2011年9月26日 星期一

Preschool Kids-One of those who changes the world.

Preschool kids are naughty and full of energy! They could spend all day just to jump, shout, and running around. They are cute but sometimes act like evil! Preschool children are NAIVE  :)


Preschool learners are not mature enough; therefore, sometimes teacher needs to spend more time on understanding what they are thinking and what is best way to teach and to communicate with them. I, myself, is interested in teaching learners who are from K-12. As a result, I found this blog interesting. 

Teacher Tom- One of those who changes the world.

Teacher Tom is a preschool teacher. He spend time on writing blogs about his preschool children, like what he design for his learners, how they react in or out of the classroom, and how to teach them. Because of his hard working, he receive the Best Teacher Blog at year 2010. From his blog, I could understand and learn a lot about how preschool students are like and they behave. It really helps me to prepare for the future class. I was so impressed and excited when I found this blog. The reason is because that his blog not only write in words but also have pictures about children. It really catch my eyes and would want to keep reading. For my future, I don't expect myself as a super teacher on preschool area. However, I expect myself as a teacher who understand my students and provide as much help as I could.

This post is talking about a little girl who is 5-year-old and said " You can't play..." with her classmates. From this article, I started to think about how this might happen in my future classroom. Kids started to develop their relationship as soon as they get in to school. This is when they begin to learn how to get along with each other. However, they might fight, argue, or yell at each other sometimes. Then, at this time, how teacher behave and react is very important. We will have to talk to not only kids, but also his/her family to understand what is actually going on. As my experiences, I had saw some teachers would just yell at the children and ask them to stop saying this. However, it would not help but will hurt kids' feeling. What we should do instead is to talk to the students and let her/his to know it is not right to say like that, it should be like.... Teacher Tom had mention about a book "You Can't Say You Can't Play' which was written by Vivian Gussin Paley rule. This book talks about the rules for students. I think I will try to find the book and read what is in there!!. 



2011年9月19日 星期一

A Vision of K-12 students Today.

 Vision of K-12 students


Kids who are born at 21 Centuries are special. They grow up in the environment with high-tech. They started to watch TV, listen to iPod, play computer games since they were small. As the result, they feel more familiar with having high-tech around.

However, many teachers in the school do not use technology to teach them. As the video shows, 76% of the teachers do not use Wikis, blogs, and podcasts to teach young generation. Moreover, 63% of the teachers never let students create with technologies. To tell the truth, what are kids going to learn when they are in school? They hope they can create, consume, remix, and also share information with other classmates. But, indeed, they cannot.


For modern students, they spend 3.5 hours playing games, 16.5 hours watching TV, 5.5 hours using computer, and 4 hours listening to ipod. Yet, they ONLY spend 2 hours  to read in a week. Furthermore, they use cellphone to text, use instant messages to communicate with each others. Their parents also use e-mail to contact. In the world like this, how can teachers still use those old strategies to teach? Students who still learn by repeating the words feel curious about its effect. Does keep repeating words like "cat, cat, cat" can really help them to remember the word? Definitely, using high-tech like camera, computer and muti-media would work better.

Learning for kids do not have limit. They started to learn everything since they were born. Therefore, their learning should be "WWW" which is whatever, whenever, and wherever. This would be the best for them. By using technologies to learn, they could understand how to think on their own, to create, to analyze, to evaluate, and to apply on what they have learned. Children nowadays are digital learners. So, teachers who plays a very important role in their life should improve. Engage them with high-tech, connected to the world.

Announcement: Teachers, stop using traditional ways to teach. Engage with technologies!!!!



Is it true that Technology will replace teacher?

Technology makes our life better. However, the question raised, "Is it true that Technology will replace teacher?"

Some of the teachers are afraid that using technology will replace them especially when it comes to online courses. Will technology expand in the future from this complementary role to replace teacher? Actually, according to Clifford in 1987, "A rational response to this question might be that technology will not replace teacher. But, will replace teacher who do not use it."

