Hi, my name is Jane Wu. I live in a small city of 4 million people that you’ve never heard of – Liuzhou, southern China. However, our local noodle makes its name worldwide through its special stinky smell and irresistible sour and spicy flavour.
We are officially in summer now. This is my second course (just finished ETEC 500). I chose this course because I really like the idea of learning open and mobile education while we are building one together.
For some reason, I read through all the posts before I did this and I panicked. Because when I clicked on “top toolbar”, nothing happened. I don’t know how to make my post look nicer or even insert an image or video.
🙁
Anyways, I have been working in a BC offshore school for 7 years. Through these years I practiced many roles, such as the principal’s assistant, educational assistant, and the program coordinator. I have always been in a supporting role in my school and I love it.
I once thought I wanted to be a teacher which I thought would have more impact on the students. But thanks to the encouraging environment in my school which allows me to work closely with the BC teachers and have my ideas adopted by them in the classes.
Technology is inevitable. It is sad to see students in many Chinese high schools can not use their phones in school. Most parents also deem phones or other electronic devices as nothing but distractions while they spend most of their spare time staring at their phones.
I’m happy to be here and learn from others. Not only I want to better support the teachers and students in applying technology in education, but I also want to do something where I can turn the “technology illiterate parents” into “e-literate parents” and hopefully they can have a better relationship with their kids.
(If you are interested in knowing more about my city: Liuzhou, please use this link.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWX3j1Nf1TA
Hi Jane,
What a contrast that must be to Canada. I find it funny how 4 million people is considered a ‘small’ city!
The differences you see in the people and education must be enlightening and I would love to hear more about it.
Looking forward to working together on Assignment 2 🙂
Hello Jane,
I am guessing is your morning there right now. I have never been to LiuZhou. Maybe I can visit it one of these days when I get to go back to China. I heard that kids are going back to school, is that right. I tutor Chinese kids who have immigrated to Argentina. At first, they were afraid of using their mobile device because they came from China where cellphones cannot be used in class. Now they have totally adapted to the Argentinean lifestyle and I cannot get them off the phone. Their excuse, I am using it to search for information. Yeah right, I always catch them playing online games. I believe that the issue is “how much” time is good. If we give them too much freedom they get hooked to their phones. But the mobile device can be used to assist in their learning.
Hi Silvia,
Yeah, it was morning when I posted it. I will be very happy to host you if you come to visit in Guangxi.
We were allowed to be back on campus since May 6th. And better news came this week that we don’t have to wear masks in school/ classroom anymore.
As to the cell phone problems, we are still in constant conflict with the host school and constantly dealing with disagreements from the parents. We were placed in a separate building in a host school. But at the entrance, we have to make posters to remind the international program students to put their cell phones away before they walk out of our building.
Tell me about it, for L2 students, electronic devices definitely help with the speed. However, we still struggle with how to educate the students about how to use their devices properly. Other than games, there’s a big problem for L2 students is that they always use online translators instead of doing the work themselves. And that’s one of the major issues I want to fix and get some ideas out of this program.
Hello Jane, nice to meet you! I’m very curious about the local stinky, spicy, sour noodle! That sounds like something I would enjoy.
As far as devices and the need for students to use them as translators, I have had a similar problem as an ESL teacher and as a student learning a foreign language. It’s easy to develop an overreliance on using phones as translators. Being able to tolerate ambiguity and not understand every word in reading and being brave enough to write in the L2 without every word being correct is a hard sell for some studentsl. Short daily writing exercises that build from 5 to 10 to 15 minutes without the use of translators help, as well as having some sort of gauge/signal in the classroom (looks similar to a fire warning gauge or a stop light – green means use your cellphones on the assignment, yellow means use it but for a limited time or specific purpose, and red was no cellphone use allowed) that helps moderate cellphone use worked in some of my colleague’s classes. In my school, cellphones couldn’t be used on end of course exams, and so students needed to be able to use a paper dictionary, and so if we were always using translators, it became problematic.
Looking forward to learning with you this semester!
Hi Mel,
I would love to take you to have some of those smelly noodles. You could probably find them in some local Chinese supermarket. And I meant it when I said it’s famous and popular worldwide.
It is called Luosifen, meaning river snail rice noodles.
I can’t agree more about that it is a hard sell when the students are not sure they are 100% correct. Especially for Chinese students, because the traditional schools are not that tolerable about being wrong. And most students fear to ask questions or even giving opinions just because they don’t want to appear to be stupid.
Thank you for sharing the different singals experience. We could definitely try that and be more specific with the students in the future. However, a big problem in our school is that the students can not see the problem of using a translator all the time is because the teachers don’t always point it out but they chose to tolerate and work with what they got. I think we need to figure out how to tell the students isn’t harmful for their own learning in the long run but not to hurt their self-esteem or motivation every time we tell them.