Author: drcowinj

Dr. Jasmin (Bey) Cowin, an Associate Professor at Touro University, received the 2024 Touro University CETL Faculty Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching and the Rockefeller Institute of Government awarded her the prestigious Richard P. Nathan Public Policy Fellowship (2024-2025). As a Fulbright Scholar and SIT Graduate, she was selected to be a U.S. Department of State English Language Specialist. Her expertise in AI in education is underscored by her role as an AI trainer and former Education Policy Fellow (EPFP™) at Columbia University's Teachers College. As a columnist for Stankevicius, she explores Nicomachean Ethics at the intersection of AI and education. She has contributed to initiatives like Computers for Schools Burundi, served as a resource specialist for Amity University in Uttar Pradesh, India, and participated in TESOL "Train the Trainer" programs in Yemen and Morocco. Her research interests include simulations and metaverse for educators-in-training, AI applications in education and language acquisition and teaching, and distributed ledger technologies, with a focus on her 'Education for 2060' theme. In conclusion, my commitment extends beyond transactional interactions, focusing instead on utilizing my skills and privileges to make a positive, enduring impact on the world.

Beatriz Martine, Teacher Candidate at Touro College on Prepositions and Articles

11102782_10152791417766381_2687658104203970642_nBeatriz Martine is a certified 7-12 Mathematics teacher currently working in the Roosevelt Union Free School District. She has had the experience of teaching in the 7th and 8th grades for four years and is looking forward to teaching many more. Beatriz has found a love in working with ENL students because of the predominantly high ENL population in her school district. She is currently pursuing her Masters in TESOL at Touro College to better support her students. Beatriz is hoping to continue her studies and work towards her Bilingual extension after graduating with her Masters.

Here the questions for the Discussion Board of our Touro online learning environment with Ms. Martine’s answers. Ms. Martine has given express permission to use her discussion board postings in my blog.

Why do you think learning correct prepositions, articles and when a noun needs an article or not takes so long to learn? Is this also true for native speakers?  

I think the reasons why learning correct prepositions, articles and when a noun needs an article or not takes a long time to learn is that the rules are complex, have many exceptions, and in certain situations interchangeable. Most of the time, practice is the key to learning these grammatical components. Tara Arntsen explains in Gerund vs. Infinitive, that “it takes a lot of practice to recognize which words this applies to and there is no rule to help,” referring to specific words that must be followed by infinitives or gerunds (2011). Prepositions are hard to learn because they have multiple meanings. Take the preposition on, for example, we can use this for different situations: to be in physical contact with something (on a shelf) or to participate in something (on a team). There are also instances where depending on where you are geographically, prepositions are used differently (standing in line vs. standing on line). Prepositions can also be interchangeable. When someone is waiting inside a restaurant, they can be in or at the restaurant.

Create a short worksheet requiring your students to demonstrate their proficiency in the use of prepositions, infinitives and/or gerunds. Post this on the discussion board for your colleagues to address.
I would use this as a Do Now for a succeeding lesson on when to use gerunds or infinitives. 

Name: __________________________     Date: ________   Period: _____

Gerund vs. Infinitive

Directions: Fill in the blank with the correct gerund or infinite

 

1. I enjoy (play)  ________________  hide-and-seek with my friends.

2. My teacher always says, “Keep (try)  ________________, next time you’ll get it right!”

3. I need (clean) ________________ my room this weekend, it’s a mess.

4. I don’t like (go)  ________________ to the store with my mom, she takes forever!

5. When my mom walks in my room, I pretend (sleep)  ________________ but I’m really on my phone!

Post two, thoughtful and insightful questions about grammar proficiency for your colleagues to discuss.

1. Does anyone have a good classroom resource for practicing gerunds and infinitives?

2. Matthew Lubin explains, “It’s easier to explain to an ESL class that gerunds sound more natural than infinitives when used as subjects or complements of a sentence” (2017). How would you model this to your students?

References:

Arntsen, T. (2011, August 22). Gerund vs. Infinitive: How to Explain the Difference. Retrieved from https://busyteacher.org/4123-gerund-vs.-infinitive-how-to-explain-the.html

Arntsen, T. (2016, October 30). How To Teach Prepositions Of Place (8 Simple Steps). Retrieved from https://busyteacher.org/3630-how-to-teach-prepositions-of-place.html

Lubin, M. (2017, July 27). How to Teach Gerunds and Infinitives to ESL Students Without Confusing Them. Retrieved from https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-gerunds-and-infinitives/

Bitcoin, Blockchain and IoT for Educators accepted conference presentation

touro-college

NYS TESOL 48th Annual Conference in Albany, November 2nd, 2018

This poster session will explain and present in easy to understand non-technical language and infographics: 1. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which represent much more than digital economic innovations. 2. The Blockchain and Blockchain principles. 3. Potential applications for to the Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Systems for educators and educational institutions.

Blockchain can be implemented within individual educational institutions, groups of educational institutions, and both national and international educational bodies. This technology makes it possible to securely store badges, credits, and qualifications through a decentralized system. Blockchain has the potential to morph into a massive open, online, secure database used for certification and achievement repositories with payment in cryptocurrencies. Blockchain can be implemented within individual educational institutions, groups of educational institutions, and both national and international educational bodies. As education becomes more diversified, democratized, decentralized and disintermediated, we still need to maintain reputation, trust in certification, and proof of learning. The increased focus on relevance and employability may also push us in this direction, as we also need more transparency. Blockchain could provide just such a system: a massive open, online, secure database embedded in the IoT and Smart Systems.

Evilyn Ortiz Teacher Candidate Touro Contribution – Modern American English- Approaches to Grammar/TESOL/Bilingual course

Sometimes Teacher Candidates contributions are too good to be buried in discussion boards.  Here is an outstanding post with permission from my teacher candidate. The activity by my teacher Evilyn is not only viable but also shows her thoughtfulness in folding in ESL grammar into real-life classroom teaching while making grammar fun. The assignment questions are featured in in italics.

Evilyn Ortiz is a certified biliassignment questions are featured in intalicsngual teacher (Spanish speaking) currently working in the Wyandanch schoEvelyn Ortizol district. She has worked for 2.5 years and is going on her second year teaching as a third grade bilingual teacher in Wyandanch. She loves working with ENL, CLD students and is currently pursuing her masters in TESOL at Touro College so that she can better support her students with new strategies and methods. 

  1. After reading our course texts, can you come up with a new method to teach the parts of speech to English Language Learners?

I like the idea of teaching the parts of speech through poetry. I think that this is an engaging way to teach parts of speech especially since most poetry is rich in nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and prepositions. I would use poetry to teach the parts of speech but chose which parts I want the scholars to focus on. In my class, we have mainly focused on nouns, verbs and adjectives and we color-coded each. A noun was to be identified in green, a verb was blue and adjectives were red.I often had my students do “scavenger” hunts during their literacy stations and they needed to find the part of speech and color/shade it the color assigned. Then students could create a chart using the words, create new sentences with the words and also needed to share their findings/data with a friend to see if they were in agreement or disagreement.

Create an activity for teaching the parts of speech for an ESL student that focuses on one particular learning style.

It was interesting to read about the different learning styles of children. All of my students are visual learners however, I have one global learner, one analytic learner, and one auditory learner. Any opportunity that I get to incorporate a video or audio to supplement a lesson, I use it in order to benefit my students.

For an auditory learner, this one specific student that I have in mind, I would pair her with a higher student. They will be given a short leveled reading a passage. I would give them job titles. The auditory learner will be the recorder and the other student will be the reader/teacher. This student is to read the passage three times. The first time just to listen, the second reading the recorder is to listen for nouns and verbs. The third reading, the student is to listen for the adjectives. Then they are to have an oral discussion of the examples they found within the text.

Pose three insightful questions relating to teaching the parts of speech or addressing learning styles to which your colleagues will respond.

  • Has anyone transformed their classrooms into a flexible seating classroom to address the various needs within your classroom?

  • On an elementary level, has anyone ever successfully had their students participate in an open panel?

  • According to Haynes, “most ELLs are visual or kinesthetic learners when they first learn English. Most teachers, especially in the upper grades, teach to students with an auditory learning style. This can be very difficult for the ELLs in your class.” Has anyone found that they are not using enough visual aids to support their ENL students and if so, how have you addressed it or plan to address it?

Resources

Haynes, J. (n.d.). Teach to Students’ Learning Styles. Retrieved June 20, 2018, from http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/learningstyle.php

Jordan, B. (2018). How to Teach Parts of Speech. Retrieved June 18, 2018 from http://blog.reallygoodstuff.com/4-fun-ways-to-teach-parts-of-speech/

Open Library – a Project of the non-profit Internet Archive

“Open Library is an open project: the software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open, and the team welcomes individual contributions. Whether fixing a typo, adding a book, or writing a widget – it’s all welcome.” from  Open Library

As an educator and Professor, I love this site.  Instead of asking students to buy classic textbooks such as John Dewy’s Democracy and Education, all my students need to do is sign-up for the free library, download the book as a PDF and read it for free.  A search function for keywords is incorporated and extremely helpful in pulling content up. Nearly three million books are available in digital form, some can be borrowed, some can be downloaded and read.  In addition, there are books in other languages than English such as Italien, Greek, Chinese, and German.  For example, one can find the complete Die Harzreise by Heinrich Heine. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has 251 books in German dedicated to him. Pindar’s The Olympian and Pythian Odes are in this realm as is Gildersleeve’s Latin Grammar and Athenaze: an introduction to ancient Greek. Interested in learning Chinese? You can borrow: Conversational Chinese, with grammatical notes
prepared by Teng Ssŭ-yü.

It is possible to borrow up to five eBook titles for 2 weeks each, either in your browser or as a PDF or ePub. Reading is available in Adobe Digital Editions as a PDF or ePub.

 

Portcrash – a Digital Learning Enviroment

Maike Niemeier, the founder of Portcrash, believes that for effective learning children need to form an emotional and physical bond with real-life elements; teaching only digitally would be to abstract. This is why Portcrash is combining digital and analog content and aiming at bridging the gap between traditional childhood education and digital media. Through storytelling and gamification centered around the feisty intergalactic pirate girl Cap’n Portcrash and her crew, children can explore art, physics, chemistry, coding, math, and music in their spare time.

