My comic story

In My comic story, the scene is on kitchen. There are two persons, Sam and Penny. The topic is about making tea. And the knowledge point is usage of modal “can”. I will use the comic story to English beginners. In class, at first, I will show the video to students. And they are required to write every line of dialogue down. They can listen to the video for two times. And then students are grouped into pairs to pick out sentences with modal “can”. Next, I will explain the meaning and use of “can”. Then, several students are called to read out the sentences. Finally, students can make up their own dialogue with “can”.

Reflection on Twitterchat

Recently, I have joined the Twitterchat called Educational Technology Chat on Monday. In the Chat, the topic is education on bad weather. At present, many places in US are snowing and some schools are closed for several days. Therefore, teachers are discussing how to use educational technology to help students study when they cannot come to school. The first question is that have you continued work with students during weather situations? Why or Why not? Some teachers suggest that we can use mobile phone to give students assignments. A math teacher gives us some interesting advice. He says: “ I use a blended model in math. It helps for those that are out, i.e. independent study so they don't fall behind.” And I have asked a question in the chat, “when using educational technologies such as Twitter, PPT, etc, which level of students do you think are suitable for? Why and why not?

       I think it is a good form for my future professional development. In Twitterchat, there are many colleagues. Therefore, we can search for help when we meet some teaching problems. In addition, we can read other’s tweets and learn some possible problems which we may meet in the future. Most importantly, we can learn some questions which I have never thought about, for example, the topic of this week.

Using Twitter for Classroom

Recently, I have read some articles about functions of Twitter in classroom. I have gained some inspiration from them.

       According to A Must Have Guide on Using Twitter in your Classroom  , I have learned some functions of Twitter in classroom which I haven’t known before. For example, teachers can use it as an additional way to let students know if there is some last minute news, like class being cancelled. Thus, students would know the news immediately. Moreover, Twitter is more immediate than e-mail. Most importantly, Twitter can improve engagement of students in classroom. During lecture, students can tweet comments or questions via laptop or cell phone. In addition, students in another project agree that digital communication helps overcome the shyness barrier. One student said that it is just an easy way to answer questions in class without embarrassing yourself and raising your hand in a big lecture hall. Secondly, Twitter provides an opportunity for community learning. Students can exchange their opinions about some issues and even discuss some difficult questions in their homework after class. Finally, teachers can get instant feedback from students and even assign Twitter quiz to students.

       According to  10 Twitter Mitakes You should Avoid , I have learned some mistakes teachers should avoid in using Twitter. For example, over-tweeting. We shouldn’t overload our followers with too many tweets and we should get rid of the trivial tweets. Thus, once we put forward some tweets, students would notice and take them seriously immediately. Secondly, our opinions should be objective rather than insulting somebody because by doing so, we may displease some of our followers. Then, we shouldn’t have too many accounts. If we do so, we may make some mistakes such as posting homework assignment on our private account and messing up our communication.

       After reading these articles, I find that Twitter is a very useful tool for future teaching.

 

Classroom 2.0

I think the Classroom 2.0  is a very useful website for my future teaching. It is a free, community-supported network. On the left sidebar, you can search things you like by tool, subject and area. You can also search for learning revolution or education policies.

 Novice teachers can really find many useful information here. For example, some articles, such as Does technology really help? , motivating students with mindset coaching and how brains work?, and how can I best love my students? etc.  In those articles, the teachers all use their own teaching experience to talk about the issue, which I find are really practical. In addition, in the forum, you can share your class experience with other teachers or even can ask for some advice or solutions, because we cannot know everything and we need the help from smarter people. Next are some groups, such as Ipad in education, Technology integration and Exploring audio tools.etc. In this section, you can follow some groups which you are interested in or you can start your own. Then you can find some blog posts related to educational technologies and skills in teaching foreign languages.

In my opinion, this website Classroom 2.0 will definitely help me and novice teachers in our future teaching.