EduBlog.NET v3

when’s the last time u changed your wallpaper? citing this para off smashingmagazine:

Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it

it’s time to change your wallpaper and smashingmagazine.com is offering you a nice SEVENTY 70 choices! (:

heard of ADE? if your answer is no, you’re like me anyway, this is really something nicely put together, by Sabrina, a 六语人才 (yah i know, video only says 5, but i defined one more). ENJOY! (:

ADE 2010 from Sabrina F on Vimeo.

this afternoon received an email from 张豫峰师 and i was told our article, 《以元认知为主导信息科技为辅的口语教学模式探索》 (A Metacognitive and Information Technology Integrated Approach to Teaching Speaking in Chinese Language), was selected and republished in the prestigious 中国人民大学书报资料中心《语言文字学》， aka 人大复印资料《语言文字学》。

期刊简介 (source: http://ipub.zlzx.org/ )
这是一座精挑细选的文献资料宝库。它以涵盖面广，信息量大，筛选严谨，突出学科热点焦点问题而成为国内同类期刊中具有权威性专题文献资料宝库，也成为国内外了解中国语言文字学研究最新成果的最集中、最权威、最精华的信息出版园地和专题文献资料库。在这里您能将看到编者以敏锐、独特的视角为您精心挑选的有关语言学、语言文字规划、语言文字规范、推广普通话、社会语言学、语言教学、对外汉语教学、计算机多媒体辅助教学、计算语言学、面向中文信息处理的现代汉语基础研究等等多方面的前沿研究成果。

这是一片属于语言学文字的精神家园。是一本面向所有语言文字研究与教学工作者的重要刊物。不论您是语言文字研究部门、信息处理部门、文秘系统的专业人员，还是高校中文系、计算机系、外语系和对外汉语教学专业的师生，或是中等师范和中学的语文教师、各级语委的业务干部以及其他语文爱好者，您都会重视它，需要它。

while it felt good for a while, i was asking myself when can i possibly work towards another such publication? it’s nowhere in sight

these few days were in and out of major meetings reporting and demoing on the upcoming The ICT Connection website, and was guided to think of the website’s next phase of development. the idea of building a community among teachers who are interested to come together to work and improve on existing ICT lesson examples. and saw this post by Christopher D. Sessums defining web2.0:

Web 1.0 = me
Web 2.0 = me + you

Web 1.0 = read
Web 2.0 = read + write

Web 1.0 = connecting ideas
Web 2.0 = connecting ideas + connecting people

Web 1.0 = search
Web 2.0 = recommendations of friends/others

Web 1.0 = find
Web 2.0 = share

Web 1.0 = techies rule
Web 2.0 = everybody rules

part 2 and 3 probably’s the way forward for The ICT Connection. but again, are our teachers ready and have the time to embrace this Web2.0 culture or perhaps i should say “Web2.0 lifestyle“. it’s like owning an iphone, it’s not abt the physical device, it’s abt adapting to and owning a new lifestyle.

saw this piece of drawing within Christopher D. Sessums’ post on 150+ Resources for Teaching and Learning:

particularly attracted by the “MONSTROUSLY LARGE BLIND SPOTS”. dun ask me why, the brain’s quite dead after running 8.5 hrs of afterburners for 2 consecutive days. it’s simply a feeling of 渺小, especially if you are doing some research or lit review lately, you’ll likely feel likewise

of cos if u would like to find out abt the exact context of the drawing, go back to the source (:

if you often like to use little graphics/icons in your presentation, student handouts etc, and you’re recycling ms clipart too often, check out these nicely created FREE icon sets by IconEden (:

open source has done it again, iTALC – Intelligent Teaching And Learning with Computers is a free opensource computer lab classroom management software. and funds can be spent in obtaining other resources for learning and teaching

was just talking abt eBooks in the 2010 trends two days’ ago, and i found this piece of video via richarson’s post:

nice? (:
nice!

was reading will richardson’s end-of-the-year reflection posting on “changes” in the year, and co-incidentally, i saw this post by Dr Ashley Tan featuring an experiment conducted by harvard on some pple’s oblivious to drastic changes. (thanks tuck soon for showing me dr tan’s blog after i asked if he knows of anyone else in singapore who blogs abt education technologies. if you belong to this ‘rare species’ and u’re reading this post, pls leave a comment to get in touch!)

