It happened again. I was fully absorbed in the last round of planning for a workshop tomorrow. After 2 hours, I decided to have a break, and started heading to a nearby Fairwood for a cup of milk tea. While in the lift, a good activity idea popped up in my mind.
So here is the cycle: rack my brain over something for some time > put it aside > relax and do something else > a better idea pops into my head > add it to my previous planning.
The bare infinitive does not exist to make life difficult for ESL learners, who sometimes confuse it with to-infinitive.
What function does the bare infinitive serve? See my language awareness article in today's Ming Pao.
Just ran into this email from the university administration 15 months ago, which completely changed how we usually taught overnight. Over the next few days, all teaching staff frantically learnt how to teach via Zoom. At that time, I thought that like SARS of 2003, the ordeal would be over in 2 months. But it dragged on for more than a year.
I
But things have changed. Today, the Dictation function is still not perfect, but is good enough for creating a first draft, and thus serves as a useful time saver.
But at the same time, why is it that given all these technological time savers, we're not getting more free time for ourselves?
有時候集中精神備課，完成後放在一旁，隨後在散步時，或甚至在沐浴期間，腦中會突然就先前的備課出現新的更有趣的點子，可以在先前的設計中採用。(剛剛又在我身上出現。)
這樣的經驗不少心理學家都提過，有創意或有趣的點子，往往在第一輪專注的思考之後，在放鬆的情況下才會突然出現。
這亦提醒我，要準備一個重要的presentation, 盡可能早一點開始設計。至於被觀課的老師，也愈早準備愈好。
Sometimes these small e-learning tricks may have slipped my mind. When I have created an e-learning task and obtained the share link, I cannot be 100% sure that other people can also open the link, especially if the app concerned requires signing up first (and my computer may have memorised my login details). So, I often ask my former students to test the links for me.
Just now, Janet suggested that I try the share link on an incognito tab. I had a go, and then found out immediately whether the link would work with other people!
A small trick, but very useful to me.
In the late 70s in HK, we had the Primary English Teachers' Association (PETA), and the Secondary School English Teachers' Association (SSETA), both of which were administered by the British Council HK. Then in the late 80s, we had the Hong Kong division of the UK-based International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL). Still later in the 90s, we started to have the HKPTU ELT Group.
Today, none of these professional groups for English teachers in HK have continued to function.
In contrast, in Macao, they have the very active Macao Association for the Advancement of English Language Teaching, which runs an annual conference on top of other activities.
My salutes to them.
Completed and awarded the following certificate by the Flipped Learning Global Initiative
Browser 我一向用Chrome, 貪其extensions 好用。但最近意外發現Microsoft Edge的Collection 功能，對於就某一題目搜集和記錄找到的資料，很方便和好用。
Edtech永遠都有新發現。
以前的PPT,純粹是install在電腦內的軟件，自從有了office 365, ppt背後和internet 連接，已大大加强了它的功能，這一兩年再引入AI和assistive technology, 令它如虎添翼。用它來製作flipped video, 乾手淨脚。曾經一度捨PPT 而取Google Slides, 但現時PowerPoint 又重奪我的歡心。
相反，Google Slides 有點停滯不前。
Just noticed that the Map template of Padlet is useful for creating a travel route, and can work as a multimodal writing task for students:
1. Create a new Padlet.
2. Choose Map as the template. A world map will show. Then drag the map to go to the area of the world (e.g., England, HK Island, Wong Tai Sin) where you want to create your interactive map.
3. Drag the Pin icon from the right pane to the point of the map where you want to add a stop.
4. Then as usual, edit the Pin by adding text, an image, a link, etc.
Just noticed that Wordpress had 'merged' with Anchor, a podcasting platform, a short while ago. Now, we can convert our old, as well as new, Wordpress blog posts into podcast episodes.
I tried that with a couple of old blog posts, and the conversion was rather quick.
After the conversion, we can listen to the respective podcast episodes either on Anchor, or on Spotify. The resulting machine-converted audio episodes sound acceptable, and not terribly robotic (and much much better than the early days of text-to-speech conversion).
I'm still figuring how to make use of this new function in language teaching.
Here is my newly created Spotify podcast link, titled "Teach, Write, Live", converted from my Wordpress blog of the same name:
https://open.spotify.com/show/6P9Cb3TH7SbI2J9yrqlJST
(So far, I have converted 3 previous blog posts only.)
隨着今早本學期最後一課的完結，我亦剛好完成在中大教育學院第三十年的教學。如果加上先前在羅富國教育學院的四年，今天便是我完成教師教育工作三十四年的一天。
能夠這麼長期從事自己享受的工作，從中找到意義，期間又可以在個人和專業兩方面不斷成長，我實在非常非常幸運。
期待九月時，開始第三十五個教師教育年頭。
This morning I took part in a peer lesson observation which was associated with the school's Lesson Study scheme. Teachers of the same grade level planned a lesson together, and taught the lesson, with modifications that catered to the needs of each class, to their respective classes. The teachers concerned observed each other's lessons to see how the collaboratively planned lesson worked with each class.
A few years ago, I used TES BLENDSPACE quite often to create presentations. Then, for reasons I have forgotten, I put the tool aside, and after a while, remembered the name TES only. Still later, when I wanted to use the app again, I couldn't remember the full name, and when I googled TES, I was taken to other places.
An hour ago, while thumbing through an old notebook, I saw the name Blendspace again - the memory came back. I then googled Blendspace, and I was taken to the app which I used quite often a few years ago.
https://www.blendspace.com/lessons
I'm glad despite the quick developments of other presentation apps in the last few years, Blendspace is still functioning. I then browsed a couple of presentations in their Library. I think Blendspace still has its merits, although PPT has improved enormously in the last couple of years. It can embed external websites, Youtube videos, and more importantly, PPT, PDF, WORD files from your Google Drive. This is something which PPT is still unable to do.
Hence, I must keep an eye out to an opportunity in the near future to use Blendspace for a short presentation, to refresh my memory of how it works, and also to test out its advantages against other presentation apps.
