ESL Podcasting

It seems that podcasting is a great tool to practice using listening skills. At ESLpod, many podcasts are uploaded daily to help students not only practice listening skills, but also learn practical phrases and vocabulary. Each episode has an audio file that can be downloaded, a transcript of a conversation, additional explanation.   

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I chose a particular episode which is “Kitchen Appliance” from ESL Pod. In order to use this episode a classroom, first, teacher explains the key vocabulary and phrases in a conversation so that students can listen to the conversation more comprehensively. And then, teacher let students repeat after to a conversation by each sentence. Afterward, Students practice the conversation in pairs. For next activity, teacher gives students a worksheet that has blanks, and students will fill in the blanks by listening to the conversation from the podcast. Teacher then checks the answers with students by listening to the conversation again. Finally, teacher gives students another worksheet has word puzzle using the key vocabulary and phrases. Through these activities, Students will be able to memorize the key vocabulary in the conversation “Kitchen Appliances,” and practice speaking and listening skills.

ePals

It seems that ePals provides safe collaborative technology for schools to connect and learn in a protected way by offering great products such as “Global Community” and “Learning Space.” Through learning space which is a safe virtual workspace in ePals, students and teachers could engage in relevant issues while learning, motivating each other, and enhancing skills in a collaborative learning setting. ePals also could allows students to connect to the other students around world safely through Global Community section. For example, a high school student studying Korean, might use ePlas to connect to a students studying English in Korea. These types of connections can benefit students as well as teachers making language classroom more social and efficient. 

Digital storytelling using Animoto

           What I created for digital storytelling with Animoto is a video presenting key vocabulary with photographs. The key words are "passport," "visa," "boarding pass," "security checkpoint," "luggage," "information desk," and "currency exchange" which are  things to know for traveling abroad. These key words in the video will be used for practicing listening and speaking English skills with a conversation which might be used when students travel abroad. 
           If the language used by the teacher or in materials is not comprehensible, students can lose interest, become anxious or frustrated, and sometimes go into a passive mode. Thus, introduction of key words of the conversation using pictures helps to understand the conversation more easily before they listen to the conversation and practice the conversation in pairs. They will listen to and speak the conversation more comprehensively by knowing the key words. 

Digital storytelling using Bookr

           What I created for a digital storytelling using Bookr is that presenting the different types of foods in the other countries. In  multicultural classroom, students will see the pictures of the other countries' tradition foods and discuss the difference between their own traditional foods and the other countries' foods. Then students will present their own traditional food using Bookr in groups or pairs. Therefore, this storytelling is a basis for their own digital storytelling using Bookr. I hope that students get interested in using this tool so that they can  participate in classroom actively. Also, there will be a lot of interaction between students which encourage students to practice speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills by completing their own digital storytelling. 
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Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling 2011 welcome screen designed by Marius Renberg.
Photo byJeff Mottle (Flickr)

Digital storytelling is telling stories with multimedia tools such as graphics, audio, video animation, and Web publishing. It seems that teachers could use digital storytelling to prompt students to participate in and outside of classroom effectively.

According to 7 Things You should Know About Digital Storytelling, “Creating and watching digital stories has the potential to increase the information literacy of a wide range of students.”  I think that using digital storytelling will be an effective teaching strategy with students who are visual learners or digital learners. Digital storytelling will be able to help students to develop their abilities of presenting self- expression, autobiography, or historical events, especially, in multicultural classroom.

A website “Center for digital storytelling” stated that “Digital Storytelling is currently being used in more than 80 countries with many different applications, including education, marketing, and self-expression, among others.” It seems to reflect that students who are digital learners getting more and more nowadays. Therefore, digital storytelling will be a good tool for teachers to teach, reach, and engage their students more effectively in digital era.

Twitter for teachers and learners

Before I read articles about twitters in classroom, I did not know that it could be a great tool to teach and learn. Also, I did not even know why people use twitter. However, articles from Joe Dale and Scott Akerson provided a good insight on how I could use twitter or microblogging for my own professional development and for my future students.  

Twitter allows students to interact with the other students in classrooms across the country so that students can learn from each other. Scott Akerson said that  twitter provides opportunities for connection, communication and collaboration to help the students’ learning experiences better and gives more motivation for students to prepare great presentation

For teachers, Joe Dale offers practical tips and advice on using twitter via video clips. The video clips explain how to use twitter for professional development. I have noticed that Twitter is a great tool to stay current with news and communication in general. It allows people to search for topics or people that might interest them in their field very easily. This is good for professional development because I can contact those who can give me good advice or search for information that will improve my teaching skills via twitter. 

Social Networking Group

This website shows that connecting to other people in order to learn the knowledge of the field in which is interested is important in learning in digital era. Technology allows people to have a community on internet website.

EFL Classroom 2.0 is community of many of English teachers and learners. It seems to be very useful to current teachers in EFL context or those who are planning to teach English in EFL context. People can get a lot of useful resources, materials, and ideas for their classroom through this website. Also, they can experience indirectly through many teachers who are having or had teaching experience in EFL context. In addition, through this web site, teachers can share ideas with other teachers and discuss teaching strategies or skills. Even for learners, they can get helpful materials for learning English as well.