Thing 9: Checking out slideshare.net

Slideshare.net is a very interesting site! I was hoping to find some Chinese language slides, but this was the best that I could find. I did get side tracked watching some great presentations regarding the use of ICT's and visual aids in our teaching...perhaps I'll pop them up later!

Here's the presentation I found, "Amazing China":

Amazing China

View more presentations from ڿڰۣڿڰۣ♥ Spider ♥ڿڰۣڿڰۣ ♥.

Thing 8 (cont.): An investigation into Creative Commons

What is Creative Commons?

After using the above phrase in a search I have found a great definition from here:

Creative Commons

A new "copyleft license" aimed at flexible handling of copyright protection for all kinds of creative work (books, websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, songs and other audio & visual recordings). It is intended to preserve the intellectual property rights of publishers as well as to allow legal modification and distribution by the consumer. If you are about to publish your work, you may choose between different options (allow/disallow

commercial use, modifications, re-distribution under different license terms). Visit the Creative Commons website for detailed information.

http://search.creativecommons.org/

Is a great search engine that searches popular sites for content that is licensed under Creative Commons. You can choose what sort of content to look for including content to use for commercial purposes or content you'd like to modify, adapt, or build upon.

I performed a search using the same terms as the Advanced Search post and although searching in English turned up very similar results, when I typed in 房子 I found some great pics, including the following:

Thing 8: Conducting an advanced search.

Ok, so when I started this Thing, I thought I knew some of the tricks already. I use www.google.com and google.com.cn already to find cool pictures like:

The first search term I started with was in google images and I searched for 'house'. The first thing that came up was:















So I refined my search term to 'australian house' and 'my house' finally finding something that looked more like home:











Then I decided to type '房子' (house) in and see what happened. At first I found these images:

Which is topical because I'm in the market for buying a house and am definitely feeling like the guy in the bottom pic! The house is yelling out to 'PAY IT BACK! PAY IT BACK!" :)


I realised I wasn't getting anything helpful using the term '房子' (house) so I changed to look at '公寓' (apartment's) and found lots of photos of cats!! After scrolling through the cats, I found the plans to an apartment in China. This would be great for a unit we do with our Year 12s...so I thought I would look for the same in Australia so that we could compare them.
Here's what I found:
Not only did I use different languages to change the results of my search, I also narrowed the search down using " " and by tweaking my search terms to find what I wanted.

I am off now to search Creative Commons. This is something I don't know much about. Yet.

下次见！　

Thing 7: Embedding a Voki

Get a Voki now!


Wow! This is a lot of fun! I have a feeling my students are going to love making these! Especially my Grade 8's!

I have recorded a simple introduction in Chinese:
你好！对我来介绍一下，我叫白凯琳。我是个中学汉语老师。这是我第一次来用“Voki".
Hi! Let me introduce myself, my name is Bai Kailin. I am a secondary Chinese teacher. This is my first time using "Voki".

Uh oh...Term 3 has started...

I have been very slack! Term 3 has started and it seems my time has disappeared. My timetable is settling down this week and I can promise that I will be able to lock in my 'things' time!! I will be catching up with the last 2 things this week.

Will keep you posted! :)

Thing 5 & 6: Finding and Embedding a video

Well, here it is! I tried hard to keep to a minimum of 5-10 minutes searching, but I just couldn't! I found Jess McCulloch's bookmarked video's on TeacherTube. Lots of great stuff for Chinese!

Here's one I thought was very cute, it's called 'Mum is the best'!

My goals for the '23 Things' PD

The goals I want to achieve during the 23 Things PD are:

• Learning new technologies that I can implement in my language classrooms (especially finding ICT resources that will work with script-based languages!!)
• Connecting with other like-minded teachers,
  
• Giving myself structured time to find new 'things' on the world wide web.

Once I have my new timetable, I will set aside a 35 min block of my spares each week and at least 35mins outside of school to work on the 'things' and to reflect on my progress.

The Professional standards (based on those from the Queensland College of Teachers) I want to target are:

• Design and implement intellectually challenging learning experiences,
• Design and implement engaging and flexible learning experiences for individuals and groups, and
  
• Commit to reflective practise and professional renewal.
  

The Beginning...

Wow. Writing blogs is hard! I am known to talk too much, so it's going to be difficult to keep my posts to 150 words!

A little about me and the purpose of this blog:
I'm a beginning teacher, I have clocked up a whole semester of teaching experience!

I teach Chinese and English at a fairly large state high school in Brisbane, Queensland.

I am very interested in using ICT's in my teaching to challenge both the students and myself to do new things in new ways.

I am currently participating in the awesome '23 Things' Professional Development course (hence the creation of this blog). I love the idea of this PD course as it gives teachers the tools and allows us to find the time to learn and practise new skills. If I've learnt anything over the last semester, it's that it is impossible to find a convenient time for anything! We're all too busy!