Primarily, insights into my learning on a Masters distance course with the University of Nottingham.
Google map of students and tutors on the University of Nottingham’s MA in Digital Technologies for Language Teaching (Distance Learning) 2014-2016 course. We are a small group: two students are in Vietnam, two more are in central Europe, and one other is challenging me for the ‘Furthest Away from Nottingham’ title, over in Canada….
EXPERT CORNER A new Teaching Chinese Online platform, Mandaring, is in soft launch. I was lucky enough to meet up with one of the Beijing-based Mandaring team a couple of weeks ago. Since then I have enjoyed being one of their guinea pigs, trailing their online lessons. 45 minutes of intensive speaking and listening left…
EdmodoCon 2014 Yesterday I sat in on in some of EdmodoCon’s live, online webinars that brought together educators from around the world for a full day of professional development. Essentially, teachers learn from teachers, and showcase the ways they use Edmodo and other digital tools in the classroom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAUrH9fOdDU?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281 EXPERT CORNER Interview in Chinese with Leo Laoshi Leo’s teaching background, love of Chinese characters, views on the current issues facing TCSOL and digital technology recommendations for learning Chinese. 傅强老师采访。傅强老师解释一下他的教学背景，热爱汉字，对学国际汉语当前存在的问题和数字化技术的建议意见。
EXPERT CORNER – Part 3 A dialogue with a university teacher with regards digital technology in the classroom. University Teacher 1 strongly believes in keeping her teaching skills fresh and up to date through regular training. She recommends Confucius Institute’s free summer training, available to overseas Chinese teachers and China-based teachers alike. We finished…
EXPERT CORNER – Part 2 We discussed Hanban’s International Curriculum for Chinese Language Education，the CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) approach， teaching Chinese characters and using the student’s mother tongue in the classroom. In 2007, Hanban’s Curriculum was developed with regards teaching Chinese abroad. The learning environment, and aims, of those abroad is inevitably different to…
EXPERT CORNER – Part 1 A dialogue with a university teacher with regards digital technology in the classroom. University Teacher 1 has been teaching Chinese for more than 20 years and has seen all of the changes and development in the industry first-hand. Using technology is a teaching basic for her. It’s not only a…
[wpvideo sswcLS00] I created a monster! After seeing my Powtoon video, a teacher friend went ahead and made her own video for a lesson about friends. Now I need to make an even better video..!
http://crazyfreshchinese.com/ A great place to get fresh, Chinese slang! The host, Jessica Beinecke, also hosts OMG! MeiYu for Voice of America, which teaches American English slang to Chinese students: http://www.youtube.com/user/OMGmeiyu Finally, listen to a fun interview with Jessica on Pop-Up Chinese’s Sinica podcast: http://popupchinese.com/lessons/sinica/omg-in-conversation-with-jessica-beinecke Her comment about learning Chinese being “2D”, peaked my interest. In…
1000 Chinese Characters! I made it! 我终于会写一千个汉字！太好了！