IK's final thoughts in the final week

I really enjoyed this class, exploring new technologies that I did not know before and their potentials in the classroom. They are helpful not only for my professional development but also for my personal use.

Thanks to bloglines.com, I do not need to spend time visiting all the different news sites or blogs. Recently I added some more interesting blogs and podcasts, and will keep adding. At the same time, unsubscription would be done if the blogs or news do not attract my attention any more.
Delicious is really awesome. I can access to my favorites anytime and anywhere. It is great to share the useful web resources that other classmates added under the UFET tag. Also, it helped me to organize a great amount of web resources that were too much to store in my local favorites.
The most exciting thing is that I could create the web site by myself, which was daunting at first. I hesitated to decide to do a web presence as a culminating assignment because I worried if I could learn how to use an web editor. But, yes, I did! Although it is a small and simple site, I believe that it is a good start to make it grow over time.
As a learner, blogging was helpful to summarize my learning and look back what I did. I am thinking to keep blogging not just about technology but also about my learning or thoughts in the U.S.
Wiki is also a good experience to know. At first, wiki scared me, but after contributing our class wiki, I could figure out how it really works.

These technologies would be out of date someday. When I really work in the real classroom after graduating next Spring, new technology might be introducing in the classroom. How can I be updated in a pace technology develops?
I am thinking to explore some podcasts related to technology to subscribe in my bloglines so that I might be able to catch up with it. Please let me know if you have a good podcasting site about it or any other resources.

Finally, it was a great experience to learn not only from the instructor, Dr. Dawson, but also from the classmates, devoted teachers who are willing to train themselves for their students despite of a heavy schedule.

Beta blogger

I moved to a beta blogger and tried new features. It seems more user-friendly. You can edit your template more easily.

White fonts with black background in my previous blog was kind of hard to read, wasn't it? I think this template looks better to read than the previous one. Anyone who tried the new beta version and found a super function that we didn't have before but I do not know?

Oh, you can add labels for each post. What are they for? Is it to make my post be searched by search engines easily??

Knowing technology is one thing; using technology is another.

At first, I want to share what I feel as only a week is left by the end of the course. Now I feel like becoming a tech savvy user from an average tech user who just knew how to surf the net. It is like a new world! I think that I can put myself into an advanced user, compared to my friends around me who do not know anything about social bookmarking, RSS aggregators, podcasting, creating a website, plus wiki. I am proud of myself to teach such things to my husband who is in the technology industry but do not know anything about that. :)

However, it seems that knowing technology is one thing; using technology is another. Although I reviewed the articles about Wiki, it was hard for me to understand how it really works and how it is different from a blog. Technology is just fearful technology until you experience so that you can actually use it at your convenience for your own purpose. I may finally figure out how wiki works next week while I actually participate it.
To make contents I am learning in this course meaningful, I always try to search how they are used in ESL/EFL areas.
Here are some wikis for ESL/EFL.
http://e-poche.net/?p=65
http://wiki.eflgeek.com/
http://www.opensource.idv.tw/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
After learning how to participate wiki next week, I am thinking to contribute to one of wikis, (I was surfing around those wikis but cannot figure out how to participate, and had an impression that wikis for this area do not exist as much as other contents areas. :-O) through which I might be able to not only study more about it but also build up a community with other teachers.

Furthermore, although you know how to use technology, it does not mean that you can use it in your classroom successfully. As one interesting blog entry talked about "failure of wiki in classroom," it would be a common concern for teachers who tried to incorporate technology into classrooms but the technology turned out frustrating. Any experience like this?
I remember one ESL class I took a few years ago. I had the Internet class once a week, when a teacher just instructed students to visit her ikeepbookmarks.com and surf the useful websites to learn English. I felt that I could do that even at my home. The Internet should be used in a useful way, but I worry if I will be able to maximize the Internet potential in the classroom. I may experience trials and errors until I find an appropriate technology tool for the classes.

I did it!

I am so excited now because I uploaded my new webpages on the UF plaza site successfully(http://plaza.ufl.edu/ikyang/ ). Yeah~~! I cannot think of a right expression to tell my emotion in English. LOL. I feel sometimes like writing in Korean at the moment like this. :-)
I hope my new webpages are better than before.

I spent most of my weekends working on my website because I wanted to make this look better and make things done. I could not wait to know how other classmates could upload local files to a remote server successfully, and how they could make their websites look neat.
My classmates were wonderful to help me with my work: Brooke taught me a NetG online course so I could take online tutorials about Dreamweaver. Jessica and Victoria taught me where I could get great free GIFs and animations, and gave me information about coreFTP software to transfer my files to the remote server.

As working on creating a website, I realized that a photoshop would make a website look more professional. But it would be too much to learn this software at this time. I am thinking to learn a photoshop this winter vacation with online tutorials.

My culmintating assignment update

This week I want to share how my culminating assignment- creating a website, is going on. As a novice creator, I think I am pretty struggling with technical issues, such as designs, colors and graphics. However, since Dr.Dawson said that she does not expect me to create a mammoth website, I am trying not to hurry up. It would take longer time to make my website look fancy.

