Online Learning and Learning Online

The most interesting point in today's class is the introduction that kevin give us about online learning and learning online.

It's not a tone twister. It is different. Online class is Online learning, and using the online tools assisting learning is learning online.

Kevin said, learning online is a good support to students' learning. But it is challenging to both the teachers and students if they take online class.

Surely, learning online is a strong support to students' learning. They can use all resources worldwide. As long as the teacher gives them a proper guiding, students will get a lot of supplement learning materials, practice questions and even historical knowledge about the current learning topics. Some websites like WolframAlpha, physicsclassroom, learnersTV, etc. will be very helpful to students understand the concepts and stimulate their interest.

For online learning, my idea only a piece of thread. I hope it can elicit you big idea with your comment and discussion.

In my opinion, choosing online learning means flexibility and risky to students; and the teaching becomes either too easy or too hard to the teacher. It's depend on the teacher's quality, motivation, and consientiousness.

Flexibility to the online students is obvious, students can choose the online course in their spare time, especially for those 24-hours a day, 1-hour-shift courses, such as Englishtown - an ESL online class. On the other hand, since most of online courses are worldwide, the levels of the students are varies; the culture backgrounds are different; the learning progress will be different and somehow risky to the students. This diversity leads the difficulty for effective communication, which is very important in class discussion or other kinds of incorporation in the classroom, and therefore limit the learning outcome. In another words, the learning outcome becomes somehow risky in online learning. Besides, these diversities bring up a big challenge to the teacher who hosts the class.

The effective and interactive communication will be the biggest challenge to the teacher in online learning. This is required to hire high quality teacher. The "high quality" here means being skillful and tactically flexible to flourish the classroom with a certain level of knowledge about the subjects. It includes the teacher's personality, skills and acdemic level. For example, in the ESL class I attended, the teacher's English accent, the humourousness, and strategies to organize the class influence the class critically. The students can sneak out anytime if they feel unconfortable with the teacher's English level, include speaking and writing; if they don't like the lesson (if it is dry and boring); if they don't like the personality of the teacher who shows humorless or brainless. So, , in the class, the tone, the manner, and the way of talking will determine wether the students stay or not. If the teacher cannot grasp the students' interest in about five minutes, the students have just gone into "air"! Therefore, the teacher's quality is so important. A teacher can motivate the students, inspire them to follow him all the way down to the end of class and guide them learning in fun if he want to, love to, provide students a good lesson consciously; or, he can just get his money and play the teaching as a "money-driven job" and turn the class "meaningless". One words describe this as "who cares" mode. In this mode, the teaching is "too easy" to a teacher but "so risky" to the students.

That's why I say "it either is too hard or too easy to a teacher" and online learning is risky to the students.

So, online learning has a lot of advantage and I want to advocate it. However, choosing the online teacher needs to be mindful. Online teacher should have high motivation to teach; should have better communication skills to be able to teach; should have a humorous manner and personality to teach; should have a rich arsenal (strategies and knowledge) to teach. Otherwise, eventually, 'they've all gone". haha.....

Of course, another point, the payment for online teaching should be higher! It's so important to US!

Welcome comment:-) Especially different opinion.

Story telling -- Amazing Smilebox --Thank you!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

This is amazing. It's so easy to create a story telling by using smilebox. It's a fantastic tool and good for our teaching for sure. How pity that we couldn't use it for FREE! Poor educator, it seems we are lack of money at our packet. (I use a free trial for only 14 days from today. I don't know when they will close it)

Story Telling by using PC Movie Maker

I made a digital story by using PC Movie maker. It's almost the same as Mac iMovie that Kevin introduces to us today. My method is not very smart but it works well.

There are several steps:

1. Prepare all the pictures and video segments well. Be ready;
2. Open a new project page in PC Movie maker; pull all the pictures into the project page; if it is a video segment, you should only pull one piece a time.
3. Drag these pictures on story board and arrange the certain time span for each picture; if it is a video segment, then it automatically has a certain time span.
4. For the video, after you drag one segment on the story board, you can pull another segment into the project page and arrange it on the story board.
5. Check everything is ready, then trun on "narrate timeline" icon (a small microphone icon at the lower left). Start to record.
6. After finishing the record, save project first; then save the data by "save movie file". Until now, eveything is done.

