About iTalkShow English Zone

(Excerpts from? a paper submitted to Asian Conference on?Creactivity Development May, 25, 2007 @?copywright)

iTalkShow English Zone is a blog designed to offer students an opportunity to host an English broadcast.? It is deemed as a student-centered?and innovative English teaching,under the guidance of our co-bloggers,Kitty Huang and Nancy Lin, English teachers in Municipal?Taipei Da-tong Senior High School.

In the blog, thirteen broadcasts are completed, most of which are hosted by Jenny and Stephy,third-graders in Da-tong thanks to the utmost assistance of?our friends—- native speakers in the U. S. A.—-Jerry,Gwen and Mark.? Lynsey and Anderas, two foreign exchange students in Ta-tong Senior High School also contribute a? lot to the shows.? Our broadcasts here are designed?based on?different themes interesting to?our young generation.? Roughly speaking, these themes begins with a local study, take the shape of international issues and eventually end in the global concerns.?

With the thriving development of network, intensive attempts at employing various modes of digital technology as innovative ways to teaching have been made, continuously causing tremendous transformation of learning styles.? A new trend of utilizing weblog emerges, revealing the possibilities and potentials of digital technology as a feasible and creative way to teaching and learning. Our blog?shows how senior high school teachers constructed an English multi-media blog as a teaching platform, on which some teaching activities were designed to explore whether the platform could be an alternative for effective teaching.? To fulfill the purpose, a creative teaching and learning style, student-centered, not teacher-centered, was adopted.
In the scheme, with the aid of digital technology, students are the constructors and participants of knowledge itself.? In this way, they are properly guided to develop antheir personal English?broadcasts by employing updated multi-media software and hardware. Besides, they can post and share their collaborative works on the platform. This interactive platform is designed as an outlet for students to display their multi-learning facets by employing techniques of digital tech.? Meanwhile, team work is found stimulating students to display their creativity and potential successfully, opening up an alternative mechanism for creative learning.?
The multi-media blog , also serving as our online teaching material, is named iTalkshow English Zone, having provided 13 broadcasts up to date, also serving as our online teaching material, to which teachers can refer with the aim of developing their own teaching plans and onto which students can post their personal?broadcast and release their creative works to the world across the boundaries of countries.

The blog belongs to part of a project developed by a team called iShow, whose goal is to offer a network teaching and learning platform to teachers from different subjects through the links to each other??s blog.
To explore whether the blog can be effective for network communities, a senior high school teacher, engaged in teacher action research, had conducted experimental English network teaching in her English Composition Class for 3 months.? Participants involved in the project amounted to 84 third-graders belonging to 3 different classes respectively in a senior high school. Besides, the process of teacher action research contains several stages including the process of incubation, pragmatic stage of the pilot scheme, reflections and feedbacks and the follow-up research, etc.?

???
Keyword: Teaching infused with digital technology; Integrating information technology into instruction; Teacher action research; Network community learning style; Cooperative learning; Student-centered; Creative English teaching and learning; Weblog; Blog??

發表迴響

你的電子郵件位址並不會被公開。 必要欄位標記為 *