Zhigang at IUP Graduate Scholars Forum

https://youtu.be/vyu2sYRe3A8

Daewoo Jin, Zhigang Bai

• What are 3 of your fundamental beliefs about learning literacy?
  1. The learning of literacy is socially constructed
  2. Learning happens everywhere.
  3. Learning literacy is not just confined to learning of language only.

• What are 3 of your fundamental beliefs about teaching literacy?
  1. The teaching of literacy is not to teach literacy; it only facilitates the environment where the learning takes place.
  2. Teaching will be efficient when the learner gets involved in teaching actively.
  3. The teaching of literacy is to let the teacher learn as well.

• What should be 3 key goals for literacy education in a digital age?
  1. The learner becomes an insider of digital literacy.
  2. The learner is able to communicate with people who are from and in non-digital age.
  3. The learner can work with/without digital technology.

• What should be your basic approach to teaching literacy? What role should technology have in that teaching approach?
  1. Network-based autonomous learning
  2. Technology should work as a medium and facilitator of teaching.
• How should literacy pedagogy respond to today’s technological world and to today’s digital learners?
  1. To use or not to use, enabling learning is the question. 
• Discuss how your vision for teaching literacy would address the needs of World English speakers.  

1. The teaching of literacy as a facilitation of learning enables world English speakers to take charge of their English learning.

• Discuss how your vision responds to the challenge of the “digital divide,” a challenge that says we must worry about providing equal access to technology and information.
• Should your approach to teaching literacy be the same as your approach to teaching other areas of English today? Why or why not?

I got married with technology a little bit earlier than I met my girlfriend.

The first time I came across something that can be considered as technology was apple, the white machines with green display. Actually I was there for display only. This was the only computer lab the university owned back in the year of 1991, which was donated by the World Bank. The World Bank came to check how we were using the loan and the equipment donated to our school, the school authority found some students of English Major to pretend to be learning in that lab. That was why I was there.

I was there the whole morning playing word learning programs. The Apple PC was so primitive that it was not even a multimedia one. It could only produce very poor beeps from a shabby built-in speaker. Every time you made a right or wrong choice, it will beep and display something like “Good job”, “What a pity” and the things like. Simple as it was, I had fun all the morning, I never felt a bit tired of that word game.

In 1993, I got myself enrolled in a computer class, which cost me RMB 200 ($ 30) — nearly four months of my living expense at that time.  The computer I used was IBM 386, much advanced than Apple ones, which can be easily told from a color display. The OS running was mainly MS DOS, as well as some other DOSes in Chinese language. In leaning to use computer, I did go through thick and thin. I remembered once we were blocked by a sudden summer storm on the way back to school dorm after the computer class. I arrived at my dorm at almost mid night. Fortunately, I was the only who succeeded in finishing the course and fulfilled the goal we had set up. That was a good enlightenment of computer literacy.

Computer was first used as a word processing tool in my teaching career. I was the only one who could skillfully use a computer to edit and print very beautiful test papers. Later, as the computer technology developed very fast, I was using computer to teach since the year of 1995. I could fully use the multimedia function of the computer and created multimedia courseware with different authoring tools. In the year of 1998, I won the first prize of “Multimedia Courseware Competition” of Shenyang Normal University,  which was a mile stone of my road of using technology to facilitate English teaching.

Got my carrel approved.

Question:

When compared, the two film clips help illuminate a key question for this course: How has our relationship to technology changed over time?

Answer:

In the beginning, technology helped people to make jobs easier and our life better, like the invention of working tools, machines and home appliances. This led the great development in science and technology.We can make summer cool and winter warm, we can travel faster and get our job done quicker. As we are making ourselves more and more comfortable, we are becoming more and more dependent on

As we are making ourselves more and more comfortable, we are becoming more and more dependent on technology. this actually leads to the de-evolvement of human beings. We are reluctant to go out and meet our friends and relatives in person. The more we are dependent on modern technology, the less intelligent and strong we are.  

Secondary Blog Questions

How has film technology changed?

First, the picture and sound qualities are better.

Second, the settings and stage properties improved a lot. 

Third, the shooting technique improved a lot (Animation, CG). 

How have we changed as film viewers?

We are demanding more and more from film makers. 

How has our understanding of time evolved?

How does fiction/science fiction impact our relationship to technology?