Survey Monkey: A Test from karinapearl I start as I mean to go on. That is, I am trying out digital tools with my guinea pigs, sorry, students (!) from day one of the first semester. I currently have two groups of ‘sophomore’ students (I had to double-check the meaning – it doesn’t exist in…
Category: Masters in Digital Technologies for Language Teaching
Primarily, insights into my learning on a Masters distance course with the University of Nottingham.
Inspired by Sandy Millin’s post about taking sketch-notes, a more creative form of traditional note-taking, and a Beijing-based friend who uses sketch app’s to promote her business, I downloaded the Bamboo Paper & Paper 53 apps to my ipad mini. The first result of which you can see above. Not exactly detailed, but colourful enough,…
Visual Storytelling As a regular user of online presentation tool Knovio, I was invited to test their new app for mobile phones. The Knovio team envisage users of this portable tool to document and present information in the form of visual stories. My first attempt at using Knovio Mobile was very intuitive, and by uploading…
Netiquette for Teachers Last weekend, I had the privelige and honour of guest presenting on Karin Heuert Galvao’s webinar Netiquette for Teachers. Karin is the Director of iStudy Interactive Learning, an online language teaching portal, based in Brazil. And Netiquette is something I have ample experience in, from my first online learning experience with the…
Here I am testing the capabilities of ThingLink – a digital tool that adds an interactive layer to any photo or video. Hover your mouse over one of the embedded icons/white circles and you will gain access to additional information in the form of text, image, audio and/or video. ThingLink tool has great appeal for…
COLT This summer I’m delving deeper into two very different areas – Teaching Chinese and Online Tutoring. Both of these courses are exciting for very different reasons – and if you can understand basic Chinese – which is all I can say (!) – then check out recent posts labelled 瑞娜说中文 and 对外汉语. The online course…
What do the Chinese Parents Think? Continuing my research into facilitating parental involvement, I wanted to think more about my role as a teacher from a cultural perspective. For my current SLA project, I am thinking of ways for parents to get more involved in their children’s learning. However, upon deeper reflection, it may be,…
Web 2.0 Creative Writing Tools and This week I began to think about what online tools would be suitable for enhancing reading and writing skills. With sooo many to choose from, I reviewed a list given by my tutor and selected two candidates: Curriculet and Little Bird’s Tales. Curriculet is a digital reading platform which…
A British Teacher in China As an individual, my view of teaching is based upon my own personal background, upbringing and culture. However, Starr (2012) highlights the dangers of this: “Western, predominantly Anglo-Saxon teachers (take) with them the assumption that the communicative approach (is) the ‘right’ way to teach a foreign language…” So as a…
Theories of Parental Involvement: Cultural Capital Theory and predicting Parental Involvement in Northwest Indiana Schools Cultural Capital Theory This paper by Ringenberg, McElwee and Isreal (2009) unveils yet another powerful theory that helps us understand how parental interactions may help or hinder student academic success: Cultural Capital Theory. According to Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction, children…