Update #4

At present, the teacher has delivered my lesson and students are working on the project. Actually, I’ve already received two students’ work, which seems to exceed my expectation. The website they made by Google Sites is neat and fulfills all the requirements. However, the students said they still felt Google Sites didn’t work well on their computer. I’m glad they are being honest to me and I will keep communication with the teacher too. I wish I can receive more students’ work and their feedback this week before I finalize my report by deadline.

Update #3

I sent the learning activity lesson plan, lecture PPT and survey form to the teacher. After she read through the lesson plan, she gave me her advice and let me do some modifications. First, I should specify that the Chinese New Year web site will be developed in English instead of Chinese. Even though this is a language lesson plan about Chinese, learners are at novice level and the purpose of this project is aiming at laying the cultural foundation for language skills learning (such as phrases and sentences) in the following class. Without specifying the language requirement for this project, it will confuse the teacher and the students. Second, the teacher suggest me to create a Chinese New Year web site as a sample. It may be overwhelming for students who are new to Google Sites to do this project in class. A sample would be helpful to students to get a general idea what their project will be like, which lessens their learning anxiety.

She will deliver the lesson soon and we will keep regular communication about how the lesson is going.

Update #2

After I got permission from the instructor to conduct my final project in the way I mentioned last time, I was trying to contact my friend to see whether she could help me with this project. Fortunately, she was willing to deliver my lesson in her Chinese 1 class. I explained in details how to get this learning activity done and what things she needed to do.

Step 1 after I create the lesson plan, lecture PPT slides and survey form, I will send all these materials to her through the email.

Step 2 she needs to sign up a Google account if she doesn’t have one and practice to use Google Sites. Because she will teach her students to use Google Sites, so she should be familiar with this tool and be able to show students how to create a website using Google Sites step by step in class.

Step 3 besides delivering my lesson, she also has to observe the class, make notes about how students perform during the lesson, and provide her and students’ feedback using the survey. At the end, she will send survey and several students’ work back to me and I take use of them to generate my final project report.

Based on the agreement on the processing, I am finalizing my lesson plans, teaching materials and survey. And I hope I can send them to her by this week for her preparation.

IDT 516 Final Project Idea

 For IDT 561 Final Project, I would like to create a learning activity for high school students who are learning Chinese. Because I’m not currently working either in China or US, I am planning to ask my friend in the US to deliver my lesson in her Chinese 1 class after I get all materials ready to teach including the feedback survey . She will help me obverse students’ performance, collect and assess their work, and send her and students’ feedback survey back to me. By this way, I can evaluate my lesson whether is appropriate for the students and the teacher and make improvements from their suggestion.

 At the end of this lesson, students will be able to make a web site about Chinese New Year using a Web 2.0 tool- Google Sites. Through this task, students have the chance to explore the culture of Chinese New Year using Internet resources, promote students multi-cultural awareness and broaden their worldview on China and Chinese people. This lesson will also lay the foundation of cultural background before students start to learn the basic content knowledge of Chinese New Year, like words, set phrases and simple short sentences in Chinese. Students will work in different groups to research on topics of history of Chinese New Year (when and why), special food on Chinese New Year, special activity/entertainment on Chinese New Year, special decoration on Chinese New Year, reflection and summary (comparison between Chinese New Year and American New Year). In the end, they pull pieces of information together in the Google Sites and design their website too.