EduBlog.NET v3

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 … (:

Saw this post by Christopher D. Sessums on the tools he had experimented with his students in one semester. I counted tools, just to name a few:

• the Google suite: docs, spreadsheets, reader, scholar, ….
• journaling: Blogger, Wordpress
• concept maps: Gliffy, Bubblous, Wisdomap, and MindMeister
• media/presentation: Audacity, Jing, Prezi, VoiceThread, Wordle

and many more …. you should read the posting and be AWED

how i wish i can experiment some, if not all, of these tools with students back in school

This morning I have presented our paper at the 1st Teaching and Learning of Chinese as a Second Language 2009 Conference, 第一届华文作为第二语言之教与学国际研讨会， 以下是今早会上分享的相关文件：

1. PPT简报

2. 《世界汉语教学》上的拙文 [直接下载点击此]

感谢各位专家与老师们到场的支持，也感谢卢家海老师帮我拍下两张照片。如果您有其他分享时的照片，欢迎您电邮给我，谢谢！

Was looking at the “Digital Youth Portrait: Dana” which forms part of the Digital Generation Project. Some good reminders from the video:

“the children that are digital natives a day … are still children. They are children who like stories, they are children who want to be respected, they are children that want to love learning …”

“they are probably more digital native at home than they are at school.”

“video and the internet are the next big wave of how we were trying to reach out to youth … teaching via the internet, conferencing through the internet … and that’s how she got sucked into it”

“literacy is not just not abt text, and it’s even just not about what’s visual, it’s about a combination of the visual, the oral, the interactivity, and being able to support children in all different ways”

“the techonology is the way to do, so you do not need to teach them all the time, you can get a kid with passion at home doing things …”

If you think (and personally I agree) Wii games provides some level of activity that can help to burn some calories, be sure to check out Project Natal for Xbox.

Look at the Announcement Trailer, and the consumer videos could be more convincing (:

Teachers & parents out there, day to come when we can stop worrying about overweight and obese students/kids (:

Learning and playing a musical instrument is one thing, having access to one or carrying one around so that you can play it anytime anywhere is another thing, especially when the instrument you learnt is a heavy/bulky one.

Once applications live in the cloud, the key to success will be harnessing network effects so that those applications literally get better the more people use them … Today we see that applications are being driven by sensors, not just by people typing on keyboards. They are becoming platforms for collective action, not just collective intelligence. — extracted from Webcast: Web Squared page

Was scanning an article “Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On” written by Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle for the recent web2.0 summit, and I was attracted by the Smule’s Ocarina application for iPhone. Perhaps I’m losing touch with some of the latest technological advancements without owning the phone myself, but it appears that music players can carry a synthesiser that can emulate their favourite musical instrument while moving. How conveneient (: (of cos here assumed you owned an iPhone). Check out the video below, AND do read O’Reilly and Battelle’s article to get a glimpse of the world we’re advancing into, if we are not already into it (:

today i received in my SNAIL mailbox FOUR copies of 《世界汉语教学》 (Chinese Teaching in the World). the journey of getting 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) has been a long one. it was first submitted in march 2008, after 2 reviews, it’s finally published! my first attempt at getting an article published in an international recognised blind-refereed journal (:

the article is an abridged version of my MA research, so if you would like to find out more, i would suggest you go here

Citation:
Tan, Y.H., Tan S.C., & Teo, E.H. (2009). A metacognitive and information technology integrated approach to teaching speaking in Chinese language. Chinese Teaching in the World, 23(4), 519-534.

陈育焕、陈成志、张永慧. 以元认知为主导信息科技为辅的口语教学模式探索 [J]. 世界汉语教学, 2009, 23(4), 519-534.

shared by Chang Zhi on fb, “The Fun Theory“, an initiative by VW. if schools can get this one day … *hmm* (:

and go find the world’s DEEPEST bin too at TheFunTheory.com