English Virtual Community

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

I would love to design attractive posters to inform teachers, students or parents about the activities at school. Although I may have many ideas, I am not very familiar with photoshop or any other  advanced digital image editing application :(  If you have the same problem, let me tell you that there is a free web tool for educators that may help us: Juxio. Its simplicity allows people to easily create posters for display.  It  offers very complete  HELP section with video tutorials, FAQs and hints. Once you have chosen a template and edit your "Jux", you can print on your local printer. Or you can save it as a pdf file and send it by mail. http://www.juxio.co

" Classroom Update " is a system designed to allow teachers a way to post homework assignments, class announcements, and more in minutes a day. The website offers a way to keep parents and students informed of assignments and other events at school. Have a look at this video to have a better idea of what it is about. http://www.classroomupdate.com/index.php

This is my first Saturday of 2010 summer holidays, so here I am having breakfast and enjoying Twittering and facebooking. While I was facebooking, I came across an article written by Ana María Menezes about this attractive visual tool called Wondersaid beta. "You can use any simple sentence or twitter account to generate a cool animation . Wondersayings are easy to create , customise and share . No software programs to download (it's all online ), no sign-up or passwords ( save them by copying the link), and all for free . " I have tried it and used it to wish you : made on Wondersay - Animate text with style

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?

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 .

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,  Word World a very interesting website for kids to practise and/or learn vocabulary . If the kid`s choice is right, the word is illustrated with an image.  Word World has sound so kids can listen to the pronounciation of the words presented. It also offers the possibility of colouring and printing images. It is very easy to navigate. Young learners will love Word World ! Oops! You need the URL... click HERE :-)

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

Dear EVC followers  As I told you in a previous post, last month  EVC blog was nominated in the category ‘Language Technology’ in the Top Language Blogs 2010 competition. Now, I am very happy to tell you that a mail from Priscila on behalf of the bab.la and Lexiophiles team has appeared in my mail account and I would like to share it with you: " Congratulations from the team at bab.la and Lexiophiles! English Virtual Community blog has been voted number 5 in the category ‘Language Technology’ in our Top Language Blogs 2010 competition. This year we received 495 nominations and nearly 21,000 votes. You should be really proud of yourself for pleasing so many readers!"  Thank you for your constant support! 

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...

"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 .