my initial response for the change blindness expt is a chinese proverb 成语 that comes to mind: 视而不见 (literally ’see, and yet not seeing’; metaphorically meaning is somewhat different). but it does not help to explain the phenomena. my gut feel tells me that i will also ‘fail’ the expt, cos i’m an audio person (ref VAK), and i often find myself in situations where i’m supposed to see yet i fail to see, literally. perhaps i’ll notice the change of ‘voice’ of the person in the harvard expt? i’m not sure (:

my response to both posts in terms of change is another proverb 谚语： 一动不如一静. perhaps this would explain why to change is so difficult. another way to look at it is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. and that’s why one choose to 视而不见 and be blind to changes though it may be so obvious? cos wat 黄再源老师 said had always hold true : “现实生活中的现象，只要成语里找得到的，那就是正常的。 ” imho, 此乃真知灼见也 (:

found this THE Journal article via TuckSoon’s blog, and thought perhaps i can write some thoughts as well. haven been able to post much meaningful things to this space for a long while … the five (5) trends:

1. eBooks Will Continue to Proliferate
i’m not sure how popular eBooks are with our youth or in our classrooms. personally i dont own one, nor like to own one at this point in time. staring at a monitor/screen whole day long a work is enough for me, no more screen per se; plus an eBook is still not built for quick browsing; reliant on power source is always an issue for any electronic device. if u’re like me who likes to use a pen/pencil/highlighters to draw/scribble in a (text)book, or even to fold pages of a book as bookmarks, an eBook doesnt seem to be able to meet my needs. last but not least, i’m worried for our world-class myopia rate among youth.

improving presentation aside, as mentioned in the article, i think an eBook will really be of value and not just electronic paper, if any content in the book will seamlessly link me to the larger community, as large as the internet, as close as my study mates. ideas can be exchanged, explored and clarified while one reads from an eBook. perhaps the eBook techonology has reached this stage and i’m totally unaware of it? utterly possible. if so, i would like to play with one and explore its capabilities for learning and teaching in the classroom.

2. Netbook Functionality Will Grow
we juz gotten ourselves an acer aspireone recently, as the price was too attractive to be missed on a purchase-with-purchase deal. after using so many different laptops all these years, i only like three things abt a netbook (1) lightweight (2) long battery life (3) relatively cheap full-capability computing device (not suitable for CPU or graphics intensive application though). i’m not quite sure what other functionality the author hopes to see, but personally if a netbook can be turned into a TabletPC with stylus input (not touchscreen type, e.g. kohjinsha, asus t91; but TC1100 for e.g.). if the true tabletPC stylus input capability is extended to the netbook, it would allow for an additional way for students to interact with the device.

3. More Teachers Will Use Interactive Whiteboards
anyone who’s been into a classroom can testify the importance of a black/whiteboard. however, the ‘light speed’ development of ICT doesnt seem to quite catch up with this one single piece of ‘educational technology’ in our classroom. personally, i would be most happy if more teachers have the chance to access and use an IWB in his/her classroom. though some may argue that an IWB promotes mostly frontal teaching, well, i would say frontal teaching wont go away even if there isnt the IWB. it’s a change in the pedagogy of the teacher that should be looked into, and i believe an IWB will be able to find it’s place for any methodology/pedagogy a teacher chooses to adopt. here’s a lesson i had cooked while imagining i had an IWB in the classroom. yes, the sad fact is i have never had the chance to teach in a classroom with IWB.

4. Personal Devices Will Infiltrate the Classroom
this would be true if it’s not already been so. once again, the key question here is how a school and/or a teacher would harness the positive impact of such a trend. if i recall, most, if not all telcos, are allowing unlimited smses for their student plans. if only i can cheaply and easily acquire a device attached to my laptop that can receive sms responses from students, assessment for learning would be made an instantaneous reality. how nice (:

5. Technology Will Enable Tailored Curricula
reading from the article, i do not doubt the capability of our LMS vendors to further enhance their capabilities to track students’ performances. i think the difficulty for a teacher would be how can i manage these wealth of data (that’s a nice way to say data OVERLOADING). our teacher to student ratio is still far from the day (if this day will ever come) when a teacher can comfortably tailor his/her instructions to recognise the diverse capabilities and learning needs of individual students. it’s not a technological issue here, but a human plus a larger systemic and reality issue that we’re looking at over here.

…. it’s getting late … time to sleep … (: