ePals

    I was surprised to see that there are so many interesting projects available on ePals, especially for those kids who are in their primary or high school. The Junior Folklorist Challenge, a project in which students can join to display the culture in their community. Participants can choose any form of displaying the traditions they know. This is a super significant way to protect the traditional culture. More importantly, it provides a stage for students to share their videos online. I am also glad to see that there are a lot of Chinese students participating in these activities and they are connected with the world through the four-week folklorist process. Another project in2books, which matches the students with adult eMentors, is also an interesting project in US. Students read books and share ideas about important issues with eMentors via online letters. This project combines adult mentors, motivating curriculum and technology to help students develop reading, writing and communication skills. This reminds me of the interesting notion by John Seely Brown in Siemens’s article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, “the internet leverages the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few,” which gives an example of elementary school students do better in a mentor program than they do their own parents or teachers.

  

    However, these online resources are not only beneficial for students. Teachers can have multimedia resources and get inspired from these activities to improve their classroom teaching. According to NYLearns standard, these activities meet the standard-ESL2 language for literary response and expression, and standard- ESL4 language for social interaction. In my future class, I would use the feature of connecting the students with the outside world, inspired by the site ePals. My class would be interesting and relaxing. Textbook and teacher are not the only resources for them to learn. I will encourage my students to go outside of the class to learn. Online resources provide such a good opportunity, which can be one of my objectives in the future. 

A learner is like a river

    A learner is like a river. It does not independently exist. It usually has stream and brook around it to keep it moving. A person can be an individual, having his or her own opinion, personality and style. But a learner cannot live without others. The learning process is growing fast and never ceases, just like the keep-moving river. When a learner learns, he or she cannot just live on their own knowledge; they have to learn from others, explore the information from outside, and connect with others to keep them updated. Just as mentioned in the video The Network is the Learning, “What we know today is not as important as our ability to continue to stay current.” It doesn’t matter how large the river is, how faster it moves. What matters is that the river keeps moving all the time, with the brooks and streams feeding into it. The ability to stay moving and interact with others really matters. It is the connections that help learners grow. Siemens mentions in Connectivism: A learning Theory for theDigital Age that “The connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.” Coincidentally, the video also says the “The way we are connecting to other individuals is largely responsible for our ability to stay current in the field.” It seems that learners are growing with others together, and it’s a mutual process.

    I am glad that I am also one of the learners in the information age where I can get easy access to various resources to help me learn. And learning from outside, or that kind of connection is no longer limited to the people around us. We can make use of the rich online resources to keep us connected in a very convenient way. A river can be a closed pond if it has no connection with the outside, a learner could be backward and obsolete if he is not involved in the interactive learning process.