Project blog

Here is the address of my blog for the Project: http://hamwolgrade5.blogspot.kr/

My Watchmen wordle

Watchmen Padlet

Trying to get it to work, but it won't imbed :o

Created with Padlet
http://padlet.com/aidenmdon/4qz0hteq9lg5

Irfanview manipulated image

I thought I would manipulate an image from one of my favourite comic book characters of all time, Rorschach, from The Watchmen. The origional image is from a comic book cell, which I have cropped, and given a sepia tone.

For a comparison, check out the origional:

Here is an image from the movie:

A presentation I'm interested in.

I have become interested in community groups which are self-organising and self regulating. Environmentalist groups, as well as community groups and collectives, organising around principles of social anarchism hold a particular interest. Here is a slide show from a book, "Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective."

Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective from wordsfirst

Prezzi's I have done

All of these Prezzi's were made for a morning TV broadcast I did every fortnight at my school, last year. I would narrate over the presentation, talking about the subject matter in simple English. Eventually, they asked me to stop making presentations about South Africa. I guess the students were getting bored, or my co-teachers didn't think it was educational enough. So, I started to focus on mostly stuff about the USA, and I never heard another word of complaint. Go figure!

I first started the broadcasts with PPT's I had made, but I found that Prezzi allowed me to make much more dynamic presentations, and also allowed me to embed videos from youtube, which proved added interest.

Edit and post a video

I found this footage of one of my favourite philosophers (and Linguists), Noam Chomsky. He is talking about how the resistance to US Neo-liberal economic policies in East Asia, and the rejection of the rules that Washington attempted to impose, allowed the economic boom of a country like South Korea. 

The origional video had very bad sound, which I tried to enhance. I also added a title and credits, as well as, a short period of subtitles when he speaks about the example of South Korea (I would have subtitled the whole thing, but, it was taking too long :P ).

I think that being able to easily make videos from authentic content is an invaluable tool for the EFL educator. One can put in subtitles, break up sections so as to easily analyse them, and edit thewhole video to conform to the requirements of a specific activity/task or many tasks.

Seeing as I am currently teaching academic writing the feasability in my teaching is limited, however, I'm sure these video skills will come in handy sooner rather than later.

Quizlet

My first Quizlet is for learning transition signals to aid in academic writing. Transition signals are connecting words or phrases that act like bridges between parts of your writing. They link your sentences and paragraphs together smoothly so that there are no abrupt jumps or breaks between ideas.

However, I do not vouch for my translation skills :D

We know that vocabulary learning is fundamentally important as the basis of communication. However, in my Academic Writing classes, I can't be sure that the vocabulary that I am using is understood by my students. A short quizlet, such as this one, completed in class, could help me know which terms are understood by my Korean students and which ones they are having difficulties with. This gives me information as a teacher, to be able to target problem areas of comprehension in my writing classes.


I found a very useful Quizlet set of the most common words in the English language (probably taken from the General Service List). http://quizlet.com/class/661838/

An example would be lesson 1: 


We know that vocabulary learning is important as the basis of communication. However, 

English mania.

I embedded this video, which talks about English as the Lingua Franca of the world and how countries such as China are implementing rather harsh educational policies in order to get their population to learn English. I wish the talk covered the issues in more depth. The scenes of stadiums full of Chinese children choral chanting ideological phrases such as, "I don't ever want to let my country down!", while ostensibly learning English, is frightening to me. The one size fits all mentality of standardised testing (not disimilar to Korean testing) is also a worrying aspect of this issue.

Useful learning websites: Breakingnews.com and the Khan Academy

Hey All!

I would like to talk about two resources that have proved very useful so far in my explorations of online content for language learning.

Jeff Lebow posted this site earlier, http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/. I have a friend who is an elementary school English teacher and the mother of a wonderful 11 year old. Instead of sending her child to a hagwon for English instruction, she teaches her daughter English every night. I admire her dedication and often spend time talking to her daughter to give her speaking and general conversation practice.I sent her this link and she has begun using the graded level content which is appropriate for her child. She was very grateful for the tip. As a teacher, I find the variety and quality of the activities on this site to be very exciting. There will almost certainly be content I could use and adapt for my lectures at UNIST.

Another great find is the Khan Academy, https://www.khanacademy.org My friends daughter is now using the free Khan academy math course. Her mother is happy because she is studying math in English, which increases and broadens her English abilities, and she is excited and happy because of the integrated learning approach, which uses videos and helpful hints etc. Even I have joined, hoping to find some extra time between lecturing full-time, studying for this course and my other BUFS course, and writing my thesis (starting to get exhausted just writing about it all :o ) to buff up on my math skills in the privacy of my own home, where nobody can judge my rudimentary abilities.

Here is the link to the Khan Academy TED talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk


If any of you have great learning resources, please share them.

I am finding this blog informative, especially now that I have moved from teaching EFL at public schools to teaching EFL at the university level, http://eslteacherinkorea.blogspot.kr/

So, Jeff told us to try posting a photo...

That camel just won't fit :D

...a video...

a french guy having some kangaroo fun