Which Thing is Best?

I really can't decide which of our 23 Things is my favourite! The one I have already used at school is Voki, and it has been a hit with my students, so that is definitely on my list of "Great Things".

Personally, I love blogging (actually, I prefer reading other people's blogs rather than writing my own), I think RSS feeds and Google Reader are fantastic (I'd never keep up, otherwise), Delicious solves the problem of different Bookmarks on each computer, Flickr is a wonderful resource (I've also used it a little in my classes already), I've already shared Wordle with staff at my school, and Twitter is great fun and fantastic professionally. I can't wait to use VoiceThread - I think it has amazing possiblities or collaboration with students in Japan. SlideShare is also on my list of things to use in the classroom. I think Google Docs will be the way of the future (Cloud Computing), but maybe not so useful in my primary classrooms at the moment.

I didn't put YouTube on the list as I was already using it a lot before this PD, but I love that, too, especially searching in Japanese.

So... I think they are all great!! I wouldn't take any of them off the list.

Thanks, Penny!

Tweet! Tweet!

Okay, I decided it was time to check out Twitter. I know it's not one of our "Things", but it's been in the news a bit lately, and also mentioned in a few blogs I am following.

Twitter has been described as "micro-blogging" - you post short updates about what you are doing in 140 or less characters. I am already "following" 11 people, and (surprisingly!!) 8 people are "following" me! Most of them are Languages teachers who are interested in integrating ICT into their teaching.


Once again, like blogs, the key to Twitter being useful appears to be managing all of the incoming and outgoing messages. There are so many messages flying around, some of them general updates/info for everyone, others directed at specific people (eg replies to someone's post). There are lots of Twitter "apps" around that are designed to help with management. I have installed "TwitKit", which adds a sidebar in Firefox so that I can see what's happening, live.

I also need to find and read some on-line Twitter guides I think, so that I can learn some Twitter etiquette, and what some of the common abbreviations mean.

VoiceThread - Voices Of The World

I would love to do something like this with a sister school in Japan. We could name objects, like in this VoiceThread, or share information about families and school life. It could almost be used as a simple picture dictionary. How wonderful for the students to be able to hear a native speaker of their own age when practising vocab.

Common Craft Videos - What a Great Find!

I know this isn't strictly languages-related, but I really love these videos! I think they will be useful in the Languages classroom because they will save time when explaining technology that you want to use as part of your lessons. When you only see a class once a week (in the primary school), time is at a premium, and having to teach the skills before you use the technology eats up valuable class time. These videos simplify everything - both the audio and visuals are clear and concise, suitable for middle to upper primary students as well as secondary students and adults.

Here is an example:

Web Search Strategies in Plain English

Gorgeous Sakura - Another Creative Commons Photo

IMGP3552
Originally uploaded by hayami

I am blogging this photo direct from Flickr, now that I have signed up and have an account. I am hoping it will acknowledge the photographer automatically.

It is currently ohanami (flower viewing) time in Japan, a short season in late March/early April, when the sakura (Cherry Blossom) flowers begin to bloom. Japanese people like to stroll or picnic under the beautiful trees. I like to share this event with my students, so photographs like this are great to explain what ohanami is all about.

Creative Commons - Using Photographs

I love this photo I found of "玉入れ" (tamaire), a traditional ball game played at school Sports Days in Japan. I am looking forward to using it next term when I talk about Sport with my Year 4 students.

Japanese students are usually divided into two teams on Sporst Day, red and white. On my last trip to Japan I bought a class set of the reversible hats that the children wear. They are a great idea - red on one side, white on the other. Every child has one as part of their sports uniform. You form teams for games during sports lessons or on Sports Day by asking half the students to turn their hats to the white side, and the other half to the red.

