English Virtual Community

Feliz de participar en una nueva capacitación en línea. Con muchas ganas de aprender en este nuevo entorno.// Very happy to participate of this online teacher training. I am very excited with this possibility of learning new things. 

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 ...

Yesterday La Nación newspaper published an article about online dangers for children and teens. According  to a survey conducted by LoJack and  Chicos.net , 56% of Argentine children between 12 and 15 years have shared personal information with strangers in a social network. And 29% have admitted that they have had direct contact with people they met through this medium. The article points out that banning surfing the net is not the way to prevent cyberbulling or sexting. It is advisable to teach children to share  neither personal information online about themselves  not their family without parental permission. Adults should help kids  become aware of the risks they may have if they use and interact with teachnology - PC, cell phone or webcam- without responsibility. Further reading: The article in Spanish Get Net Wise : About Kids' safety Wired Kids org Internet Safety

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...

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 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...

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...

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.-