English Virtual Community

"A vision of students today" video has been recorded by the Digital Ethnography group of the Kansas University. They also recorded " Web 2.0... The Machine is Us". Enjoy it:

Part Five - A Conversation About Twitter View more presentations from Fresh Consulting .

It is not easy to find the right time for training teachers in technology . Teachers are usually very busy teaching, marking tests, filling reports, correcting homework or preparing classes. So, Saturday mornings or some evenings are the only possible meeting time, but these are not the most popular times. Teachers – usually women – also have a family, dinners to prepare or children to look after, so virtual meetings may be an interesting possibility to solve this problem. WIZIQ is a web based education platform powered by teachers who continually improve it in response to its users’ feedback. This collaborative web conferencing environment is amongst the best online teaching solutions in the world, and it integrates the following set of online tools : synchronous (happening at the same time) and asynchronous teaching through virtual classrooms, online tests and a content sharing and messaging system. Pros : Wiziq is absolutely free of cost for teachers and students; it enables ...

I am taking an online workshop leaded by Nik Peachey and this morning, while I was checking mails coming from my workshopmates, I came across this Web 2.0 tool which looks  a really interesting storymaker called StoryBird StoryBird   is really simple and speedy. You must get registered (i t takes a couple of minutes ), and after exploring it in a few seconds, you can start writing. The artwork available is great. Have a look and tell me your opinion in comments :-) Storybird Quick Tour from Storybird on Vimeo . If you are fond of children's literacy and literature, you cannot miss this blog:

While I was twittering this morning, I came across a video about a very interesting computer. I am planning to include it in my letter to Santa :) 

If you are reading this post, you must be fond of technology. If you are fond of technology, I guess you must be interested in science fiction. Aren´t you? I am. I loved reading Bradbury or Issac Assimov or watching Star Wars and Matrix saga as well as AI (Artificial Intelligence), not only for their special effects but because I like having a look at a possible future. Years ago, the gap between science fiction and real technological achievements was quite big, but this gap seems to get smaller and smaller. The speed at which technological advances are taking place is really amazing: in 2004, we were talking about Web 2 as something incredible and today we are talking about Web 4: augmented reality, mirror worlds, virtual worlds and lifelogging. The issue of this post is a mixture of movies and TIC. Do you remember the movie " Minority Report " starred by Tom Cruise? Do you remember Tom Cruise using a computer by clicking ...

VIRTUAL EDUCA 2009 : What are teachers doing with technology in Latin America? At the XIV Iberoamerican Summit of Heads of State and Government (San Jose, Costa Rica, November 18th-20th, 2004) approved the assignment of PROGRAM FOR VIRTUAL EDUCA Iberoamerican Summit. San Jose Declaration, signed by the Heads of State and Government of the twenty Latin American countries, states in clause 36: "We warmly welcome the inclusion as a project officer from Ibero-American Summit Virtual Education Program, an initiative that exemplifies the relevance strengthen the distance education and the use of new communication and information technologies in our region". Virtual Educa is a converging space for the exchange of experiences and the implementation of projects linked to the Society of Knowledge. It organizes international annual forums, and in November 2009 it took place in Buenos Aires , Argentina . The hosting university, UCA, which is situated in a very beautiful and fashionab...

Graham Stanley spoke about the educational use of Twitter via Wiziq. We had some technological problems, but fortunately Miguel Mendoza (Venezuela) helped me online. Thank you, Mike!!! The session was a completely new experience for the audience - around 25 teachers of different languages - who were not very much familiar with the use of Web 2.0 tools. Here is a link to Graham's presentation. Enjoy it: div style="width:481px;"> sesion de Graham by Nelba Quintana Get your own Virtual Classroom

In the story " Circus Escape " an elephant escapes from the circus and runs off into town. The elephant meets Billy and saves him from a fire. The story is aimed at learners who already have a basic knowledge of English, and practises narrative tenses in a story context. Circus Escape is an online flash-animated story for young learners on the British Council's site for young learners LearnEnglish Kids. In the classroom there are many ways of exploiting activities to   help children practise their English whilst developing their creativity and imagination by writing poems, stories, reviews, etc. You can find them HERE

Learning a new language can be a fun and exciting experience, especially for younger children. The key is to keep them interested in what they are learning. Fortunately, the Internet provides many free games, flashcards, songs, books, and other resources that can entertain, engage, and educate young English language learners. Here are 15 resources worth exploring: ESL-Kids.com provides worksheets, flashcards, games, and songs that children can use to learn English. The site also features an In Class section that demonstrates how to use these resources.  Starfall  With this fun interactive English game site, beginning students can practice their ABCs and reading. Starfall is primarily for first grade children but works well for pre-K to second graders.  BarryFunEnglish is an elementary student English learning site. Through this site, you will find worksheets, games, vocabulary builders, flashcards, listening and PowerPoint presentations. The PowerPoint presentations...

