ePal

    The online community ePal provides a great learning platform for people from all over the world to share their work, ideas, projects and everything. The projects are not only about language learning but also about math, science, art and music.

  One project is designed to invite students from all over the world to discuss natural disasters. Students with their ePals discuss how the natural disasters, say hurricane, form, how people react, and how to deal with it. After their exploration, they will produce a presentation and teach others about this natural disaster.

   As for language teachers, ePal is beneficial for teaching language and arranging activities. The project that I like the most is one of the tasks in the Student Speak Video Series: I’m a global citizen. In this task, the students are asked to make a video to define global citizen based on their own understanding. When giving the direction of this task, its generator first includes his/her thoughts in defining a global citizen, such as someone who understands the interconnectedness of the word, who believes in responsible stewardship of the environment, who has a respect for human rights and cares about injustice, and who promotes peaceful conflict resolution. To prevent the video resulting in any other forms, the sample video as a demonstration and the guidelines are presented. One of the reasons that I love this project is the pool of ideas towards a topic. Students with different cultural and educational background bring their unique interpretations to share. By reviewing other’s video, they will sense the cultural diversity, make friends and learn from each other. Another reason is that it also helps to practice critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Besides learning and practicing using English, they could put their English learning in authentic contexts.

TwitterChat -- A Must-have Teaching Tools!

Although I used Twitter before, I did not know TwitterChat and its powerfulness. It is a perfect revelation of connectivism. By following and participating a chat, one would be able to communicate directly with some professionals and even pundits, and get novel advices immediately. Like what Mark Barnes said in his Blog What is a Twitter Chat andHow Can It Help YOU in 15 Minutes or Less that “you can get a wide variety of resources […] all tailored to your interests and questions” and that “you can get all these goodies in just 10-15 minutes!”

After I participated a chat #hcspdl, which I found unexpectedly, I realized there were a lot people who recommended articles, projects and social networking sites. They were all fans of Connectivisim! At first, Sean Junkins, who is a Digital Integration Specialist, an Apple Distinguished Educator, a Google Certified Teacher and a STAR Discovery Educator, introduced a warm-up activity. He had us to complete a sentence that “a connected educator is __________.” Later, one of Sean’s colleagues named Stephanie Yancey, the host of #hcspdl chat tonight, started with a question: “How has becoming connected changed the way you teach?” All participants engaged in discussing how Twitter makes us connected and how connectivity helps teachers to stay a step ahead of their students.

As for a teacher, TwitterChat is absolutely a good form to build up resources for further needs. Besides, it is an excellent collector of suggestions and ideas. Most teachers are busy and they do not have right tools and time to get those things done, but TwitterChat provides a platform for them to save time! Suppose a question is posted, you do not have to stay for answers but leaves for other work out there. After a while, voila – answers from a sea of experts are available for you! It is not that you do not have time to use Twitter, but you use Twitter because you do not have time. 

Best way to be a teacher is to be a learner first

Alan Levine held that we as teachers should stay connected and take advantage of technology. In his video New Media Consortium, he said one thing the network can help us effectively is that if we put our ignorance online, there will be a sea of various answers and suggestions for us available. Yes, I could not agree more. The best way to be a teacher is to be a learner first, so the network provides such a good platform to gather ideas and study for useful pedagogical methods. By constantly learning and collecting resources online, a teacher can gradually build up his/her expertise more efficiently. 

That is the reason why I joined The Flipped Learning. It is a nice social networking site that has diversified means to gather thoughts. For example, there are forums for users to discuss over issues like classroom management, students' excuse and resources and links. Those could be the best preparation "lessons" for a new teacher to foresee possible problems in teaching and to find solutions from more experienced community members. Also, different groups on the Flipped Learning also enable users to join and stay current and connected to thousands of potential flippers who are interest in the same topic. I would like to use it as a social networking as well as an efficient learning tool for improving my future teaching!

A Learner is Like a...

When searching for the analogy to illustrate today's learners, I would like to highlight the idea that a learner has a sharing characteristic as well as a ability to connect his/her learning community. From this perspective, a learner is like a BANK. As we all know, a bank gathers capital earned through interest, transaction fee and financial advice from individuals or groups, and lends it to others for their own development. In this process, the bank itself also benefits a lot with the capital to grow and develop. Similarly, a learner accumulates knowledge from others by varies means of teacher's instruction, peer mediation and, of course, internet connection. Then the learner can share with others in a larger community of what he/she has got. In the meantime, the learner grows, develops with the knowledge.

This analogy is strengthened by the idea provided in the video I just explored. In the video The Impact of Social Software on Learning, George Siemens explained that 

"social software is a very broad umbrella term that includes everything from blog to wiki to social bookmarking to tagging or folksonomy. and essentially it's where through social meets, we are able to share and connect with each other."

The Internet era enables an active learner to become more sharing. By building an online library, with lots of categorized tags and bookmarks, a learner can not only find pretty handy resources to promote his/her study efficiency and to stay current, but also provides bountiful information for ones who is in need of it. Study affairs are not individual, or intraperson. I prefer to use interpersonal study as learners' study mode today. Learners are connected together; they store knowledge in others; each of the connected learner benefits from this network, and "that is the function of the network itself" as Siemens said in The Changing Nature of Knowledge. 

In this way, learners' development can be put into a larger picture, which is the cycles of knowledge development and these elements like individuals and network are essential to it. Like what has been proposed by Siemens the concept called Connectivism that

"the starting point of connectivism is the individual. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual."

What is important for learners is to develop learning skills with social networking tools as informal learning ways. 

Networked Education

Want to participate lectures from UPenn? Want the world to hear your own voice? Want to manage your own learning pace? Want to debate with someone who is miles away? Then, it’s time to get networked!

The most benefitted group is the students. “ The Future ofLearning, Networked Society – Ericsson” said that the online social networking provides possibility for education system to be a “system for the kids”. Students can get what they want from open courses, lectures and other shared information online. By skyping or other distant conferences, students can get more exposure to knowledge beyond textbooks. Another benefit is that online education allows students to manage their own study process. It is them to decide when is the best time to learn and what to learn. After building their knowledge, like what “Networked Students” said, they can choose to create blogs to share what they have got, and accept comments from others from all over the world.

On the other hand, teachers should assist students in using Internet and maximize its value. According to the Networked Students, a teacher should provide guidance and teach students how to

       1) communicate properly; 

       2) find out useful information and differentiate what is good and bad;

       3) ask respectfully for information from other expertise;

       4)  “turn web search into a scavenger earn”; 

       5)  organize mountainous information.

At the same time, teachers should also

       1) maintain learning network;

       2) creatively solve problems;

       3) navigate students’ learning in the future.

The networked society provides such a great opportunity for students to get connected not only with their own teachers but with the whole world. Also, at the same time, the teacher plays an important role in students' network development.