Silent Movie--Let's Guess!

Silent Movie is a great idea and in-class activity for teacher to use in speaking and listening class. I have experienced this activity in one mini-lesson that one of my classmates gave to us in my first semester. She first divided us into two group with the first group watch the silent movie and the second group sat with their back to the screen. After watching the movie clip, the students in the first group went to the find one partner in the second group and retold the movie that they watched. After they finish the retelling, the students in the second group were asked to repeat what they heard from their partners. At last, we all watched the movie clip with sound to verify our description. We really enjoyed the activity and found it can help students to open the mouth to say something.

The whole activity involves guessing, explanation, interpretation, listening and speaking ability. Students should try to use the right adjectives and verbs to describe the people and situation and the other students should try to understand his/her partner regardless the mistakes and possible mispronunciation.
Sure will try to use it in my future class.

Photo Story--What's your story

Before the Monday class, I would think of using the power point to show the images, record my voice and embed it into the PPT, which definitely means a lot of things to do. However, Photo Story makes everything simple and easy to do. And what comes out at last is so great!

We just need to choose the photos that we would like to share, then record our voice while switching between the pictures and we may add the background music if we want. Then, we are done! Every step is simple and very easy for any one who has never used it before. It means that it is also possible to introduce it to the students and let them to create their own digital stories even if they know nothing about this soft ware. 

With the strong interest and the emotion of a personal related topic, students can have the freedom to create different stories by using the Photo Story. The whole process will be fun and students will love to watch other students' story. If they find any common with someone else, they may have more willingness to talk with them after class, which is helpful in creating a good class atmosphere.

In the whole process, four language skills are all involved in--Reading, Speaking, Listening and Writing. It is a good chance to let them to write something personal and read it out loud. By listening to their own voice record, they may be aware of the mispronunciation, the speed and the rhyme of their speaking, which will make them want to redo it again to make it better. With less pressure to read a paragraph in front of the class, students can have time to rehearse and to modify their digital story before showing to others. 

My digital story

My digital Story-- Why Am I Becoming A Teacher?

There are many reason behind the reason why am I becoming a teacher.

1. Growing up in a teacher's family
2. Love Language
3. English is a gloabl communication tool 
4. Teaching= Learning
5. Help poor kids
6. Have holiday for travling 

e-Portfolio

                http://eportfolio.lagcc.cuny.edu/
I really like the idea of e-Portfolio. It can be people's online academic blog in which resume, working experiences, personal background and other related information can be found.

In this semester, I am also taking Internship course in which my instructor strongly recommended us to build our own e-Portfolio. It is very troublesome to send or upload your resume, lesson plan, curriculum, teaching philosophy together when you apply for a job. If you send your cover letter with an e- Portfolio link, all of the things become neat. The employer can just click the link to view what he needs to know. If he needs more information, he can just choose other tabs to view more, which greatly save the time for employer to keep sending emails asking for more information. By attaching the e-Portfolio link with the cover letter, it also shows that you a teacher who knows about technology and you may well use it in your classroom.  My instructor was more convinced that e-Portfolio is useful and important for teachers after she received an email from one of her Japanese student who got a teaching job in one of the Japan university just because of his excellent e-Portfolio.

For preparing for the coming job hunting and personal academic records, I am going to set up my e-Portfolio soon!

Open Culture--website links

http://www.openculture.com/
This website does not only offer links of 530 online courses that covers most of the college subjects, but also offer the links of 450 audio books, 500 online movies, 375 ebooks, and 160 textbooks. It seems that there are tons of information here, no matter they are authentic or language adapted learning materials for learners to use. People have the different interets or focuses can find their cups of tea to learn what they want through online courses or YouTube.


On this website, it separates the Language Lessons into a single link tab in which 40 languages can be learned online. As an English teacher, I look more on the English learning part and to see what can I use in my future teaching. Under the category of English, there are subcategories that related to the different focuses of learning English, such as English speaking, business English, English Grammar, etc. Those links will guide the learners to different websites to find the online courses or the audios for them to learn the language. One website that I find interesting and useful is the BBC learning English. It was recommended by one of my college teacher, but I did not have a chance to view this website in detail until now. If I were the teacher, I would recommended it to my students.
This website can be used as a guide website for self-learners to find the online sources to learn courses and it also can help teachers to find more possible teaching materials to enrich the teaching in the classroom.

Open Learning Initiative--Learning through science

http://oli.cmu.edu/learn-with-oli/see-our-free-open-courses/

Open Learning initiative is online course website running by Carnegie Mellon University. Its purpose is to "transforming higher education through the science of learning." It is very obvious that most of the online courses in this website are about science, such as chemistry, biology and statistics. Speaking of the English education, it only offers two couses that I think relate to English eduction: American English Speech and Argument Diagramming. The first course is about the English pronunciation which is for the beginning level learners and the second one is about how to write argumentative papers which may suitable for the advanced level students. In each course, there is a syllabus that clearly presents how many units and modules it contains and what the topics for each unit ad module. Learners can study by themselves follow each unit and do the exercises after each lesson. Teachers can use these courses as a guidance or a references of what to teach and how to teach.


