Reflection

Reflection on my website

There have been many changes in using the technology in Korean education over the last few years. When I was young, the course about computer I had at primary aimed to teach how to use computer itself, rather than how we could use to enhance our studying. However, nowadays a computer has been using for our teaching and studying and the class using a computer also has shown a lot of benefits in spite of some concerns (as I stated in my rational). Therefore, I tried to obtain advantages and get rid of disadvantages and weakness from my website.

The website I designed is for intermediate level and it might correspond to Korean high school students. The students in this class, “Having Fun with English on the Internet”, are not supposed to use Korean website, except for one Korean-English dictionary website (http://endic.naver.com/endic.nhn?).

My main purpose is to give them motivation to read a variety of readings written in English and also, to improve their reading skills, such as skimming and scanning. In this light, I tried to make activities and tasks in it clear and fun filled.
In order to check out my website, I asked some international friends to explore my websites. In this part, I am going to give my own opinion about their constructive comments.


(1) Topic:

Topic was chosen considering students interesting. In fact, to Korean high school students, traveling is almost impossible until they finish their National University entrance exam. Thus, they have a big desire to trip to other countries. I guess this topic is able to attract student’s interest.
However, one of my friends asked me, how come there is no Iran? his country!, although the title is “Traveling in Asia”. From his comment, I realized the importance of choosing title, especially; website is open to people all over the world. Also, it can make students have wrong knowledge that only the countries shown in my website belong to Asian countries.


(2) Design & Structure

Overall colors in my website makes viewers feel comfortable, compared to overall colors used in WebQuest. I could have an idea that lighter colors on the main screen of website might be better for viewer to read through the screen for a long time. Also, one more thing, in terms of text font for screen, not being fancy and no tailing, such as verdana, would be easy for viewer to read, in contrast to readings published into a paper. One of my friends asked me a question “is there a special reason to put Forum and Journals before ‘process & activities’ and ‘knowledge hunt’. I supposed that it would be helpful to teachers and students before exploring these two, ‘process & activities’ and ‘knowledge hunt’. According to her, the forums and journals for teachers need to be put front in order to inform teachers of some guideline which can be all necessary procedure however, for students, it could lead students to other activities rather than my website activities. If so, the extra activities introduced in Form and Journals could be main process and mine could be extra. I think it would be better to leave forum and journals for teacher in original place instead, to move forum and journals for students back after Knowledge hunt.
It is said that the flag and the button for activities are well designed, which makes students feel like clicking the activities more. Overall, with regard to navigation, it is not difficult and is linked to proper and interesting links.


(3) Activities

I put much effort on each activity to give scaffolding to students’ learning, so I guess activities are challenging but not impossible as long as students read carefully. In fact, my friend told me some difficulty in solving the puzzle, however I think his difficulty is from not reading carefully, rather than difficulty in understanding the meaning by the questions. Also, each answer for questions in activities can be found while they are exploring the introduced websites.

However, I am seriously concerned about the function, “Find” in the edit menu. While they are answering to the questions, they can use the function behind a teacher. This makes them cheat easily with the function. Of course, a teacher should warn them not to use the function, but who knows where they use it or not. Thus, this seems to be a last big assignment for me.

** I was so happy with this unit and I’ve learned many things about a variety of software and pedagogical rational to build websites for EFL/ESL students. Truly thanks for Debra and Susan who contribute to my WebQuest and website.

Zipped file

Finally, I put a top function in my webquest.. and temporarily I was so happy..
I thought the next step was making this webquest compressed into zipped file and then sending it to Debra.. However, it didn't work..
Why??????? everytime, error messages turned up...
What's wrong with my webquest or with this computer or with H drive.?

' Everything related to computer is never coming to me easily.. '

I got Byron Bay tour voucher.

Yesterday.. I went to a Korean travel in the city to book tourpackage for Sydney and Melbourn. This is because I was planning to travel there before Korea.
Luckly, there was a big event to celebrate the 11th U&I travel angeny birthday.
All of sudden, I became a candidate as soon as I picked up the number, and I could not help but skip the class, CLN641, as this started 4:30 pm and finished 6:00.
Actually, this is the first time for me to skip the class since I started to study at QUT.
However, it was worthy since I got $ 60 worth BYRON Bay tour voucher.. ^^*

This is the first photo taken here. Maybe 2 weeks after I came to Brisbane.
I used to live in a homestay house which is behind me in the photo. However, the place was between 3 and 4 zone boundary ,, so it was too far and it was a little expensive, so I decided to move out.. and moved into my current house..
From the photo, I seemed slimmer than now.

Dinner

One day, my friend, SAFA, invited his friends and house mates.
While posting this photo, I found that except him, all of us were women there.. and one more thing, except J's daughter, he was the youngest among us..

THEREFORE, I can conclude he usually like woman more than man, and the old than the young.
^^*

The more English you are exposed to in English classes, the better you will get.

The more English you are exposed to in English classes, the better you will get.

-> I totally agree with the opinion above. However, I'd like to adopt it into English class in Korean primary school. As you know, Koreans are not native speaks of English and also primary school teachers's communicative compentence is not excellent enough to speak in English during the class.
Furthermore, each class has at least 35 students.. Could you image that a teach teaches them in a communicative way .. using in English?
In this situation, this opinion has threatened them. I am sure that even native speak teachers have difficult in teaching them and actually, I witnessed it in Korea.
For this taken for granted opinion, to implement into English class room in Korea, it would take much more time than we expected. This is becasue I really find that language barrier is extreamly high..


I'd like to hear your opinion.. -> Even though a second language teacher does not speak a target language fluetly, it would be better that he/she teaches students in a target language.???
Like me.. after going back to teaching, teaching students in English although I know my inproper pronuciation.. heaps of grammar mistakes.

What I've witnessing here.

Yesterday, I finally finished my last presentation, from now on; I should focus on four big final assignments. To tell the truth, this semester is less hard than my first semester, although I chose one more subject. I feel like I’m getting used to do my assignments at around the end of my studying. Since I started to study here, I’ve been witnessing something that really enlightens me to a great extent. When I use other people’s ideas while doing assignments, I should be honest with using them and also appreciate their studies and ideas. I am not saying that their ideas are always right. I mean that their studies and ideas are worthy as they give me a time to think more in that part I’ve never thought or I’ve ignored.

^^*

How time flies. My departure time for Korea is coming, however before that day; I should submit four big assignments and build up my website for CLN618. I think that’s life. Always good things and bad things come to us together, and we feel even happier about small things after we go through bad things and we realize how valuable the small things which came to me naturally are. I used to wish to live by myself from my family and I thought it must be cool and lots of freedom. I admit there are some advantages of being myself from family.

Eg. Nobody wakes me up in the morning. / I don’t need to report it to my family that I am likely to be late.

I didn’t know that I could miss these things until I lived by myself.

However, now, I am realizing that how happy I was with my family.

Moreton island

I love this photo very much, because everyone looked funny like children.
Sandboarding.. Before I did, i thought,, "~~ this is for Children.. ~" but, it's fun and it's fairly fast..
Me and Daisy, Maria,, Where is Joice?
She was taking a photo of us.

I really like my uni in that it is very spacious .. especailly from this photo, my uni looks nice.
In fact, My univerisy in Korea was really small so I could get everywhere in uni within 5mins and the number of student per year was around 100. Instead it was fairly competitive to enter. This is because the students graduating from my uni can easily get a secure job.

This photo was taken in Cairns where I spent my winter holiday. Before I got there, I expected it would be hot and very tropical climate. However, it was cold to swim.. so.. I would like to go there again for snorkeling and swimming.
Great barrier reef..

Presentation.

Today.. I have a presentation for Language and Culture.
Although now I have to practice it before class, I am still hanging around my website and blog.. and so on.. Once I jump into the cyberspace, it's really hard for me to jump out of there..

Hot Potatoes

I am having a fun with Hot Potatoes program and actually it’s easier than I expected. However, in a light of Hot Potatoes assignment, the most important thing is how to build up useful website to do some reading on language learning tasks and get students motivated, rather than showing off technology skill. Thus, I need to read some book about CALL or Task based learning and so on..

It's been over one year.

It's been about more than one year since I came to Brisbane. I left my family behind and came here. Looking back on my life, it was the hardest thing to be away from people I love and care about. Over one year, my oldest sister opened a restaurant and my second oldest sister gave birth to a daughter. Actually, I didn’t realize until I came here that I made such a challenge and hard decision. The reason I chose to come here is that first of all, I wanted to speak English fluently and another thing is that I expected the feelings which I had during holiday in other countries. Finally, I made a decision very easily and quickly. However, I found many things that there are heaps of differences between studying overseas and travelling overseas. It would take page and page, so I won’t forgo it. If I knew that and considered many things, I wouldn’t have been here. Currently, I am happy with my loose decision. This is because I’ve learned a lot about how to lead my life and how important is the relationship with friends and family, although I'm still missing my family dearly.

I hope everyone is doing well and keeping healthy.

Don't call each other by their first name in Korea.

Koreans rarely call each other by their first name except for close friends and children.

-> It is common to call others by their first name in many other countries; by contrast, it is not common in Korea. Although students often do use first names among themselves and adults only use first names with those who are younger than them. At other times, Korean call people by their first name together with 씨(Mr./Ms.). This is very commonly used polite title among colleagues. To be more polite, Korean put one’s name and “teacher” together.

So.. if you want to call me in Korea.. call me "Park teacher" ^^* although it sounds formal.

Elluminate

Today, I had a special class with Norm, professor in Canada.
This online sychronous discussion with Dr Norm Vaughn at the University of Calgary was really useful to me and everything came to me so exciting.

Interesting thing from ED 14 studying.

Theseday, I am suffering from doing my first "Languae and Culture" assignmnet. However, I'm also having fun from new knowledge..
In terms of the nuit's focus on language and culture, my particular interest relates to the women's title..I read the book talked about the title for Korean marriaged women. It is said that the title, Samonim, was invented to call successful men's wives differently from ordinary marriage women when the capitalist industrialization was rapidly growing. Samonim has the literal meaning of mother of a teacher. In confucian culture, teaching was regarded as the most respectful job, so Samonim refferred to the most prestigious social status. They demonstrated that women did not have their own economic status and their economic status was dependent on their husbands' class position in the patrialrchal society. This word is still commonly usded.
Thus, for me to be called Samonim in Korea, I feel I have to marrage the man who belongs to a high class. SUCH A SEXIST TITLE.. When can we escape from male -dominated culture?

The difference between Korean-Egnlsih

(1) Koreans use “we” where “I” would be used in English.

(2) Koreans use strict verb forms according to who you are to speak to.

(3) Koreans hardly call their first name. If we call teachers’ name, it is regarded very rude and parents might be asked to come to school..Therefore, when I studied in EAP, my teahcer asked us to call her 'her name' , not 'teacher'. However I couldn't use her name to call her for a while..
In this point, I'm still thinking that it would be better to ask my student to call me "Mun-hee" or just "Teacher" as the way it is translated.

It's me

My holiday in Newzealand

This holiday in Newzealand is the best one I've had in my life.
I knew it would be amazing, but it was even more amazing than I expected. I highly recommand travelling in NZ to you.
Where I visited : Christchurch - Milford Sound - Fox Glacier - Queenstown

It's exciting

I am Moon