There are several reasons that indicate teachers will not be replaced by technology.
First of all, people still feel more comfortable when they are communicating with people. Therefore, once students have questions, they still feel more comfortable to discuss with teacher face to face. Then, it would be better to talk directly face to face if students wants to ask questions. It would avoid misunderstanding. Last, if students are taking the class which is teaching by records, they could not immediately raise their hands and ask questions. The most important point is that teachers could take care of the students.Therefore, teachers are still needed in this century.

2011年9月10日 星期六

Internet safety.

My dear students,

I know you all like spend all of your time on serving the Internet, posting messages online, and copying information. However, sometimes it is not as safe as you think. Crimes could be committed on the Internet, like stalking, fishing, and identity thief. Therefore, there are several points that I would want you to avoid.

1. Guard your financial information.
    When you are shopping online, be careful about the websites you are buying things. Check if the billing system is safe or not. Sometimes your financial information could easily be stolen while you are paying bills online.

2. Be aware of imposters (Cheater).
   Be careful when you are talking to a strangers online. Sometimes, exposing your own personal information to a stranger is not a smart thing. Some strangers would pretend to be your friends and ask about our own information like your credit card number, your family members..etc Sometimes trouble begins here.

3. Keep your e-mail account safe.
    Be aware of e-mail account and the passwords. Avoid using e-mail at public computer. Sometimes the passwords would be stolen by others. Moreover, be careful not using e-mail to send information like bank account and personal ID. Never response to a e-mail that ask for your own identity.

4. Do not visit some strange websites.
    Some of the websites do not clearly point out what it is about. They only put some fancy titles on it. Avoid entering those websites. Sometimes they will make your internet shut down or affected by virus.

5.  Turn on the firewall.
     This could help prevents hackers from getting information such as passwords to bank account or other information they could use to steal funds or steal your identity.


Here is the video of Being Smart Online.



Here is an article about " Safety rules for kids who use the Internet."

Three ways to teach by blog.

1. Communication
Standard 1.1Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions,
and exchange opinions.

Students at 21 Century are modern. They use internet to communicate and to get information. They do not spend time on looking information in the library as often as before. Moreover, they feel more comfortable to communicate with others by new techniques like texting messages, posting information on facebook, and writing blogs. Therefore, they could feel more relax while teachers are teaching them with the technology they are using, blog, for example.

In Taiwan, most people use a blog called " Plurk". Plurk is a place similar to Twitter. It is well-used in our country. I believe it is a good place to use for teaching because almost everybody use it and it is easy to use. I could post a new knowledge that I am going to teach. For instance, I want to teach a new term called "cognitive". I could post the definition of cognitive and some related information about it. Then, students could started to leave messages about what they know about cognitive and ask questions. Plurk would be good to use because students could immediately reply on it with their own internet language. They are already familiar with this tech, so they won't feel stress on it. By chatting and posting, students could remember the term easier.


2. Comparison
 Standard 4.2 Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the      cultures studied and their own.

By using blog, students could post any findings. Teacher could post a topic related to culture and provide some information or instruction he/she want students to discuss. On the blog, students could express their ideas and personal experiences. Other students could see the opinion and support or disagree with it. Students could also learn other countries' culture by comparing theirs with others. Every posts will show at the blog, so that everyone would not miss the information. Also, posing response and opinion is in time. They could do it whenever they want to. Students can definitely learn by reading all the post. At least, they could know more about other countries' culture.

3.Community
Standard 5.2 Students show evidence of becoming lifelong learners by using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment.

The best thing of using blog is that teachers could always connect it with websites like youtube or news. Most of the learners would like the videos better than just reading. Therefore, teachers could put on some videos or music or movies that is related to the topic. Students usually could have deeper memories after watch the videos. Therefore, next time when they look at the topic, they could easily build up a image of it. It is good especially for those learners who are audio learners. Also, by using these technology, students could try to listen to the target language they are learning. By posting messages in target language and watching or reading in target languages, they could learn it faster than just focusing on text books. Once they are familiar on writing  comments on blog, they could improve fast. Not only the terms they are using, but new information they are absorbing. Most importantly, blog could use for a very long time. As a result, they could learn as much as they like. They could also get sense of achievement by posting messages on it.

Hello

Hello, This is Wei Ju Chen. You can call me Alice :) Nice to meet you all!!!!