My areas of interest

As a native language arts teacher, I am always interested in finding how to improve language skills among new immigrant students, how native literacy affects the second language acquisition, and the correlation between the improvement of native literacy and academic performance of non-English students, and how to integrate technology in language learning. I have been working on it for several years and got some first hands experience that I am willing to share with students and educators, and to further the study of issues and methodology of instructional technology. From the workshops I offered in different occasions/events, I sense genuine needs among educators to infuse more technologies into teaching, especially in language learning and literacy program. Of course, it can also extend to all subject areas at all levels, such as science and math, so on and so forth. My belief is that in this digital era, new technology provides new platform for teaching and learning. Ways of learning evolve rapidly so our teaching should accommodate this change. Teaching needs to explore and extend to a broader horizon that we used to vision at. Otherwise, the gap between learning and teaching will widen, which would contribute more to the failure of student learning. The ignorance and negligence on instructional technology will certainly downgrade the education quality of all students in schools as well as in colleges. The perfect example of it is that the mayor and the chancellor banned the ipod and other electronic devices in schools while educators in schools and colleges are trying to incorporate ipod, pocket PC and audio visual devices in the classroom to make classroom instruction more effective. How can we educate our youngsters for the 21st century and compete with other nations while other countries are investing more in instructional technology?

My areas of interest:

Teaching and learning in digital era/information age
Instructional technology and language learning/technology and language acquisition
Student-centered learning with technology
Multimedia in teaching/learning
Digital tools in language learning
Internet/WebQuest
Web projects for subject classes
IPod/Podcasting and language learning
Writing through Weblogs
MSN messenger (QQ) for online group discussion
Handheld PC for language learning
Digital photography and reading/writing
Assessment/rubrics