Last Sunday, Social Networking Congress 2009  finished its first session with great success. Abotu 699 participants from all over the world met on line to listen to ICT specialists and participate in MOODLE forums. The organizing team worked hard and as a testimony of this work you can have all the information about what happened in this event in a MOODLE platform, forums where to interchange knowledge and experience, and a blog. If you were not able to attend the sessions, do not worry. The videoconferences were recorded and and available at http://avealmec.blogspot.com/ Personally, I was very pleased working with so good professionals and warm people. I learned a lot about how to organize  and moderate an online event. I hope ARCALL and AVEALMEC will continue working together in projects like this one.

Yesterday Social Networking Congress started with enthusiasm and a very good response from the audience. Around 40 people per session attended the 4 videoconferences the very first day. The speakers were Nicky Hockly, Riza Zinstejer, Paula Ledesma, George Simens and Carla Arena. I would like to point out the energy moderators have and excellent work they did. Evelyn Izquierdo (Venezuela) moderated all sessions!!!! Today, Friday 6th November at 18.30 GMT , Vance Stevens' presentation  will take place. It is titled "Modeling Social Media in Groups, Communities and Networks". I will have the pleasure to introduce him. Vance is Webhead's creator and inspiration of many teachers around the world. Thanks to his dedication and support ARCALL was created. Don´t  miss it!!! Abstract of the Session: Modelling Social Media in Groups, Communities and Networks This presentation intertwines two threads: (1) an examination of social networking as practiced distinctly in...

After nearly two months of work , ARCALL is proud to announce the opening of its first online Congress together with AVEALMEC. The organizing team has worked very hard: preparing the material, website, MOODLE platform content, WiziQ sessions. Today the forums have been opened. I will be moderating the forum about Commuties of Practice together with my dearest friend and colleague Evelyn Izquierdo. Follow us at: http://avealmec.org.ve/moodle  or in twitter http://twitter.com/avealmec I hope you will enjoy the experience.

My birthday is on Oct 24th . I have always considered that date important... not only because it is my birthday but also because it is the anniversary of the United Nations. But now I have another reason to celebrate: 350 What is 350? 350.org is an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis--the solutions that science and justice demand. Their mission is to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis. The website is translated into different languages, so it may be a very interesting source of inspiration to develop a lesson plan to make our students work with the net. Let's share: If you read this post and make a lesson plan using 350.org website , you are invited to send it to me by mail. I will upload it here.

I am delighted to inform you that from November 5-8, 2009 , ARCALL and AVEALMEC will be running the Social Networking 2009 Conference . This open-knowledge event will be completely online and free and it is aimed at elluminating ELT practitioners to grow in the use of social networks as learning development tools.This event is being jointly organized by ARCALL and AVEALMEC , two Latin-American associations, one based in Venezuela and the other in Argentina, interested in promoting the use of ICT in the language classroom. For this event, we invited conference speakers from different parts of the world: George Siemens -Canada Etienne Wenger -US Vance Stevens -UAE Nik Peachey -UK Charalambos Vrasidas and Maria Solomou -Cyprus Nicky Hockly -Spain Erika Cruvinel and Ronaldo Lima –Brazil Rita Zeinstejer and Paula Ledesma -Argentina Nellie Müller Deustch –Israel Carla Arena –Brazil Graham Stanley –Spain Jennifer Verschoor, Evelyn Izquierdo and Erica Cruvinel –Argentina, Venezuela...

I am very happy to announce a new set of material provided by the British Council: Teaching children 1) " Circus escape" is an online flash-animated story for young learners about an elephant which escapes from the circus and runs off into town. http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/teaching-kids/circus-escape 2) There a re many activities on the British Council’s site for young learners which you can use with your learners to help them develop their writing skills. They range from writing poems, making stories, reading and sending book and film reviews and sending ecards to family and friends. On this page you will find tips for using and exploiting the activities in the classroom: Play with Poems, Story Maker,Write a review and Send an ecard http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/teaching-kids/get-writing 3) Superhe roes is an exciting topic for young learners. On this page you will find tips for using and exploiting the materials in the classroom including an extremely...

If you are looking for an online publisher, try http://issuu.com/ where you can explore a world of publications by people and publishers alike. You can also collect, share and publish in a format designed to make your documents look their very best. Issuu is a popular destination for quality publications on the web. We can give your readers the possibility of reading your previews or entire archives. Read more in an article written by me at Lost in Technology

This weekEdublogs has got some goodies for you - a student blogging challenge and the chance to win one of 16 free Edublogs Supporter accounts!!!! And one for the teachers... About the Student Blogging Challenge Edublogs's last blogging challenge had over 1000 students, from 15 countries, aged 6 to 18 years old, writing posts, commenting and getting to know about each others cultures while improving their blogging skills and connecting to a global audience.The growth of the students’ blogging skills during each challenge is totally amazing and inspiring; check out these examples of student work. Challenge Categories This time the Challenge Categories have been expanded into two separate categories; both designed to improved student skills.Students (or classes) can choose to participate in either or both: Better Bloggers Challenge – emphasis on better blogging, improving your blog design and connecting to a global audience Better Commenter Challenge – focusing how you write comment...

This is the second part of the post written by Karen Schweitzer who kindly offered herself to contribute to this blog. Thank you, Karen for this contribution!!! MIT Open CourseWare - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offers dozens of free foreign language and literature courses through their OpenCourseWare site. All of the courses are self-paced. Many include audio, video, lecture notes, assignments, reading lists, exams, and other downloadable study materials. Cramberry - Cramberry offers many hi-tech web-based flashcards for English language learners. Users can also create their own flashcards and track online progress. Popling - Popling is a way for language learners to learn without actively studying. This desktop app pops flashcards onto a computer screen at regular intervals so that users can learn new English vocabulary words while completing other computer tasks. Visual ESL - VisualESL.com provides a wide range of interactive video activities for English langu...

To see more information about this event in Spanish, click on: http://www.diadelblog.com/

Nik Peachey is a freelance learning technology consultant, writer and teacher trainer. He specialises in learning technology and social media for language development and teacher training. He was here in Argentina last January as a coordinator and teacher trainer for Hornby School (More about the event in this blog? Click HERE ) We can see and listen to him in a YouTube video speaking about Web 2.0 for EFL. The following is a recording of a presentation he prepared for teacher trainers in Morocco. Enjoy it.

After having uploaded "Are Social networks Dangerous? Part I , I started looking for further information about the attack to the use of social networkings such as Facebook, Hi5, Myspace, Sonico, etc. carried out by Televisa. The funniest thing is that Televisa did not mention their own social network, called Gyggs and that J.L. Dórigo has an account in Facebook! Articles in Spanish related to the topic: · http://www.periodismodeverdad.com.ar/2008/10/29/la-verdad-sobre-facebook-hi5-myspace-sonico-etc-etc/ · http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/533846.html · http://cyberholocausto.blogspot.com/2008/08/lopez-doriga-un-peligro-hi5-facebook-y.html · http://lapoliticamexicana.blogspot.com/2008/08/lpez-driga-quiere-que-cierre-mi.html Then I asked some collegues who are ICT specialists for their opinions. Most of them agree on the necessity of using Facebook because it is a popular tool, specially among young people: “I have avoided FB for a long time but this has become almost imp...

This post was written by Karen Schweitzer who kindly offered herself to contribute to this blog. Karen Schweitzer, Business School Guide for About.com, writes about online colleges for OnlineColleges.net. Thank you, Karen for this contribution!!! "Incorporating hi-tech learning aids and applications into a study regimen can sometimes make it easier for language learners to learn and retain new information. You can order many of these products for a cost from catalogs or from companies who provide such services. You can also find free options online . Most of the free options work just as well as the paid options and can be used indefinitely without incurring any costs. This list provides information about 5 free online tools that can be used for language learning. ( I will be including more online tools suggested by Karen in future posts, don´t miss them ) : 1- FreeRice - Language learners can give free rice to hungry people by playing this English vocabulary game from the UN F...

Some days ago I got a mail pointing out the dangers of networks. The mail quoted the attack to the use of social networks such as Facebook, Hi5, Myspace, Sonico, etc. carried out by Televisa. Televisa said that social networks are not safe because they provide information to kidnappers. The Mexican journalist Joaquín López Dórigo criticized the security measures of social networks due to the kinapping of an important businessman’s daughter. A video about facebook came to the e-mail I mentioned before which I found really scary.

