Classroom expectations

Hey everyone, here is the link to my "Bucheon university class expectations" when dealing with multimedia. Click here and enjoy.

A Brand New Teacher (blog 8)

What is something you learned in this class that you will be able to incorporate into your teaching?

This course has been extremely helpful and useful to me. Before I started this course I was really nervous because I didn’t feel that I was very computer savvy. Now at the end of this course I feel I have been armed with a lot of tools to help improve my classes. I wouldn’t say this course has made me amazing when it comes to computers but I definitely feel more well equipped as a 21st century teacher.

I feel that now at the completion of this course I don’t have to be so reliant on using paper handouts anymore. I can start putting more things online and have my students get the material from Google drive or webpage etc. Also as I stated in my last post, I plan on implementing prezi presentations to convey my main teaching points in a more concise and entertaining manner. This course has prepared the ground for me to utilize a lot of tools that I otherwise would not have known about and for that I am very grateful. 

Movie Presentation

This is the movie trailer that Chris Shears and I decided to do a sweded version of..."The Matrix"



Below is the Movie trailer that Chris Shears and I created. A sweded version of the classic 1999 box office smash hit,
"The Matrix"


Click here for the Student movie assignment and Rubric

Audio assignment

"Prepositions of Place and Movement"
This is my audio assignment I have made for my students. 

The assignment and rubric are linked at the bottom. 
I have embedded my audio recording below.

Click Here to view the assignment that each student will have to complete.

Web site

Below are the links to my web site and and an explanation for the group assignment I would give my students.

This is a direct follow on assignment for directions....

For an explanation of this lesson click here (Rubric provided)

Click here for link to my website

My favorite multimedia tool! "Prezi" (blog 7)

My favorite tool that I have learned about in class over the past few weeks would be “prezi”. I have a feeling that prezi is going to be the answer most of my peers will be blogging about as well.

Before I started this course I had difficulty using Microsoft power point. I hardly implemented it in my classes and mostly relied on using lots of handouts. However after taking this course and learning more about multimedia tools and how to adapt them into my classes, I would have to say that learning prezi and utilizing it in my classes will change the way I teach and structure my classes.

Prezi is a great tool that can help teachers present information in a fun way. Prezi allows you to zoom in and out of frames and rotate in any direction easily. The coolest feature in my opinion is the ability to hide frames within frames. Using prezi will make my classes more entertaining and keep the students focused longer.

Although at times, it was very confusing, frustrating and difficult learning how to operate prezi, it goes without saying that I am thankful that I now have a very useful and effective tool I can use in my classes. I will be implementing prezi into my university classes starting immediately. It will be a little annoying to redo most of my lessons but in the long run I think it will be worth it. 

Directions Presentation

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2afGIAK3M64MUluVnZmY3dmSTA/edit?usp=sharing

Screencast.... (Kakao Talk)

Here's my screencast, "An easy way to group chat using Kakao Talk". Hope you find it useful, enjoy!

9 essential skills (blog 6)

9 Essential Skills Kids Should Learn.

The topic of this article is “9 Essential Skills Kids Should Learn” written by Leo Babauta. http://zenhabits.net/kid-skills/

This article suggests nine essential skills that students should be learning to adequately prepare them for the future. The writer believes children are not being taught the proper skills that they will need in the future. He believes that because the future is unpredictable, always changing and unknown, teachers need to prepare children to adapt and deal with change by teaching them these nine essential skills.

1. Asking qestions
2. Solving problems
3. Tackling projects
4. Finding passion
5. Independence
6. Being happy on their own
7. Compassion
8. Tolerance
9. Dealing with change

I agree with the essence of what “Leo Babauta” is talking about. Children should be encouraged to ask questions and solve problems. This will help them in the future to deal with any kind of situation. Tackling projects at school that they are passionate about either by themselves (independent thinking problem solving etc) or in a group (development of compassion and tolerance towards others) will essentially improve a child’s confidence and better prepare them for any kind of future endeavor. The future is unpredictable and unknown so dealing with change is probably the most important life skill to teach children. Things change very quickly and when they do change, we also must adapt and adjust ourselves accordingly.

I primarily teach university students so I feel that by the time the students come into my class they should have already learned most of the skills mentioned above. All teachers are a huge influence in students lives; these nine essential skills may start at an early age but they continue through all levels of education.  

 

"Play Play Play" (blog 5)

The Power of Play in Learning

The article I chose to quickly summarize and comment on is “The Power of Play in Learning” by Aran Lavesseur http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/01/the-power-of-play-in-learning/

When briefly looking at the name of this topic, you can be forgiven for thinking… “Okay, this is going to be focused on children and learning through physical play.” However this wasn’t the focal point. The article states that we all learn best through trial and error, pattern recognition, making a choice and seeing where that leads us. In a sense, “Play.”

In this digital age we all need to learn how to use and operate all kinds of new and innovative multimedia tools. Through “Playing” with these tools, both students and teachers can learn and adapt. The article pretty much tells us that students can become more creative through playfulness and think outside of the box to solve problems etc.

I agree with the essence of this article especially as to how it relates with multimedia and the classroom. I would hope the use of the ipad for instance could encourage my students to become more creative in class. My students are so used to memorizing what they are given. Through this learning style, they have been deprived of the chance to explore and experiment for themselves. If I could introduce this kind of technology into my classes, then it will not only excite my students but they will start to become coaches themselves, helping their classmates operate it. By making mistakes and correcting them though “Play”, my students will hopefully become more confident and creative and thus interact and use English more in my class.

In my opinion play or playfulness with the use of technology is essential for both students and teachers in the 21^st century. It will encourage students to experiment and explore answers creatively.

My favorite lesson (blog 4)

The topic of this blog is "My favorite lesson". I don't know if this is my actual favorite lesson but it's definitely one of my favorites. Whether you may or may not know, I work at a university with several other teachers on this course. We all have to teach the same book, so I'm not sure if anyone else is going to write about the same lesson as me.

The lesson I have chosen is about "Prepositions of Place". The level of most of my students isn't very high when it comes to their English ability so this lesson is based on simple prepositions. The prepositions I concentrate on are (next to / in front of / behind / between and across from). My lessons are 2 hours long so I spend the first hour explaining the prepositions via white board instruction, power point presentation and classroom participation.

I specifically intend to make use of kinetic learning strategy and put it into practice.
Therefore, during the second hour I have my students in teams of three. They must complete an outdoor scavenger hunt around the university using their smart phones taking pictures. An example of this is as follows "I am next to the English cafe sign". The students (in their teams) must make their way to the English cafe and take their photo. In total there are 20 tasks they must complete.
At the completion of the scavenger hunt the teams must make their way to my office and explain in English each picture they took using the prepositions I just taught them.

Example:
Teacher: Tell me about this photo, Kyoung min.
Kyoung Min: Teacher, I am between the black car and the white car.
Teacher: Well done, you get a sticker.

At the completion of this lesson all students should have a basic understanding of prepositions of place. I find that this lesson works extremely well and 95% of my students respond positively to this class. They love the concept of going around the university taking photos (sort of like a treasure hunt). I love teaching this class because the students really enjoy putting the new vocabulary to use in an environment other than the classroom. I find when I give my mid term test, nearly 100% of students get the preposition portion of my test perfectly correct.   

Online reputation (blog 3)

When I think about this question: "to evaluate my online reputation", I have to be honest and say that I've never really thought about it  seriously before. As for me I have to think about the one social networking site that I use on a regular basis, "Facebook". To tell the truth I never really thought that posting comments and silly photos would harm my reputation as I assumed that only my close friends and family could have access to this information. Now when I think about this (online reputation), I have to admit.... "what a fool I've been".

