维基百科 Wikipedia--A great tool in teaching/learning

Wikipedia--"the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"
Recently I browsed wikipedia site. It is truely a great site. Everyone can contribute to the content. It also provides directions to conduct a research with specific topic. It should be a great tool for Isearch projects in school. Major language versions are available. Chinese is one of them.
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Oracle Online Course

Tonight, I had my first chat online with my students in Oracle Academy. We talked for about half hour. Students were great. They asked me some questions about the course. I explained some of the key points in the first section. I tried write my messages in English. I hope that their English can also be improved throught this practice.
This is our new approach to conduct lesson online. I wish the success for the program. Of course, we need to put in a lot of time and efforts.

中秋节

一位学生的博客介绍了中秋节, 在此连接以贺中秋.

中秋的祝福

Students Are Writing Blogs!

Back to school, I assign students to create blogs for my courses. I got some nice blogs. They are still improving. I am very proud of them. This is one of my joys of being a teacher. Here is the link: http://teachchinese.blogspot.com/ Check student blogs section on right side.

It is really a good tool allowing students to write freely in their blogs, so that they can train themselves to have a habit of writing, most importantly to enjoy writing. This free writing practice can be lead to instructional or structured writing later on in different subject classes. This transition is quite crucial for our students considering the fact that they are lack of reading and writing in many areas during their previous schooling. The challenge is how we can get students with very limited writing skills to write. I would suggest that let them read their classmates blogs first. By reading other classmate blogs, it may interest them to express themselve in some ways. Hopefully this interest can push them to write. In my assignments, I provide both free writing practice and instructional writing practice. Let's see how much they can improve.

Hearts to Katrina Victims

One of the New Orleanians said: "If we can go to another country to help, what about in our own country?"

Help online:
https://donate.msn.com/pages/landing.html

A Scene on Sea

A World of Joy

A giant cruise ship is sailing on the endless sea. Kids are jumping around, sliding down into the water pool. Splash! Joy and excitement extend to the horizon of the ocean. I look at the kids. "It is the time of joy." I said to myself. I join in myself. Splash. All the worries and stress are gone with the water vapor, evaporate up to the blue sky.

Blue sky, blue water, joy, fun,...

The ship continues to sail with my joyful wish. May joy with us forever.


迭云遮日重重,
束光映水清清。
天高海阔悠游，
远目眺望心沁。

Layered clouds shy away the sun face
Penetrated sunlight calms the ocean waves
The stretched horizon merges a refreshed soul
That travels through the eternal fate


Caught this scene, took two pictures and merged them into one with Photoshop. Click the image to view the full size.

Workshops at NYSCATE Conference 2005

More details

1. Photohop for Class Projects:
Text/Style
Layers
Animation/ImageReady
Transparent image
New tools in Photoshop CS
Automate
Create a photo album

**Bring some digital images.

2. Intermediate Web Design-Dreamweaver and More:

Layout/Table
Cascading Style Sheets
Handling of images/Rollover
Forms/Jump menu
Plug-in(audio/video)
Dynamic pages
FTP
Use of server side application
*Use of blog