viernes, 22 de abril de 2011

Social Networking

Social networking has become a very common activity in the last few years. It allows people from all walks of life to stay in touch with their friends, relatives, etc. Perhaps the most popular network at the present time is Facebook, which was launched in 2004 and has more than 600 million active users nowadays.

But beyond the fact of simply keeping connected to our special ones, Facebook and other social networks like MySpace and Hi5, for example, offer a new world of possibilities for language learning. Thanks to the different apps that these social networks offer, like chatting, multimedia up/download, messaging, posting, etc., now teachers may find new ways not only to get closer to learners, but also to make them practice with the language.

When it comes to teaching English, we teachers may rely on such apps in order to design a wide variety of activities which are very educative, motivating, and fun for learners. imagine for example having learners upload a summary of the latest English lesson on Facebook each week and have the other students in the class make comments on it, using the English language. What if we have learners to create a story by posting notes on Facebook and add a new paragraph or chapter every week? What if we have our students chat with or send messages in English to their e-pals in a class in another school in or outside the country? How about having our pupils create photo albums on Facebook where they can talk about their interests, school, culture, etc., including picture descriptions in English?

The possibilities are endless and all you need as a teacher is your willingness to use technology in the class plus a little bit of creativity. This will help you create task-based activities that are engaging and fun for learners, promoting their independence and developing their learning strategies and language and computer skills.

sábado, 9 de abril de 2011

Using Wikis in the Classroom

One more time and thank the LT's Course, I have discovered a new way to incorporate the LT's in my classroom. This time everything is about collaborative writing, which refers to writing that is edited and polished by more than one person. Taking this into consideration, Wikis arise as, perhaps, the best way to carry out collaborative writing and, to be more specific, peer writing in the English class. But what is a Wiki? Well, it is a website that can be edited by different people by means of using a web browser. Users can create, modify, and even erase a text that they all share. 

From this point of view, using wikis in the English class serves not only the purpose of using learning technologies, but also the promotion of writing and peer reviewing as a strategy to be used during the revising stage of the writing process. Peer reviewing lets students be motivated and feel engaged as they use their own knowledge to correct others' texts and, at the same time, provide feedback.

Here you are the link to a video that explains what a wiki is and its advantages. Enjoy it!

 

miércoles, 6 de abril de 2011

Using Blogs and keeping track of them... God bless RSS!!!

Whoa!!! After going through all the activities in the unit Online writing for students and teachers, I must confess that the part that I liked the most is the one regarding how to use RSS (Really Simple Syndication), which is a tool that allows you to subscribe to different sites on the cyberspace and keep updated on them.

For a long time, I had seen the orange symbol on the left without knowing what it meant or what it was used for. Now I know that just by clicking on it I can subscribe to any site on the Internet. This is undoubtedly a very useful tool as it lets you save time when surfing the net looking for the most recent news or updates on your favorite webpages.

Also, I loved the part about Google Reader, an application that allows you to access all news about the pages to which you have subscribed just as you do with your email accounts. Personally, I think this application is great; I just opened my account in Google Reader to keep track of all those newsfeeds from my favorite sites.

sábado, 2 de abril de 2011

School Linked Projects

Nowadays, when it comes to using learning technologies in the classroom, the variety of things we can do as teachers in almost endless. It just requires imagination and creativity to come up with a new way to use LTs to achieve our lesson goals.

One nice and important feature of using LTs is that we can actually get in touch with other people around the world in order to exchange educative experiences. Bearing this in mind, it is good to know that liked projects arise as one of the best options. A linked project lets schools that are geographically distant get in touch with each other. By means of using them, we can have learners communicate with other learners in different countries, promoting and fostering not only the practice of the language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) and the linguistic competence, but also the good relationships between people from different cultures and the practice and learning of universal values like respect, love, tolerance, etc.

In the light of such linked projects, teachers and students can communicate with each other by means of using different applications available on the web. Among these, some of the most popular are (video) conference calls, chat rooms, emails, blogs, forums, and wikis. At the present time there are different sites and freeware on the cyberspace that offer these applications; for example, Facebook, Skype, Blogger, eLanguages, ePals, etc., which are free and available in different languages.

Some of the advantages of using link projects are:

1. They are engaging,  motivating, interesting, and fun..
2. Students can develop and practice with their language and computer skills at the same time.
3. Communication and understanding between cultures is promoted and enhanced.
4. Students can also create the content as they work on the project, so teachers save time and effort.
5. They are easy to carry out.

Some recommendations:

1. Be careful when planing your linked project: make sure you have a clear topic and purpose, learning objectives, tasks to be performed by learners, resources and skills needed, type of language and content appropriate to the learners' level, age, and abilities, etc.
2. A good linked project should last 2 o3 three weeks. Avoid working on huge projects that take a lot of time and effort on the part of teachers and students.
3. Ensure all learners are familiar with the different applications and web tools to be used.
4. When selecting the name of the project, always come up with something that is catchy and summarizes its purpose and topic.

Finally, here you are some links that are useful when working with linked projects: