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. 

Web evolution

by Morten Goodwin Olsen

The World Wide Web (www.) has evolved continually since its launch in the 1990s. As a web, it has been constantly growing to involve users on it. The trend is to have everybody involved. The evolution of the web is usually divided into three parts: Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 0.3 (Some authors are talking about Web 4.0, 5.0 and X.0)

Web 1.0 was the first launching of the www. and it offered static web pages available worldwide in different languages. Almost every single firm, then, launched their own web page as to gain an image online but there was no interaction. People used to manage their few online interactions via e-mail and they used to surf the net for getting information and downloading some contents. There were also open chats for real time online conversations with the particularity of anonymity.

Web 1.0 evolved into web 2.0, a web oriented towards the user. Web 2.0 offers the opportunity to the users of expressing themselves in many different contexts. Users can now have their own space because many web pages offer it for free. Many static web pages have changed their format to an interactive one, so, users can comment on them. Blogs, wikis, social networks are tools people now have for expressing themselves and in some cases for making money.

From the experience of web 2.0 of users interacting in the web and not just receiving information but producing information, the web evolved into web 3.0, a not so evident web version. Since web 2.0 has been a success for the companies to make advertisement, the web has evolved to the semantic web. The web now analyses the users’ interactions to offer them options of what they are searching and talking.     

Basic concepts of ICT used in education. Current situation of ICT in TEFL

The Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become increasingly popular in almost every area in society. Education is not the exception, nowadays, teaching and learning are being benefited from ICTs in many different contexts.

Some concepts might be clear before we start to discuss the situation of ICTs in EFL. First, we have e-learning, a wide concept that involves all learning mediated by electronical devices and services. Donal Clark has cited Rosenberg for a concise definition

Marc Rosenberg (2001) confines e-learning to the internet as: the use of internet technologies to deliver a broad array of solutions that enhance knowledge and performance. It is based upon three fundamental criteria:

• networked
• delivered to the end-user via a computer using standard internet technology
• focuses on the broadest view of learning

E-learning includes, then, distance education via online or virtual learning. Distance education via online learning refers to teaching and learning process done out of the classroom. The interaction is not held face to face, which means that teacher and learner do not have to be in the same space but mostly at the same time.  Blended learning is, then, the combination of online learning with the traditional teaching style of classes. It means that some classes are online and some others face to face.

ICTs are currently being used in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in many ways. We take advantage of many different resources available on and offline. Computers and other electronical devices are present in more and more learning environments and many teachers take the blended learning as an option when designing syllabuses. I think that this increasing use of ICTs in the EFL classroom is totally beneficial because it fosters autonomy and it is attractive for the students.

Teacher and students in the computer room at the Modern Languages School (EIM-UCV)

Reference:

Clark, D. R. (2010). Defining eLearning. Retrieved May 5, 2012 from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/elearning/define.html

Digital Literacy

Digital Literacy

What is digital literacy?

Digital literacy is a common term we usually hear or read everywhere since the popularity gained by the WEB 2.0. We talk every time about computer literate or digital literate and also about digital citizenship, which is becoming very important.

I found two interesting definitions of digital literacy:

“an ability to understand and to use information from a variety of digital sources, … simply as literacy in the digital age” Paul Gilster (1997) cited by Prof David Bawden Source

“The ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers.” Paul Gilster (1997) cited by Sarah Hjeltness Source

Well, to basic ideas “computers” and “information”. We live in a digital era but most importantly we live times when information is power. Almost everybody is looking for information all the time: the news, the traffic, the currency, where to shop, vacations, show business…, even personal information of their loved ones… But people is not only looking for information they are also generating information. The key of this current sharing of information is internet. The digital era we live is leading us to be computer literate because much information is being shared through internet and we cannot miss it. It seems to be that the less information we have the less powerful we are.    

Digital literacy for living or for working?

The use of the web tools has become highly relevant in the successful of people’s professional life. We cannot think of a leader in any of the disciplines without a digital citizenship (a digital profile).  People is using internet to promote themselves. Does that mean that internet is useful only for working? What about daily lives? Some digital fans start their days turning on their electronic devises (if they are off) and checking everything they follow and they find many the information they need for their live in there. So, digital literacy introduces people into really fast and interconnected world that is very necessary for working, for learning but also for life.

"Digital literacy, to me, is figuring out the cool ways to use Internet tools to accomplish stuff." Karin Dalziel (2007) Source

Welcome

Welcome!


This is a blog for my ICTs class.  Here I will post about ICTs and EFL teaching and learning.
I hope it is useful for you