Students are engaged and willing to learn if a class is interesting to them. Thus, unique, creative educational experiences create opportunities for diverse forms of engagement in and outside the classroom.
Mandarin Chinese is not easy, but I think that most people will agree with me that the most difficult part of learning Mandarin is learning Chinese characters. To a second language learner, learning characters is laborious work. However, Chinese characters are not just a form of communication but a form of art.
As I write this in late-summer 2021, most of us are or will soon be inside a classroom again, looking our students in the eyes, and seizing all of the benefits that F2F teaching can offer (no more "you're muted"). Nonetheless, I would be lying if I said that while teaching remotely I didn't come across great online resources and tools that proved to be extremely helpful.
Today, we are starting a new series with the goal of sharing our favorite hacks with some of the tools that seem to be most popular with language instructors. In this installment, we’re going to look at Microsoft's popular, free ed tech tool Flipgrid, which allows teachers to create "grids" to facilitate video discussions.
While extremely challenging for a large number of reasons, the pandemic has definitely been a unique opportunity to gather novel insights on the dynamic of technology integration. Remote teaching and learning during COVID has forced many faculty members to experience firsthand a number of technology-supported teaching and learning strategies.