Maike is the creative mind behind Cap’n Portcrash and her crazy crew of pirates. She’s the one who creates the stories, thinks up the extraordinarily long words and wields the paintbrushes and pens. With twenty years of experience in elementary music pedagogy and instrumental teaching, together with her studies of Art and Music Pedagogy at Bielefeld University, she has a firm foundation for offering you a cool learning system.

Maike founded her own school of Art and Music ten years ago while she was still a student, and teaches children, teens and adults. She and her colleagues have run  projects in preschools and schools at all levels, with everything from small groups to entire schools of up to 400 children. She has also been teaching music at a secondary school, the Städtisches Gymnasium in Petershagen, for two years. Her father was an elementary school principal, so she’s well versed in formal education systems and knows what’s important to teachers.

PortCrash

Portcrash is her second company, and she runs it parallel to her music school. It uses books which feature QR-coded links to browse games, experiments, and additional materials to educate children in a playful, humorous way while being based on pedagogic principles. Design, haptics, and audio are tailored to provide children with the conditions they need to improve their focus and to strengthen effective learning.

 

 

The EdTech startup was founded late 2017 with the aim to make education fun for students, teachers, and parents alike. Alongside the educational games, the Portcrash engineering team also created a licensing system for educators: ‘Rock the Boat with Cap’n Portcrash’.

Apps – all themed around Cap’n Portcrash and her piratey pals – take children age four and up on a crazy, adventurous journey into distant galaxies and steer them towards the learning objectives. According to the website “The apps are based on our scientifically-underpinned learning system; that ensures an optimal learning environment.”

Source & Image: Portcrash UG & Co. KG

Portcrash Website

 

Meet Nicola Watkinson, Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner

The Rotary Club of New York International Breakfast Meeting

Nikola WatkinsonIn August 2016 Nicola Watkinson was appointed by Austrade to serve as Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner for North America, responsible for its network of offices covering New York, Boston, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Washington, as well as Toronto and Vancouver in Canada.
Nicola Watkinson YouTube Introduction
Nicola joined Austrade in 2003 following a career in the private sector in the UK and with the Victorian Government in Melbourne. Nicola’s career in Austrade spans Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner for South Asia, Consul General Frankfurt, Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner, West Europe, Global Head of Investment and Senior Investment Commissioner for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

She has also worked in North Asian markets with a particular focus on Japan, China and Korea. Nicola has sat on the advisory board of groups such as CSIRO (Australia’s premier research organization), Industry Capability Network, Australia China Business Council and Australian Business in Europe.

New York
May 16, 2018 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM
777 United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017
United States

Advance reservations required.

EventBrite Ticket reservation

Rotary Project: Hands Across Water

FarmSchoolAs a participant in this cross-cultural education program, RCNY received an update on the project from the Haifa Rotary Club. Dr. Amnon Shefi of Hi-Teach was a major coordinator for this important program. Hands Across Water educated more than one thousand students of Jews and Arabs to work together in search of advanced water solutions which was the theme of the successful year.

The Rotary Hands Across Water program was run by the Haifa Rotary Club in collaboration RCNY and many other clubs and districts, harnessing the power of our Rotary collective.  Together, Rotary’s Hands Across Water cross-cultural water project emerged as an inspired science education program which has been running large water projects.  Hands Across Water  culminated in a graduation event held  in honor of the International Water Day

In 2010, a successful collaboration was established between the Rotary Club of Coral Springs-Parkland, Florida and the Rotary Club of Lod, Israel to utilize principles of water conservation within schools as a platform for promoting social interaction between various ethnic and religious communities in Israel.

HandsacrosswaterBeginning with the diverse and underserved City of Lod, a rainwater harvesting system was constructed at two anchoring institutions – the Ha Mapilim School and the Agricultural Learning Center (Farm School) – serving as a joint, demonstrative tool for ten nearby schools (three Arab Israeli/Palestinian and seven Jewish) to utilize for student’s hands-on learning. A third anchor was added with Gany Aviv School for advanced activities. The innovation and excitement generated by these efforts has served as a catalyst for further cross-cultural exchange amongst the schools, resulting in complementary sustainability projects and an adoption of a culture of conservation.

Building the Model – Hi Teach

With continued leadership and support provided by the pilot schools, surrounding community, and Rotary partners, these initial efforts served as a foundation for an expansion of the program.

In 2015, Israel was awarded its largest Global Grant from Rotary International to utilize principles of water conservation as a platform for promoting cross-cultural exchange amongst 10 schools of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. The program officially took on the title: Rotary Hands Across Waters (RHAW).

Handsacrosswater2

Initiated by the Rotary Club of Haifa, Israel and the Rotary Club of Coral Springs-Parkland, FL, RHAW is a growing partnership of over 25 leading public, private, and NGO organizations, including Technion University, Ministries of Education and Economy, local water authorities, and NASA’s GLOBE Program. RHAW is transforming the next generation of water leaders to collectively address our most pressing environmental issues.

Hands Across Water Video