Week 3 - Being an M.A. TESL Student

This week in class we spent designing digital stories and reading from Dubravac Ch. 3 and Levy (2009). I worked with Hongbo, and we designed a digital story from ebook.com. It was a bit confusing at first what with all the buttons and options, but it is quite nice. I like the idea of creating a story and publishing it for the world to see. Here is our digital story:

http://www.myebook.com/ebook_viewer.php?ebookId=183962

In this story we discuss life as a MA TESL student which was odd, because Kristen and her partner also chose the same topic.  Great minds think alike, I suppose. We gave it a colorful background design and black font which may not have been the best combination as the font is difficult to read, but nonethless, I am happy with our results.

In  viewing other students' digital stories, I enjoyed Joe's group and Karen's group. It was funny to watch birthday cards "come to life," in a sense.

Dubravac discussed the history of the web and how webpages can be used for teaching. I remember when I first designed my own website, it was a webquest sort of format. Dubravac goes on to discuss additional uses for the web, including class management and professional development. Levy was quite an interesting read as he provides technologies in use for second language learning and goes into the following skills and topics: reading, writing, listening, speaking, pronunciation, and culture. Overall, this week was quite refreshing and I look forward to the next week.