Hannah's Nineth Week of the Webskills Course

It’s been a crazy busy week for me. After submitting the final project, I have mixed feelings. I have thought about what I have done so far, having some regrets on that I should have done my best. On the other side, it has been great time sharing and exchanging great ideas with people from various countries. I realize that there are so many, somewhat too many, resources out there I have not even heard of or tried. For me, as a content planner, it’s been a great opportunity to try new things and think about how to make the best use of them.

However, still, it is a hard to answer to the question “what is the best way to realize “Smart Education” for our children’s future?”. Successfully incorporating smart media or multi-media into the classroom seems difficult but worth trying. Because they can help teachers cater to a range of learning styles in the classroom, considering students are varied in terms of learning styles.

It someone asks “why smart education?” I would answer “for our children’s future” to the question.  

Hannah's Eighth Week of the Webskills Course

The eighth week of the course is coming to an end. I am sure people are busy working on their final projects. It is great to see them adapting new ideas directly into their classes or planning new lessons with technology for the students.  It is unbelievable we are almost finished with the course, already.

The last biggest task is to complete my final project plan. I am still working on mine. There are a lot of thoughts and ideas going on my mind. What makes me confused is not the lack of resources, but the excessive materials making it difficult for teachers to select what they want.

Implementing new technologies to the class is one thing, however how to properly manage it is another thing we have to closely think upon.

Adapting technologies to the class is inevitable in this era of smart media. However, it is still questioning what additional skills do teachers need? How we manage class with technologies?

Foreign language acquisition requires technology-based teaching and learning. It also requires students with greater autonomy in that since language learning takes certain amount of time and effort, studying English only in the classroom is definitely not enough.  

Therefore, I am going to spend couple of days to figure out how to realize “smart education” in our classroom?  I hope I will be able to answer the question “smartly”.     

Hannah's Seventh Week of the Webskills Course

The hectic week of 7 has been almost finished. Currently, I am in charge of organizing and managing International Conference on Educational Media hosted by Educational Broadcasting System, the Korea’s leading educational company. We invite many speakers including teachers and educational experts from many different countries to share the examples of future schools, and how to best use of “Smart Media” in this era of multimedia. Several educational broadcasting companies including BBC, NHK and YouTube are also going to participate in the conference.  

In line with this webskills course, the conference I am currently focusing on has been a great inspiration to make me organize my thoughts and narrow them down to the two main questions; the first one is how to realize “Smart Education” in our “real classroom”. And the second one is how can we encourage greater autonomy in students using smart media.

I am going to mainly address those two questions in my final report. How I come up with the right answers with those two questions will also help me deal with the problems I mentioned in my previous posts. For example, how can we narrow the widening educational gap between the poor and the rich and how we deal with students who are immersed and proficient in smart media, etc.

In the meantime, I also would like to raise these questions; are teachers adequately prepared for this new teaching and classroom environment? What additional skills do teachers need?

By combining and integrating those questions above, hopefully I will be able to come up with right solutions for the smart education and media for our children’s future. 

Hannah's Sixth Week of the Webskills Course

The sixth week of the webskills course is coming to an end. Actually, I have mostly spent this week thinking of my final project plan and trying to make it take shape. There have been so many useful resources and ideas from the class since the course started. For me, it takes time to arrange and organize them. Here is what I have put my ideas in order for now.  
Many changes are taking place in the classroom in an increasingly fast pace. Teachers have to deal with students who are immersed and proficient in smart media the classroom, which means that to improve our classrooms up to their experiences with technology requires that the classroom has to be smarter than the traditional classrooms.

I believe that successful foreign language learning in smart era starts from students in their self-directedness. When students choose what they want to learn, the ownership of learning and self-directedness will grow and they’ll become more responsible learners. Plus, this will be able to lead students with lower levels of English to higher levels of English, narrowing the widening educational gap between the students.  

In the meantime, are teachers adequately prepared for this new teaching and classroom environment? What additional skills do teachers need?

This is what I have been thinking so far. I am going to spend the next week to answer my questions and make them organized. I am looking forward to further development in my final project plan. 

Hannah's Fifth Week of the Webskills Course

The half of the course has been almost finished. Now, my research on the final project seems to be narrowing down to the two main points. One is how to narrow the educational gap between the poor and rich with the help of using technologies. And the other is how to ensure scoring reliability for speaking and writing assessment since it is the time when the National English Ability Test strongly focusing on enhancing Korean students’ communicative competence in English is about to be implemented in Korea. Now these two things are my biggest concern in terms of developing and planning smart educational contents for the classroom usage.

In this era of Smart Learning, how we can best help teachers and students to learn English through technologies and Internet tools like Rubistar, I was very impressed after trying it. What additional skills do teachers need to deal with students who are proficient in smart media. Many people are concerned about students immersed in or even addicted to smart media and exposed to so-called “Internet Pollution”. However, in this era of multimedia, I believe using technologies for foreign language teaching and learning seems to be inevitable and necessary at the same time. So the question arises how to make the best use of multi-media or new technologies?  I hope I will be able to answer the question as this course is coming to an end by sharing and exchanging great ideas and experiences with the class. 

My Fourth Week of the Webskills Course

The 4^th week of the course has been passing by. What I am impressed the most this week is the problems students and teachers are having all over the world. They are varied and ranged from cultural differences to technology problems. As I mentioned in my posting, the biggest problem many of the Korean teachers are faced with is the wide gap between the students in terms of levels of English.  It is hard for teachers to deal with those problems and to decide whom to focus on.  

However, it is very encouraging to share the problems and solutions at the same time with other teachers.  It is a great comfort for me to find out that a lot of teachers are struggling to find a way out.  

As Victoria Zhukovska replied on my posting about the problem, I firmly believe that technologies are going to play a huge role in narrowing the educational gap between the rich and poor. Therefore, it is crucial for teachers to effectively adapt those technologies into their classroom and to be well trained how to use them. So I am very excited to learn more about how to properly use them and introduce them to the teachers in Korea. 

Hannah's Third Week of the Webskills Course

It’s been three weeks since I started this webskills course. How time flies! What makes me keep on thinking this week was the final project. I have examined some of the projects from previous terms and found out that they seem very experimental and gradual in line with the progress with this course. How fun it is going to be to learn something new and instantly apply it to the class and see how it works for my students. With each week of this course passing by, I will be more engaged in the final project and making progress with it, which is definitely going to be challenging but worth trying. Therefore, I am very excited to learn new things every week including aural/oral skill building and making my own Delicious this week. I can’t wait to see how my final project is going to be and what I will be able to learn throughout this course.