English Virtual Community

Definition by W ikipedia: Glogster is an online tool that allows users to create free interactive posters, or Glogs. A "Glog", short for "graphics blog", is an interactive multimedia image. It looks like a poster, but readers can interact with the content. Advantages: It is free It is visually appealing and offers users lots of options for designing their glogs. Stimulates, imagination and creativity : users may inserts text, images, photos, audio , videos, special effects and other elements into their glogs to generate a multimedia online creation. Fosters teamwork and collaboration with classmates Sharing: Posters can be shared with other users on the site, embedded in external wikis or blogs, and shared via many social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Private, secure, safe virtual working. Unlimited shelf life Disadvantages:   Registration is not optional IMPORTANT: to avoid young learners' registration, teachers can op...

Popplet is an application for the web and iPad, where you can collect, curate and share your ideas, inspirations, and projects.  It is a combination of wallwisher, glogster and field for webspiration which offers a lot of  possibilities: users can type, draw, upload images , embed videos or draw in the virtual “post-its” called “popplets" .  Advantages: Teachers can use it for collaborative work  Popplets can be connected It doesn’t have an limit on the number of characters you can use. . At the moment   is in beta and you need to request an invite.  Here is a video explaining how it can be used.  http://popplet.com/ Related posts: http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/01/03/popplet-looks-like-a-winner-its-wallwisher-on-steroids/ http://2sparkley.edublogs.org/2011/01/05/popplet/

Ronaldo Lima (Brazil)  asked his students to talk about "What makes (your city/country) unique" and they created a response to it using  the online tool : animoto Ronaldo's idea was pinched in by Carla Arena (Brazil) based on some project she had carried out with someone some time ago and it's great to see that the online environment allows for these ideas to be spread. http://finally5b.blogspot.com/2009/04/what-makes-brazil-unique-country.html Two other teachers joined the idea : Sasha (Slovenia) http://rostilj.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-makes-slovenia-unique.html and Mr Stout (Japan) http://mrstoutsblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/toyo-gakuen-university-homestay-english_7990.html Will you and your students be the next?

Vance Stevens is visiting La Plata! He kindly accepted my invitation to give a presentation. He will speak about "PLN ( Personal Learning Network): The paradigm shift  in learner and teacher autonomy"  at the School of Languages. When? at 12.30 p.m.  next Wednesday -August 11th .  Free entrance but you should book your place in advance by phoning 0221 423 6672

Hello everybody, We are on winter holidays in Argentina and I have more time for thinking about my activities on the net and feeding my curious soul by surfing the web. One of the conclusions I arrived is that I have stopped blogging long posts because I don´t have much time for writing  :-((  I microblog in Twitter and Facebook everyday! Today, I came across this material edited by my Brazilian colleague , Ana María Menezes. Ana has gathered a series of videos related to ICT in education. Thank you, Ana for sharing this material :-)  PS: The following collection of videos is a bit heavy, so it may take some minutes to download.   Build your own custom video playlist at embedr.com

In this video you will listen to Ken Robinson talking about how the present educational system neither prepares young people for the future nor encourages creativity. Can you leave a comment about your opinion? Do you agree with Robinson? Are you doing anything in your class to avoid killing creativity? Are you stuck to academic education?

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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

Yesterday I started a three session teacher training course at Escuela Normal Superior N°3 "Almafuerte"- ISFD 97_Profesorado de Inglés organized by Prof. Patricia Guzmán - Head of the English Area of the Englsih Courses at Escuela Normal Superior N°3 . I had the pleasure to have as participants some colleagues of mine such as : Prof. Anahí Cuestas (Escuela de Lenguas Coordinator of the English area), Prof. Silvana Barboni (teacher at Profesorado de Inglés) and Prof. Silvana Fernández (Literature specialist and teacher at ICAB ) The session started with an introduction to ICT (Information and Communication Techonologies). Then we started exploring Google tools : mail , chat and calendar. The audience consisted of digital immigrants with different levels of computer literacy. Some of them were curious about what blogs and wikis are, and the advantages of having an account in Facebook. Next sessions will be on June 2nd and 12th.

" 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.

In my previous post I asked if we can go on teaching with the same tools we learnt or used to study. Now, I am watching this video asking myself, are teachers prepared to teach like this for the future?