Chapter Seven

National Geographic

This is the website I would like to introduce in Chapter 7: Content-based Instruction.

What is this website about?
This website provides an abundant of information about things over our planet. Animals, plants, geography, the environment, etc. can be found in it. Visitors are kind of taking tours online to know about Earth. It is a very useful website for the content area geography and social science. And it is recommended to people of all ages!!! Click into the site index to see for the links National Geographic sorted for different visitors.

Special Features:

It has a section for younger visitors called National Geographic Kids. A colorfully designed website just for kids! The sections are divided clearly so that young ones can surf easily. Word choices are considered to fit their vocabulary ability. Kids can learn through interesting Activities and Games. Fun Stories and Videos about things on our planet also attract kids’ attention. Kids can also create a list of favorite stuff in the website by using a function called My Page. Click to the Animal to find out all about the animal: videos, facts, pictures, etc.

As for more advanced students, click on to any topics provided on homepage. Read Daily News of stories and photos, History, or People & Places around the world. Watch videos to get prove of things in textbooks. There are many things to read and watch!

It also provided materials for educators. The website has designed Lesson Plans for different grade levels. It is really useful for teacher in content-based language instruction. Maps and photos are also presented on the web. Teachers can download what they need. Professional Development section has detailed information on teaching geography or social studies. National Geography also has products to support teachers.

My Words:
It is a well built website with a lot of knowledge for different ages of people to explore!! When I first entered it, I have a feeling that I will go back again to read those interesting articles and watch those great videos!! It is a website for life-long learning.

Chapter Five

Hot Potatoes

Hot Potatoes Version 6 is the website I visited for Chapter 5: Creativity and Production.

What is Hot Potatoes about?
It is software that allows users to create five kinds of quizzes: JCloze, JMatch, JCross JQuiz, and JMix for the World Wide Web.

What is so special about Hot Potatoes?
Hot potatoes can be used both by teachers and students. Teachers create quiz WebPages to test on how much the students have absorbed. As for students, creating quiz WebPages can be contained into the project they are doing. In order to design the five type of quizzes: Interactive multiple-choice, short answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-filling exercises, students need to have a clear understanding about their topic or project first, which is a kind of training, too.

My Words:
This software is really convenient for creating quizzes but not so convenient to create a quiz website online. The software itself is actually pretty easy to use, because the manipulate environment are basically the same. But here comes a problem: the quizzes are being created into separate pages, even they can be set to connect to each other, the users still have to use another software to create a homepage for them, which means users have to know how to use other software such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver.

Chapter Four

Dave's ESL Cafe
This is an example of a Web site for student to listen and speak around the computer.
About the Website: It is mainly divided into four parts.

Jobs: To help teachers who are interested in teaching overseas but don’t know where to start. The website not only offers ESL/EFL job links of countries like Korean, China, etc, but also allows teachers to post resumes on board.

Stuff for Teachers: This is a great place for teachers. It provides an idea cookbook that contains many sources for different courses. For example, it has ideas for food, math, grammar, and reading, etc. Also it builds forums for teachers to discuss issues of jobs or teacher training.

Stuff for Students: It is described below.
Stuff for Everyone. There are book store, ESL links, and also things about Dave-his photo gallery and a clip of interview.

Goals: The Internet' s meeting place for ESL+EFL student from around the world.

Presentation: Students can click into Idioms, Phrase verbs, Pronunciation Power and Slangs to learn. You can choose from random learning from collection, a complete list or alphabetical lists of meaning and examples. Also students can go to Help Center to post questions or participate in different topic of the Student Forum. Quizzes are created to test how much you learned.

Appropriateness: The Website is pretty easy to explore. Students can click whatever they like to learn and take a quiz to test immediately. Sharing what one’s ideas with others through Student Forum is a great way to learn English, because after reading others’ postings one can learn more.

Outcomes: Quiz-like outcomes.
Evaluation: When students submit their quiz answers, the evaluation appear immediately to provide the correct answers and the scores.

Notes: The drawback of the Website is that the Pronunciation Power icon is led to another website that is not for free!!! Students have to purchase for it to use the product for practicing pronunciation. Therefore this English learning Website is actually lacking of the training of listening and speaking.

Chapter Three

Welcome to Adam Rado's English Learning Fun Site
Adam Rado's English Learning Fun Site

This is the Website I explored for chapter 3: Developing and Practicing Listening and Speaking Skills.

Goals: Through many activities basic, intermediate and advanced levels students get to practice the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Presentation: There are mainly three parts to click in: Guest, Toefl Helpful, and Members. In the guest area it helps students to learn grammar, idiom, slang, vocabulary, pronunciation, conversation, accent reduction, listening, reading, and writing through many topics such as sounds, cartoons, jokes, printout exercises and student input with correction, etc. Students can also interact with others by sending their comments on several activities to forums and view others’ opinions or making e-mail pals with foreign students.
BUILD A STORY
PICTURE THIS
HUMOR ME
READ ME
INTERACT
SAY WHAT?
MOUTH WORKOUT
TOEFL © HELPFUL
MOVIE TALK
TOON IN to IDIOMS

Register for free membership student can get more practice in each activity. The Toefl Helpful focused on preparing for the test.
Appropriateness: The sections are clearly created, students can easily choose what they want to explore. It should be noted that the website is for basic, intermediate and advanced levels students.
Outcomes: Quiz-like outcomes.
Evaluation: When students submit their answers, recorded voice of “try again” or “good job” speaks out immediately.
Notes: This website uses interesting topics to encourage students to learn. For examples everyone watch movies, so it provides a section on movies to create all kinds of activities. Multimedia materials make learning English more fun and interesting. It also covers communication and collaboration, which is an important notion in learning. It is indeed a website that covers much and really can attract students to visit again and again!

Chapter Two

P I Z ZA Z !... People Interested in Zippy and ZAny Zcribbling
An Online Resource since 1995 forScribblers and Teachers of English as a Second Languageby Leslie Opp-Beckman
PIZZAZ: People Interested in Zippy and Zany Zcribbling (Opp-Beckman, 2003)
PIZZAZ
Goal:
PIZZAZ! is dedicated to providing simple creative writing and oral storytelling activities with copyable (yes, copyable!) handouts for use with students of all ages.
Presentation:
It is divided into five sections: Poetry, Fiction, Bag of Tricks, More Publishing Opportunities, and Other Teacher Resources. Each of them provides many links that has clear descriptions. And when one decides to click in, complete instruction and handouts are provided. Some even have related links of information for the activities.
Appropriateness:
The ESL Student Level for each activity was stated clearly at the top, the teacher would easily find what kind and what level of activities they want. As for students, most of the resources in the website are not for students, but the instructions are really clear, and the word choices are not difficult. It is really useful for all levels and ages.
Outcomes:
The website provides links that can publish something on the webpage.
Evaluation:
This website did not provide any evaluation for students. The evaluation depends on the instructor of the activity.
Notes:
Every activity has great instructions and handouts for students. It is very useful for ESL teachers when they need some ideas.

About Me

Hello! My name is Christina. I was born in February 4, 1986. I am an Aquarius. I have two sisters and a brother, and I am the oldest. Recently a new family member came, she is a black dog who is only three or four months old, and her name is Hailey. She is kind of my third sister!! Wow, what a big family!!! I am a girl who loves to read. Reading in leisure is the best thing in the world!! Also I am good at running; I had won many medals in elementary school and had been in the track and field team in high school. Oh!! I got second place in the cross-country race in NCU. But tell you a little secret, actually I hate running!! I never practice beside the race day. Haha! I love to try many sports, I went to NCU Hotdance for two years and now I am playing volleyball. Talking about my favorite color, it is definitely purple!!! I always unconsciously dresses myself in purple, and I told people to call me 阿紫. I guess I am crazy about it!!!!! I am pretty emotional and therefore I cry a lot. And I am really free about things. I do not know it is good or bad, maybe both. At last, why I had this blog? Well, I am a student major in English Department and it is a requirement from a class called Online English Learning. Hope I can provide something useful to people who visit my blog and learn something myself.

hihi

oh, label, i am testing