I'm not quite sure how to use Creative Commons correctly. I'm guessing I'm supposed to acknowledge the photographer, but I'm not sure of the rules. Does the acknowledgement have to be in a particular place, or of a particular size relative to the photo? (ie is very small text under the photo or at the end of the document in which it is used, acceptable?) I'm also confused because I did a Creative Commons search on Flickr, but the small print next to this photo includes a copyright mark, not a Creative Commons symbol. (By the way, this photo was taken by "cheboo".)

I watched one of the videos on the CC website. Maybe I should watch a few more to understand it better!!

Need to learn a bit more about this....

Google Docs - our Group PowerPoint

Here is our Group's attempt at a shared slide presentation (I guess we can't really call it a PowerPoint because that is a Microsoft copyright!).

I'm looking forward to seeing how it updates itself in my blog as people add more slides. At the time of writing, there were only five slides. We should be able to make it to at least ten!

Google Docs in the Primary Classroom?

Okay, I must admit I'm not sure about this one. I can definitely see the benefits of Google Docs, and I can't wait to try it out. I am going to suggest that the JLTAWA (Japanese Language Teachers' Association of WA) consider using it when planning PD etc, instead of pinging e-mails back and forth. I can also imagine it being used in secondary language classrooms.

One article I read on the web explained how a teacher had used Google Docs for his students to share PowerPoint presentations they had made. Instead of one student standing at the front of the class, showing his/her presentation while the others listened (some maybe not paying attention at all), he asked them to present as a shared document. All the students watched the presentation on their own computers, and were able to contribute comments (in writing) as the presentation progressed. He said it was the most engaged he had ever seen a class during this type of activity.

I'm just not sure how useful it would be in my Primary classrooms. Once again, like Voki and some other sites, it requires students to log in with individual e-mail addresses, outside of the "protection" of the school server, and setting up these accounts would be time-consuming. (This problem would be somewhat alleviated if it was a school-wide decision, and student accounts were already set up ready for me to use.) I'm also not sure how much "sharing" we could do in once-a-week classes where there are only a couple of computers and the students' typing speed is so slow!

Finally, the Terms and Conditions of Google Docs say that it is to be used only by people 13 years and older, which would exclude all primary school students. (Not that this has always stopped us in the past!!)

So... I'm still debating this "Thing". For me, it's great. For my students? Let me think about it a bit more!

Wordle Wonder (but not in Japanese!)

I had fun creating this Wordle - it can be a bit addictive playing around with the colours, fonts etc! I read the FAQ and unfortunately it is not likely to be available in Japanese or Chinese. This is because these languages do not have spaces between words, and therefore the computer would need some sort of algorithm to determine where words start and end. As we know, language is complex, and no-one has yet been able to write that algorithm. What a shame! I could still use it with my classes, but it would have to be in romaji (Japanese written using the English alphabet).

I do want to share this with my colleagues at work (primary classroom teachers). Several of the teachers have a "Star of the Week" project running in their classrooms, and this usually involves the student sharing information about themselves and showing photos and a few treasured objects to the class. Classmates then write a short positive description of the Star Student. My son's class did this in Year4 - it is a great keepsake of all the lovely things his friends said about him. I think that wordle.com would be a great way to make this into a personalised artwork about each student. (You could also do this in the target language - great for practising adjectives). Type in the Star Student's name quite a few times to start (may take some experimenting to ensure that it is the biggest word on the page), then ask classmates to each secretly write down 3 or 4 words that describe that person. You could brainstorm a list of adjectives first and display this to assist, or maybe use it as a dictionary exercise? Enter all of the words chosen into wordle.com, and see what you come up with!

Delicious

Hmmm... I'm still trying to get the hang of Delicious. I do like it - much better than having different "bookmarks" or "favourites" on each computer, but it's taking me a while to really get the hang of it and how to use the Delicious Toolbar efficiently. Because I log on at home on my laptop, at school on my laptop and at home on my desktop, I find that my settings for Internet Explorer and how the toolbars are set up are slightly different. I also use Firefox sometimes, especially when working on the 23 Things project and this blog, and my settings for Firefox are also a bit different. I think it is just going to take some practice. Like everything new, it's a bit overwhelming when you first start!

