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.