English Virtual Community

Yesterday I took a KET course to the computer room. Let  me share my lesson plan with you: - I prepared a questionaire. They were about 10 questions such as:  what is the level course? , how many students are there in the class? Do they have laptops/computers/ smartphones/ tablets? , how many students have wifi at home, etc.) - I asked the students to take a sheet of paper and write✎ down the questions. - Then I asked them to gather in pairs or groups of three and go to different courses to get the answers. They had 20 minutes for this task. - While the students were doing the questionaire, I went to the computing room and turned on the computers. - I wrote the digital activities to do on the board: Open Word, Set Arial Font, size 14 for the title and 12 for the text, Copy the questions and the answers, Enrich your text with images downloaded from Internet, Edit the images,  Revise spelling using the spell checker, Include your names, course code ...

Though the technology has been around for more than two decades (IWB  was released in 1991), its use has only grown exponentially over the past few years. Fundamentally, an IWB combines a dry erase whiteboard with an LCD projector and is usually mounted on a wall or floor stand. Powered by easy-to-use software, the whiteboard becomes a computer screen viewable by an entire classroom.   The projector projects the content from a onto the surface of the board while the teacher controls the content either with a pointer or a touch of the hand instead of a keyboard and mouse. The combination of software with the projector results in much more than simply a projected image. An interactive whiteboard can be a cost saver as this technology demonstrates how one computer can provide learning stimuli for a whole classroom. This is more cost effective than equipping an entire IT room, or every student with a laptop. Examples of the features available when using an inte...

If you want to understand how English works, it is advisable to learn about English culture. Culture will help you understand expressions. A celebration that takes place in March is St. Patrick’s Day, a global celebration of Irish culture on or around March 17. It particularly remembers St Patrick, one of Ireland’s patron saints, who ministered Christianity in Ireland during the fifth century. Learn some Irish words and phrases. The Irish have their own distinct dialect of the English language, so if you want to sound like a true Paddy on St. Patrick's day, try sprinkling some of these Hiberno-English gems into your conversation: What's the craic ? This phrase can be interpreted as either "How's it going?" or "What's going on?" or "What's up?" and is used in non-formal settings. Craic is a very important word in Ireland and can be used to describe your enjoyment of an event or activity, e.g "How was the party?" "...

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to participate in an online radio programme called " En tu Idioma " ( In Your Language ) which is on  the air every Wednesday at 7 p.m. I was invited by Carolina Skoppek to speak about Technology applied to English Language Learning. Viviana Ameijenda, Head of the English Department of the School Esteban Echeverría , was also present. The programme lasted about 45 minutes and we talked about - among other things - the origin of this blog,  how I started working with digital technology applied to the language learning, my work as coordinator of the ICT Area at the School of Languages and my experience in Japan where I attended WorldCALL 2008. Then, Viviana spoke about the use of Interactive Whiteboards and how her school incorporated this new tool in  the English class.                            Here is a pictur...

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 .

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 ...

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 ...

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 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...

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...

" All that glitters is not gold " may be applied to Interactive Whiteboards (IWB). Today, I have read an article by Gavin Dudeney which has arisen a debate on IWB. Gavin is not very enthusiastic about this tool ;however, below his post (click HERE ) there are some other experts' opinions - Graham Stanley's, among others - who are not so pessimistic and mention the point that "Training is indeed the key to using the IWB". The big danger using IWB is using this kind of tool only to show Youtube clips (a bit like buying a Jaguar just to take a trip to the corner shop). Personally , I completely agree with Graham. If schools want to incorporate new technology to language classes, teacher training is essential. Oh, but the teacher trainning should be given by an experienced teacher, not the IWB maker.

Well, this is my fourth active week in Second Life. I had to present a dialogue in the "simulation" class. I used a box with notecards with all the necessary material for the students, the board with different texts and the typist for a game. Then, Dafne showed us a presentation she gave about the differences between online classes and classes in SL. Finally, we visited "Ciudad Bonita". The place where people will learn Spanish as a Second Language at Language Lab. "Ciudad Bonita" resembles a typical Spanish city. It is not finished but looks really beautiful. Dafne is doing a great job. Here is a slide show of the this week. Click on it because the text bubbles cannot be seen very well. BubbleShare: Share photos - Craft Ideas

This third week has been vey interesting. We learnt to manage new tools such as a flat screen. I feel more confident with my movements and have been exploring new lands. I met Nergiz and had a lovely chat in her house. Then she showed the places around. After our chat, I stayed for a while exploring the place and touching the objects. Finally I found a book to read. I could not avoid changing my appearance. I went shopping and got some new appearances and clothes. Have you noticed I changed my look? Evelyn and I wanted to earn some money to buy some images for our flat screens, so we went to a disco. You can earn money dancing. Here you can see me in a disco.

This is my second week in the super intensive training course at Language Lab. I have been pretty busy working with the new tools and investigating the virtual world. There is always a "helper" ( an avatar who helps you) at the entrance of Language Lab to help you with the tools. DaQ ( a helper from USA) took me shopping for free! Yes, ladies. Can you imagine? This is paradise! You can buy clothes for free!!! So, I bought lots of clothes and shoes. Oh, and you can also buy different hairstyles. This is how I look now: I designed a lesson plan for beginner learners of Spanish as a Second Language. I was supposed to give a 10 minute class, and I was terribly nervous. Believe it or not, after having taught English for 15 years. Fortunatelly, I was not the only nervous one. My colleagues felt the same. For this first Second Life class, I chose the topic "Colores". I designed a detailed plan, some objects to be used in a game, and rehearsed what I was planning to do in ...

Jennifer and I were interviewed about Web 2.0 and our scholarship to Japan last month by Mario Sarlengue for Radio Universidad de La Plata. This interview was in Spanish - sorry Webheads :( Anyway, I would like to share it with you. Click on the links below, turn on your speakers and listen to our wonderful voices :-) Part one http://www.mediafire.com/?jmoozmxjjtj Part two http://www.mediafire.com/?jmoozmxjjtj Enjoy the interview. Nelba