The idea of forming groups is good, and I'd like to run a simple PD at a Japanese Language Teachers' network meeting on how to use Delicious, and then set up a group for sharing our bookmarks and tags. It takes a long time to trawl through websites to find a few that are really good in the classroom, so it would be a great time-saver if we could share them with each other.

"Useful" On-line Translation

There is a website that I use quite frequently when I need help to read a Japanese web-page: www.rikai.com. You go to the Rikai website and enter the address of the web-page you want to view. It will then take you to that page, and when you roll the mouse over Japanese text, a small pop-up will appear with an English translation for that word. Like a regular dictionary, it gives several possibilities for each word, and you have to try and work out which is the appropriate one for the text you are reading. It's not perfect, but it's great for people who have some literacy skills in the language and just need occasional help.

One of the staff at school has a son who recently played baseball for Australia against Japan, with he game being held in Osaka. The only way they could follow the game was on a play-by-play website (where each ball in the game is described in writing by someone who is actually there watching) which, of course, was completely in Japanese. She rang me, and I gave her a rough translation of what was going on. I then suggested she try the Rikai website. She and her husband don't speak any Japanese, but by using the website they could follow the game.

Perhaps there are similar websites for other languages.

On-line Translators

I have to say that Penny's video made me laugh out loud! (I've included it below for those who haven't seen it yet.) I think I will actually show that video to my Year 6 students as the start of a discussion about online translators and their accuracy (or lack thereof!).

It's actually quite topical, because I have started to introduce my students to being able to word-process in Japanese script. The students think it's great, as it is much easier than laboriously trying to write unfamiliar hiragana characters by themselves. The really keen students are eager to start writing as much as they can, and often want to look up the words that they need. Because I travel from room to room, the students don't have access to a class set of traditional dictionaries, and I will often use an online dictionary myself if I have to find a word I don't know when asked by a student. The danger of course, is that students go beyond a single word and try to look up whole phrases or paragraphs. (Or they try to translate a sentence one word at a time, keeping the same word order as in English, and end up with complete gibberish!)

I think this is a really good way to demonstrate the complexity of language. I often say that languages, like most things, don't always follow rules - there are always exceptions. This is why computers can't match the human brain when it comes to languages and translations (well, not yet, anyway!!)

Japanese Children's TV

I found this "TV Channel" on Mogulus.com. I'm not sure whether or not I will be able to use it in the classroom, as access to sites like this that require live streaming are often blocked. Our tech people are pretty good about unblocking sites that are for educational purposes, so that may not be a problem.

I'm also not sure if I can save particular parts of the broadcast, rather than just showing my classes random clips that happen to be showing at the time. It would be of more value if I can sort through and choose clips that show songs that we know, or use language with which we are familiar. How do you "record" live streaming? (I don't think the actual show is live, as the time stamp in the corner isn't always consecutive.) There is an "On Demand" button, but that doesn't seem to do anything - there are no clips to select from when I click on it.

I'll have a play and see what I can work out.

Voki in the Classroom - a First Attempt

Okay, I finally decided to give it a go and see what happened. I created a Gmail account on behalf of each Year 6 class, and then registered with the Voki website. I decided I'd try that first, before going to the effort of creating individual e-mail addresses for all 58 students. My worry was that we would not all be able to log-on at the same time with the same username/password. I waited until the last 15 minutes of the lesson, and told them that it was just an experiment, and might not work, but we all managed to log-on without a problem! Some of them had already found the website and experimented at home after I mentioned it in a lesson a couple of weeks ago. I insisted that we all log-on with the class e-mail, so I can keep track of their class work.

The kids had a great time trying out the possibilities. There was great laughter when we first logged-on, and students were running from desk to desk to check out the random Vokis generated by the website when you first log-on.

