December 2004 Archives

It's now almost 2005. 10 min away. And beside me is my non-stop yh3 crawling around on top, yes on top, astinus. One year ago, he was still in me, and today, 5 min ago, he has succeeded in climbing onto his Tomy activity table and the sofa and almost succeeded in climbing onto the TV cabinet. Oops. That makes 1 less place, or more, that's safe at home. :) The wonder of life.

《2000年5月试卷二--综合填空》

这篇文章基本上是在讨论"读书是为了学做有用的人"的道理，内容重点在于说明什么是"有用"，即"有用的人"的一些特质。

那些不会读的字词应该查词典才是。

综合填空的一个作答技巧是要联系上下文，也就是说文章后来的内容会影响这里的答案，切记！

读书是要学做人，学做有用的人。如果，狭隘[xia2 ai4](21)地理解"有用"一词，把它拘束于物质上的用途，那么，只做有用的人是不够的。

[听21题讲解]

但是,有用是可以放到比较广泛(22)的层面上来看。

[听22题讲解]

...

古往今来,伟大的人凤毛麟角(27),伟大与否,是他人对你的评价,是历史的论断。

[听27题讲解]

历史上的伟人活着的时候,有不少就像落花生一样,平凡而朴实。他们或品格崇高(28),或才识卓越,却不为人知;

[听28题讲解]

也有不少一生落魄卑微(29),甚至饱受欺侮,但他们是形体毁灭而精神不死,光辉(30)事迹照耀千古,他们都称得上是伟大的人物。

[听29题讲解]
[听30题讲解]

What is a Blog?
Blog, also known as Weblog, is an online diary. The entries are dated and arranged in reverse chronological order. One's bits and parts of life are shared with anyone with internet access on this open platform. Blogs used for educational purposes are known as edublogs.

Why does one blog?
Since blog is a diary, the reason for blogging can be just to recall some happenings in the day, or simply some personal reflections.

With this understanding, a large number of edublogs will exist for reflection purposes. This may include things like article reviews, book reviews, expression of thoughts on current issues etc.

How can edublogs be used?
Besides using blogs for personal reflections, it can also be used for group reflections, where more than one student co-own a blog.

With the commenting feature turned on, visitors to the blog may provide feedback and thoughts on the blog entries. Students may thus be asked to comment on peers' reviews. When the owner of the blog replies to the comments, a discussion begins.

Such discussions may be contained within the same blog, or visitors may choose to link the discussion back to his/her own blog by using the trackback feature.

Students shouldn't just be the ones enjoying blogging, but teachers should also join in the fun and benefit from owning a blog! Through a teacher's blog, students may be able to understand the concerns and thought processes of their teacher. This can lead to improvement in teacher-student relationship, and the benefits will extend to classroom face-to-face lessons.

A teacher may want to double his/her blog as a class blog where students can visit to put down their thoughts or feedback their comments on classroom processes. A separate blog can be created for this purpose too.

Often, teachers may not be able to clarify all of the students' queries due to limited classroom hours. Such Q&A can be brought offline to a blog, where a teacher need not give answers to questions straightaway, but instead carry out some scaffolding to allow students to discover the answers for themselves. Students may in turn document each of these self-discovery learning journey in their personal blogs. Students are now empowered with the ownership of learning.

If teachers can take such documentations of learning as part of students' assignments, this will instil meaning into students' writing. While they are documenting their learning, they are also writing their reflections for an audience, which is their fellow classmates (may include friends from other classes/schools too).

What's the benefits of using edublogs?
With the use of blogs, we are changing the way feeback is carried out. In the traditional paper-n-pen model, students are handing up written assignments for marking, the communication is very much one-way and one-to-one. The teacher marking the piece of assignment may be the sole person reading it, and the student will only receive comments from the teacher. With blogs, peer commenting can be introduced and views/ideas among peers can now be exchanged. Teachers will no longer be the sole source of feedback. Not to mention that the weaker students will now have the chance to model and learn from some of the better work put up by his/her classmates.

When teacher allows students to document their learning in blogs, they are transferring the ownership of learning to the students. Students understand that it has to be based on their own effort if they are going to make their blogs presentable to fellow peers.

The use of a blog by a group of students as a repository of resources, as well as to track progress in project work can promote cooperative and/or collaborative learning.

As blogs are relatively easy to maintain, it would save significant amount of time if blogs are used for a long term process, such as for portfolio building. Through a portfolio, a student's progress in learning can be captured over time. A language teacher may want to allow his/her student to build a reading/writing portfolio.

Students are most excited when they are able to customise the look and feel of their blogs by editing their blogskins. This adds to the element of fun in learning, which can in turn motivate students in their learning.

Where to find blogs? Where to create one?
Searching for "free blog" under Google will turn up many results. There are basically 2 types of blog hosting services, namely the free and paid services.

One of the most commonly used free platform is Blogger.com. Almost everyone will be able to create a personal blog with just "3-steps" under 10 minutes.
Other common names are LiveJournal, Xanga, Diaryland etc.

Some bloggers may prefer paid solutions such as TypePad for additional features, while others with access to a server may opt for solutions such as Manila, MovableType, WordPress, b2evolution etc.

Most of our students, if not all, have been using the free solutions for hosting their personal blogs. Some schools may choose to use the paid/hosted solutions which can ride on their existing IT infrastructure and gives better control.

How do I start using blogs for my lessons?
From the pedagogical point of view, you may want to relook at your existing processes, and identify an area you would like to introduce the use of blog into. Ideally, this introduction should replace an existing processes, e.g. students handling in of journals are replaced with blog entries; students submitting of project progress reports are replaced with entries in blogs.

Next you'll need to draw up an implementation timeline to see how you can step-by-step introduce blogs to your students. Depending on the IT proficiency level of your students, you may need to hand-hold them for the creation of accounts at the initial stage. You may also work with your IT HOD to engage any IT trainers in the training of students to get things started.

How do I monitor the updating of my students' blogs?
You will be able to monitor multiple blogs with one single web-based tool: Bloglines.com. Bloglines will be able to communicate with the blogs and check to see if these blogs have been updated. A detailed user guide of using Bloglines.com is available for download.

(updated on 7th June 2005)

In order to monitor updates in students' blogs, we will have to use the "Rich Site Summary" or "Real Simple Syndication" (RSS) feeds.

RSS feeds are generated automatcally generated by blog engines and it saves users from having to repeatedly visit favorite websites to check for new content or be notified of updates via email.

In order to monitor multiple blogs, we would strongly recommend the use of Bloglines.com. A whole class of 40 or more can be monitored with this web-based tool.

A detailed user guide has been created and you can download it here.

今天拜读了汪惠迪先生的这篇文章之后，不禁有些许感想。尤其是这一段：

钱钟书、余光中、林海音、余秋雨、二月河、柏杨、李敖、董桥、王蒙、王朔、贾平凹、张抗抗、赵忠祥等名家的作品都被李延良点校过，人人有错。

以上所列者，皆为大家，大家都有犯错别字的问题，试想我们的学生也还正处学习阶段，纠正他们的错别字固然重要，但若太过执著则可能忽略了其他可取之处了。

语言仍约定俗成也，试问是"年轻"还是"年青"，是"莫名其妙"还是"莫明其妙"，是"唾手可得"还是"垂手可得"，有时还难说得准呢。电脑时代，我们大可借助电脑来帮助语言使用者进行规范，但大凡电脑软件也还是人造的。不信的话，试试上列第三个例子，你可能会有意外的发现！

凡事适可而止，不要太执著，顺其自然吧！

（下列原文，供日后参考用）

Spent some time today to look at podcasting, one of the hottest thing lately, and well to look at its possible use for teaching and learning of course.

In short, if we compare podcasting to blogging, a blog post is a typewritten post, while a podcast publish an audio clip. The content for both can be similar, it's the form that is different.

To begin podcasting, you simply need a digital device that is capable of capturing sound/voice. One commonly used piece of hardware by podcasting fans is the iPod. (origin of the pod in podcasting)

In this experiment, I used the built-in microphone of my latest toy. You need a software capable of capturing your voice and converting it to MP3 format. The freely available opensource software Audacity is the perfect choice. And here goes my 1st ever podcast!

Looking from the perspective of language(s) teaching and learning, podcasting is most useful for the developing of oral skills. Students can be asked to tell a story, to comment on any issue (just like in an oral exam), or simply to retell their day's event! These are but some possiblities. Teacher may also use podcast to give assignments, such as 'completing the story after you have heard this podcast'.

As this tool is most useful in the development of the oral skills, where Mother-Tongue Languages are concerned, it may be more suitable for the primary level, where they are still learning to speak/narrate. For the secondary level, the Normal(Techinical) students would benefit most as a large proportion of their examination is based on the oral component.

During a self-declared break this afternoon, went back to the student's blog that inspired the HPINIT project.

Found 2 recent entries quite intersting, one is about Ophiuchus, the 13th constellation not found in this day's zodiac. Well, constellations ... stars ... reminds me of the physics module Understanding the Universe back in NUS. One most unforgettable thing is the quiz, where you witness MCQ questions with choices 'A' to 'N' (yes, 14 choices)! *faint*

The other entry was on one of those personality tests easily found on the web. After making a few clicks, it seems that I belongs to the "Hunter Soul", the result of my responses obviously :P

Without realising it earlier, I only came upon this piece of news when I did a google search of my own name. *gasp*

Well, another piece of write-up for archival purposes.

Increased enrollments, changing student expectations, and shifting patterns of Internet access and usage continue to generate resource and administrative challenges for colleges and universities. Computer center staff and college administrators must balance increased access demands, changing system loads, and system security within constrained resources.

To assess the changing academic computing environment, computer center directors from several geographic regions were asked to respond to an online questionnaire that assessed patterns of usage, resource allocation, policy formulation, and threats. Survey results were compared with data from a study conducted by the authors in 1999. The analysis includes changing patterns in Internet usage, access, and supervision. The paper also presents details of usage by institutional type and application as well as recommendations for more precise resource assessment by college administrators.

