About "Webquest"

"A webquest is an assignment which asks students to use the World Wide Web to learn about a specific topic. A good webquest makes learning interesting for your students. Beyond that, however, several other factors make webquests a powerful learning tool. (From Webquest 101 )"

Here I upload one webquest from http://zunal.com/, famous webquest site.

http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=228060

It's title is "Physical Fitenss"

It has several steps : This is "TASK" part

Students will be divided up into groups of three and each be given a different role in the group, but each group member will help the other members with each other뭩 roles so everyone gets the same experience as the everyone else. First, role one will have the students look at the sites given at different information about physical fitness. Second, the student will gather that information and create an outline for the third student. Lastly, the third student will create the power point. Each group will give a presentation at the end of the week, which will give the students three days to complete it in class. The presentation should be 8-10 min of good research. http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/health/ Centers for diesease control and prevention offers a wide variety of information that will help you achieve and answer any questions that may be troubling to you. Some of the resources that you will find on this website are....  Data and Statistics Diseases and Conditions Emergencies and Disasters Environmental Health Healthy Living Injury, Violence and Safety Life Stages and Populations Travelers' Health Workplace Safety and Health http://www.aahperd.org/naspe/publications/teachingTools/whyPE.cfm "Healthy People � Physically Educated and Physically Active!" AAHPERD is the largest organization of professionals involved in physical education, physical activity, dance, school health and sport, all specialties related to achieving an active, healthy lifestyle. Its mission is to advance professional practice and promote research related to health and physical education, physical activity, dance and sport by providing its members with a comprehensive and coordinated array of resources, support and programs to help practitioners improve their skills to further the health and well being of the American public. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_education General information about physical education or any subject is always on Wikipedia. Be careful, some teachers take Wikipedia for granted and believe it is unreliable because it can be edited by anyone. Wikipedia is a good site to gain general knowledge about a subject. use this as your last source for last minute, hard-to-find research. http://www.pecentral.org/ PE Central is a site that has a lot of information for teachers and students. This site will be a great tool in assisting you in answering your questions and helping your research greatly. PE Central has different ideas and information that helps anyone in finding ideas for physical activity, and they have different activities that help for success. http://www.veanea.org/home/1000.htm Virginia Education Association has a great article that stresses the importance of physical activity. This article is a great key point that will help your project with credible research and answers. http://shine.yahoo.com/back-to-school/why-kids-physical-education-203900739.html This article on Yahoo.com is just an article that talks about why kids need physical education as a learning tool. Also, the article talks about how physical activity stimulates the brain to remember more and prepare the brain for mental tasks. http://bcsd.k12.ny.us/middle/wood/7%20reasons%20why%20PE%20is%20important%2011%2009.htm Yet another article that explains why Physical education is important to not only the body but in mind function as a whole. The article gives seven reasons on why physical education is important to students. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/staying-active-full-story/ Coming from Harvard, it must be good. Benefits of physical activity research by students at Harvard, School of Public Health, tells more reasons of why physical activity is important to not only students but in adults as well. http://www.phitamerica.org/Benefits_of_Physical_Activity.htm PHIT America is a cause and campaign dedicated to increasing physical activity and fitness to improve the health of America. While the name PHIT sounds like FIT, it also has another meaning. PHIT stands for Personal Health Investment Today. They feel we must invest in fitness and sports activities today to improve the health of Americans. How will this PHIT into your presentation? Here is "PROCESS" part You and your group need to find out what your favorite part of gym class was/still is. What were your likes/dislikes, favorite sport/activity that you participated in class? List and create a short paper.   Day 1   Welcome to the class and a short introduction to the assignment. Students will be placed into groups with their individual roles. We will move to the computer lab and each student will sit with their assigned group with access to their own computer. Students will go to the website http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=228060 Students next will individually read the Introduction. After reading the Introduction students will discuss how they can work successfully as a team to accomplish this project. Student then will begin by looking at the their assignment. Students can, if they want, write down notes or questions. Before the end of the hour, have students share as a team what they have discovered. Start researching for your project.  Day 2       1.     Start the day by connecting with your groups onwhat you know. 2.           Figure out what you are about to learn and whatyou want to know about physical education. 3.            Write down questions that pertain tophysical education.   4.            Use the websites that I have given you toanswer these questions.   5.             Be ready with unanswered questionsthat you can either talk to me or your group about. Day 3 1.           Connect with your groups and find out what eachperson knows or hasfound out in yesterday homework. 2.           Organize your material and start working on yourpresentation. 3.           Continue asking questions and finding newinformation that may be interesting to your classmates. 4.           If you have any questions try to look them up,if not then ask me for help.   Day 4 1.           Meet with your groups one last time to answerany questions that you still haven't figured out. 2.           Put the finishing pieces of your projecttogether including your summary and who is going to present what piece. 3.           We will start presentations according to groupnumber.

CNN Postings : Nicaragua's first lending library

This clip is about Jane Mirandette and about her inspiration for Nicaragua's first lending library for schoolchildren. This is really impressive video clip.

She says "My passion is that everybody can access information they need, libraries are available to them, books are available, computer sills language skills driving schools. It goes on and on. There's so much that we can do."

Tasks in Class : I created Treasure Hunt (Reading Activity) : Do you know PIXAR?

My TH topic is animation

This reading activity is aimed at middle school second graders who are in low-intermediate reading level. I considered level of vocabulary and structural complexty of sentences in the webpage, and found that they were in pretty easy level.

The objectives of this activity are developing students' scanning, summarizing, inferencing skills in reading.


Website link : http://www.pixar.com/about/

 

Quenstions :

 1. what did happen to PIXAL in 1986? (summarizing)

 2. Which film was accompanied by short film "Geri's Game" (scanning)
 3. Why your creative ideas can't be accepted by Pixar? (inferencing)

 4. Who do you think will probably be the main character of one of upcoming firm
     "Inside Out" (Inferencing)

 5. Which film won "Oscars for Best Original Song" for "We Belong Together" (Scanning)

Tasks in Class : Treasure Hunt activity : Jackie Chan and Chinese New Year Drawing Contest

August 21, 2014 Design a Buddy Bear Contest Winners Chosen Jackie took some time out of his busy schedule to select the winners for the Design a Buddy Bear Contest! There were so many designs this year and Jackie was impressed with the creativity of his fans. Three winners from each age group have been selected. (Prizes kindly sponsored by the United Buddy Bears in Berlin). Click here to see the winners. (Prizes will be sent out to winners very soon!)   August 4, 2014 The Design a Buddy Bear Contest has officially ended! Wow! The team at JC Kids Corner is totally overwhelmed with the number of entries received over the weekend. Please give us a little time to process and update the Buddy Bear Contest page. All entries will be posted over the next couple of days, and winners will be selected by Jackie and his staff very soon. Thanks again to everyone who participated in this contest. Jackie is looking forward to judging your lovely designs.   July 21, 2014 What a busy weekend we've had at the kids corner with lots of new Buddy Bear Designs being emailed to us! Click here to see all the beautiful designs so far!   July 7, 2014 We received a couple of lovely Buddy Bear designs over the weekend! Click the bear below to see the designs so far!   Click here if you'd like to enter your Buddy Bear design!!   July 1, 2014 Design a Buddy Bear Contest! The annual Design a Buddy Bear Contest is back again!! Get ready to design a Buddy Bear and enter the draw to win some wonderful prizes. For more details on how to enter, click the image below. Entries close on August 02, 2014.   February 28, 2014 Chinese New Year Contest Winners Announced! Jackie has selected the Chinese New Year Contest winners for this year. Click here to see who won!   February 20, 2014 More Entries - Chinese New Year Contest Click here to see the latest updated entries for the Kids Corner Chinese New Year - Year of the Horse contest. We received many lovely drawings this year and Jackie was so impressed with his creative fans, he chose 20 drawings that he liked most and will be sending them a special prize for the Chinese New Year Contest. Winners will be announced soon!   January 30, 2014 CNY Year of the Horse Contest Entries Check out some of the latest Chinese New Year - Year of the Horse Drawing Contest entries! Click here for more information on how to enter.   January 27, 2014 Chinese New Year Drawing Contest We are having another wonderful contest to celebrate the Year of the Horse, 2014. Click the horse below for more information. This year is extra special because Jackie is also born in the Year of the Horse. So, don't forget to enter because Jackie will be judging the contest. Remember, only ONE entry per person!   United Buddy Bears Update A couple of weeks ago, we received some wonderful news from the United Buddy Bears Team in Berlin. A historical mark was reached in November 2013 where over EUR 2 million (around USD $2.7 million) has been raised for children in need! Congratulations to the United Buddy Bears! Jackie has been a supporter of the United Buddy Bears. In 2004 when the Buddy Bears were visitors in Hong Kong, Jackie handed over 3 cheques with a total amount of around €450,000 to the Hong Kong Committee for UNICEF, Community Chest of Hong Kong, and the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation on the day of the opening of this global project. The United Buddy Bears continues to travel the world, and this year will visit Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro for three months from April 2014. (Click here to read more about the United Buddy Bears)   January 26, 2014 Chinese New Year Drawing A BIG THANK YOU to Petra for sending us another wonderful coloring project for the Chinese New Year of the Horse. Click on the picture to download a printable black and white version that you can color!

CALL Review III : "Storybird"

This is my third CALL Review III, and sadly this is my last CALL Review.
But it just means the end of official CALL Review. My mini Reviews will be posted continuously!!

Here is the link of "Storybird" website. http://www.storybird.com/

Briefly, Storybird can become writing tool and reading tool at the same time.
In this review I will especially focus on the writing part.

Anybody can create his or her own stories with this tool.
The most significant feature of this tool is that you can insert a great number of high quality illustrations in your stories.

This video will will give you an elaborate explaination of how to use Storybird.






Here I upload three pictures that show three types of reading tools of Storybird.

This is page for making "picture book". You can add many pages as you want, and each page has one artwork(an illustration). You can drag artwork then you can change the position of the text part of a page.

 


























This is "Long Book" form. You can make one long story with many artworks. When you finished some chain stories, you can post it in the form of a series story like chapter1, chapter2, chapter3, and more like this way.






























Lastly, this is poem making with word boxes on the page. You can freely drag words and can make your own poem. However, the limitation of word is its shortcoming. And if you click refresh button, all the words are changed. That means your poem which is being composed would be deleted clearly.

From now on, I will tell you why it is good tool for writing activity, and practical  classroom activities designed with this tool.

First, making students' autobiographies can be good activity with Storybird. With "Long Book" form, you can make them write their own stories about themselves and their life from birth to now. This activity will be good for any level or grade of students, but especially I recommend you to use this activity for Low level or low grade students don't have to write complex or long stories but they can write just simple and short diary style story. Above all, their less writing competencies and less knowledge of words and structures of English can be compensated by using those artworks. Low level students don't have to feel intimidated by lack of writing skills. They can create high quality autographies filled with those illustrations instead of long and complex sentences.

Second, you can use this tool for collaborative writing. Look at the "picture book" form. Teacher create first page, any theme can be used, but I think it would be better to make one that can spur students' inspiration and imagination. Then each students are responsible to make next page of previous story that their friends created. Simply, they publish serially their stories. When every students finished their work, you can make real book to read together. This book can be shared with other class students, teachers, or their parents. This activity can also be used for low level or grade students, and the reason is same with above activity I explained.

CNN Postings : Detained Americans released from N. Korea

In september I posted one CNN clip about those captivated Americans by North Korea.
This is really good news for them and other people in the world who worried about them like me.
I wish they regain their happy daily life with their families as soon as possible.

Tasks in Class : My 8th Discussion Forum

1. Are you a top-down reader? Or bottom-up reader?  When you read novels do you read top-down or bottom-up? What strategy do you use when you read new articles or 전공서적 (academic reference)

 I think my reading style is closer to bottom-up rather than top-down. It is because, recently, almost of my reading activities were for academic purposes which is more related to bottom-up skills for remembering the contents. Almost reading activities in high school, also required me to be bottom-up reader, because precise comprehension of each phrases or words took an important role in solving problems in KSAT (수능) Those experiences lead to kind of habit formation that made me become bottom-up reader.

  However, when I read novels, I usually become top-down reader because interesting contents make me read faster. But sometimes, I become bottom-up reader even in reading novels. There are a few parts that show grammatical complexity, or difficulty of comprehension. Those parts requires me to be bottom-up reader.

 On the other hand, when I read new articles, I become both top-down and bottom-up reader. First I read the new article fast with top-down skills for overview of texts and for distinguishing between important parts and relatively unimportant parts. And then I become bottom-up reader for comprehension of specific part that I think important.

2. What is ER (extensive reading)? How is it different from intentive reading which we have practiced in English classes in Korea?

 Extensive reading is reading as much as possible, for your own pleasure, at a difficulty level at which you can read smoothly and quickly without searching meanings of words or translating to Korean when you read. In other words, instead of spending long time decoding a tiny part of one book, you read many simpler books that are at or slightly below the level at which you read fluently.

  Then how it is different from intentive reading? We can find the differences by observing features of English classes in Korea. Reading materials selected regardless of students’ interests or reading level. And in many times, teachers let them read materials that is beyond their reading level. In this case, it doesn’t matter to search dictionary for unknown words. The length of text is also the difference. Only short texts are presented on the textbook because students can’t read the texts quickly due to the difficulty of it. But in extensive leading, long texts presented because students can read it rapidly with little difficulty.

3. How does technology assist ER? Give me one example.

 Selecting proper level of reading material having enormous significance in extensive reading. As I mentioned difficulty level is needed to be considered deliberately when you select proper texts for learners. Here, we can use concordancer for classifying texts into separated difficulty levels. If we have digital form of target texts, we can check its difficulty level through software like concordancer that can designate automatically divided levels for each materials. Then we can use appropriate material which fits well with each learner's reading level.

CNN Postings : What is bipolar disorder?

This article is from "Wikipedia"

 - If you need extra explaination about blue colored terminology, you can click and can use hyperlink to wikipedia page about the terminology.

Bipolar disorder, also known as bipolar affective disorder (and originally called manic-depressive illness), is a mental disorder characterized by periods of elevated mood and periods of depression.^[1][2] The elevated mood is significant and is known as mania or hypomania depending on the severity or whether there is psychosis. During mania an individual feels or acts abnormally happy, energetic, or irritable.^[1] They often make poorly thought out decisions with little regard to the consequences. The need for sleep is usually reduced.^[2] During periods of depression there may be crying, poor eye contact with others, and a negative outlook on life.^[1] The risk of suicide among those with the disorder is high at greater than 6% over 20 years, while self harm occurs in 30–40%.^[1] Other mental health issues such as anxiety disorder and drug misuse are commonly associated.^[1]
The cause is not clearly understood, but both genetic and environmental factors play a role.^[1] Many genes of small effect contribute to risk.^[1][3] Environmental factors include long term stress and a history of childhood abuse.^[1] It is divided into bipolar I disorder if there is at least one manic episode and bipolar II disorder if there are at least one hypomanic episode and one major depressive episode. In those with less severe symptoms of a prolonged duration the condition cyclothymic disorder may be present. If due to drugs or medical problems it is classified separately.^[2] Other conditions that may present in a similar manner include: drug misuse, personality disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and schizophrenia as well as a number of medical conditions.^[1]
Treatment commonly includes psychotherapy and medications such as mood stabilizers or antipsychotics. Examples of mood stabilizers that are commonly used include: lithium and anticonvulsants. Treatment in hospital against a person's wishes may be required at times as people may be at risk to themselves or others yet refuse treatment. Severe behavioural problems may be managed with short term benzodiazepines or antipsychotics. In periods of mania it is recommended that antidepressants be stopped. If antidepressants are used for periods of depression they should be used with a mood stabilizer. Electroconvulsive therapy may be helpful in those who do not respond to other treatments. If treatments is stopped it is recommended that this be done slowly. Most people have social, financial or work related problem due to the disorder. These difficulties occur a quarter to a third of the time on average. The risk of death from natural causes such as heart disease is twice that of the general population. This is due to poor lifestyle choices and the side effects from medications.^[1]
About 3% of people in the United States have bipolar disorder at some point in their life.^[4] Lower rates of around 1% are found in other countries. The most common age at which symptoms begin is 25.^[1] Rates appear to be similar in males as females.^[5] The economic costs of the disorder has been estimated at $45 billion for the United States in 1991.^[6] A large proportion of this was related to a higher number of missed work days estimated at 50 per year.^[6] People with bipolar disorder often face problems with social stigma.^[1]

