My students are blogging.

It's exciting to see my students start blogging. Technology does bring some fun into the classroom, especially it has an impact on student learning.

Students' Blogs

Emily
Caroline

What You need to know when using digital imaging in the Classroom

The advanced technology has brought great impact on teaching and learning. There are a lot of resources and information out there on the Web. With a single clicking of mouse, information including digital images and graphics can be copied to facilitate teaching and learning. Digital imaging can be used in a variety ways to enhance learnig in different subject areas. Although fair use does allow teachers to make use of the copyrighted works, it is still very limited. It is important for teachers and educators to be aware of ethical issues when copy copyrighted materials. The following web sites provide information about copyright and fair use.
1. Videotape for the Classroom without violating copyright law
2. Are You Breaking the Law?
3. A Teacher's Guide to Fair Use and Copyright

Challenges for teachers

When I graduated from junior high school, my math teacher wrote some words for me: one day teacher, lifelong father/mother. To me, that indicated teachers are not only knowledgeable enough to give advice to students, but they are also patient, considerate, and caring like fathers/mothers to their children. However, nowadays, there are more challenges for teachers. To have all the charaterisitics listed above is not enough in the current teaching field. Teachers are facing a lot challenges ahead. For instance, they need to learn new technologies and integrate them into the classroom. It might be easier for young teachers since they are living in the information age. To older teachers, learning new technologies is very challenging and takes time. Even though it is very challenging, I have seen a lot teachers try their best to learn new technologies so as to facilitate learning and teaching.

In January, I had a chance to learn blogging in ESL/EFL. It suprised me that participants in the program were so enthusiastic and so involoved in learning the new web techniques. I felt thrilled about the impact of technology on teaching. It's even more amazing that a lot teachers around the world have been using weblogs in their teaching. Definitely, there will be a lot challenges in the teaching field due to the innovations of technologies. However, teachers are creative and persistent to overcome the challenges they will face.

A reflection from the article: The Changing classroom: Challenges for Teachers

Blog providers

I have created a couple blogs using different providers including no'time, tripod. I like Blogger better than the other two. No'time provides pretty templates but not very user-friendly-not easy to customize these templates, especially for new users. Tripod offers very user-friendly templates. It's easy to customize. Users don't need to know HTML. There are options provided for users to customize their templates. However, there are a lot annoying commerical ads (for the free blogs).

Why blogging?

Why blogging? I've asked myself several times. I think it is probabley the nature of being a teacher or educator--always seeking some way or strategy for effective teaching. Teaching is learning. Once we get into the field, there is no end for learning because there are always new things for us to learn and teach.

ESL/EFL Blogging

Learning a second/foreign language can be in a more authentic environment because of innovative technologies. Blogging is one of the tools that has make teaching ESL and EFL more authentic.

I always think that teaching is also a process of learning. Blogging makes the process more visible and transparnet - personal beliefs, characteristics, knowledge as well as concepts in a certain field that are visible not only to themselves but also to other people, who are interested or willing to share information in that field.

Moreover, blogging could be an exploration because the nature it helps individuals explore a certain topic to deeper understanding through personal dialogs and interactions. For me, blogging helps me explore something I am interested. More importantly, blogging is a learning process - you start from nothing (or something) and learn as you go as stated in the quotation.