Access the full paper here.

[source: elearnopedia.com]

This is an example of how a teacher can make use of blog to communicate ideas and facilitate discussions with his class.

The blog also doubles as a repository, where students of past, present and future can obtain references.

Rather than focusing on a single tool, this piece will address a phenomenon which, for the example it sets, underscores the importance of new programs like BEAT. That phenomenon is both an idea and a set of tools known as personal Webpublishing -also known as weblogging, or blogging, after its most prominent form. Here, specifically, we will look at how weblogs are making an impacting on education.

By shortening and simplifying content publication and processing, personal Web publishing practices, like weblog authoring, content aggregation and syndication, and the formation of conversational networks, address a number of important needs of today's learning environment. To keep things simple, here we will highlight just two -what might be called the two-punch power of weblogs in education.

The full article goes here.

[source: incsub.org]

Here are the results to a survey conducted by J.Farmer for his paper. Will need to take a further look, but it's an eye-opener to see how other pple in other countries have been using ICT in their teaching and learning.

In this blog entry, we can find at least 155 newspaper feeds indexed. Our very own ST has been providing feeds, just wondering when is zaobao.com catching up? *hmm*

[source: weblogged-ed.com]

Back then we mentioned about a principal's blog, now we have at least one superintendent out there who is also on the blogging wagon :)

Check it out here.

[source: EdTech Insider]

The results for the above are out on James Farmer's blog.

Check it out here today!

The ASCILITE Conference 2004 held in Perth, Australia was just over.

Among the many papers presented during the conference, a paper "Communication dynamics: Discussion boards, weblogs and the development of communities of inquiry in online learning environments" by James Farmer was among them.

Some German researchers studied a sample of 175,000 15 years old students in 31 countries and discovered that too much exposure to computers may actually affect the developing mind.

Research shows that ability in maths and reading had suffered significantly among students who have more than one computer at home. And while students seemed to benefit from limited use of computers at school, those who used them several times per week at school saw their academic performance decline significantly as well.

"You could argue that's the big issue here: People need guidance in how to use [computers in education]," says Dr. Marcia Linn, professor of education and director of the Technology Enhanced Learning in Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley.

The people here will refer to not only teachers but parents as well. Many of our current parents have grown up and learnt in the no-internet era. So it seems that there are still some gaps to be closed in our education before computers will bring less 'side-effects'.

Read the source of report here.

Back from Samui yesterday evening. Have had 3 days of sunshine (which came as a surprise as weather.com reported rains and thunderstorms for the weekend). Forgot to mention in the previous post that accompanied yh3 on the trip were also Cheryl and Raymond. 5 of us had truly enjoyed ourselves.

Will definitely go back to explore more of the island in future :)

Showing off the power of blogging, on the move, using a pc at the free internet access area. The yh3 is on the way to Koh Samui. Flight originally scheduled for 2010hr, then delayed till 2100hr. Due to some unforseen circumstances, the final (hopefully) departure is now 2130hr.

Will be back on 6/12 (Mon), until then ... dun think will have access to internet over there :)

Will Richardson has stated FIVE(5) good reasons why he thinks that Blog should be titled the educational technology tool of 2004 in his post. In his words, blogs can provide:

1. Audience
2. Constructivist Learning
3. Collaborative Learning
4. Critical Reading, Thinking and Writing Skills
5. Information Literacy Skills

As presented during the EdTech Award Ceremony 2004, we too believe that the potential of blogs has yet to be unleashed, especially in the context of Singapore education.

I am not sure if anyone here has explored wiki, but looking at the online tools that we have experimented so far, web page, email, forum, none of which is so easy to use to faciliate teaching and learning. Best of all, blog empowers our students with ownership, the blog itself, as well as learning.

Guess what? Merriam-Webster Online has proclaimed the word Blog as the #1 Word of the Year for 2004!

Check it out here.

[Soruce: Ed-Tech Insider]

Just another fine example of the use of blog for teaching and learning. Jason Reagin has created a blog for his EL class.

Instead of maintaing their own blogs, students are required to visit their teacher's blog to practice EL thru posting comments on the topics posted in the blog.

Though as educators we are most interested in edublogs, it is also good for us to be updated on how blogs have been evolving in the global scene.

Read this article "Web of Influence" by Daniel W. Drezner, Henry Farrellto find out more.

This morning, some 20 teachers from four schools attended our workshop held in Beatty Secondary School Computer Lab 3. In the short 3-hours, teachers are introduced to blogs, as well as had a hands-on session on the use of Blogger.com. The day's programme ended with a break out discussion on the possibilities of introducing blogs into the teaching and learning of their various subject areas.

Softcopy for the presentation and handouts can be downloaded here:

1. Presentation slides (EdTech Awards version)
2. Blogger HOWTO
3. Bloglines.com HOWTO
4. WinXP IME 3.0 Chinese Input Installation Guide