Tasks in Class : My 7th Discussion Forum

1. What is wiki? Why is wiki good for collaborative writing?
 
 Wiki is an online tool that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content. Wiki supports hyperlinks and crosslinks between internal pages. Also, Wiki is a kind of group communication. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site, it encourages democratic use of the web page and promotes content composition by nontechnical users. Then how wiki can facilitate collaborative writing? As I mentioned contents in wiki made by various users, not by one writer. If few writers engage in the writing, wiki lose its distinctiveness. In addition, every users writing can be valued equally in wiki. In traditional writing activities, some students would probably worry about their lack of writing skills or quality of contents. But in wiki world, nobody worry about those things because their weaknesses can be compensated by other more superior writers. This is how wiki promotes collaborative writing.

2. Explain on your own words how the author used wiki for his class.

 The author planned to use wiki as a classroom writing activity. The planned wiki was consisted of 6 categories, and divided 6 groups take one topic of each categories. The 6 categories were all about students’ school life, and they were “special rooms and facilities”, “the school as a big family”, “interest clubs/extra-curricular activities”, “lunchtime and recess”, “the secondary one curriculum”, “adapting to secondary school life”. He applied process writing approach in this activity. Firstly, 10 days were given for making first drafts. They could log in the wiki system whenever they want, wherever they are. During the process, they were encouraged to read other groups’ uncompleted works. Then for 5 days, a lesson for revising their first drafts was given, and in the lesson they learn some strategies to organize ideas into coherent paragraphs, and to write topic sentence. Next, for 4 days, a lesson for proofreading was given. This lesson was made for giving them opportunity to correct grammatical and lexical errors of their works. The last stage is publishing. Their completed wiki announced to all teachers, students, and parents.

Tasks in Class : My 6th Discussion Forum (2)

1. From communicative language teaching (CLT) perspective, writing practice should be interactive. Discuss how English teachers can provide interactive English writing experience for students.

 If we are designing writing activities from CLT perspective, we have to check that whether they are promoting authentic and interactive use of language. It means there should be real and specific audiences which is not felt contrived. Like speaking activity, authentic writing needs real audience who can react. “Specification of an audience and purpose of a text by making the situation real” is the good way for achieving the authenticity as I mentioned. Exchanging e-mail or messages with friends or teacher, sharing acquired information, producing a class newspaper to be read by family or other classes’ friends all are good examples for the specification of an audience and purpose.

2. When we write for authentic purposes, there are always audience (except secret diaries or self-notes). Discuss types of writing activities for different audiences. First, students can write for their teacher.

 Teachers are good at checking student’s writing errors because they are expert in learner language. They also have excellent grammatical knowledge. So, writing to the teacher is going to be a good chance for the student to get appropriate feedback of their own writing. But, this can be challenging on the part of the teacher, because it is very burdensome to read and check all student’s writings. It takes lots of time and effort. Here is another disadvantage. Students will not write everything freely and openly what they really want to express because of the fear of the all-knowing teacher who can reveal their imperfect writing skills and spelling errors. Second, students can write for their peers or classmates. In this case students will feel much less fear. They are friendlier and are not in superior position. But, there writing can be full of joking and kidding.

3. How does technology help task-based writing? Discuss and write your ideas.

 Self-correcting of spelling or grammatical error was not easy until automatic correcting software was developed. Now, you can check and correct our errors in writing by ourselves without experts help. If you make a mistake, Word Processor will display red line under the mistake. Then just with one click, you can realize what was problem and correct it immediately. Also, you can write letters or messages easily with technology. You don’t have to prepare sheets of paper or pencils. You just need an e-mail address and a keyboard. SNSs like Facebook provide you numerous opportunities to have real audiences in the distant countries that we’ve never been. They can become friend and your real audience. They will respond to your message or comments. This is really good chance can’t be given without technology.