To submit my draft last week, I scanned the module of week 6 and storyboarded my website like below.
1) Purpose: It is a personal and educational website to share information with the intended audiences rather than a classroom web presence.
2) Audience:
- Students who are learning English or Korean as a foreign/second language (Targets might be young adults or adults.)
- ESL teachers
- Anyone who want to know me
3) Functions:
- Provide resources for the intended audiences
- Share my interests
- Communicate with the intended audiences
- Discuss the topics I am interested in with the audiences who have the same interests
4) contents:
- About me (personal & educational background)
- Bilingualism
- TESL
- ESL
- Korean
- a messageboard or forum

Well, it seemed okay so far but I was not sure if my website would look good with those ideas. Next I searched free web editors to create a web page, and found a Mozzilla free web editor that is equivalent to a Netscape composer. (Actually I tried to download the Netscape composer, but could not find where to download. I just realized that it is bundled in a Netcape browser software.)
I decided a left menu with a fixed top. The web editor looked easy to use just like a word processor, which made me think "Not a big deal!" As working on it, I realized that things are not going well as I thought. After finishing a rough draft, I spent hours uploading my pages into a UF plaza server, but failed. I guess it was because I did not have much information about FTP application. Well, if something does not work well, try other solutions.

A blog entry from Crystal helped me think about a free web hosting, so I searched the Internet and found one, which provided me an easy step to transfer my files to the server. After a while, my website was uploaded online successfully at ikyang.fateback.com. I was very proud of myself to accomplish a task. However,it looks so ugly. :( Comparing to my classmates' websites, mine seems worst. :-O
Now I think that I need to study a web editor more with online tutorials and a book. I will borrow "The non-designer's web book" to study, and may try Dreamweaver.
Although being challenged technically, I enjoy becoming a producer of WWW as I was just a consumer all the time, which is like transferring from a passive user to an active user. It is exciting!

Please keep your fingers crossed for me and let me have your feedback on my work whatever it is.

ESL/EFL Internet-based activities

I chose the option 3 to find pre-existing Internet-based activities for ESL/EFL learners, which I think would be useful for my future EFL classroom. Although teachers could use the same activities or methods in ESL and EFL environments, there are many things that teachers should take into accounts when implementing them because two environment are very different. ESOL learners in K12 in the U.S are required to learn new language and the subject contents at the same time, and academic language skills are rather focused to learn then communicative language skills in this environment. However, in the EFL environment, e.g. teaching English in K12 in Korea, a communicative language learning with skill-based activities is a focus rather than an academic language learning because they are learning subjects in their native language. The article, Teaching ESL Versus EFL: Principles and Practices, by Daniel Krieger, gives you more insights about the issue.
This article helped me with clear understanding about how task-based webquests could be integrated into skill-based ESL or EFL curriculum.

Most of the pre-existing activities I found are for high intermediate and advanced English learners.
http://www.call-esl.com/samplewebquests/lesson-template3.htm : This is a well-designed webquest for advanced ESL college students who prepare to study in an American universities. Students are required to sit in an American college classroom to observe an American professor and students. ESL students finally learn American college customs and compare them with their native countries, which might be so much interesting if you have students from many different cultures. In the EFL environment, I think that I could use this task if I can show a video of an American college classroom (if possible) to the student, which might be a substitute for the step 4. Students can practice extensive reading, writing in preparing PowerPoint slides, and speaking while making a presentation at the end.

http://www.angelfire.com/az2/webenglish/koko.htm : In this treasure hunt task, students can practice scanning strategy in reading because it involves searching rapidly through a text to find a specific point of information. Before doing the activity, students needs to know a purpose of reading and how this strategy can be used in their reading outside the classroom.

http://www.eslgo.com/classes/mi/ : I love this site, which is a multiple intelligence webquest for adult English learners. I myself did the test to know my MI, and I received high marks on mathematics and Visual/Spatial, which I expected. :) Through this task, students could have an opportunity to evaluate their own intelligence and let the teacher know about them more. At the same time, students are exposed to read a lot of English articles. Also, they are involved in writing a report in English.

http://www.nelliemuller.com/Whydidtheydothat_Student.htm : The task is to research flags of other countries and origins of them. Through this task, students could expand their knowledge about other countries and improve cross-cultural understanding, as well as improving language skills. I like this task because multicultural understanding is my interest. Also, considering English as a global language,I hope my students in Korea learn not only English-speaking countries but also non-English speaking countries including, developing countries to have a true global mind.

Finally, I guess that one of the reasons why the Internet is so popular in the EFL learning is because the Internet is a perfect tool that students can practice listening and speaking. In the EFL environment, English learners are rarely exposed to the language-rich environment. So the technology provides a virtual place that they can hear and speak the authentic language. http://www.esl-lab.com/guide.htm provides learners with listening activities based on specific topics, which provides semi-authentic environment to practice English. Students could self-study for listening exercise, and work in a pair or a group for pre- or post-listening activities.
http://www.manythings.org/ provides word games, puzzles, quizzes, exercises, slang, proverbs and much more for fun study, which will help students with building up bottom-up skills.

IK's Response to "Working the Web"

Looking back my first semester in my master's program last year, learning about 'a student-centered instruction' was like "WOW!!" to me.
As a person who grew up in a totally different world, my learning experience in school was to memorize a great amount of knowledge from the textbooks in a teacher-fronted classroom to prepare the multiple choice questions or sometimes short-answer questions.
My high school had a good-looking library with red bricks, where I sometimes studied for preparing tests but never borrowed books to research something.
My teachers in the subjects were only the information resources and never gave us the research assignment.

More than ten years have passed since I graduated from high school, so I believe, or hope, that teaching and learning in K-12 has changed and children in my country learn to "THINK" and "SELF-LEARN" in a student-centered classroom. (But I doubt it.)
70% or more of Korean use the Internet, which made Korea rank the 3rd place in the national information index in the world, as of 2005. So I am sure that use of the Web for teaching and learning would be prevalent, but as the author pointed out, it is important how teacher and students use the Web. Do they just surf the web without any purpose or do they use technology for authentic learning?
If teachers are not familiar with student-centered instruction, they may not be able to implement the internet-based instructional activities, such as treasure hunt, webquests, and so on. In order to incorporate this activity into the classroom, teachers' teaching philosophy should be changed at first and teachers should be willing to be a guide or a facilitator, instead of a authoritative figure.
However, we cannot blame teachers for not implementing these GREAT activities in their classrooms because education is always interwined with parents belief on education, educational systems, cultural/historical philosophy on education and so on.
How can we apply western ways of teaching and learning into my country? I don't know. I am always stuck in this question.

Considering application the Web into a language classroom, I think that the internet-based activities can be combined to task-based or content-based approaches. When teachers are implementing them in the language classroom, they should remember to set up "language objectives", such as key vocabulary, language structures, and language functions to help students accomplish the task. Without language instruction, students would be frustrated.

One more consideration for the activities is to consider learners' level of language proficiency. If students just started to learn new language, they cannot perform the task in the new language. Instead, they could use the Web resources in their first language to complete the task. In this case, teachers should know students' first language and students use the same language in one classroom.

My Final Decision on the Assignment

Alright, I decided to go for a web-based presence. I am excited to learn something new!

As for the contents, I need time to think about it. It would be for anyone who is learning English as a second/foreign language or for anyone who is interested in learning Korean as a foreign language. Because I am not sure where and what grade level I will teach after graduation, it is not easy to set up my future class. :(

A second thought about the assingment

After I looked at the Brooke's blog, I had a second thought about my culmination assignment. When I looked at four options, I actually did not understand a web-based presence (I have never heard this term before. Can anyone explain me more about this? Help me! ). I guess that it is to to create the website for educational purpose.

I took Digital Photography and Literacy & Technology courses before and I worked on developing some Internet-based activities, using Webquests or something. (After finishing this course, I might be able to get an ed tech certificate.) So it would be better to try a new task although it could be challenging.

I have never created a web site before so I don't know anything about a web software. Would it be too difficult to create one if I do not have any previous knowledge on this? I cannot decide if I would go for this assignment until my understanding about this assignment is clearer.

Culminating Assignment

I decided to develop an Internet-based instructional activity for my culminating assignment. I chose this because using the Internet in my future ESL/EFL class is my interest. I am thinking to either create new activity using the Internet or integrate the Internet into my previous lesson plan that developed without use of the Internet.

Teaching a introductory Korean at college in the U.S. is also my interest. So my focus might be a foreign/second language education, either EFL/ESL or KFL.

About Me

Hello, my name is Inkyung Yang. I was born and grew up in Seoul, South Korea until I came to the States in August, 2003 right after I got married. I had lived in Michigan for one year because my husband was studying at the Michigan State University for his master's degree. He and I moved to Gainesville in 2004 as he transferred to UF to pursue a Ph.D degree in the materials science. I started my master's program in ESOL/bilingual education at UF last fall. I will be graduating next spring. Yeah~!! :)

Studying education in the United States has broaden my perspective in many ways- not only learning 'what is education' but also understanding many different cultures that has melted into this society as well as the mainstream culture. I appreciate every experience here because they will be all my valuable assets for my life.

Before I came to the States, I had been working at IBM Korea as a product manager for five years. So I do not have teaching experience in school. I see my study here as a stepping stone to better change my career in the future.

Surfing the web, talking to friends over the MSN messenger, and writing my diary in my Korean blog are part of my daily life. However, I have never used RSS before, which now I found very interesting and useful to use. It was a headache to visit many different websites in a day.
I am interested in incorporating the Internet into teaching English as a foreign/second language in Korea for my future class. I hope I could get some good ideas from this course.