ESL Podcasts

I just listened to a 20 minute podcast entitled ESL Podcast 613- Being a First Time Parent  and thought how much I would like to share it with my students.  (I currently have 4 first-time pregnant women in my class and this past week one of my male students became a father for the first time.)  What I liked about the podcast was that it is designed for ESL learners.  It presents a phone dialogue between two adults: one who had a baby three weeks prior and the other who was a veteran parent.  The speakers speak clearly and slowly and introduce a variety of vocabulary.  After the dialogue is finished, another speaker goes over the scene and explains what is happening in the conversation.  He explains vocabulary by providing definitions and also using them in different contexts.  He also explain the idioms that the that the speakers employed which is very helpful for ESL students.  I liked this podcast because it offered my students vocabulary utilizing an interestingtopic that my students in which my students can relate.

EPals: A great way to learn about the world

I recently went on line to reaserach EPals and find out how I could use the site in my adult ESL classes.  I was very impressed with the website and the myriad of languages that students could use to communicate with each other.  I really thought that the different topics/ themes that the communication are designed to revolve around are academically sound(The Standards are addressed in each project) and also interesting. 

Students and teachers can choose to focus on topics like weather, natural habitats or maps.  Students can create projects, often in pairs or groups, and truly inform someone living in a different part of the world.  Although the website seems to be designed for K-12 learners, I think that I could use various projects that it presents with my adult learners.  One project is entitled Holidays and Festivals.  It has many links that provide information about how holidays are celebrated around the world.  Moreover, it introdues symbols and asks students to design their own.  Another project is Digital Storytelling that enables the user to create and post their own stories.  There is step by step directions as there are for all the projects.  I think that my students would really benefit from the Holidays and Festivals project as well as the Digital storytelling one as they can write in English but read in both English or their first language.  I do not think that they could correspond with students outside our classroom as the site is aimed at K-12 learners.

Creating Reading Books Using Bookr

Photo courteousy of James F. Clay

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesclay/3509154283/

Bookr is a great tool for creating books for beginning ESL students.  I created a short picture book for my beginning literacy students entitled Going to the Store.  Bookr enabled me to choose culturally relevant pictures and words that my students would be able to read and understand. I would use this in my classroom to teach my students vocabulary and literacy skills.  As shopping is an activity that all my students engage in, it is a shared daily or weekly routine that does not need a big introduction.

Copyright and Usage



http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeblogs/3020966666/

 Photo courteousy of MikeBlogs


There are various Creative Common Licences.  The first one is Attribution which means that although your work is copyrighted, others can distribute and display it but they have to give you credit.  Another license is Noncommercial which means that others can use your work but only for non-commercial purposes.  A third type of license is No Derivative Works.  This license prohibits people from altering your work but allows for your work to be copied, distributed and displayed.  Finally Share Alike is a license that means that others can use your work to produce new things but must use the same license that governs your work.

Microblogging!

This week I learned about Twitter and how to microblog.  In the course of my learning, I came across some interesting articles that answered questions about Twitter and how to make it useful for my teaching.  On Langwitches blog I read a post that further explained hashtags to me and how they could be beneficial in the classroom.  One just has to put a number sign and follow it by the topic. (e.g. #pasttenseverbs)  I think that Hashtags could be very beneficial in the future if I choose to use Twitter in my classroom.  Langwitches post was http://langwitches.org/blog/2010/06/09/what-is-a-hashtag/

Another interesting post that I read was entitled "Free Technology for Teachers: Don't Eat Lunch Alone"  In this blog, Richard Byrne talks about the use of Personal Learning Networks to connect with colleagues.  As many people's schedules these days are very busy, the internet has become a social networking hotbed, but it is important to realize that it also is great for professional networking.  I think that I will try to stay connected to my professional learning network for insights into the classroom and teaching.

Teaching Pronunciation

I read an interesting blog post at Critical Mass ELT: Reflections on the World of English Language Teaching entitled It's all in the accent: Being critical how you teach pronunciation that focused on the issues that surround teaching pronunciation.  The author discussed accent prejudice and whose pronuncation students should seek to imitate.  This interests me as I have students with marked accents and some of them struggle to imitate the local regional accent.  Although I think that pronunciation is important for communication as I often have difficulty understanding students who have accents that differ from mine, I also think that accents are part of our identity.  I need to contemplate and discuss with my students the importance of pronunciation in communication but at the same time respect the fact that there are is not only one standard for pronunciation.

EFL Classsom 2.0

I recently joined EFL Classroom 2.0 on Ning.   It is a good resource for EFL or ESL teachers because it has lesson suggestions that it is entitled Lesson in a Can.  Moreover, it has an ongoing forum in which members can post questions and await responses some of which deals with lesson planning. The URL is http://eflclassroom.ning.com/index.php

A Connectivist View of Learning

A learner today is like an air traffic controller at Chicago's O'Hare.  It is the learner's responsibility to stay alert and direct incoming and outgoing messages to their proper locations.  As information is shared and changes at such rapid speed today which causes problems to arise, many split second decisions have to be made.  Siemens in his pioneering work in Connectivism posits in both The Network is Learning (2009) and Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age (2005) that the rapidly evolving corpus of knowledge in any given field forces us to abandon previously held views on education and learning.

