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Valentine's Day is celebrated on February 14th. It is a festival of romantic love when people show feelings of love, affection and friendship. Many people give cards, letters, flowers or presents to people they love.They may also arrange a romantic meal in a restaurant or night in a hotel, while others may choose this day to propose or get married. Background The origins of Valentine's Day are not clear but many sources believe that it stems from the story of St Valentine, a Roman priest who was martyred on or around February 14 in the year 270 CE during the reign of Claudius II for refusing to give up his Christian faith. St Valentine was caught marrying Christian couples. However, another theory says  that the church used the day of St Valentine’s martyrdom to Christianize the old Roman Lupercalia , a pagan festival held around the middle of February. Further reading: Saint Valentine Lupercalia Music: Love is in the air - subtitled How deep is your love 

Lit2Go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format. An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages. Many of the passages also have a related reading strategy identified. Each reading passage can also be downloaded as a PDF and printed for use as a read-along or as supplemental reading material for your classroom. Here is the  link  to enjoy literature

The greatest benefit from living in our times is that we can share information or knowledge easier than our grandparents could. Technologies and social media applications simplify the process of sharing and provide us with an access to any person in the world. However, many people question their language skills and fluency level. Usually, it stops them from interacting with other learners. Hence, they mistakenly postpone speaking practice which predetermines sharing until they get enough background. Fortunately, there are always ways to begin a good talk even if you are a beginner. 1-Join a group of similar interests to train your speaking skills through social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc. If you are a beginner, small chats with other learners or native speakers will help you overcome the fear of mistakes and prompt you to switch to longer talks.   2-Create your own YouTube channel to share useful tips about cooking, knitting, preparing cockta...

On September 21st, we celebrate b oth Spring and Students' day in La Plata, Argentina. Luckily, nature is present in my city in all its parks - there is one park every 6 blocks and streets. We can smell the perfume of the orange trees along 47th street. Students meet and have picnics and at night there is a popular concert at Moreno Square . http://taggalaxy.de/

Cambridge University Press offers in its website a series of videos tutorials which demonstrates how to use an Interactive whiteboard.may help teachers in the use of IWB. To launch the videos, click on this LINK

School 2.0: Future of Education View more presentations from SteveHargadon .

Vance Stevens visited La Plata, and gave a presentation on PLN. More than 20 teachers came to the School of Languages to listen to him.  Among them was Susana Canelo who came from Del Valle (400km far form the capital of the province of Buenos Aires). Here is a picture of us: If you could not attend this event, you can see the slides of the presentation below these lines: PLN View more presentations from Escuela de Lenguas UNLP . And here is a link to the recording in PodOmatic:  PLN: The paradigm shift in teacher and learner autonomy

Latitude 42 Study Findings: Where Else Will Kids Think to Put the Web in the World? from latddotcom on Vimeo .

 I am very proud to upload selected material provided by the British Council  for this blog. I hope you find it useful :-) Methodology articles http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/portfolios-elt Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/methodology http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/public-speaking-skills Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/methodology http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/music-visualisation Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/methodology Teaching activities http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities/working-biographies Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities/it%E2%80%99s-1200-oclock Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities/who-it Related content: http://www.teachingenglish.o...

Via: Cell Phones

As I announced in this blog , last year I was appointed as ICT coordinator at two schools of languages. The experience was really enriching and with great satisfaction I can say that authorities  and teachers are much more interested in digital technology than they used to.  One school opened a  full equipped computing lab and the other changed all the computers for new ones! The beginning Things were not easy. I found a bit of resistance on the teachers' part. They used to think they would have more work for the same money. In a way, it is true that teachers should devote some extra time to update their professional skills or get familiar with any  new teaching material. I insisted on the importance of applying digital technology to language classes, but what was more important , I demonstrated it to them.  From simple tools to more complex ones I started showing them the advantages of the three portals : Google, Yahoo and Hotmail. How teachers can use a m...

Mind maps are diagrams used to represent radial thinking – a natural function of the mind - which involves writing down a central idea and thinking up new and related ideas which radiate out from the centre. Mind Mapping (or concept mapping ) can be applied to every aspect of life where improved learning and clearer thinking will enhance human performance, specially in education for brainstorming, organizing ideas or studying. It is very useful to develop visual memory. Characteristics The subject of attention is crystallized in a central word. The main themes of the subject radiate from the key center on branches. Branches may hold a key image/word printed on the associated line - details radiate out. The branches form a connected nodal structure.  • Why using a mind map? To clarify your thoughts, organize information, communicate clearly or take in information a mind map can assist. Mind maps may be used for different purposes: visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and...

Luckily some new material selected by  the British Council is available in this blog. Let´s start with a very interesting  short topic-based videos where our young students can listen to children talking about their lives on the British Council’s NEW LearnEnglish Kids site for young learners. As you can see the window is visually attractive and user friendly for kids. When you click on the photo of one of the kids that appear on the screen, a video starts running. You can exploit the video extensively and/or let your students explore other listening material at their own pace: You can also print the script of the video and full colour activities with corresponding answers in pdf format. Don´t forget to make your students vote for the video! Students can answer to the personal questions in comments, introducing them to online participation. I hope you and your students really enjoy this online website ! Further ideas to exploit the website? Click H...

This is a very good post in LexioPhiles site about how you can improve your language learning process. The link is : http://www.lexiophiles.com/english/learning-a-language-in-two-weeks-really I hope you like it

educ.ar   is the educational portal of the Argentine Nation created with the support of the Martín Varsavsky Foundation in 2000, but after the economical and political breakdown which took place in Argentina in 2001, the portal needed to be reorganized. In 2003, the re-launching took place in the hands of Alejandro Piscitelli who considers his experience in educ.ar as the most challenging in his life. The aim of educ.ar re-launching was to work for and with Argentine teachers on digital literacy. An initial team of 23 specialists helped teachers and heads of educational institutions to get familiar with the use of ICT. Thus, the portal became one of the most respected online providers of educational contents and was the first educational national portal in Latin America. Actually, it has about 1,450 million of users and about 2,000,000 hits per month.   Educ.ar Mission   To generate opportunities for all the inhabitants of the Argentine Republic to learn no matter ...

Last November I had the pleasure of attending a presentation given by Alejandro Piscitelli at Virtual Educa Congress . His presentation, massively attended by specialists on Information and Communication Technology (ICT), was about digital literacy and the Argentine Education system. It was really moving, sometimes ironic and sarcastic. Alejandro showed some acid humour when he opened his presentation with a slide showing an oven and the phrase “We are in the oven” (1) and continued describing with rich vocabulary the educational system resistance to put the use of ICT into practice. (1) It stands for the Spanish local colloquial expression “estamos en el horno” which means we are in a really difficult situation. Piscitelli’s book Alejandro wrote, among other titles, "Nativos Digitales" (2) . Although I had already read quite a lot about the topic in English, I decided to buy his book to know more about his opinion after having heard him at Virtual Educa. Luckily, I...

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