Games In Classroom

Gamification is the infusion of game design techniques, game mechanics, and/or game style into anything.
The usage of games in language learning classroom is that it enhance the interaction between teachers and students. The engagement of teacher and students in the game might create a harmonious atmosphere in class. Both teachers and students need to be involved in the game. For example, if teachers use the game as a task, students need to follow instructions. Say, we use walkthroughs in the task, students have to focus on what they need to do next and how to finish the task. By so doing, teachers and students are very interactive to each other because one work as a guide and the other work as followers. What's more, students might encounter new vocabulary or other new language features in during the game, and teacher could work on these new things after they finish the game or during the game.

I personally played the game Phantasy Games for 4 times without the help of Walkthrough, but I failed to completed the mission. It was difficult for me to finish the game even under the help of walkthrough because some steps need to be very careful and if you failed to follow, you have to start from previous step or steps. If I employ games into my classroom, I think my language learning objectives might be SWABT:
Recognize vocabularies for directions ( go back, to the top, go to the right, etc.);
Understand directions by listening to walkthrough;
Apply direction vocabulary in daily life.
The role of teacher in the classroom would be a controller because teacher have to give directions and control what the students need to do. Also I think teacher might be a bridge that help students to finish the task. During the game, students would actively involve in the game by following orders or instructions given by the teacher. There is a goal in completing the task is that students need to rescue the girl, so they have to do it step by step. So, I would use a walkthrough for the game, because I want to incorporate my learning objectives in the game, and more importantly, I found it is really hard to finish the task alone. Students need directions and at the same time, teacher can assess whether the students understand the direction or not. I would also use images from the game to guild my students. For example, the arrow the show directions, or the items they are going pick up. I might make a powerpoint and show to my students.
After walkthrough, I would check if my students finish the task successfully or not, that would be one way to assess whether my learning objectives achieve or not. Another way to assess my learning objectives would be do a follow-up activity which require students to show directions, like ask for direction role-play, or picture telling about directions.

Use Twitter for Professional Development

Nowadays, twitter become one of the most popular social network that people use in daily life, but how can we use twitter to develop our profession also heated discussed by people. If you have been using twitter for quite a long time, you definitely notice that people tweet whatever that want. There are no rules for tweet something or retweet something. They do it because they want to not because they need to. If your followers are like this type, you were tired of reading spams and want to skip them and finally, you might loose interest in follow them.
10 Twitter Mistakes You Should Avoid tells you how to use twitter appropriately not only in professional development, but also in daily life. The first principle is that avoid over-tweeting

if someone over-tweeting, the whole homepage would be filled up by them, which bothers others a lot especially you tweet something useless and meaningless. Other mistakes are: follow Friday perversion, celebrity insulting, RIP for someone famous, retweet every compliment, tweet about food, etc. In China, we have Weibo, which is like Twitter in America. Some of my followers tweet about food everyday, even though I am tired of that, I would bother sometime because you have to say good words in your compliment. 

If you want to use Twitter for professional development, this article 10 WAYS Teachers Can Use Twitter for Professional Development provides you some ways. Create a strong profile page, use hashtags

and share what you read are mentioned in this article. After I read this article, I think I really did a bad job in using twitter for professional development. I don't have a strong profile, I did not filled up my bio as well. But I really think that Twitter can help educators a lot in future. If you use hashtags, you can find topics that interesting you in the whole twitter and join them to discuss the topic. Also, your questions might be answered by others around the world, which means you get opinions from around the world. Share what you read on twitter also help you develop your career. Say I read books or articles about how to teach refugees and I tweet my reviews, my followers read it and might also give comments on my tweet. What's more, someone who read the same article or book would provide their review on comments as well. By this way, you actually "communicate" with others about your thoughts. You can improve yourself and reflect what you do in class in twitter if you use it as a teaching diary.

Twitterchat

This actually is my first time to get involved in twitter chat , and it seems I was confused about this feature at first, however, when I search for hashtag, I find that there are so many people discuss some topic on it. Moreover, if you have questions about your field, you can put forward it on twitter and hashtag it, people with the same hashtag can help you out. 

