Sunday, March 30, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Personal Reflection on Educational Technology Course
I’m taking this course for my application for Chinese teacher certification through the State Department of Education. They required that I have eleven credits in professional education course work and specified that I must take educational psychology and the special education. Educational technology is the course I selected by myself.
Although “educational technology does not possess inherent instructional value”, with the support of technology, we can maximize the successful chance of Chinese learning for American students.
Technology is an unfamiliar territory for me. So far, I ‘m driven to complete the course requirement and I often feel a bit overwhelmed. But it’s an important continued learning for me. I would like to meet the challenge and will thank for the further significance the course bring to me.
Monday, March 10, 2008
“Added value” and UDL
Sara Dexter states that “Technology use provides added value to teaching and leaning.” The “added value” in classroom is mainly manifested in accessing data, processing information, communicating knowledge.
The purpose of “added value” for the uses of technology is same as UDL (Universal Design Leaning) that maximizes learning opportunities for every type of individuals by using technology in digital age.
Just like advancement of technology benefits the development of human being, it is a fact that advancement of educational technology benefits teaching and learning. I believe that it is a requirement for an educator in digital age to understand the importance of technology usage and master the necessary skill and method. eTIPs and UDL figure out some practical principles that educators can rely on to design or build more effective curriculum.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Inquiry-based Learning in World Language Teaching
Inquiry-based Learning in World Language Teaching will definitely have its place, simply because there is no other knowledge or skill like language acquisition presenting the importance of involvement which is the essence of inquiry-based learning.
Last time when I talked with several moms, one mom said her little one spoke ‘Mine! Mine!” very early, because he often needs to argue for toys with his brothers. It gained other moms’ agreement. Involvement in language acquisition implies communication that leads to language understanding and inspires children to speak out. Usually when parents communicate with their child more, the child’s language have better development. On the other hand, there are cases reported that some parents baby-sit their kids with a TV or computer games which caused delay of the kids’ language development. Because watching TV is a one-sided language input, it lacks of language output.
The outcome of second language learning depends on how much a student could involve the language just like the first language acquisition. I’m glad to see the first three content standards in the Standards Selection of World Language are all about communication. In one word, involvement in second language teaching means helping students to use the language in real life and to speak out what they really want to say- their personal information, their feeling and opinion; but not means to memorize material which have no any contact with them.
Recognizing the importance of involvement has more significance in Mandarin Chinese teaching in
I’m developing a new Chinese teaching model for American students in which I especially stress students’ involvement in Chinese learning. For instance, I found many students who learned many years Chinese even did not know how to write an absence note to the teacher. In my curriculum, I give students some absence note samples in Chinese with different possible reasons, so students can pick one when they need to write a absence note to me. Then when we learned Chinese tense, I asked students pay attention the difference expressions when they will not go to school and did not go to school. So students master successfully Chinese tense which is the most difficult grammar point in Chinese learning. As a language teacher, we have to remember, language is not knowledge but a useful tool. Students first know how to use it and then they master it.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Target Standard & Visual Learning
The content standard I am looking at is World Language- Grades 9-12. I will focus on communication, especially the content standard 1- Interpersonal communication.
I have been teaching Chinese as a second language for more than ten years in
For meeting the culture standard it is a good idea to link visual learning with digital’s imagery & Inspiration. In the past, we had to bring heavy picture books to class and showed students to fit the same visual outcomes.
I have continued to go to my daughters’ school to celebrate Chinese New Year and introduce Chinese culture. I had summed up a model of activities. That is reading a Chinese New Year book, making one or two Chinese New Year arts & crafts and enjoying some Chinese food or gifts. In the latest two years, I added some digital video about Chinese New Year to show children and got a big welcome. This year I showed a song “Best Wishes” to my little daughter’s class, it’s so amazing when the children watched and heard the song on the computer, they began to dance following the music beats.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
layering digital image - winter & lion
Saturday, February 2, 2008
inspiration concept map - memory
Explicit and implicit memory systems follow different rules and involve different neural systems of the brain. The subdivisions of each kind of memory also may involve different neural systems.
(source: From Psychology by Peter Gray: Published by Worth Publishers. Copyright© 1991,1994,1999,2002 by Worth Publishers)