When I think about the first time I used the Internet, I thought," hey, this is awesome! I can say anything I want and nobody knows who I am." In other words, everything that was said or done was anonymous. These days ,however, everything you do leaves an electronic footprint back to who you are.

I feel a little concerned about my current online reputation in terms of future employment. If a potential employer was to go through my Facebook profile (especially photos) they would see some contents I consider a little inappropriate, weird or compromising. Their reaction would probably be, "Hell no! we're not going to hire that guy". This thought makes me feel disappointed in myself for not showing enough initiative to stop those photos being posted or being tagged in them.

A more professional and responsible attitude is needed by me to stop these potential problems in the future.

Now I need to ask myself what can be done on my part to sculpt my digital reputation in a better direction. Firstly I really need to learn, operate and pay more attention to the security settings on Facebook. Hopefully this will only allow people I want to view my profile and especially my private social photos with friends. I also have decided that at the completion of this course I will go through the painstaking hours of photos that are posted of me and untag my name and if possible, remove the more embarrassing photos that I find myself in.

Overall I wish to have a more professional online reputation and thus in terms of any further online social networks I join like Twitter, My space , Pinterest etc, I will make sure I read and operate the security settings properly and take more care as to what is posted on these sites. In a nutshell, I need to think twice "Does this post/comment etc have the potential to damage my online reputation in the future?"

Digitizing assignments (blog 2)

How are some ways that digitizing assignments will improve your teaching, class, or your organizing?

Digitizing assignments are the way of the future. I feel that all aspects of my class, classroom management, teaching style and overall organization will improve.
Through the use of different multimedia tools my classes can become more effective and efficient. At the moment I do not use many multimedia tools in my class. I have a more traditional style of teaching. However as students are becoming more tech savvy through the use of smart phones etc, teachers also need to change with the times and become tech savvy themselves. By digitizing my assignments my classes will become more structured and efficient. Instead of teaching via a book and having my students write up homework and assignments and hand them to me on paper. I could instruct my classes through the use of multimedia tools like prezzi, power point presentations, videos and so on. This will make my classes more fun and hopefully stimulate the minds of my students and keep them interested in my classes. This will be a big change from the same old mundane, repetitive classes that many teachers experience because they only use a book.
By digitizing my assignments students will be able to complete homework and class assignments and then very easily email them to me or even complete their work through the use of a blog. This will help me as a teacher as I can see exactly when their work was turned in. I can then mark their work and post results online or email comments back or make teacher's comments at the bottom of their blog.
I also feel that by digitizing my work I will become a lot more organized. My students grades, class work and progress will easily be accessible on computer. No more paperwork means time saved. To be an effective teacher, organization is key! It makes perfect sense to me that the more organized you are as a teacher, the more time you will save, and thus this extra time can be put to more useful work like creating and preparing classes in a more effective way.

Improving as a teacher (blog 1)

In what way would you like to improve as a teacher? How do you think this course will help you to improve?

One of the biggest problems I personally have as a teacher in Korea is incorporating technology into my classes. I have been teaching English as an ESL teacher in Korea for the past ten years and I feel that my teaching method hasn't really changed much or improved. I mostly use whiteboards and Microsoft word. This is due to my lack of knowledge with computers and unfamiliarity with the utilization of multimedia. I am hoping this course will help me to improve as a teacher as I learn more about blogging, twitter, prezi etc and how to use these in my classes with my students. At times in my classes I feel many of my students are more computer savvy than I am and I often  have to ask a student for assistance.

I am hoping that this course helps me to understand different teaching methods using multimedia and how I can implement them into my classes. I mostly teach university students in a classroom setting and some methods such as using prezi or using multimedia could be quite helpful. Other times I teach elementary school children so using different multimedia tools like smartphones and YouTube could be more useful.

At the conclusion of this course I hope to be a more well-rounded teacher who can use technology in a productive way in my classes. I wish to create the best assignments possible for my students. I feel this will help me to become a more confident and effective 21st century teacher.

started blog

Started my very own blog.... bring it!