Word Clouds

There is another good news for visual learners: word clouds. Students can go to www.wordle.net to create their own clouds. All they need to do is to paste text into Wordle and the corresponding word cloud will come out automatically. 

I would like to apply this digital tool to language arts classroom. For ELLs, teachers can encourage them to choose one topic they are interested in, such as school, friend, technology, etc. Then, students can list down all the words coming up from their mind when they think of the topic of their choice. ELLs may not have a broad range of vocabulary, so teachers should allow them to consult with their classmates or check dictionary. Finally, they are going to type in all the words and make their own word clouds.

Don't forget to let your students share their word clouds with the whole class and post their works on their blogs. 

Assessment for Financial Literacy Class

I would like to design an investing activity in which students act like a mutual fund manager,  responsible for managing their fund’s portfolio trading activities. They will play a simulation game on The Stock Market Game, everyone being allocated $100,000 to start with. Whenever students buy or sell certain stocks, they have to post on blogs the decision-making process behind every trading. Therefore, their blogs serve as shareholder letters, explaining why they choose certain companies, and what intriguing stories are behind their business. Students are encouraged to comment on their peers’ blogs, raising questions about the decision-making process.

Through playing the simulation game, students will find out their recent performance compared to their previous one (last month, last quarter, etc.) and to their peers’. The former comparison is what Prensky (2010) calls “ipsative assessment”, in which students are being evaluated according to their best record (p. 176). The latter part refers to summative assessment: ranking and comparison are being used.  Posting blogs and inviting counterparts to make comments involve peer assessment and self-assessment. This way, they will receive feedback from others and learn from their peers’ investing philosophy.   

References
Prensky, M. (2010). Teaching digital natives: Partnering for real learning. London: Sage Publishers.

Mind Mapping: Process for Appeasing Your Angrier Wife

I used Gliffy to do this map; organizing your thoughts and presenting them in a map is very easy right now with the help of Gliffy. It has a variety of diagrams for you to choose and allow students to invite their peers to collaborate on the same work.

I chose the flowchart option to create a diagram depicting the process for appeasing your angry wife. This graphic organizer is meant to make your spouse laugh since it vividly demonstrates your full understanding of her inner world. I believe she will appreciate this "e-understanding."

Seriously, I would like to make use of this digital tool in my financial literacy class. Students will be divided into different groups, and they need to summarize their understanding about how to spot a high-growth but low-profile company in stock market. Later, students are encouraged to use Gliffy to share their thought process with the whole class. 

My Storybird

I am using Storybird to create my own story:

http://storybird.com/books/hannibal-the-most-dangerous-bear/

Storybird is very useful for Language Arts class, especially for developing students' writing skills, creativity, and the ability to connect the dots. ESL/EFL teachers can assign their students to create their own visual stories on this website with various categories for them to choose. Students can work individually and in pair to experience the process of being an author. Affording young pupils a sense of authorship is a strong motivator for them to participate in class.

Lik any other Web 2.0 tools, young authors are able to share their works with people all over the world. This is real and contexualized education because they write for real audience, and their writing is situated within self-selected context. Let your students create now!

Animoto: Connect The Dots

Animoto is very user-friendly for creating a professional and appealing video. All you need to do is put in photos, music, and words of your choice, and Animoto will combine every ingredient and magically transform it into an awe-inspiring dish. In the past, speaking of making our own video, we were terrified by its tedious and arcane process; however, with Animoto, even a digital novice can feel confident in creating a video that used to be thought of as a professional work.

I think that in the future, “easy but complicated’ is the tenet for all Web 2.0 tools. The tenet means “hot” digital tools must be easy for users to operate, while their final products are complicated and sophisticated. These technologies are so understanding that they allow you to use simple languages but are also able to capture your unspoken ideas in your head and present them. Animoto just does that, which is the reason I like it so much.



Make your own photo slideshow at Animoto.

Guiding Questions for Financial Literacy Class

For a financial literacy class, the main theme could be the stock market. First of all, I would set up an overachieving question that is open-ended and encourages multiple answers, such as “Why does the stock price of a company go up and down?” The aim of this overachieving question is to help my students understand what skills they are required to learn. Then, students can work individually or together to investigate the possible reasons for the stock price fluctuation and share their findings with their peers. They will find out that in the long run, the consistent growth of earning is the robust reason for the stock price’s moving up, and only a good business has the capacity to demonstrate the consistent growth of earning.

The more detailed incremental question for the main theme might be “How can we identify a good business?” This question is situated in local context. Students are required to look for  a good business in their neighborhood and share their observations that this business is lucrative. From an overachieving question to a supporting question and from why to how is the better way to create guiding questions:

The best guiding questions are generally about a why followed up with a how. Even when we are teaching specific skills, the why should come first. “Why did we have a civil war, and how an we help prevent other such wars?” “Why do we have seasons, and how can we predict when they start and end?” “Why are some numbers irrational, and how can we calculate with them?” (Prensky, 2010, p. 85)

Relating supporting questions to local context, students are able to explore real places that are close to them and their funds of knowledge.