Siemen suggests in the video, The Network is Learning, that the " network (one) create(s) when (one) follows the writings... of an educational theory field... that that particular network is what enables (one) to stay current."  Moreover, in his article "Connectivism: a Learning Theory for the Digital Age", Siemens posits that "Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience. Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Learning now occurs in a variety of ways – through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks."  It is this focus on the need to stay current or alert and the realization that learning is happening continuously, both formally and informally, that makes one realize that the connectivist theory needs to be further examined as it relates to educational needs in the digital age.  Siemens realization that we are no longer drivers on an empty highway, but rather airline traffic controllers constantly receiving and directing new information, rightfully calls for a new theory to explain how we transition from a theory aimed at individualism to one that examines the current collective nature of learning.

Reaction to videos

I viewed two videos this evening Social Media Revolution 2 (May 5,2010)and Did You Know? (June 22,2007) that document the prevalence of computers in people's lives today.  What interested me at first was that although these videos were published less than 3 years apart, the latter, Social Media Revolution 2 showed how Facebook had replaced MySpace as the leading internet socializing tool.  These two videos may have been intended for different audiences but I was struck how much glossier and high tech the more recent one was.  I was also struck by the sense of urgency in Did You Know?  It seemed to be a rallying cry to America to get with the tech or risk losing our national status. 

Thirteen years ago when I was teaching Renaissance Lit in  a Boston high school classroom, I made an analogy between the invention of the printing press and the internet.  As the internet was still in it's relative infancy, the students had some difficulties conjecturing how it might affect their lives.  As those who have studied the history of English or those who have read wikipedia's entry on the printing press know:
 
In Renaissance Europe, the arrival of mechanical movable type printing introduced the era of mass communication which permanently altered the structure of society: The relatively unrestricted circulation of information and (revolutionary) ideas transcended borders, captured the masses in the Reformation and threatened the power of political and religious authorities; the sharp increase in literacy broke the monopoly of the literate elite on education and learning and bolstered the emerging middle class. Across Europe, the increasing cultural self-awareness of its peoples led to the rise of proto-nationalism, accelerated by the flowering of the European vernacular languages to the detriment of Latin's status as lingua franca.<sup>[10] 
(courteousy of Wikipedia -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_Press accessed 9/16/10) 

I cannot foresee the future but I think it would be interesting to know what people and children did before they spent so much time on computers, phones and Ipods.  I think that the internet and technology will have a vast effect on social relations but hesitate to say for the better or worse.  I also think that the internet more than anything makes it necessary for teachers to teach critical reading skills as some people believe everything in print.</sup>

Rules for blogging in the classroom

Blogs are designed to help you communicate and share your awesome ideas, thoughts, knowledge and interests.  In order to ge a good and safe blogger you must wear your internet seatbelt.  This will keep you safe as you journey down the information highway.

DO:

1. Use language that is appropriate in an educational setting.
2. Post articles, pictures and web links that are appropriate in an educational setting.
3. Be CREATIVE!
4. Have FUN!
5. SHARE your thoughts!
6. Tell your teacher if you get a comment that makes you nervous or uncomfortable.
7. Cite your sources when you establish a link.

DO NOT:

1. Share your full name, address, phone number or any other personal information.
2. Write anything that is hurtful or offensive.
3. Share your user name or password with anyone but your teacher or guardians/ parents.

Have fun on the Information Superhighway, it's a fast road so wear your safety seatbelt and navigate at an appropriate speed. 

Three ways to use blogs

I agree with Richardson that I need to understand how blogs can be a useful tool for my students before I ask students to join me in blogging.  Richardson(2010) suggests that "it's not until (he) fully understood how these technologies could facilitate global connections and conversations around (his) own passions, and how they could help (him) create powerful learning networks and communities, that (he) was able to see what needed to change in terms of (his) curriculum and (his) teaching. (8-9)  I think that I need to learn more about blogs and how they function in my education and with subjects that fascinates me before I can realize their potential value in my classroom.  It was interesting to read how teachers have used blogs to facilate global audiences and correspondences in their classroom.  As I currently teach ESL to adult refugees, I think that there would be many interesting activities we could do that connect us with each other, as well as the world.  However, I think that it would be beneficial to my professional growth to view how other ESL teachers use blogs to facilitate learning in their classrooms.

In response to how I would have students use blogs, I think that one thing that I could do with my intermediate students is post a news article each week on a controversial issue and have the students offr their opinions in one paragraph on the contentious topic.  This goes along with the NYS ELA standards that propose in the area of reading thatintermediate students "can understand the purpose , main ideas, and some details in some shorter authentic and academic texts." Moreover, in regards to writing, intermediate students should be able to "effectively convey an idea, opinion, feeling or experience in a simple paragraph."

For my low-advanced class, I would propose a situation in which students would have to respond in writing using appropriate purpose and tone.  Initially I could create a weekly situation in which the students would have to write a letter or email to a friend, business, news editor, landlord, etc. Eventually I would let students come up with situation, real or imaginary, where a correspondence must be made.  I would have the students post their letters or emails on the blog and then have them comment on at least 2 classmates writings.  This activity is based on NYS writing standards for advanced students that expresses that students "can display an awareness of audience and tone."  I think that this would be a good long term lesson on the use of formal and informal writing.