Animated Graphics- Chinese characters

I prefer animated graphics over static images when I teach Chinese characters.  Each Chinese character consists of different strokes and it looks like a drawing for nonnative people.

Some difficulties for students learning to write Chinese characters are: 

1) They don’t know where to start

2) They are not sure about the stroke order

3) Some strokes are hard to count

Animated graphics show students how to write Chinese characters with correct stroke order and number of strokes. I found this very useful and save a lot of my instruction time on characters.  Instead of teaching strokes order in class, I can do other more interactive games with students.

Another benefit is that animated graphics can show radicals, part of the characters, in different color.  Radicals are the foundation of characters and categorize Chinese characters.  Knowing radicals can help students’ comprehension ability to decode new Chinese characters they encounter. 

Week 8 - Interesting video on Chinese Characters

Mario Bros is one the most well-known video games around the globe. Despite different languages and cultures, people can easily identify and recognize this game and its component in the game.  Given that pictograph is one formation of Chinese characters, the authors of this video uses the storyline of Mario Bros to introduce the evolution of the Chinese characters such as turtles, fish, flowers, and cloud.

Users know what to expect in the game and each component repeats itself for several times in this 2 minutes video. At the end of the video, it shows the pictures of  all the components in the game, its old writing styles, and its current Chinese characters.

This is a very interesting and educational video because users can explore the subject matters. It introduces origins of Chinese characters in a fun and unconventional way which can motivate students to learn Chinese characters. 

Good educational Video

This is an interesting and educational video on the four tones in Mandarin Chinese. The length of the video is about 3 and a half minutes. It starts with a quick introduction, explanations of the four tones and sums up with a review.

This video follows some basic principles of
multimedia learning environments so  that people can learn better:

1. Multimedia principle: The video uses both words (mostly spoken, and text) and pictures (graphs).
2. Split-Attention principle: The graphics of each tone marks are physically  and temporally integrated. When the teacher talks about another tone mark, the previous one disappeared.
3. Modality principle: The narration was accompanied with proper graphics and animations that help people to understand the concept better. 
4. Corresponding words (text in the lower left-hand corner) and pictures are presented near   rather than far from each other on the screen  and also in time with audio.  

Good vs. Bad Visualizations

The good example of visualizations is The Huffington Post. Most stories are accompanied by pictures. The pictures they chosen usually tell a lot of the stories already. It’s very easy to navigate and these pictures with titles tell the story clearly.  This is a good example of the dual coding theory where information is presented through both an imagery/nonverbal system and a verbal system. Including graphics in text may support better retention of the information. They also have a “Quick read” option, which present the first few sentences of the story and readers can click on “Read the whole story” options if they wish to continue. I feel it’s very easy and less time-consuming to scan through the website to know what’s going on.

On the other hand, The New York Times’s website is very heavy on text even though it’s a good read. It takes longer to navigate and to scan through in order to know what’s going on of the day. Even though the website has few pictures, it’s more like icons. Frankly, they are quite small and I am not quite sure what are the messages they are trying to convey. Moreover, the fonts and colors of the texts are not very clearly distinguished. I think this website takes more working memories and cognitive loads for readers.

Simple table of contents, glossary, and appendix

I started to learn English as a second language when I was 8 years old. Then I started to learn Japanese when I was in middle school. Back in time, there were not many hypertexts or hypermedia available. All we had were traditional textbooks. I still remember the English textbooks we used were called “Let’s go!” I still have a clear image of the level one textbook cover, which has a red background, bolded title “LET’S GO!” and happy-looking children on it. My Japanese textbook cover was with large Japanese characters (Genki) outlined in green on a white background.

Then I remember the table of contents, glossary, and appendix in those textbooks. If I needed to look for grammatical explanations on past tense, I go to the chapter where we learned about “My weekend with my family.” I knew on that particular page, there were a timeline and a box explaining the concept of past tense. However, I just don’t remember the page number. Thus, I went to the table of contents to look for the page number.  Moreover, I would use the glossary to look up information quickly. I would also use appendix for a quick reference.

