E-project: RECENT HISTORY

Recent History

This E-Project is oriented to the sharing of information. It was designed for the Lab class of English II at the Modern Languages School (EIM) of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). In the third term, we study Recent History topics and the students have to make group presentations of them.

This project will help the students to share information about the different topics, as well as, to show all the material they might not have the time to show in the presentations. Each group will open a blog about the topic they are presenting. 

The topics are:

* Missile Crisis

* Panama Invasion http://panamainvasionucv.blogspot.com/

* Gulf War http://thegulfwar1991.blogspot.com/

* September 11th http://911attackseimucv.blogspot.com/

* Irak War 

* Current Financial Crisis

At the end of the term the students will be evaluated in oral exams. So, it is necessary for them to have the information of each topic. That is why Recent History project is oriented to the sharing of information by blogs. Besides, creating a blog and feeding it would provide meaningful learning. 

Currently, students are creating the group blogs.

E-project blog

 http://recenthistory-eflateim-ucv.blogspot.com/

Second life

Second Life is an interactive platform a in which you can have a parallel life. You can have the name you like and the body (the avatar) you have always wanted to have. There are many activities you can do there. You can walk, run, fly or even teletransport… You can chat, talk and videochat. You can even work or learn a language. The page is available only for adults. Many adults get really engaged with this 3D Virtual World.

http:///www.secondlife.com

Saracé having a rest!

Second Life may be used as a learning tool in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. The students can learn from the English interface or by chating to some English speakers.  You can even teach a class in this platform or attend a conference.  

A class in SL

Social Networks

Social Networks are the new way to make and maintain relationships. Friends, family, business parterns… you have all of them in your networks. Social networks are a phenomenon of increasing popularity. You rarely find a student who is not in a social network so… if you want to attract your students to your class you may interact with them on social networks.

There are many ways to use social networks to teach English as a Foreign Language. You can have a Twitter account, follow your students, make them to follow you and tweet and retweet about the topics of the class… You can also have a group on Facebook and post about the class and make them to comment or post… You can also share pictures about the topics of class on Flickr. The students may get engaged with their own learning.   

Podcasts

Podcasts, voice tools & audio recorders

Podcasts are audio recordings about different topics posted online. You can find podcasts about personal experiences, teachings, religion, music comments, film reviews, short stories or even novels and so on… People usually download podcasts to their portable players to listen to them anywhere anytime.

The Office of Instructional Consulting at Indiana University, School of Education affirms that:

Finally, it is important to note that you do NOT need an iPod to create or listen to podcasts! In fact a 2005 Bridge Ratings consumer survey found that over 80% of users simply listen to downloaded podcasts on their computer or laptop and the podcasts never make it to an iPod or other digital media device. Source

Podscasts are an interesting way to learn languages. You can develop your listening skills while having fun listening to short stories or series or whatever you want. In that way, you work on your pronunciation unconsciously. But also you can practice speaking if you podcast.

Here you have my intro

Podcast Powered By Podbean

There are many voice tools and audio recorders available on internet. In some of them, such as Voxopop you can join or start discussions. 

My discussion

Discussion » Web 2.0 tools

EFL teachers should take advantage of it, either if they start audio discussions online or they recommend podcasts to their students for them to practice English while having fun.   It can help to the motivation.

Here you have an interview about personality factors in EFL acquisition:

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Videos and other useful Web 2.0 tools

Videos and other useful Web 2.0 tools

Videos are the combination of audio and image. We usually record videos of many different events. But, what is interesting, is the amount of time we spend watching videos. We usually watch many videos that show different ideas. We watch videos of our favorite songs but also we watch videos of funny people or situations.

Nowadays we can create videos mixing some pictures and music. So we also watch videos we create and the ones our friends and family creates. That is very useful for teaching. We as EFL teachers, can make videos to show some content in a very atractive and engaging way.

 There are many Web 2.0 tools that are useful for EFL teaching, you can upload videos in YouTube so that you students can watch them. You can also find some good videos for EFL teaching that you can share with your students.

Here you have a video I created for my Begginers class. It is about food.  

  

There are some other useful Web 2.0 tools such as Flickr for sharing pictures, SlideShare for sharing documents (text documents and presentations) and Blogger for creating blogs for your classes and keeping updated.  

Wikis

Wikis

A wiki is a page in which the content can be edited by different people, the collaborators of the wiki. To have a wiki may be very useful for groups who want constant contact or agreements for their activities. Wikis are also useful for people to share information about a specific content they are keen to.  The most famous wiki is Wikipedia, they have the largest number of collaborators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

Besides, Wikis are being used actively in the classroom. They have proved to be an excellent tool in the different levels of education. Specially in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Wikis are a very useful tool for both sharing content with colleagues and develop content (a unit) with your classroom group.

Here you have some wikis about EFL:

http://teflpedia.com/Main_Page

http://millersenglish.pbworks.com/w/page/20937326/FrontPage

http://theconnectedclassroom.wikispaces.com/home

I hope they are useful for you!

Blogs

Blogs

Blogs are web 2.0 tools. They are so popular nowadays that you can find a blog of almost any topic that come to your mind. There are blogs for many different topics and they have different levels of formality or periodicity. Some people blog about their area of study or their hobbies but some others blog about their experiences, their daily life, whatever comes to their mind. People get really engaged with their blogs.

People blog and follow blogs all around the world. Some people work blogging, they can even make the ends meet.   I personally follow some blogs about literature in my mother tongue (Spanish), about photography and about TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). In blogs about TEFL you can find experience, reflection but also a lot of interesting ideas for classroom activities and online activities. Besides, you can find the results, I mean, some TEFL bloggers reports what happened when they did those activities. That’s cool. 

Here you have some blogs about TEFL:

• LARRY FERLAZZO’S WEBSITES OF THE DAY…: http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/
• Throwing Back Tokens:  http://tokenteach.wordpress.com/
• Love, life & language learning:  http://eltideas.wordpress.com/
• Evelyn Izquierdo: http://evelynizquierdo.wordpress.com/

I hope you like them! 

Blogs can also be useful for having your students writing: you can have an interactive class blog or a blog per student. Or you can have one course blog where they can just read and comment what you post. Blogs are definitely a very useful tool for teaching English as a foreign language.