ACLL 2017 paper

the conference proceeding is officially published 2 days ago on the IAFOR repository.

our paper titled: Blended Learning for In-service Teachers’ Professional Development: Lessons from the Experience of a Singaporean Chinese Language Teacher Educator which we wrote about:

(abstract) Traditional face-to-face workshop is a common avenue for the professional development (PD) of in-service teachers. Chinese Language (CL) teachers in Singapore also attend such workshops frequently. Research has however shown that such workshops often failed to establish sustained learning and produce little impact on teachers’ practice, as well as students’ achievement. To address this efficacy issue, a blended learning workshop for CL teachers was designed and conducted. Specifically, this study examined the experience of designing and implementing blended learning as seen through the eyes of a Singaporean teacher educator. This teacher educator had gone from being a participant to becoming an instructor of blended learning workshop. The role switching of the individual in different settings allowed acquisition of deeper insights into blended learning workshop as a PD approach. The considerations of the instructor, and the challenges she faced during design and implementation were described. The significance of this research lies in the lessons from the findings that could be useful for consideration when blended learning teachers’ professional development workshops for better outcomes are to be designed.

the full proceeding PDF can be found here.

the local mirror goes here.

teachers’ pd and change in teachers’ beliefs

as a note to self, extracting this from my own writing:

“Fives and Buehl (2012) have identified two salient features of professional development program that could encourage change in teachers’ beliefs — a focus on task or strategy, and the development of a community of practice among participants.” (p.338)

reference:
Fives, H., & Buehl, M. M. (2008). What do teachers believe? Developing a framework for examining beliefs about teachers’ knowledge and ability. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 33(2), 134-176.

change photo

what world will my child live in

saw this video shared on moe channel in a feed:

(02:33-) “one thing that is going to be very important is to…learn to learn, in which as you are learning the theory, you are also applying it to a set of problems that are very real. The computers will know the fact, and the computers will be much better at executing the procedures than you will ever be.”

translating it to the two aspects of language learning (cultural content & skills):

“one thing that is going to be very important is to…learn to learn, in which as you are learning the language skills, you are also applying it to a context that is very real. The computers will know the language, and the computers will be much better at executing the skills than you will ever be.”

“one thing that is going to be very important is to…learn to learn, in which as you are learning the cultural contents, you are connecting them to a context that is very real. The computers will know the fact, and the computers will be much better at recalling the contents than you will ever be.”

what are we (both school/teachers, and parents) teaching today that is preparing our children for the world they are living in tmr? #food4thought

translation error phenomenon and the phenomenon behind

received this advertisement pamphlet by singtel selling 3G services in view of the impending 2G termination:

as a CL teacher, the choice of term in the blue bubble immediately caught my eyes – “赶忙”. in the same moment, i hypothesised it’s #ThankUGoogleTranslate problem. indeed, a quick check on Hurry, the term used in the EL bubble, yielded 赶忙 as the 3rd translation. anything in the top 3 must be good right? (:

posted the photo on fb, and we observed different reactions, with mostly sympathy of the error’s occurrence.

while such occurrence of error is not a first, nor will it be the last, i think we should look beyond the phenomenon itself, and ask WHY it occurs at all. the reasons could be many.

as a CL teacher (educator), my immediate question is how did these grown-ups learn CL when they were in schools? Were they taught to become a lifelong learner of CL, or were they taught to inherit the language (contents) from the teachers? to become a lifelong learner, it means that one is able to learn and to use the language when my teacher-guru is no longer around me. but, the over-reliance on Google Translate (or some other online translation tools) appears to suggest otherwise. it appears to me that these grown-ups are using Google Translate in place of the trust-me-all-guru who is no longer around. in short, they lack the know-how of learning the language in life beyond schools (and exams).

in terms of know-how, if a Science teacher is to teach students to think like a real-world scientist, what is a CL teacher teaching his/her students to think like? a writer, a poet, a linguist, or an exam-Acer/passer? the outcome goal is critical; with only the outcome goal clearly set can a teacher possibly design his/her lessons to enable students to learn to being and becoming the goal.

if you are a CL teacher reading this, what is your goal? what are you already doing to enable your students to learn, and to use the language lifelong? the transmission of large amount of knowledge has probably proven to be futile as the singtel pamphlet has revealed.

当你思考科技与教学的关系时

"当你思考科技与教学的关系时,无论是想选择某项科技、介入某个平台,只要你从学生学习的角度出发,怎么学如何学,或作’学习本位’(cf.教本位), 就不会差太远了。" (Tan, 2017)

to cite, if anyone is ever going to do that (:
Tan, Y. H. (2017). 当你思考科技与教学的关系时. Edublog.NET – A Singaporean Teacher’s Storeroom. Retrieved from http://edublog.net/wp/2017/01/21/%e5%bd%93%e4%bd%a0%e6%80%9d%e8%80%83%e7%a7%91%e6%8a%80%e4%b8%8e%e6%95%99%e5%ad%a6%e7%9a%84%e5%85%b3%e7%b3%bb%e6%97%b6/