Create Your On-line Library

If you are also a fan of technology and love reading on-line instead of holding heavy books. DIIGO is an amazing site for you. Just quickly sign up a free account for it, then you will have a cloud library. The best part of Diigo is that you can make on-line notes and highlight lines right on the sites when you visit any websites, and all the notes you made will be saved once and forever! Then you can bookmark the websites you would like to visit some day again and share them with your friends. For convenience, you can put tags on every site so all the websites you collected are organized into lists according to tags. You can also explore new sites by following others' diggo and make new friends who share the same interests!

If you are a expressionist, then Diigo seems a little bit plain. Try Scoop.it! With Scoop.it, you can save your favorite websites with fancy title pictures and show them all on a 'photo wall'; isn't it fancier to watch your collections show off than simply get a list? What's more, Scoop.it will automatically provide you suggestion about websites according to your topic key words. You can do all the same stuffs that you can do on Diggo, like commenting websites, giving tags, following friends, EXCEPT you can't make on-line notes or highlight lines :( What a pity! But at least you have a fancy collection websites :)

I would suggest Diigo to those who consider more on working convenience using mobile devices; and Scoop.it is the best choice for those who want to make a social net work while collecting web resources. Anyway, the best way to figure out which one is your thing is check them out yourself!

Classroom and Teachers of Tomorrow

What do you think the future classroom will look like? A giant floating classroom? Robot teachers? Directly put knowledge into your brain? Wow, that's cool.

Take a glance at what classroom of tomorrow will look like. You might be a little surprised and disappointed. But yes, we are already experiencing a part of future classroom. The technology is changing our classroom and we have already put some hot stuff into use. We use smart phones and tablets in the classroom to read, calculate, search information and give lectures and presentations. These devices not only replaced heavy books and notes, they tend to become all-purpose belongings. With diverse apps supported, we can use them in so many ways in the classroom, like rulers, lights, or maybe broadcast radio station.

       Technology is still developing at an unexpected speed. The smart touch technology has made our dream come true to use only our fingers to operate different apps on large screens with touching and swiping.  Mobile devices can be used everywhere and at any time, especially when you want to make a difference. What will be the next change? Everything happened in science fiction movies may become real tomorrow.

The changing of technology of classroom also requires teachers’ constant learning and adapting. Years ago, “Adapting and evolving, teachers digitally empower diverse learners to connect, communicate collaborate, and create in an interactive technology-rich environment” is exactly a vision of 21^st century teachers. Have teachers reached the goal yet? Yes, absolutely, I think. With technology as a tool, students grasp knowledge more efficiently under teachers’ help. They have more resources to learn, share and have more spaces and possibilities to invent and explore. But because of the fast pace of technology development, teachers have to spend more time learning and exploring useful tools and preparing classes; this set a higher standards in the field of teaching. Quote Dana J. “Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” As teachers, we mustn't fall behind the pace of technology. 

What students expected is also what we should make our effort to achieve. I will try my best to work on this, will you?

Teaching with blogs

Blog, as an innovative product of internet culture, serves as platform for everyone to express ideas and thoughts; the blog culture stimulates people’s desire for knowledge. For it is open and has a variety of features, there are many possibilities to engage blog in language education use.

We can put reading resources and relative links on blogs and have our students post feedback on their own blog or comment on what they interest most. Due to the development of mobile devices, we can easily access blog everywhere; inside or outside school, students and teachers can share what they hear and see whenever a spark jumps out of mind. By reading others’ posts, one may follow the posters’ mind and get the knowledge from others; while the posters get satisfaction feeling being one of knowledge discriminators. Thus, blog provide a bridge of positive communication between teachers and students and even build a study network within students themselves.

Blog can also be used as a multimedia resource index. As mentioned above, we can put reading materials on blog. More than that, thanks to technology, we can have multimedia tools on blogs to share with our students. For example, for a student who is writing linguistic paper, we may introduce him how to type IPA symbols in the blog. We may also categorize our blogs for students so they can search information easily. Generally, we can use blog as a specific library that accumulates what we've studied. It can be useful for a teacher to improve his teaching as well.

What do you think? I’d like to hear your comments. Here are some official learning standards that meet my ideas:

ACTFL standards

COMMUNICATION

COMMUNICATE IN LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH

• Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions
• Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.

       COMMUNITIES

       PARTICIPATE IN MULTILINGUAL COMMUNITIES AT HOME & AROUND THE WORLD

• Standard 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting
• Standard 5.2: Students show evidence of becoming life-long learners by using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment.