Learning Style

    I have technically been an student for eighteen years. Throughout my learning experience, I have encountered many different learning strategies, such as visual, audio, textbook based, technology based, verbal, sequential, hands-on and so on. 

    Of all of them, there are two ways that work for me the best: visual and technology based. I am a visual learner, I learn very well when I could actually “see” it, either a picture or something written down already.When I see it, I can understand it well. Another thing that can help me learn very well is technology. Technology helps me get more motivated and excited, and thus I could have more fun and learn more effectively.

     One of the strategies that does not work very well for me is the audio way. If all we do is to hear the teach talk and see nothing or doing nothing. I feel lost immediately. 

    Reflecting on all the above, I decided to try to apply different learning strategies at different times. Especially, I will focus on application of technology and hands-on experiences. So far, I have used an online Chinese learning game Zon, and also try to introduce new lessons with computers. I will learn to further my understanding about Jing and integrate that into classroom learning. As for hands-on experience, I would try to let students experience at least one of the following things in a thirty minute lesson: make something, move body or get involved in a game.

Creative Commons Lab

Photo Attribution:

Original image:  ”Chinese New Year”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ju-x/86959911/   by: Ju-x

 

Released under an Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

 This picture will be used for a Chinese New Year project. We will discuss about how people celebrate Chinese New Year in class, and then draw a picture “Chinese New Year in my eye”. This picture can show students how we celebrate with red lantern and students can take it as a reference when they draw a picture.

My flickr user name:

 siming_hu

The image I uploaded:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/69782918@N03/6345031518/in/photostream

I gave it a cc license.

Personal Growth Plan

                                                                                Siming  1

Siming Hu

Dr Nancy Romig

CEP810-734

Oct 20 2011

                     Personal Growth Plan

      My goal in the course cep 810 is to learn about how to make a difference in education. So far, I want to learn to apply diigo and google applications into my planning, and google earth and some other web 2.0 tools( facebook, twitter) into classroom teaching. I will plan to give a try for all the things learned in this course, and keep using those things that work well.

      Also, I will plan to increase my skill in technology. I plan to deepen my understanding and skills in things I have learned before, such as google applications, Microsoft office; and I will learn to start applying the new tech kits into my life and teaching, such as diigo, twitter and blogging.

     I will try my best to get the hang of all the required technologies. For example, diigo, google applications and RSS. I am also planning to learn how to use Jing, Sticky and Quizlet.com. I am going to try to apply all that  I have learned into my classroom teaching.

PC Maintenance and Security

     I have watched the following three tutorials: Setting up search preferences in Google, Customizing your folder buttons and following a PC maintenance checklist. I have learned a lot from the tutorials.

     One thing that I will definitely share with the others is the safe searching filter in Google. You need to click on “search preference” in Google, and in the “safe search filter”, you can choose “strict filtering” to block all the text and images containing sexual, violent contents. I think this will be every helpful for teachers. When I do in class research with kids, I am always worried if something not appropriate would show up. By applying this filter, this problem will be solved.

     There are two pieces of information that surprised me. First, you can actually customize folder button to help edit or move folders. Second, I was surprised to learn that, no matter how safe your computer is, you will always need to back up in case the hard drive dies. I never thought this would happen, and I will begin to back up important files and pictures now.

RSS Lab

This is a reply I made in the blog aha!Chinese blog regarding four must-see places in China for the kids. They have nice pictures and also useful tips.

Updated screen shot of my Google Reader page.

Here is a blog I am following from Aha!Chinese

              I have never used Google reader before, thus I was quite  nervous when I started to use it. At first I found it very confusing and hard to manage, but I always told myself to give it another try. Eventually, after some devoted work on it, I got the hang of it. I felt that it is not as difficult as before. I could add subscriptions easily and enjoyed checking on it every other day. I think it is a really cool tool to receive information easily and timely. I will need to spend a lot more time to accumulate the information from the Internet than I do from an RSS feeder. I feel very happy now that I could use it for my teaching, for my personal interest and also for global news. When I check on the subscriptions, I noticed a significant difference between different ones. Some of them would update daily and have every cutting edge technologies and teaching practices, some of them update like once or twice a week. I think that each of them has good things to learn, and different feeder provides distinct points of view. Now I have learned about what kind of feeds can cater to my teaching needs better and how to make some selections.

       I do have learned a lot about Chinese teaching songs and games. In Laowai Chinese, I have learned new ways of singing a Do Re Mi song in Chinese, and also Happy New Year, Jingle Bells and so on. I also learned some research result on second language acquisition. I was surprised to know that the best time to start a second language is 0-6 months old. I was also informed that a bilingual child would be more likely to be more creative, flexible and open to new ideas.

       As for how I would apply RSS readers in my career, I think that I would get more good quality teaching resource to apply in class: songs, games and activities. I could also get updated on the current big events about Chinese teaching in US. I will definitely apply the things I learn from Google reader to my teaching. I may also teach my older kids how to use Google Reader and recommend them some good RSS feeds that are related to our content and learning. Sounds very exciting!

Getting Things Done

The “getting things done” process looks easy, but when I did it, it was not as easy as I imagined. I used paper and pencil to write down all the things that only took me like ten minutes. After collect, I went on to process and organize and this was real slow. I have never done things in this way, what I did was to list all the things I need to get done, and then pick the easiest first. Now I need to consider time, energy and priority, I felt very overwhelmed. It took around two hours so that I finally got this done.

I think this process can be helpful if I have a TON of things to do. But in real life, we are not that busy, so this is like using cannon to shot a fly for me. I feel that it is a big waste of time thinking about what to do first and then how much time it takes. I think what I need is just all the things I need to do, and then make a order of action sequence and then go do it.

I do not think that I will use this later. Like I mentioned above, I felt overwhelmed and have wasted a lot of energy just to make category and deciding on which one to do first. For me, what I would do is to write down all I need to do, mark all the things I can do now and then go ahead and do them. Other things, I will mark on when is a good time to start working on, and then do them when it is time.

How Social Networks Fit in my Life

Social networks fit into my professional life in the way that they provides me many ways I can collaborate with my colleagues. Also, I could always get to know about new things happening in the schools by those social networking. As for my personal life, social networking is crucial for me to keep contact with friends and family in China, and also friends in other parts of the US.
I think social networks fit into my colleagues and students life in a similar way as I do. They can keep in touch with colleagues, friends, playmates and so on.