Video with Teaching

     Video is a good tool which enriches the class and also appeals to students. It assists teachers with showing the main point in their class clearly.
     I think this tool is good for introducing some holidays or a simple idea with students, especially children who just start to learn English. If I use it in a grammar class, I would compose a short video with a grammar rule and music to teach students.  Each slide will contain just one idea. If I put the grammar rule first, then I will put a sample sentence after it and more slides with pictures showing how this rule can be used under what kind of situation. If it is a reading class, I would transform the short story or text we are going to read in to a storytelling video and play it after we cover the all reading. It not only will attracts students' attention and prevents them from getting bored but also can deepen their memory and provide them a brief review. But, it is significant and necessary to switch the images in video based on the age of students I teach. If they are children, providing them some comics or cutes images will be fine. However, if they are college students, the pictures in video should be changed.
     The ultimate goal of teaching not only resides on students' understanding but the cultivation of their interests. A good video clip with proper teaching can help students learn happily and efficiently.

It's a video I made with Animoto which briefly introduces the meaning of Easter.

How Microblogging Friends Teaching

     Before reading the article, "Teach with twitter? Read This!," I would never relate Twitter to a stage for teaching because it is the most popular blog among young people while I cannot imagine its relation to teaching. However, after thinking about the in-time response feature as pointed in "28 Creative Ways Teachers Are Using Twitter", I start to reconsider it as a tool that can be helpful to students because it offers an interactive stage outside classroom for teachers and students to present discussion. But, there is some points that teachers should notice. As mentioned in the first article, a teacher can no longer follow the old posts once s/he becomes a friend of the user because what twitter focuses on is the current not the past. However, the author mentions how to add a feed for a Twitter hashtag, which I believe is really useful for those who choose Twitter as their stage of teaching since they can share any article with students on Twitter. 

     In "How To Use YouTube's Video Editor," the author introduce the newly launched video editor on YouTube for people to edit the raw video they uploaded.  Also, people can add soundtracks into the video with the online video editor.  This tool is really helpful toward teachers, especially those who would like to share videos with students. Sometimes teacher may find an ideal video to assist teaching while it may be too long and costs lots of class time. Under this kind of circumstances, teacher can try this video editing tool to cut their video shorter and preserve the parts they need. 

    I think video plays an important role in teaching because clearly it catches students' attention well and even encourage them to learn what appears in the video. Further, although twitter may not able to provide long-term posts, it offers a stage for teacher to answer students' question immediately, just as really chatting with each other. Video is a tool that is necessary in traditional classroom, let alone classroom in 21st century. However, when the class is held online and teachers no longer bring videos to the classroom and project on a screen, they need to prepare the materials they plan to use through managing the online resources well such as editing the video before presenting to the class. Additionally, teacher can create a twitter account for the class on which students can share their questions and teacher can reply right away or even some students in class can help each other because another student may know the answer to this student's question. In this way, students not only are able to solve their problems immediately but can improve themselves or reinforce what they learned at the same time.

Youtube Teachers!

YouTube Teachers - Ideas for Using Video in Your Classroom
     When seeing the title, I am really interested in what does "youtube teachers" mean since it is a term that I did not know before.
     In this article, the author introduce the new channel on YouTube which instructs teachers to use videos in their classrooms. On that channel, teachers are able to find various video-based classroom planning suggestion and even learn how to make their own videos for class. But, the author also points out a tremendous problem the channel has--it is unable to be accessed in every school. Hence, though some teachers discover this channel and plan to use it in class, they may fail to use this function.

     I like the primary idea of YouTube Teachers--combining technology with teaching, while I do not understand why it would be restricted in some schools. In addition, during my studying life in America, none of my teachers use this channel in class. I guess it still has long way to go to popularize this channel.