Name: MBE (jason)
After living in China for over 6 years, my life back stateside...
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(since 5.14.04)
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I assigned my first blogging assignment to my students on September 7th of this year. They really were still getting used to this school and learning in English and living in a new place. Their writing was good for a second language learner at such an early stage. We are on our 13th week of school and I must admit that their writing is improving so much! This can also prove that just blogging once a week can get them thinking about writing more and trying more with the English language. Here are two examples from two different students. The first entry it their first attempt and then today's attempt:
09-07-04: my favorite thing to do at school is art , science and english and play to friend and geme and go to the library in read a book.
11-30-04: I like to play tennis.
But I can't play very well.
Becouse now I practice of tennis.
I want to play tennis very well.
(^0^!)～♪
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
And I like to play unicycle.
I have a unicycle and I can to play unicycly.
It was 3grade.we like to play unicycle.we practiceof unicycle.
So I can play unicycle good.
!^0^!====
♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
I like to play rope skipping.
I can to duplication jump.
My Japanese school have rope skipping morning assembluy.
/^０^\
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
I don't like to play horizontal bar.
Becouse I can't to play horizontal bar very well.
***************************
09-07-04: I like English story beause English shcol in the English speak I no.
11-30-04: I like sport is tabletennis.
Becase tabletennis is I think very easy.
And I'm tabletennis is very well.
So very funny.
I'm also like sport is swim.
Because swimming is very funny.
So I like swimming pool.
I'm two more went swimming pool.
I think some people like sport is swimming.
first I don't like swim.
but go to swimming pool,
very funny~!
so I like swim.
And I like game is computer.(little)
because some funny.
computer game among...
jigsaw puzzle.
because that some easy.
I'm jigsaw puzzle is very well.
so I like jigsaw puzzle.
As you can see just by the amount they are writing, but also the quality is much better. You can check out more of the class' writing at Y5R.
Last evening I had my first Chinese traditional foot massage. You would think that in almost 4 years of living here I would have gotten around to this before now. Actually, I have a weekly massage but it does not include the foot massage. My wife told me that there is a Chinese saying that goes "Your feet are a person's second heart" (脚是人的第二心脏) I have to admit that she knows what she is talking about! The bottom of the foot has the most acupuncture spots of your whole body! If you protect your feet it like protecting your heart.
The thing that gets me is that I have seen Chinese business men and the shoes that they wear. I have two pair myself and they are like walking on a pair of wooden planks. They are the most uncomfortable shoes I have ever worn. I get blisters every time I wear them. I guess that is why everyone heads off to get their feet massaged?!
...yes, I know, it seems that I have mis-spelled 'weather' but I have not. It is really amazing that in two days the weather could have changed so drastically! On Wednesday it was about 16C, or 60F and last night it was 2C or 36F. My wife and I were scrambling for the long underwear and the heaters. So to say the least we have stayed in most of the day. She is writing a paper for her new schedule of classes and I am trying to simply stay warm!
For Christmas this year we are planning to buy iPods for each other. Being the music junkie that I am my wife is getting me the 40G and I am going to get her the pink Mini-iPod. She really only needs the 4G because she can only listen to music for a set period of time before she needs to do something new, you know?! So I have downloaded the 'iTunes' program for WinXP and I have started 'preparing' for the arrival of the "PODS". So far I have 1579 songs and that is only the beginning! I am really excited now and I will keep the total updated here...
Last night I conducted an 'enrichment' class at my school. This was the third such class that I had hosted in about 6 months at my school. However, this was the first time that a few teachers from earlier returned for further information. That was very encouraging! It was a pretty good turnout. 12 people came to find out more about blogging. Everyone there was very interested in blogging and all set up their own beginner blog. Over the coming days and weeks I will add their sites to my sidebar, so keep your eyes peeled.
To follow up on my XBOX woes: That same day that I posted about it not working, I had planned to take it to the shop to get fixed. So being that details kind of guy that I am, I double checked it one more time to make sure that it was really not working. When I plugged it in it was working fine! I have been playing a number of different games and it has not given me any more trouble. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the problem is resolved!
I found this and thought it was useful!
Blog Promotion for Newbies
1: Don’t use blogrolling: it may be easier to use but the javascript stuffs up search engines when they are looking for links and makes the links useless, use WordPress’s managed links feature or similar product, or even hard code it, I did for the 18 months I used MT before changing to WordPress
2. Pinging to weblogs et al is good but trackbacking to sites is better, when of course your post is in relation to that sites topic. Also legitimate commenting directly on other sites helps expose your site to others. But remember, it must be legitimate comment and not spam!
3. Offer to exchange links on your site under your links section, it lets people know that your interested in linking and will build up your site quickly in Technorati and Google.
4. Link to other small sites without exchange, either through side bar or post: linking to big sites is great in showing what your reading but does nothing to build up your readership because they nearly always never return the favour, indeed a number of them will steal your stories or ideas without any attribution at all. Smaller sites on the other hand are often stoked that you’ve linked to them and will return the favour without asking, even if they don’t, you’ve still done a good deed.
5 submit your blog to ALL the search engines, it might take some time but the spiders will start coming if….
6. The most important feature of all: post regularly and post often. It not only brings readers back regularly but it means the spiders from the search engines will return more frequently indexing your entire site, and you’ll start getting hits from the search engines. Some may argue that these aren’t that valuable but I would argue that’s rubbish. It exposes your site to a new audience for free, and even if only a few return you’ve still built up your readership for free. Take the Blog Herald for example, we get 5,000 views per month just from clickthrus in from Google and another 2,500 from other search engines (Google is the only real game in town though). Even if only 1% return to the site later, that’s 75 new regular readers per month or nearly 1000 per year, and what I also find is that this traffic also responds well to advertising on the site if they’ve stumbled in for the wrong reason.
When I first moved to China (1999) I had one year of teaching experience under my belt. The school I taught in my first year was not the highest scoring school by any means (that begs the question about testing that I will not touch on today) Anyway, I was just happy when one or two students handed in their homework on time. After teaching in Beijing I realized that teaching can actually be rewarding and that student can learn! I then spent another two years back in the states working in a different school from my first. This school was a little better, but after my experience in China, my expectations were too high of my students and often left me feeling like a failure. When I returned to China in 2002 I felt that feeling again of reward as students really seemed to 'want' to learn! Today as I was teaching a 7th grade computer class I stopped and reflected for a moment as I looked at their work and realized that they are producing work similar to that of an 11th or 12th grader in the states... I was in awe. I was taken back. I was happy! At the same time I was so sad to think that in the states there are so many people who think that we have the best educational system in the world. I hate to tell you, we don't!
This past sunday a China Eastern plane crashed just seconds after take off from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region killing 54 people. If you look at the pictures of the frozen lake that it crashed into you can tell that the conditions were less than ideal. This is the first major airline crash in 2 1/2 years. The last one happen in May of 2002 near my wife's hometown of Dalian. For anyone who has flown domestically in China, I am not saying anything that you do not know when I say that I am not surprised that this happened. According to Xinhuanet the following decrees where issued following the crash.
So, what you are saying is that you were not already doing this? I am would say that I am shocked, but I am not really. 
..a few weeks ago I got Halo 2 for my Xbox. It is a really rockin' game. However, yesterday I had some buddies over to the house to play. After we played the multiplayer mode for a while my Xbox stopped working. I was really depressed. Because I live in China, I cannot just run out the Best Buy or Target and get it fixed. So after work today I will be headed back out to the shop where I bought it to get it repaired. But the problem with that is that usually the fellow who runs the shop has to send it off to be repaired which means 1 week to a month to get it back! The weather is getting colder and I use that as an excuse to play more Xbox. There is some hope. I have been reading several XBOX forums and this is a common problem with certain DVD Drives in the earlier XBOX consoles. So it looks like only a new Samsung or Phillips DVD drive will fix the problem. Please let me know if you too have been having trouble...
...in 1999 when I first started working in Beijing, China, my 'Foreign Affairs Officers' at the school where I was teaching gave me a Chinese name. It was required for many of the documents at that time for non-Chinese to have a Chinese name on the offical docs. At that time, the officer just took my first given name (Warren) and gave me a Chinese name that sounded like it (Wang Lin) 王林. That name worked fine for me for a long time. It was really easy to write and it impressed Chinese students and students in the US equally. However, the longer that I lived in China and the more adults that I talked to about my name told me that my name was missing a character. It was odd to see these two characters together for a name. It happens, but it is rare. So in my attempts to sound more 'Chinese' I added a third character "山" in between the exsisting two and that made my name Wang Shan Lin "王山林" (King of the Mountain Woods) Now when I tell people my name they do not say that it is not quite right, they just laugh that I say and write my name! Oh well, the price you pay for fame, right?!
As of the last week or so, this site has been slow at loading. If you are a regular reader, thank you for being patient. I have noticed a lot more visitors on my counter, and I am certain that most of those have been from blogexplosion and that is cool, but out of all the people visiting, very few have ever left a comment. If you like please leave a comment. You might be one of those folks who just wait the required 30 seconds to load the next page just to get visitors to your site. At least leave your location on my new GUEST MAP from Bravenet. You can find the link at the bottom of the page! I have only 100 spaces, so please be quick!
At Button Maker, one can make their own custom buttons for their blog, website, etc. It is really cool! Check out mine!
This site (http://www.learningpage.com) is a good site not only for ESL teachers, but also for any other primary aged teacher's class. It has loads of FREE resources and to access them you only need to register (also free). I know that being a teacher when I see the word 'FREE' I have to at least check it out. The main resource that I use from this site is called 'Tommy Tales." It is a serial story about a boy named Tommy that has a magic 'clicker' (TV Remote) and he is able to travel to very different places. There are lots of supplimental materials to add to the story. I use the stories at least once a week and it has questions to check progress and understanding. I would suggest a look at the tools to see if they can be used in your classroom. (aged KG-3rd)
Stephen Downes' website/blog is very informative for any educator or person interested in educational needs. I have his RSS feed on my reader so I get his daily stuff on my desktop everyday. He just returned from a tour of Australia where he conducted several talks about technology related matters. He has put all of his information on the website (including MP3s of the actual lecture) for anyone interested. I am particularly interested in the Blogs, Learning Objects and Other Cool Stuff! session.
I mentioned in yesterday's post that I compiled several articles and tools to assist my fellow teachers with starting and maintaining a blog for personal and/or professional use. I want to list what resources I have included in my book for those reading this that might be interested:
1. "How to start your own blog"
2. Blogging Style: Basic Posting Formats (Series Index)
3. EduBlogs
4. A Closer Look at Weblogs
5. My Article from May 2004 Beijing, PRC
6. Weblogs for Use in the ESL Classroom
7. Scaffolding for Struggling Students
8. Educational Blogging
9. "Let's Blog Around the Clock"
10. The New Amateur Journalists Weigh in
11. The Educated Blogger
12. What We're Doing When We Blog
13. RSS: The Next Killer App for Education
14.RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators
I have a few other odds and ends, but this is the bulk of what I have included in the 'reader' for my co-workers. I think that for my fist attempt it is a pretty good representation of beginning blogging. I also included an extensive list of links/blogs that I have found useful.
...back in early June I presented a short one-hour presentation about blogging to some of the other primary teachers at my school. It was good and a lot of interest was generated. However, to my knowledge no one started a blog from the session. A week or so later my wife started her own blog to practice her written communication skills and so she could communicate with friends and family more. After returning to school this school year (August) I was asked again to share what I knew about blogging with some colleagues in the secondary department of the school. Through this one other teacher started a blog for her class. Around the same time a fellow teacher and friend of mine started a blog for his 4th grade students. And finally, I started a seperate blog for just my classroom activities here. I have not included all the comments, questions, suggestions that have come from these presentations and one on one meetings. But a little later this month I will be presenting again to more teachers that are interested in learning about the benefits of blogging in education. In preparation for this I decided that this time I would compile several articles and useful blog entries into a 'handbook or workbook' that the people attending this workshop could benefit from having. I spent the better part of Thursday and Friday (in my freetime) organizing this information into a nice flowing format. I will keep you posted as to the reaction of the people and to see if more people will join the blogging ranks!
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