I found having a table of contents at the front, a glossary and an appendix at the end goes hand in hand. In between are knowledge and information. It is simple.

I would imagine that a table of contents is a navigation bar on the left, which contents hyperlinks to specific chapters. It hides while users read, and appeals when mouse slides through it. A glossary can be embedded throughout the text. For example, users can place their mouse on phrases and definitions will pop up in small windows. These windows will fade out as their mouse move away from phrases. 

THE GOOD AND THE BAD OF HYPERMEDIA

I think a good example of hypermedia on the web is Facebook. It allows everyone to post simple texts, pictures, articles, videos, games, applications, and even music he or she listens to. Even though it may seem overwhelming to navigate, it shows the burbs of postings. For example, it only shows few pictures of the entire album on the wall. It shows a snapshot of the video and a short description of it. It gives you the title and few sentences about the article. It tells you games or apps your friends use with icons. In my opinion, it is instant and presents a lot of information in different formalities with a glance. Users and readers then click links they would like to read further on their own.

A bad example of hypermedia that I can think of is myTC. Even though there are tabs such as “Welcome,” “Courses,” “Community,” “Researches,” and “Search& Help,” there is a lot of information collapsed together on myTC, which makes it difficult to look for ones needed. There is so much going on throughout the home page and it is unappealing to the eye. 

Take this week’s assignment as an example, TC Bookmarks would not be my first instinct to look for Software and Tools to download FTP software. I probably will first go to “TC Services” tab and then “Technology Support.” Besides hard to navigate, many links are either duplicated or not working probably.   

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

I read this article by Marc Prensky about 5 years ago. It is interesting to read it again now. Five year ago, I believed that I was a digital native, but I am not quite sure anymore now. I would say I am still a true digital native with an “accent” of Digital Immigrant.

Am I getting “old?” Hopefully not! Let me explain further.

I am 28 years old and grew up with downloaded music, phones in my pocket, and “googleing” all the time and so on. According to Prensky, I am a digital native. However, I like to ask students printing out documents written on computers in order to edit it. I still prefer printing out research papers to read, highlight phrases, and annotate in the margins with a real pen. I know I can easily do such things with Adobe Reader or Preview, and save our planet earth by cutting down the usage of paper. But still, there is something to it that I actually can learn better with tangible objects in hand. This could potentially make me a digital immigrant according Prensky. I wonder how could this happen? Perhaps, from my Digital Immigrant teachers in the past…

I recently had some 12^th graders work on a project. The project requires two pages of writing on Microsoft Word and a PowerPoint presentation including videos and pictures to introduce a notable Chinese American. All of them did a great job, and yet they all did it differently in their own ways. Here is how it went:

Student A on a computer: Wikipedia, YouTube, online dictionary, Word Document, PowerPoint all open at the same time while “Facebooking,” listening to music and texting on the phone

Student B: Started researching online on her phone because “it’s too much work to turn on a computer” according to her. Then she wrote down the information with a pencil on a piece of paper and started to write her first draft by hand.

Student C: Asked me all sorts of questions regarding to the person he wanted to research on for about 15 minutes. Then he Google everything on the phone and came back to me sharing what he found. He wrote down few things in his notebook AND on his phone because “I know I probably can’t find the notebook again later on.”

Student D: Started typing Chinese characters on a desktop, and decided to quit after 5 minutes. “This is so annoying, I cannot get this right. I will hand-write it on my phone, send it to myself and do editing in a Word document later.”

Student E: watched a lot of video clips related to the person he researched on for the first 25 minutes on Youtube

What’s the point here I am trying to convey from these observations?

I guess as a teacher and an instructional designer, it is important to keep the followings in mind:

1. provide a framework and a final goal for them to achieve
2. the step-by-step procedure won’t work because there isn’t a certain way anymore
3. Digital natives have their own ways of doing things      

                        - it’s OK as long as they get it done the “right” way

                        - it’s NOT OK when nothing gets done, or done in the “wrong” way (ex: plagiarism) 

                        

                               THEN we interfere.