Tell us about your story

The forms of storytelling are varied from traditional oral narratives from up-to-date storytelling via interactive media or digital tools and technologies, which is also called digital storytelling. According to Wikipedia, digital storytelling refers to "a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to share aspects of their life story". An effective digital storytelling incorporates elements of text, video, audio, music and pictures, and can be interactive.

The digital storytelling is also pedagogically applicable. It is a powerful tool for instruction and consolidation of course content for teachers. Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling suggests that teachers could use it to present new materials by creating new stories, and, in so doing, to motivate students in engaging learning activities and exploring new ideas and topics. In addition, since some of the teachers may find it is difficult to perfectly integrating multi-media into their instruction, storytelling is a good way of consolidating course content by making abstract concepts more concrete and by involving students into discussion. Besides, digital storytelling can be an effective learning tool for students. Through creating their own story, students will develop communication skills such as to “organize their ideas, ask questions, express opinions, and construct narratives”. What’s more, they will gain valuable experience by researching a topic and then choosing a particular point of view. Also, a collaboration work on digital storytelling provides a platform for students to learn learning styles from each other and to share learning resources.

Except for the pedagogical means to use digital storytelling mentioned above, it also benefits me in my future teaching. Firstly, it is a pool of cultures that students share with each other. Students, through first person narrative, would identify salient features from their own cultures, arrange materials at hand, tell their story and demonstrate to others. In the storytelling process, students’ cultural identities are gradually established; by being exposed in dynamic culture contexts, students will experience authentic cultures in this way. Secondly, digital storytelling is used as a reflection of students’ learning experience. When students are asked to think about their identities as language learners, they are required to trace back what they did to contribute to language learning process. In doing so, teachers and students will gain a knowledge of their cognitive development in language area, which enables teachers to provide feedback for their future learning and allows students to see personal ownership and accomplishment.

Inspirations from Twitter for Teaching

How to monitor what students tweet about their assignments? How to follow each student’s thoughts and progresses, with thousands of tweets continually coming in?

Those questions are haunting me all these days since I was introduced the educational purpose of using Twitter. Fortunately, when I read Teach with Twitter? Read This! by Michelle Pacansky-Brock, I found the trick lies in using the hashtag, which is the easies and the least cumbersome way to track your students’ new tweets. Once the students are asked to add hashtag on related topic, the Twitter will automatically archive their interactions and engagements with their teachers.

Before studying 35 Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom, I never think about useful ways to incorporate Twitter in classroom in that communications in classroom are through face-to-face interaction rather than through machines without actually talking to each other. However, it indeed casts some lights to my future teaching insights. Firstly, Twitter provides a platform for me to enhance learning outsides the classroom. Like what is proposed in the article, students could follow experts and thus communicate with them, which enabling the students to absorb practical and most current knowledge in related fields. In addition, they could share what they have gathered through those inspiring

communications to their classmates and/or followers. Secondly, it is a rather good tool to monitor students’ learning process. One advantage of using microblogging rather than normal blog is that microblogging appears less formal and more prompt. If the students find it is lengthy and tiresome to format blogs, they would love to tweet. As for teachers, they could get instant feedback of what they require students to do and what their problems and difficulties. Thus teachers could provide immediate suggestions to clear any possible obstacles for students.

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. 

Diigo vs. Scoop.it

Both Diigo and Scoop.it are so called content curator by Stephanie Frasco. Here are several aspects of what they have in common. Firstly, they have extensions on Google Chrome or small button located on toolbar, which are easy as well as immediate to use. Secondly, multiple tags are provided for  content categorizing. Thirdly, because they form a sharing community, they allow users to follow topics, other users and even groups. However, after learning the introduction videos and experiencing them, I find that they do have a myriad of differences. Among them, Diigo has relatively prominent features for choosing between them. 

Diigo:

1. allow users to highlight texts and displayed wherever you logged in.
2. can be on the top of your google research entries.
3. has relatively straightforward tag list for users to categorize resources. 
4. users formed a community can send message to communicate with each other.
5. has more effective functions such as "read later"and "snapshot".

Scoop.it: 

1. has a beautiful webpage dedicated to topics.
2. is more visualized (with pictures and charts) when browsing resources.

I do not experience all of their features, so I cannot tell all the differences between them, since I just start to use those two content curators. Yet from the comparisons above, I prefer to use Diigo with its diversified functions and features. Diigo has its most fascinating tool to me, say "Read Later", so that you can save your resources when you don't read them right now for some reasons. Besides,  as social networking tool for academic purpose, Diigo looks more concise and more formal, with less polished home page. The Scoop.it, on the contrary, has more or less a sense of entertainment with colorful buttons and posts, and it reminds me of Pinterest, but Scoop.it is good for not causing visual fatigue. As to multiple tags, the tag list by Diigo is good for my students to find related resources faster, because the list is located at the homepage. Unlike Diigo, the tag list by Scoop.it is under each topic, which means students have to open the target topic and find the filter button and click the tag(s) they want. For my students and followers, the concept of "library" shows how wonderful Diigo is. With collected what I find online, tags are like bookshelves for students and followers to find decently categorized resources. Isn't it a nice tool for a sharing teacher?

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.