Twitterchat embraces such great feature that we can share thoughts on this stage, and it's free! Social network makes the world smaller and shorten the distance between people by connect each other. For me, this would be great for professional development, because I can read others' tweets, learn from their experience and also post my questions waiting for someone to answer that for me. In this case, I might not just receive one answer, I might gather answers from different walks of people or from my field, that would be a wonderful thing for me! I like to hear from different people, and Twitterchat just provides this opportunity for me. I think it would help me a lot in future and I definitely would continue to use it!

Learn Clothing Vocabulary! (phrases 2)

Social Networking group--NYSCATE

NYSCATE (The New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education)" is a non-profit, professional organization representing more than 10,000 technology using educators and administrators in New York State. NYSCATE is an affiliate of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), and cooperates with such partners as the New York State Education Department, state and national educational organizations, private sector corporations, and publishers to further the  use of technology in our schools. NYSCATE is involved in helping define statewide policy regarding the use of technologies in education."

NYSCATE is a social networking group that I want to try in my future career. I think it's a useful and user-friendly website because I find a lot of useful information in this site. It provides you with a different groups that you can join in and a forum that diverse topics are discussed. Members share their ideas through this site and connect each other together. Say, one of the members provide a useful link that tells you to read blogs that would be useful for you if your school is using Charlotte Danielson 2007 for their APPR. (Blogs that you need to read) So for those teachers whose school is using Charlotte Danielson 2007 can go to this link and find some useful information by this link.

As what Alan Levine says in the clip Alan Levine-New Media Consortium, we can build up our own social networks by connect with our colleagues, friends or other medias. We are not born to know everything, as teachers, we also need to learn new things, ideas that help us in teaching. One of the ways to get to know more is by connect yourself with others by social networking groups.

Learner is like flowers

Learners are like flowers if teachers are gardeners. This analogy uses a lot in Chinese culture that teachers are gardeners who need to take good care of flowers-- the learners. I think this analogy is quite fit in what Connectivism Theory refer to. "Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing." What does a teacher need to do in order to convey knowledge to students is that building a bridge that connect students to the outside world, the real world. From this point of view, learners are flowers, because they need to absorb sunshine, nutriment or other elements that fed by gardeners. Sunshine and nutriment are knowledge that teachers try to bring in the classroom.

In the presentation What is Connectivism, the presenter talks about concept of connectivism and types of connectivism. He mentions that "The experience of learning is one of forming new neural, conceptual and external networks." What I read from this point is that if learners are flowers, teachers need to bring in some new information that students can benefit from and turn those kinds of information into their own knowledge, students need to digest information but not just absorb. It is like when the gardeners help to fertilize flowers, they provide them with water, nutriments and enough sunshine, but what the flowers can do in order to grow healthy or grow well is by absorbing nutriment, sunshine, and water, and then turn them into the elements that they need to grow up. Students need to form their own thoughts by digest what teachers give them in class and to create meaningful things for themselves in the real world.

I doubt this analogy the first time I heard it, but when you think deeper, you might find this analogy does not mean force students to do something they do not like, but cultivate students to pick up what they need in life. 

Diggo VS Scoop. it

Diigo and Scoop. it are tools that we can use on any devices. They are very convenient and easy to use for everybody. 

These two advanced tools provide users with abundant of information that they can share on they homepage. Users can followed each other and search for information by type in multiple tags or key words on both Diigo and Scoop. it. This is a great way to share information and thoughts.

Despite their similarities, Diigo and Scoop.it share some differences. For example, if you use Diigo, you can highlight texts and save for later that you want to share with others, but Scoop. it does not embrace this feature. Scoop. it, on the other hand, owns some wonderful features that Diigo does not have. First of all, users can comment on other's scoop or topic and share thoughts with each other. It also allow users to copy and paste original article to appear in their comments, however, Diigo can not. Secondly, Scoop. it offers suggestions on the topic that you are searching and you can find different sources to related topic. This feature surprises me in my first try to add scoop to my topic. You can find topic by Google blog, Youtube, Google news, twitters...Anyway, you would find one source that interests you.

If I have to choose from these two tools, I think I might continue to use Scoop. it because of its power features and plenty of information that I can easily find. I do not mean I would dump Diigo, I Like Diigo as well, because it just like a library, and it's user-friendly. This is a hard question for me because I want to keep these two tools for my future use.