Vance Stevens 2005 TESOL presentation

From top left to right:

1st row: Audience 1, Elizabeth, Deborah Healy and Jim Duber, Johanna Katchen

2nd row from left: Deborah Healy, Susan Gear, Mercedes, Michael Coghlan

3rd row from left: Aiden, Bee, Audience 2, Audience 3 [foreground: Elizabeth on the left, and Dustin (Vance's son) on the extreme right] 

2005 Internet Fair

I was supposed to present at TESOL's EV 2005 Internet Fair. unfortunately due to financial reasons, I won't be able to attend :-( 

Here's what's posted on EV's CALL-IS website:

“Listening and Speaking” will be represented by Aiden Yeh, who will show various online videos such as commercials, video trailers, and video résumés that can be used to enhance discussion on language and culture-related topics. Lesson plans, task requirements, and samples of students’ projects will be included. Vino Reardon will demonstrate the use of Internet sites for additional listening practice and background information for a content-based speaking and understanding course. URLs of useful sites and sample worksheets will be provided.

http://tinyurl.com/4tbud

How CMC tools for professional development enhance learning environments for students

Online presence at TESOL conference with Vance Stevens. Michael and I will be joining Vance online. We'll be talking about my blended leanring project, Happy online.  

Difficulties in using your first and second language

If you speak more than one language, describe any difficulties you experienced learning and using your second language (both languages?). Have any of your experiences been similar to Tan’s and/or Kingston's? What are some of the difficulties you encountered when translating from one language to another? Post your answers on the forum at http://languageculture.forumsplace.com/message-5.html



Click play to listen

"In this 1989 interview with Don Swaim, Maxine Hong Kingston, author of China Men, Woman Warrior, and The Fifth Book of Peace loves the English language. She talks about how any language can be translated into English and any non-translating word will become incorporated into the English language. This is why English is almost a universal world language. Kingston explains how she will think in Chinese about what she wants to write and then she will write it in English." From Wiredforbooks.com website

Maxine Hong Kingston After the Fire
Miel Alegre and Dave Weich, Powells.com


Click play to listen

"Author of The Bonesetter's Daughter, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, and Moon Lady, Amy Tan talks with Don Swaim about growing up as the child of immigrants, working with disabled children, participating in a writers' group, and "becoming Chinese" on her first visit to China in this 1989 interview." From Wiredforbooks.com website

Amy Tan's Biography

BBC's article on Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter

Note:

The above audio links are from Wiredforbooks.com. They are linked here for educational purposes only. Taiwanese students in Aiden Yeh's Language and Culture class will be using them as part of their in-class discussion and activities on Kingston's 'Misery of Silence' and Tan's "Mother Tongue".

I asked my brother who happens to run an ad agency to come up with logo studies for my 'dream' restaurant/take-out place. I've been toiling with this idea for some weeks now and I'm not sure whether I should give it a go. It's the fear of not making it that makes me quiver. But I really need the money to support my studies and at the rate I'm going I'd end up burried in debt if I don't do anything now. So, which logo is better? Which name is better? 

Language and Bicultural Identity

Links to readings on Language and Bicultural Identity

Excellent Find! Language and Identity

Why Bilingual Education? ERIC Digest.
by Krashen, Stephen

Immigrants Suffer from Losing Their Identity by Howard Kim

language and identity in twentieth-century Ireland

Rights and Responsibilities of Educators of Bilingual-Bicultural Children, Jim Cummins, University of Toronto

capturing audio

What I thought was going to be a good session turned out to be a huge frustration. All the preparations I did last night, the online vocabulary quizzes, cloze tests, all went down the drain when the audio/video material from my online source [CNN] did not work properly. It kept on buffering affecting the students' listening motivation. It was really difficult listening to the material and concentrating on getting the details was becoming a pain.

After class, I went to the office hoping to catch Mr. Tsai, our tech-support guy. He was there alright and I poured out all my frustrations. He suggested that I record the audio but will have to sacrifce the video. At this stage, I have no choice but give up video. He mentioned Total recorder which I have at home, and if it doesn't work, he can lend me a new software that does mp3 recording. I can't wait till monday- my class is on Monday!

Anyway, the moment I got home, I tried recording using Total recorder. It worked alright but I could not get rid of the noise. I think TR has done purposely injected noise so member will add the noise reduction feature which you need to purchase. This isn't an option for me. It's a good thing that BENQ has audio recorder built in so I used it instead. It worked fine but I will have to try this in class to see how clear the audio is if played in the classroom.


sigh. what an exhausting day.

aiden

And it's times like this when you need to get closer to the person you care about... 

Girls get to throw a chunk of snow, too! 

Too cold for comfort? 

Let the boys have fun! 

Snowman or snow dwarf? Whatever that is, it's the piling up of snow that fills a child's delight. 

Wai and her new RAV

My sister, Wai, showing off her new RAV. Wai is an Information Architect at a Media company in California. She helped in designing the Webheads logo. She's very smart, creative, and witty. I think she has found the man of her dreams and I hope that this one's for real. 

Showing bio page

Showing the students the BIO page I created. Screenshot was taken by Vance Stevens 

Class A listening to Vance, James and Elderbob

Language and Culture, Class A, listening and watching the Alado online conference. 

Showing the students the BIO page I created. Screenshot was taken by Vance Stevens 

students having fun after the online session

Sherry and Josefina having fun after the online session. This screenshot was taken by online guest speaker, Vance Stevens.

/aiden 

When a language dies...

My language and culture class [A & B]wrapped-up their first round of online discussions. Class B kicked it off with Michael Coghlan. I sent my feedback to our language and culture classs yahoogroup which was also a response to Michael Coghlan's email and feedback.

my feedback

"Volunteers for Class B, you did a great job today. Despite the technical glitches and a slight stage fright, I think that in time you'll master the craft of participating in online discussions.

Follow the link below to read Michael's blog.

Aiden

Michael Coghlan wrote:
To: evonline2002_webheads@yahoogroups.com
From: Michael Coghlan
Date: Thu, 03 Mar 2005 01:01:57 +1030
Subject: [evonline2002_webheads] Session with Aiden's Students Today

Hi everyone.

I had the great pleasure today to be the first of many guest speakers for
Aiden's Language and Culture class over the coming weeks. As always, a
thoroughly instructive and enlightening experience. For a few comments in
audio about the experience you might like to go to
http://mikecogh.blogspot.com/ to hear them.

Thanks Aiden! :)

- Michael.

PS Will the archive be posted anywhere? I have a copy but am running out of
server space."

A feedback from my student

One of the volunteer students in Class B wrote and he said, "I'm glad that you like our performance in the online conference.
[name deleted] I would like to share my feeling about the online
conference. I'm really happy that we didn’t spoil it. However, I
have to say that I am still not so satisfied about the conference.
For me, I think the time is not enough for a decent discussion. Take
this online conference for an example, [names deleted] did
a great preparation for the presentation of the article, but they
didn't have enough time to present them before they ask their
question. Also, each one of us can only ask two questions instead of
the questions list that we've made. I had some relative examples and
questions that I want to discuss but I didn't have the time to do
so. I believe that most of my classmates could not raise a proper
question because we jumped one issue from another too fast. I hope
that we can have a longer and more decent conference."

I wrote back

So in respone, I wrote, "Thanks for your feedback. I know what you mean, the time wasn't enough. The discussion was fairly decent, but not exhaustive. True. This was because we started 15 mins late than the time I expected the session to start, which was at 11:00. I forgot about the 10 min. break. I also wasted 5 min. of your time trying to upload your powerpoint- I was hoping to use my laptop for that but I couldn't get my wireless connection to work. Bummer.

I learned something from your session and I hope to improve the situation for the actual group presentations, both for class A and B.

Group presentations will have to be done an hour before the online discussion. In this in-class presentation, the group will present their powerpoints and all other researched materials that they have. They will also make it interactive to engage their classmates in their presentation.

The online discussion will be done after the in-class presentation and online meetings will simply be based on discussion, asking and answering questions. The goal is 'getting and giving' information. The approach is similar to radio broadcasting. If you've listened to the audio recording- you'll find some similarities.

I know you were expecting to talk more, and I was hoping that I could give you that time. I wanted to. I want to. And if you're willing, I could invite you to 'real' online sessions to experience how it's like, to know that there are time limitations and to learn how to appreciate the opportunities in 'free' online or blended learning events.

I'd just like to remind you the limitations that we have and we could only work with what we have. Your class is big, for group presentations, 5-6 members to share an hour for online discussion. One computer- one mic. I am trying to make use of what we have. So, given this situation, let us strive [together] to make the best out of it. Let's not focus on the frustrations that we've had, but instead, appreciate the chance to take part in meaningful discussions.

The online session that you had was a trial run, and I'd like to thank you again for taking part in it.

I learned something from it."

Class A's turn

We started early. I logged on to Alado and waited for Elizabeth, our online guest speaker. When I had the feeling that she won't make it, I logged on to Yahoo messenger and buzzed all webheads who were online. 3 came to the rescue: James Bakker, Vance Stevens and Bob Brannan aka Elderbob. We had a good session- well at least, I think the volunteers felt happy. They even stayed for another 40 minutes to chat with me and Vance who remained online. I'll be posting the screenshots that Vance took. We were having fun.

For class A, the volunteer students prepared a list of questions which was uploaded on the Internet. I pushed the URL during their online discussion and it can be seen all throughout the online session. The list also helped the students follow the outline of their discussion and they were able to carry on until the very end. They also invited their classmates to ask queestions. There were I think 2 representatives who came to the Mic and talked to Vance, James and Elderbob.

Looking back at the comments made by Class B, I think Class A learned the lessons and prepared their questions on a webpage where they could see at a glance what they needed to tackle. They also had a time frame, which I think was necessary.

I must admit that delivering a blended learning activity with 50 students is not easy and it takes a lot of effort and explaining to the students the limitations that we have. Yet, despite this, I feel much better after Class A had done their presentation. They were organized, collaborated well, no one controlled the show, it was well divided. They learned from past mistakes and I am very happy to see that.

The links to the recordings are http://www.geocities.com/wentzao2004/culture/2ndsem/online_sked.htm


aiden

Invitation to join my LC online

I've invited Webheads and BaW2005 to join my Language and Culture class's online discussions. Michael is available on March 2 but i've got 9 more slots to go. I hope there will be more [crossing fingers].

Anyway, here's what I wrote to the list:

Hello BaW2005,
apologies for cross postings


I was supposed to wait for my BaW session to announce this but my class is about
to start next week and I couldn't wait any longer. I need to plan ahead. I'll
divide my invitation into two categories:


for my Language and Culture class
as part of my research: Taiwanese teachers [in supplementary schools] TPD


Let's start with the most urgent, Language and Culture. In this course, we'll be
talking more about sociolinguistics, the practical and easy ones for graduating
university level students. Less on theories but still rich in meaning and can be
applied at a personal level. I have prepared a website for this which will be
updated, links and other details will be added as we go.
http://www.geocities.com/wentzao2004/culture/2ndsem/index.htm and look at week
2. This is the first round of online discussions. I will still reserve slots in
Alado but will do that later. The online schedule is at
http://www.geocities.com/wentzao2004/culture/2ndsem/online_sked.htm So the first
round is on March 2 and March 4, different class, same topic.

March 2 is at 11-12 noon Taiwan time or 3 AM GMT [ungodly time for those in
Europe]

March 4 is 1-2 pm taiwan time or 5 am GMT [still ungodly but better]

The topic is "What's lost when a language dies?"

http://www.citypages.com/databank/22/1088/article9859.asp

If you have similar experiences, please join my students. I am a good
example of this story- and my students know...but they want to know more,
different people, different perspectives. Inspire them- that's what webheads do
best.


Online discussions for Language and Culture are all student led discussions. At
least 5-6 students to take turns in giving summary and they will ask you
questions, more like opinion, but opinion grounded on teachings would be nice.
These kids are smart and demanding. BTW, both classes are big, Class A 47
students, Class B- 50. So imagine yourself speaking in a videoconference. That's
how it'll look like. I'll be projecting the chatroom and webcamming is
definitely welcome.

I'll be posting some questions regarding the article, or if you could jot a few
for my students, that would also be great.

If you're interested in joining this class online, please send me an email, here
or to my email aidenyeh@y.... Check the topics, they're quite interesting.

---------------------------------------------------------

Now let's move on to teacher professional development, which, I think many of
you here are qualified teacher trainers or if not engaged actively in TPD. This
is in connection with my PhD research. I have about 3-4 Taiwanese teachers who
are participating in my study. Discussions are going on with our yahoogroups
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/taiwanese_efl_teachers/, and each has they're own
blogs:

Josefina's blog http://josefinachiu.blogspot.com//

Mei's blog http://ameis1025.blogspot.com//

Joy Chou's blog http://joychou.blogspot.com/

April [to follow]

These teachers are teaching English in supplemantary schools, or private
language schools, or the infamous buxibans in Taiwan. you're also invited to comment on their blogs to generate discussion within their blogs and could be extended or passed on to our
yahoogoups [taiwanese thing]. They have already been adviced about your possible
contributions to their blogs and they're looking forward to this.
Other university colleagues do not believe in what I'm doing primarily because according to them these teachers are 'just cram school teachers'. I didn't [don't] like the remark
given because I believe that these teachers play a big role in Taiwanese
children's learning. Buxiban is similar to japanese 'Juku' [am not sure with the
spelling, but sounds like it or something similar ;-) I also believe that TPD if
showed how and explained to them the reason for doing it, then these teachers
could learn and improve at least instrinsically. Financial remunerations for
self-driven actions toward improvement is scarce but to experience the benefits
of TPD for themselves is a good start. I also believe in the role of CMC in TPD,
this is what I want to do and explore. My problem is I'm not a teacher trainer,
but I've got books [plenty] on TPD and action research, but
they're not enough. I need people who could deliver to them an hour session on
TPD related topics, see http://dcyeh.com/aiden_phd/ Online sessions for this
group are scheduled on Saturdays, 9-10 pm or 1-2 GMT. This is free and
voluntary. If you want to know more, please read my research epad at
http://buxiban.blogspot.com/

Questions?

Email.

Thanks.

Aiden

p.s.

I look forward to meeting you some of you on Thursday.

Syndicating Newspix

I'm a new buzznet user. Creating an account was easy. I even created two, one for personal use [but I don't think I'd be using it] and the other for my News and Current Events class [hence, the Newspix].

I managed to upload a photo from my mobile [Nokia (don't know the model)], followed the instructions on buzznet and it worked! In seconds my photo was published online. Now, my students could do something like this. But managing 50 students (X3 classes), whoah, that would be chaotic. Now, there must be something that could be done to make it more manageable. The Gallery feature should work but one photoblog, I think, would not suffice. One photoblog per class? Hmmm...

Elderbob, a technoguru Webhead, gave some useful tips on syndicating my photoblog to my blog [blogger]. The instructions were in plain English but sounded greek. I had to read it 3 times to make sense of what I was reading;-)I looked at the source code as Bob had instructed and compared his blog lay-out with mine. The script code, I found out, was also available in buzznet syndication help site. After tinkering with the codes, my newspix blog is now syndicated and I would be able to follow my students' photo publications. Thanks, Elderbob;-)

Now, I should take more [nicer] photos of Taiwan. Newspix, afterall, is news about Taiwan.

/aiden