher 2.0".

In this group, I can find every material when we teach various subjects as an EFL teachers.

http://community.eflclassroom.com/forum/topic/show?id=826870%3ATopic%3A10395

There are many useful sections in this site such as "Teach/Learn/Play/Read/Video/Resources."
Each section has sub categories and each categories have tons of useful material. For example, in "TEACH section", I can enter in elemtary part and there I can find many good songs and stoires for EFL students. I thought if teachers  knew this group site before they start teaching, they could save time to prepare for their classes.

Even though we study hard individually, we might be a good teacher but we can't be an excellent teacher. However even though we are not good teachers, if we knew this group, we can be an excellent teacher!