love teaching , love life

In this week I read an impressive blog named Interviewing Icha Sarwono,IndonesiaD in Vicky Lora's blog.The blogger made an interview with an Indonesian teacher named Icha Sarwono who is very active on social media and spread not only her useful teaching resources and skills, but also positive attitude of life all over the world.

After reading the blog, I came to be Sarwono's fans and followed her blog, then I found it is so much pleasure in the ELI teacher's career life. On one hand, She has rigorous requirements and high standard achievements on her profession, she's a really outstanding ELT teacher now teaching K2 class.On the other hand, she's a one hundred percent life activists.she like spending sparetime with children, pets(she has four cats),keeping eyes on fashion like many young ladies. She love cooking, also involve her class in cooking activity.

I have deepgoing understanding about what kind of characters more than professional skills of teaching in classroom should belong to a good teacher from Sarwono's life. Teacher should realize the importance of equality of communication, you have to put yourself in students' position and take their feeling into consideration all the time. If students treat you as peers or friends, you could say you have get 50% success. The other 50% success is knowing how inspire students through suitable means, as Sarwono said, “I think what we should have in mind when teaching young learners is that you cannot force them in accepting all you have to give at a certain time. They need time to bloom. We should know also that it is better for the kids if they can experience themselves rather than asking them to visualize.”

Revolution in Education

Internet will most likely become mainstream trends over the next decades, which have already permeated into every aspect in education.In the video <Social Media Revolution>, I get more understanding on how social media changed and changing our lives in depth through the statistical data:

• If facebook were a country, it would be the world's
3rd largest.

• If Wikipedia were made into a book, it would be
2.25 million pages long.

• A new member joins Linkedin
every second

           ...

As Eric Qualman said,we don't have choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it. From the video <Educational Change Challenge>, I realize that every day could be the best way for students to be educated, and every method could be the most useful method for students to learn. What teachers have to do is let students could learn from not only classrooms, but also the whole world.

So how do we understand the "whole world"? Students couldn't overview the whole pages of 2.25 million pages in Wikipedia, couldn't understand every kinds of culture, but they have the opportunities to find information and knowledge in every aspects from whole world's websites, and connect to far greater numbers of humanity with greater intellectual capital. They could share information with each other even in long distance, could learn more diversity cultures in different groups of people, and could learn and teach in online interactive activities. Teachers could use activities and technologies that encourage students to share learning and resources, and form communities of practise. One example is the video <Networked Student> which was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemans and Stephen Downes (retrived from the brief introduction below the video,), students use blogs, itunes and other SNS to build up their information exchange system, even teacher just plays the role as a guide and instructor in process, students have consolidated their forgone knowledge and accept many kinds of contents differ from theirs.  

How can you use Weblog in your classroom

  In general sense, Weblog is an easily created, easily updateable Website that allows anthor to publish instantly to the Internet from an Internet connection.

  There are wide variety of ways to use Weblogs in schools:

•   Class Portal: a great entry point for Weblog use is to build a class portal to commucate information about the class and to archive course materials. Many students really enjoy acquiring course materials in the faddish and convenient method. Parents also love the transparency and the ability to access class materials.

•   Online Filing Cabinet and E-Portforlio:the class can go paperless as students simply post their work online for peer and teacher response.Firstly, students never misplace their work. Second, having all of their work organized in one place makes for some great opportunity for student reflection. Finally, work on a Weblog can be shared with others who might be interested or invested in the student's progress.

•   Collaborative Space: Weblog creates spaces where students can collaborate with otheres online.

  From myself, I will be interested in using Weblog as the class portal and students' individual/collaborative working spaces, students would be expected to use 2nd language in Weblog at home or other places with internet connection.


  Two official learning standards met from ACTFL（National Standards For Foreign Language Education）:

  Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions

  Standard 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting