Blogger Play
Apologies to those who are interested in my blog but were somehow disappointed to find no updates for the past three months. I almost give up this blog as in China, people cannot view my blog. I had wanted to invite my Chinese students to post their opinions as feedback to my blog. However, as the web page simply cannot be opened in China. I had to give up the idea.
Then I find it is hard to keep up my blog without a target audience in mind. I simply lost the interest. However, I remember in the International Cross Culture Conference held in Harbin, China this June, I was advertising this technology blog of mine, inviting international peers who are interested to know about China to visit this blog. I don't know if there is anyone who did respond to my ad, but I felt sorry that I didn't keep my promise.
I hope this will be a start to get me back to my track. I have checked the new feature of Blogger, BloggerPlay. It is cool as it is advertised. I think the charm comes from the diversity of these pictures as well as the on-line synchronic viewing of the pictures. If we do have internet connection in Chinese classroom, this will be a fun way to expose our students to various cultures. And the cool part is that teachers can stop at any picture and zoom in and elaborate the picture by a single click. If I were to use it in my classroom, I'll have a brainstorming activity before the click. Students can say anything they like about this picture, predictions about the content of the post, stories behind the picture, simply anything that they are willing to share with their classmates. I feel many English teachers treat their students as kids simply because Ss' low English proficiency. But we are ignoring the fact that they are grown-ups and extremely intelligent adults (given the fact that they survive the severe college entrance exam in China). So I am thinking, they should not be hindered to express their opinions, ideas or knowledge even though they cannot express themselves very well in English. I will definitely tolerate some Chinese in activity such as this to encourage my students to open their mouths to talk.