Unfortunately, there was one point I forgot - you can't save a Voki until you have given it a voice. We ran out of time to try out any recording (in hindsight, I could have just asked them to type in "hello" so that there was at least something there, and we could edit it later) so most of the students didn't save anything. I made a rule that everything saved must have their own name included, so we know whose Voki is whose.

I spoke today to a mother of a Year 6 boy who isn't the most enthusiastic language-learner. She said that he came home yesterday and told her that he did some "cool stuff" in Japanese today. Yay! A step in the right direction.

The Japan Times

It's difficult (and expensive!) to subscribe to Japanese-language newspapers when you live overseas, but I like to keep up with the latest news in Japan. Also, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, my kanji reading is at primary school level, so reading authentic text for adults is time-consuming. For this reason, I have been subscribing via e-mail to "The Japan Times". Every day, I receive an e-mail with all the news headlines, and I can click on the story I want to read, which takes me to The Japan Times website. This takes a bit of time, while I wait for the story to open in a new window. With RSS Feed and Google Reader, it will be much quicker.

In fact, when I went to the website to see if there was an RSS Feed button to add to Google Reader, I discovered a "widget" to add The Japan Times to my blog (see left!). Even better!

RSS Feeds - I think I might get swamped!

I LOVE the idea of RSS feeds. I have found interesting blogs in the past, and added them to my "Favourites" or "Bookmarks", but then never seem to find the time to go and check each one for new posts. RSS feeds and Google Reader solves that problem!

Unfortunately it also creates a new problem! How do I keep up with all the new posts on Google Reader? I think the answer will be to wait for a while, and then decide which blogs are most relevant to me, and unsubscribe to to the ones I don't really need. Or, use the "Mark all as read" button sometimes, and accept that I will never be able to keep up!

日本語

I have now changed my language settings for Blogger, which I did a while ago, and also for Gmail. It is quite a challenge for me, as my kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese reading/writing) reading is not very strong! Luckily for me, many IT terms are written in katakana (one of three Japanese "alphabets") and they sound very similar to English. For example カレンダー　(karenda- = calendar), メール (me-ru = mail) and ヘルプ (herupu = help). The main thing is to remember how to change it back!!

Navigating around other peoples' blogs in languages with which I am not familiar is much harder. Of course, if you know the layout well, you can guess what most of the words mean, but it feels very strange. Perhaps that's what it's like for people who use the internet for the first time - lots of unfamiliar words, almost like another language!

SlideShare

I really like the idea of SlideShare. If I can organise a class blog for my Year 6 students (see previous post), then we could also post any PowerPoint presentations we develop on there, via SlideShare. My only concern with SlideShare would be the same one that I have with YouTube: you're never quite sure what will come up as the "featured" or "recommended" presentations. What if it is adult content? In the past I have shown YouTube videos direct from the website, but now I try to convert the clips first and insert them into my Smart NoteBook presentations (IWB software) so that I know for certain what the students will see. You can also do this with SlideShare of course, but if the students need to go to the site to post their presentations, it could be a problem. Maybe I can post on behalf of the students...

The presentation below would be good to show to my Year 4 students, when I do an in-depth explanation of script types. I particularly like the way the author has used photographs of real signs in Japan (from the flickr.com website) to show examples of different scripts. I must remember to take a look at flickr.com myself. (or is that already on our list of 23 Things??

View more presentations from ajJB2. (tags: japanese hiragana)

Voki Fun

Well, here is my first attempt at a Voki. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm really keen to use this with my Year 6 students. What I'm struggling with is the logistics of setting it up. Blogging is not something that we have done in the Junior School, and some staff are wary of privacy issues. If the students only use their first names, and it is a private blog, I don't think that should be a problem. It's the setting up of the blog, making sure I get the privacy settings right, and then getting all the students to sign up that's going to be tricky. I wonder if they have a limit on how many Vokis you can create? Could the students all simply log in as me, and create their Vokis in my account? Getting them all to create a Gmail account, verify it, sign-up for Voki, verify that account and then create their Voki could be a nightmare with a class of 10 and 11 year olds! And then they would have to get their code and embed it in the blog... hmmm, need to think about this a bit more!

YouTube 大好き！ I Love YouTube!

I love using YouTube videos in my lessons. As we have SMARTBoards (IWBs) in our classrooms, it is easy to share them with the class. With the K-2 students, I often end the session with a short (2-3 mins) video clip from Japanese TV. The children love it! We talk about how TV shows in Japan are the same as or different from the ones we watch. One of our favourite shows is "Anpanman", a cartoon series that was first created in 1968 and has been on TV continuously since 1988. Over 50 million Anpanman books have been sold in Japan - it is an institution!

The video I have embedded here is from another TV series about a dog called Shibawanko. This series is designed to teach Japanese children about Japanese culture and traditions. Although all in Japanese and quite difficult for young students to understand, it is interesting just to look at the pictures and discuss things such as Japanese traditinal housing and gardens. After participating in PD related to Intercultural Language Learning, I encourage my students to notice things, rather than telling them what life is like in Japan. Watching authentic Japanese videos is great for this.

This particular episode explains the origins of Children's Day (Tango no Sekku). I will show it to my Year 3 and 4 students in May.

Jumping Ahead

Although I'm trying really hard not to, I can't resist having a look at "Vokis".

I want to create a unit of work for my Year 6 students that helps to revise and consolidate what they have learned so far in Japanese, before they progress to the Senior School next year. Of course, revision can be a problem, because a large percentage of them claim they already "know" something, or say, "We've done that before". With only one lesson a week, however, a lot of their learning is superficial, and topics covered in earlier grades are often forgotten.

Much of what I teach in lower grades centres on the students themselves: being able to give information about themselves, and ask others for the same information. I always tell them that my main goal is to enable them to communicate with other Japanese speakers, and to make friends. When you're a kid looking to make a new friend, the first thing you want to establish is what you might have in common. Age, grade, hobbies, family, likes/dislikes...

In the past I have tried to draw all of this together by getting the students to make a Powerpoint about themselves, incorporating pictures and clip-art, and teaching them how to word-process in Japanese script as part of the process. They also record themselves narrating each slide. As they have access to one laptop per student, and the school is wirelessly networked, technology is not a problem. But, to be honest, Powerpoint is not the motivator it once was!! Eleven year olds are very tech-savvy these days, and making a Powerpoint is something they have done many times before.

After hearing Penny mention Vokis, and doing a quick Google search, I am intrigued! I think the students, many of whom like Japanese manga (cartoons), would really get a kick out of making a Voki, and then we could use Audacity to record our speeches about ourselves. I will need to set up a class blog first, though, so that we have somewhere to display and listen to our Vokis.

My Goals for this Project

Hmm... setting goals is something I always think I should do, but never get around to...

My goals for this project are:

1. To become more familiar with some Web 2.0 tools that I have already looked at, but haven't really followed-up on (eg Blogger, Wikis, Google Maps, Skype, del.ici.ous)
2. To try out some totally new things as well (Voki, Slideshare, Twitter, RSS, Flickr)
3. To actually USE some of the "Things" in my class, especially with the Year 6s, who have access to laptops every week
4. To learn from my colleagues - it's always great to hear what works in other people's classes!
5. To meet new people who love languages like me!!

ようこそ！Welcome!

Welcome to my blog recording my progress on the "23 Things for Languages" project. I love ICT and try to incorporate it into my lessons as much as I can. I am always looking for new things to inspire and interest my students, and I think lots of these "Things" will be useful in my classroom. The classrooms in which I teach have interactive whiteboards, and the upper primary students have access to laptops during their lessons, so the students will be able to learn with me, I hope!