 

References
Prensky, M. (2010). Teaching digital natives: Partnering for real learning. London: Sage Publishers.

Use Social Networking in Your Class

Three ways to use social networking in class? Here are some ideas:

1. Facebook: I would like to ask my students to create a facebook

page featuring their favorite character; then, they will sign in Facebook to

create a new identity and try to fill in their page with pictures, audio

clips, videos, and any links related to this character. They need to

comment on their classmates’ pages as well.

    

2. Twitter: Group students according to their interests and have them

decide a topic they want to research on in their interested area. Then,

follow a famous figure in this field on Twitter. Last, present what they

have learned from this person’s tweets in front of class.

3. Twitter: Ask students to report a piece of news related to social

justice in their life every day to learn how journalists report news in

concise words.  

"Real" Education for Financial Literacy

Using current information associated with content area is very important in providing education that is perceived real by our students. I would like to use the information of 2008 financial crisis and the high cost of college education in the US in my financial literacy class. My students will come to realize that if they do not put money into work at very young age, their range of choices are going to be very limited in the future. My students are not going to sit there being lectured about the importance of being financial literate; rather, I would engage them with simulations and video games related to financial knowledge. For example, I would group my students first, and then ask them to go to The Stock Market Game. This website offers educational information about how to invest in stock market and let students have a chance to compete with each other by giving them a hypothetical $100, 000. Students can share their knowledge on their blogs with classmates, such as how to identify potential companies or how to buy and sell at the right moment. This is what real education is like. Prensky (2010) points out the characteristics of real education:

Real, on the other hand, means much more and goes much further. Real means that there is a perceived connection by the students, at every moment (or at least as often as possible), between what they are learning and their ability to use that learning to do something useful in the world. (p. 72)

Through playing the stock game, students constantly put their financial knowledge into use and learn invaluable lesions from mistakes and others. This way, when they grow up, they are better equipped to invest in “real” stock market wisely with the money they make from their part-time job and accumulate sufficient capital to pay off their college tuition.

References
Prensky, M. (2010). Teaching digital natives: Partnering for real learning. London: Sage Publishers.

Glogster

Good news for auditory and visual learners. Glogster now offers students an opportunity to create interactive posters, Glogs, with multimedia objects embedded. Creativity is a quality we would like to see from our students, and it needs time and corresponding activities to cultivate. Glogster is a good place for students to demonstrate their creativity and learn how to condense their thoughts into a poster. Like most digital tools, Glogster allows children to share their Glogs with others on the Net, which helps them gain a sense of achievement and authorship. You can assign your students to work on a poster together, and they can contribute to this project according to their talents. Some are responsible for text, others take care of the image part, and still others deal with audio and video. Glogster helps children learn to express themselves through multiples modes, broadening their communication skills.

Taiwan (Prezi/Simplified Version)

Prezi is appealing to students due to its sound, visual, and spatial effects, which PowerPoint lacks. In addition, Prezi allows collaborative efforts among participants; they can work on the same Prezi on the Net in any place without meeting in person, which is the power of Prezi: co-creating beyond the constraint of time and space. Another advantage of Prezi is that you can share your works with others and grant permission to them to build on your project. Therefore, through sharing, new ideas will continue to emerge; students are motivated and trained to present their concepts through multiple modes to catch audience’s attention.

Prezi is very user-friendly, though it looks very fancy; it does not require advanced computer skills and knowledge from you. All you need to do is to watch a tutorial video first and then mess with your Prezi: copy, move, paste, type, retrieve links, etc. Play for longer time, and you will come to know how to make your Prezi distinctive and professional. However, beware of the dizziness your audience may feel if your Prezi involves too many visual impacts and does not afford their eyes any break at all.

Digital Divide or Digital Opportunity

Yeah. It is time for some critical things. Technology as a panacea for lifelong learning, economic competitiveness, and social exclusion? Some researchers do not think so. Most politicians and the public regard technology as a promise for common good, while critics question popular optimism and offer evidence of “digital divide.”  Basically, digital divide is defined as “a growing disparity between those individuals and communities that have and those that do not have easy access to new information technologies” (p. 261). Income is a highly significant factor determining individual’s access to IT, and a few studies have demonstrated widening inequalities in access to technology. Therefore, the same groups of people (e.g., the lower-class, women, or old residents) who have been excluded from educational opportunities are now also being blocked outside the promise land of technology.

From this perspective, the technological agenda is basically an economic agenda.  Expecting technology to solve everything ignores the grip of social institutions on people’s lives. When investigating the issue of technology use, be cautious not merely to divide subjects into users or non-users, but group them according to their level of access to technology. In addition, the quality and circumstantial nature of IT access as well as how technology is being used are worthy of further inquiry.

Society is too complicated for technology being a magic bullet to solve everything. Most social problems result from problematic social structure, and the elimination of them should start from structural change. We have tried to reform our school system in hopes of curing social illness but to no avail; now putting our hope again in technology to be the superman to save our society is anti-historical at all.