Media Critique

Junqi Huang (Kay)

TED Talks-Amazing tool for presenting ideas in class

Nowadays, it is the era of science and technology. One coin has two sides. On one hand, technology makes our lives more easier, such as we can communicate every where with our cellphones; we can pay various bill by a push of a button; and we can rely message more efficient with text and email; on the other hand, sometimes technology still has its cons. For instance, our personal information can hacked and be exposed to the cyber world. If the computer with important information is down, we might be hard to retrieve the information we needed. Nevertheless, as educators, we find that technology can be utilized as useful tool in class.

As I was in college, TED Talks seems to become a mainstream tool for teacher to present concept in the class. I remembered the first time I was exposure to TED Talks was in sociology class. The professor was presenting the topic of the bias of gender. In order to direct her students to form critical think in the subject matter, she showed us a short presentation, called “Killing us softly” from TED Talks. The speech impressed me. After watching the presentation, I felt like I accessed large amount of information from it in such a short time. Since then, I start watching some interesting presentations from TED Talks. When I watch speech from TED apps, I can also choose either to show the subtitles or not. For my understanding, reading subtitles while watching TV or video is beneficial for people to learn English, especially for the people who are at the beginner level. It helps people to understand the concepts better. Therefore, I believe the TED Talks is able to enhance students’ language level.

In a classroom, motivation plays an important role in students’ learning process. I believe those amazing speeches from TED Talks are able to grab students’ attention, especially for adolescents.  Adolescents are energetic and on-going processing the knowledge from the world. TED Talks is divided into many categories. Every topic is related to the social factors and reveals the common phenomenon in the society. Each presentation is well organized and precise. In class, teacher can teach class by showing them one of related presentation; and then, lead them to think critically. According to previous class, we notice that teenagers are lack of concentration. However, the TED Talk only required a short amount of time to watch, which aids students to access the largest amount of information in the least amount of time period.

In general, there could be a downside for the TED Talks, but either playing an educator’s role or student’s role, I only see the advantage of the TED Talks. It helps students to open their mind and gain a deeper understanding of new concepts.

The social media platform that I am interested in discussing is Imgur. Imgur is a platform for people to share interesting images regardless of their popularity or connections with others. Users are allowed to comment on each other. The reason why I chose Imgur is simple, that is Imgur is simple. Continue reading Imgur: a New Way to Teach ESL →

The Aaron Sorkin production, The Social Network, chronicles the early life of the most ubiquitous of all social media platforms: Facebook.   The movie depicts the instant popularity, almost virus like in its spread, of this new technology and the rise of its famous founders.  While a dramatic picture, the film accurately portrays Facebook’s role in young peoples’ live and how it has become an integral component of a prosperous social life.

Recent scholarly research in the field of education emphasizes the importance of social interaction in the learning process.   This includes interactions with both teachers and classmates: positive peer-to-peer and teacher-peer relationships are critical to student success.  These relationships motivate students, reduce affective stress levels in the classroom and allow teachers to understand the individual needs of students.  While most educators are aware of the importance of social relationships, creating and maintaining them can be challenging in any classroom, even more so in classes where there are upwards of thirty students who come from diverse backgrounds.

Facebook can be an effective tool to fill in the interaction gaps and create a more involved classroom, one that is in tune with the interests of students.  As an educator, Facebook can be used for classroom organization, fostering student discussion, and addressing student concerns that were not taken care of during class time.   Due to students comfort with the technology, it may be easier to implement than other online classroom management tools or discussion forums.  Additionally, the ease of access promotes student participation and autonomy as a learner; the phrase “I couldn’t do my homework because…” will become harder to justify as school work becomes accessible by phone, computer and tablet.

While Facebook is a key resource that can be implemented by educators to engage students across disciplines it has particular relevance for the second language classroom.  One of the biggest challenges as a language teacher is creating authentic situations for language use and relating language learning to student’s everyday lives.  The use of Facebook brings the target language to a platform that students already engage with.   Students can communicate with each other in the foreign language, particularly supportive for more introverted students who are often quiet in the classroom.  Students can connect through Facebook to language learning resources, target language news sources, and famous figures who post in the target language.  As student’s news feeds’ fill with the foreign language, their brains will too, with authentic input, vocabulary that reflects their interests and culturally relevant content.  The hope is that students can see the living nature of language firsthand through their online experience and be able to create their own persona in the target language.

Facebook can be a highly effective resource for teaching critical media literacy, if teachers are willing to do the front loading necessary for students to be able to engage with a critical eye.  Teaching about credible news sources, exploring stereotypes of those that speak the target language and monitoring student discussions are all ways that teachers can use Facebook to create discerning students who can censoriously analyze online content.

The use of any social media platform does however come with risks and challenges; the foremost challenge being the protection of student identity and information.  As an educator, one must be knowledgeable on how to use the technology in a way that does not put student safety or privacy at risk.  The other obstacle to the implementation of a Facebook friendly classroom is access to an internet equipped device when working with students with high financial need.  In these cases, the use of social media, though challenging, is of increased importance to cultivate leaners that are savvy to resources available and mindful of their pitfalls.

Over time, successful implementation of Facebook as a classroom tool can improve student engagement, the social network will become the educational network, but then, there is no need to tell the students that.

Before my student life in NYU, I never used technology in my entire life. In my last semester, we learned different features of technology in teaching and learning process especially in my content area. I believe that the technology is affecting the lives of peoples in both positive and negative manners. Because of technology, the world has become smaller and it is the largest factor of globalization. Technology is fast becoming the driving force of adolescent and high impact on their over all development. Nowadays people of all ages have become quite comfortable with technology.
Here my concern is Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK), Continue reading The TPACK framework. →