It is also very useful for students who are working in science field. They can find learn the science subject and many terms in the field at the same time, which is like hitting two birds with one stone.
Personally, these online courses may only be used for adult language teaching since there are many descriptions and the definitions that may be boring and too difficult for young learners. Too much readings are very hard to keep young students in their seats.

PREZI--Zooming to the point!

                                                                http://prezi.com/ 

When I first watched my teacher giving presentation with Prezi, I was immediately attracted by its zooming and the path showing. Then I went to the teacher after class for asking for how to make this fancy power point and at that time I just got to know that it was not a power point. It is a software for making zooming presentation named Prezi.

Students' attention is very essential in teaching and learning. Its zooming and moving function can attract students attention when it is used in the classroom. People like new and special things. Prezi can offer a new and special leaning experience for students in learning. Students will be excited waiting for what's next and they will pay fully attention to the information that is zooming, which is helpful in memorizing. Prezi presentation also is a path-leading one, which can give students lesson in a linear story style. It will be very useful in teaching younger students who needs more interesting things to keep them in seat. 

It is very necessary for teacher to have the big picture of the lesson as well as the details in mind. Prezi successfully helps teacher to have a bird view of the lesson and also have a zooming focus on every details. It is also helpful for adult students when they finish one unit study and they can see what kind of learning path they have taken and what's the purpose of this unit, which can help them to build a foundation of controlling and mastering their learning process. 

As many of my friends said, the only problem with using Prezi is the dizziness that caused by too much fast zooming. My solution to this problem will be offering more information in each slide, don't make two zooming slides too far away from each other and put the related information together. 

I really enjoy watching and using Prezi and I am surely will use it in my classroom of teaching English or use it to show  my trip in US to my friends. : D

Lessonwriter--Saving time in planing lessons

                                                         http://www.lessonwriter.com/

Lessonwriter is a very convenient software for both novice and experienced teachers to make their lesson plan easily and quickly. For novice teachers, with the text or the video in hands then they can have a well planned lesson after just copying, pasting and a click through Lessonwriter. Using the EXPRESS way to automatically create the whole lesson can give them some clues about what to teach based on the text that they would like to use. There are some ready made lesson plans which can set as examples for new teachers' first teaching and guide them to find their teaching style and method in the future.  

For experienced teacher, Lessonwriter truly benefits them in saving a lot of time to prepare for the lessons and come up different questions for the text. STANDARD and DETAILED provides free space for teachers to design the higher order thinking reading questions based on different prompts such as Blooms, Hess and writing prompts as the guidance, which saves time to go back to the books and generate appropriate questions themselves. The comprehension questions are offered for different literacy levels, which can help teacher to provide questions that are appropriate for students' language level.

Personally, I like the order of each teaching steps in the lesson plan, which could be effective for Chinese EFL classroom (which is using Grammar Translation Method) since most of the Chinese teachers just directly jump to the grammar and leave other parts blank for students. If the teacher can follow these lesson plans which pay more attention to the pronunciation and word use, students can surely be benefited a lot in improving their learning. 

The only thing that I would like suggest Lessonwriter to improve in the future is adding more in class activities. Currently, Lessonwriter offers two activities: Flash Cards and Words Searches, which is rather limited for teachers to choose. Look forward to seeing more interesting activities and the coming REPORTS function.

All about myself

Self Intro

My name is Zengfang Lin and you can call me Lilo. I am a Chinese student currently studying in New York University (NYU) and majoring in TESOL (not lead to a state certification). I completed my undergraduate study in Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) in Beijing, China majoring in English.

I come from a small city named Dali in Yunnan Province in the southwest of China. My hometown is famous for its nature beauty of lakes and mountains as well as the rich Bai ethnic group cultures. I belong to Bai ethnic Group which is one of 56 ethnic groups in China. Bai people speak Bai language which is different from Mandarin in the sound and words order. People from other ethnic groups may not be able to understand this language. Unfortunately, with more and more young people leave Dali to find jobs in metropolitans, Bai language, a language that only can be passed down orally, becomes an endangered language. I am trying my best to learn as much as I can from my mother now. It is not only for the preservation of my ethnic group language, but also for the possibilities to teach Bai young people English in school if I will teach back in my hometown. 

I have been an intern teacher in an English tutoring school teaching speaking and listening for secondary school students for one month in China and I am doing my internship in American Language Institute for level 1 international students now. My passion about teaching and learning languages makes my goal to be an English teacher in the future. I am planning to be an ESL teacher in New York City or to be an English college teacher back in China after graduation.