Computers are constantly changing. We can find a wide variety of sizes, colours and utilities in the market. After the success of the ultra-portable netbooks the nettops arrive! What are "nettops"? They are desktop PCs with small cabinets, modest performance and low costs, that seek to revitalize the segment of desk equipments. The idea is to offer it to those who are neither gamers nor video editors or people who need to do any other task which require a powerful processor. The tiny cabinets directly integrated to the monitor are the attraction, besides they are ultra-silent spend less electricity and require less cooling. Are you thinking in getting one? They are already available here in La Plata, Argentina. Local shops are offering MSI nettops for about u$s700.-

Last Saturday June 27th I attended a seminar about How to Assess Young Learners carried out by Prof. Analía Caldiz (MA Discourse Analysis, ICAB staff member) at Instituto Terrero. On this ocassion I had the opportunity to meet the representatives of three important publishers: Ticiana Neder (Longman), Carolina Coppa (Oxford), Mabel Manzano and Fabián García ( Richmond). I asked these representatives for online interactive material. Longman offers a four module course called Teacher Development Interactive which provides professional development and an internationally recognised certification from Hunter College, City University of New York. Jeremy Harmer is one of the facilitators ; an internationally hosted online learning and assessment system for English courses designed to go hand in hand with Longman’s texbook series; iTests , and dictionary widgets which you can add to your blog. Among Richmond Publishing brochures, I got the one belonging to the “New Framework” book s...

The Top 100 Language Blogs 2009 is the largest language blog competition and is hosted annually by bab.la and Lexiophiles. It is aimed at finding the best blogs related to languages and awarding language-loving bloggers. This year there were 473 nominated blogs from 26 different countries in four categories. I am very happy to announce that this blog has been nominated for the "Top 100 Language Blogs 2009" competition!!! Due to the amount of blogs they have created categories. (Language Learning/Language Teaching/Language Technology/ Language Professionals) English Virtual Community blog is in category Language Technology . Voting will start on July 8 and close on July 27 . Winners will be announced on July 30. Thank you very much for this nomination! It means I am doing things well. Thanks to all who have inspired me these years and who follow this blog :-)

At present I am working as ICT coordinator. I am supposed to help teachers using Web 2.0 tools in their ESL (English as a Second Language) classes and it is not an easy task! I have to deal with two problems: 1- Students are already motivated to use digital technologies because they belong to the "thumb" or "digital" generation , but they think they are only going to play intereactive games at the computing lab. In Argentina, Digital natives associate Internet with having fun: chatting with friends and playing interactive games since the school has not incorporated computers and the Internet as a learning tool, so I have to make them realise that we are going to work and practise the Second Language (SL) - English in this case- using computers. 2-On the other hand, teachers are still "digital immigrants" and they are , in a way, reluctant to include computing and Internet in their classes. :-( Some of them are completely technophobes and others are a bit ...

Yesterday the II Session about ICT organized by Prof. Patricia Guzmán took place at Profesorado ISFD 97 in La Plata (57St between 8 and 9). This time most of the participants (mostly students) have certain knowlege of the Internet and its tools, so there was more interaction between the audience and me - more questions- since they are already using some Web 2.0 tools. This time I spoke about Collaborative Learning and gave ideas about how to use Google docs ( documents, spread sheets and presentations) and blogs in our professional life and classes. We had the pleasure of having Ticiana Neder , Pearson Education S.A. Representative SGBA among the audience. She brought interesting educational material and fantastic presents for the audience. One of the books Ticiana gave to participants was How to Teach English with Technology by Gavin Dudeney which I do recommend for all those who want to learn about the topic. I was given a Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture! Th...

Teenagers are called the thumb generation. Guess why? because they are typing text messages on their mobile phones most of their time. Multitasking is nother characteristic of digital natives. Do you want to read more about this? Read this interesting article by clicking on : http://ow.ly/aOuQ

Have a look at this link if you are planning to set up your computer station properly. http://ergonomics.about.com/od/office/ss/computer_setup.htm

I was in Córdoba city (Argentina) on May 27th, 28th and 29th because the local university organized a 3-day-Congress on ICT applied to Language Learning. Teachers from different parts of the country attended the event. The papers were about different topics: use of blogs and forums, webquests, Collaborative Learning, Moodle platform, distance learning, moodle platforms. I found particularly interesting 6-hour-workshop about "How to introduce teachers to the use of ICT in their classrooms" given by Mgtr. Víctor Sajoza Juric who gave us some useful guidance about this issue. Now let me tell you about my experience in the city. I had the fortune to be in Córdoba on "El Cordobazo" (See more info in Wikipedia ) anniversary. The city seemed to vibrate at the rhytm of the drums played by the workers who marched along streets carrying Argentinian flags in the memory of their lost co-workers who died or suffered persecussion during the military dictatorship. Some teachers an...