Let's share my digital story with you below. I'm a little nervous when I recorded. So, there is a lot of mistakes in the audio. What makes me so happy is it works!

Welcome comments and I like to share your skills as well.

Short Story by Using Cosmic-Life

Cosmic Life, it's an amazing tool for creating story! I believe my students will love it.

Introduction of several new technologies

Today's class is really excited.

Starting from the energy-saving light bulb, Kevin introduces another new high-tech tool that can be applied in teaching, document camera. It is also called digital presenter. This allows a teacher, lecturer or presenter to write on a sheet of paper or to display a two or three-dimensional object while the audience watches. This product is available in Smart Technologies.

The most impressive character of this camera is being able to display real-time images of any static or moving object onto an interactive whiteboard for your entire class to see, instantly. You can also capture images with Notebook collaborative learning software and use them to create interactive lessons. In the class, Kevin shows us how to use this digital presenter combined with labtop computer and projector to organize a fantastic lesson. Just using a simple switch, he can manipulate this system easily and smoothly.

If I had this camera, I could show 2D collision in my Physics class on the glass surface to verify momentum conservation vividly; If I have this camera, I can directly use my handwriting to present equation solving without tablet computer; if I had it, ... A lot of burden on preparation of teaching would be released. However, Kevin tells us that the price of this document camera is in $800 ~ $3000 range(it depends on how many modes setting there), it's even much expensive than a smart board. So, we need to think about it.

Of course, the most important is how to use the high tech tools effectively in order to improve teaching. The lesson design and lesson content are more important than technologies itself. Without this in your mind, "You can also do silly things even you have a good tech tool".

Follow by a work sheet discussion on useful tech tools adequate to different teaching situations, Kevin explains Special Education Technologies( SET ) by using his own wiki sites. Kevin stresses again on Cosmic life, which is very useful to engage students in writing, and digital image to guide us on our digital story telling. Another software attracts my attention during the class. It is iMovie software for Mac. computer. It has similar function as I used Movie Maker in my PC, but it is said that its functions are much stronger than that of Movie Maker. iMovie is a fantastic quick tool to adding the movies. It has a great build-in sound too.

The followings are presentations my colleagues give. It's an excited time. I do appreciate what my colleagues do, they present such a "big meal" with so "rich nutrition" in front me. I'm starving:-) Thank you so much!

The first is GPS and Google Earth. GPS can be used as navigation, tracking and position measuring, it also can make lesson plan; Google Earth can be definitely applied to any of social classes and science/math class. When I hear the discussion from my colleagues, I feel so happy because, all of these is very interesting to me.

Continuously, I follow another colleague to learn how to create my own website for teaching, through goole site. Oh, my! This is just as a "meal" on my table but I don't know how to find it and eat it before today! How silly! It is a good lesson that should be kept in mind. Exploring is the most effective way to learn and we should put it as the first priority in our life. Otherwise, I won't learn anything even I am in a "treasure cave".

"Alice! Alice! How lovely you are!" Another free software that is definitely good for me in writing my digital story and it is soooooo~~ helpful for people like me, who is almost a "blind" and "deaf" in programming.

I'm going to do my "treasure hunt" soon after. Just wait, I'll show you what I can get from their "treasure cave". My exploration will bring some happiness. Don't be rush, I'll show you:-)

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

SMARTBOARD makes you SMARTER

Here are collections about a new technology used in classroom-->Smartboard, an interactive teaching tool that can foster learning and make a dramatic change in learning outcome.

Before we use it in class, we need learn some basic skills for using smartboard with other SMBtools (here too) and how to set it up. (you can also refer the visual information here). When you have basic knowledge, try to think what kinds of activities you can organize in your class. The activities are various and you need to choose something useful. Also, some activity tool-kits are available here and there.

Let's see some examples. smartboard in Physics class; Smartboard in Social study class; case study; And it works on teaching in elementary class and Kindergarten as well! It makes teachers happy in teaching! Oh, look at these animations! So cool!

Ways to reduce the expense of using Smartboard. (save the money!)

1) Build an infrared smartboard by using Wiimote.
2) See how much I can save.
3) How to use Wiimote SMB
4) Only spend $20 or less!

The expert of doing this is Johnny Lee!

Enjoy the Smartboard!

Class Note June 4th,2009

1. About the article writing:

• ­"Everything I put into it disappeared, it's painful". --> What is the collaboration? ­


• Thinking about what you can bring it in is much important for an effective collaboration.


• What is the advantage to do so? -->Everybody works together at the same time.

2. Choice for children:

• ­What is valuable?


• How do you deal with the parents who has different perspective to the education?


• Culturally, there is some challenges as changing the system. (e.g. Univ., parents, school system)This change is not only a challenge to the teacher, but also to the children.


• Children may feel difficult to make decision because they are not used to it.


• Children have choices, but they are still in the school system (rule, policies, etc)


• Choices means help students to be ready to learn in their ways (enjoyable way). -->build a flexible environment for an active learning <-- Kids have the right to choose what they want to learn.


• People work the best on the certain structure, but not for the other structures.


• Having choices provides more free space to keep students "alive":-).


• What can we make something meaningful to the students? It's our task.


• As to allow a choice to the presentation, what should we do? --> Answer: choices for students are -->what kind of tools you can use/ how many slides you're using? However, there is no choice for doing or not doing the presentation.

3. About portfolio (9:50am):

• ­Learning is as a journey --> Writing down what you’ve experienced in this class.


• ­When the technologies fail us, how could we do for the class? (it’s for the discussion in your blogs, or in your contribution to the class)


• You can take photos, videos, anything is related with your progress, you can put in your portfolio.

4. Webquest:

• Web 2.0 wraps out of it. It's used in 1980-2002 or 2003.


• It's a guided treasure hunt.


• There is a filter to narrow down the information, not like the information got in google-search, in which you get too much information and hard to get the one you need. (Webquest is filtered)


• Turn to the website where there are many tasks for us: taskonomy.

5. Story telling(10:40am):

• ­Jason Ohler is a professor who is passionate on story telling.


• Art is critical to our culture.


• "A good dad"-->A powerful tool as a movie. It seems a good way to train kids telling stories:-) <-- speak with care.


• The next week, bring a camera and make a story.


• Write a story and it's a critical part of the story telling.


• 3 minutes story(approx: 3-page double space; be aware of this: 1 minutes resume can be done in 1 hour in a real class)


• It’s not put into assessment, it’s only class participation.


• When you have story, read to yourself for a couple of times. (record it and listen to it); work with your audio first and edit it later; as to pictures, you need to “google” it.

Front Row Product -- A dream

In the last class, a guest speaker visited our class and introduced us a new product: FrontRow sound system. (Sound Feel Portion? That was I heard) It can increase the clarity of the lecture; it can improve the quality of teaching; it can attract attentiveness of the audience; it can help the audience in word recognition; and the teacher will be more relax in the class. By the way, the company will provide 10-minutes training and help you to use the system. As a results, the studetns can understand more in the class, and teh understanding correctness will improve from 65% to 95%. I can't imagin how wonderful it is! But, I dream that there is a FrontRow Sound system in the classes I'm attending.

In one class I registered this term, there is a wonderful instructor. He can make the class active all the time, with many interesting activities and fun questions, we all love to be in his class, it's terrific! At the first class, there is only 43 students, but now there are total 55 students. I guess some students transfered to our class in the first week just because heard of his fame. Everything is excellent except.......his voice. His voice is perfectly OK if there is only 20 more students in a smaller classroom. However, now, it is a 55-students in a classroom that is as twice as large than usual! Sometimes, when we do an activitivity, (we used to do 3-5 activity every class), students have to be around him in circles. I'm not a swift person, I couldn't be in the closer circle. Usually, I could only stand out of three circles to listen to him. At that time, I always wish that he had a more projective voice with higher clarity. Then I could've catch his words more.

If there is a FrontRow system for him, what would the class be?

Marvelous! Amazing! Great!.... there is no words can describe his class then. That's too good to be true.

His raucous voice would become magnetic and sonorous, penentrating through us without any distortion; he would not need to repeat again and again for clarification to the students at the back rows; we students would just listen to him easily without struggling..........How can we say in Mandarin? "Shuang Ahh! Shuang!" Just like eating a juicy orange with cold, clear water in a hot summer day.

What a wonderful dream. I hope the dream will come true soon.