Author: TYH

A Singaporean Chinese Language Teacher
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Tools for the classroom

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 🙁

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TLCSL 2009 Conference 华文作为第二语言之教与学

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！


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Children as digital natives

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 …”

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Musical instrument on the move

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 (:

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