My activity

Activity demonstrations:
Vocabulary

Level: Basic

Activity: Identify vocabulary through a game.

In pairs students will enter to the link that the teacher points them at a power point presentation. They will have to play a specific game (one pointed by the teacher) this game will have relation to the topic they are studying. In this case the specific topic will be verbs.

Technologies used:

Webpage http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/

(In this site you can find a great variety of grammar explanations, games, and exercises that are graded for each level of English).

Aims:

This activity is aimed to children of 3^rd grade of elementary. The principal goal is to increase the lexicon of the students in specific topics, thus they will understand a greater variety of familiar terms used in their lives.

Conditions that this activity follows:

Interaction: This activity is made for students to help their partner if they need some help. They can support each other with ideas in the development of the activity.

Meaningful Activities: As this activity was created with a specific purpose it is meaningful for students because they will be able to put in practice what they were taught. Besides in this activity children are allowed to identify and associate the spelling of the word with a picture, which is very good for visual style students.

Exposure to/Creation of varied language: New language is introduced in this activity through the game.

5. Right Amount of time/Feedback: the children are given a more and less fixed amount of time to do the activity, besides the game has a clock which registers the time it takes fulfill the activity.

6. Appropriate for Styles, Personalities and Intelligences: The main resources used are specially created for visual students but the entire activity involves others things as to be creative and it stimulates intelligence.

7. Motivating: The games are very motivating for students because they are full of color and images.

8. Student-centered: This activity allows students to work without the teacher guidance all the time; they can create independence from the teacher and can find help in their classmates also, of course the teacher can give them some pieces of advice in case they need it.

9. Autonomy: This activity provides the children very much autonomy from the teacher, but also creates a greater level of confidence between students and the teacher.

10. Multimodal: The activity principally works with images and also presents text, so the students can see the equivalent of the word or action of the verb through a picture.

11. Comfortable Environment: As the students work in front of a computer and in pairs they feel themselves very comfortable doing the activity.

Teachers and technology

1. What role do you think technology does take/can take in learning?

Teachnology is an important resource because it provoques a meaninful learning. It is a facilitator, and it motivates the students for a better learning.


Through this answer it is possible to have an idea of the approach adopted by this teacher. As almost the majority of chilean teachers, this is a most intrumentalist one. He considers technology as a tool to obtain the desired objectives.


2. What role should the learner take in the classroom?


The role of the learner is to be a receptive person, and a builder of his own knowledge. He should be very active in the classroom.


3. What role should the teacher take in the classroom?

The teachers’ roles are:

- They should be facilitators of their students’ learning
- They should be a collaborator for student in the discovering of his own learning
- They should make the students build his own knowledge


Through these two answers I realise that this teacher is a learner- centered one. Despite he answered in the first question that he thought that the learner’s role is the one of a receptive person, he repeats several times that are the students the ones who must build their own learning.

4. What does good teaching look like?

Good sense of humor, a great knowledge and expertise on the topic he teaches, collaborator, and he should establish a good raport with his students.

I am sure that the teacher did not understand my question (as it was sent via e-mail) therefore this answer, I think, does not have much validity.

Del.icio.us!!!!!!!

This is a great site (a social bookmarking)... where you can find lots of information and it is very well organized! It liked me so much! specially for pedagogical purposes, I think this is a great strategy for making our students active participants in their learning process.

Would you like to have a look on it? Lets begin with our account!
http://delicious.com/chileteach

Web Browser Trends and Technologies

Since a few years ago the Web passed from being a place where to find entertainment to a necessary tool in a big number of activities in which learning is also included. Due to this necessity and growth of the web, web browsers have had to adapt themselves to fulfill the requirements of their users.

Explorer and Netscape have been the most popular and used web browsers along the last years but it is Explorer the one who remains winner inside the internet world. however, Netscape is working very hard in the Mozilla Project, which has woke up very much interest among internet users. In what methods for Internet access refers it is expected that in the nearest future mobile language learning will be completely possible due to the use and development of technological gadgets such as mobile phones and palms. Thus, web browsers are looking for methods how to decode easily written HTML texts. This is very important because now there are several other XML developments of potential interest to language learning educators/developers that can be carried out thanks to these methods.

One thing that struggles with these web browsers is the compatibility of very specific programs with those browsers. And although "Instant messaging" is being popular now, and holds considerable promise for user-to-user contact and communication it suffers from compatibility issues.

Finally as it was referred in the text "We need to have teachers directly involved in pushing the boundaries of the technologies in order to help search out new methods to enhance student learning"

Ying Xue Zhong and Hui Zhong Shen

What am I going to do when I become a teacher if I do not have technology in my classroom?

I think I do not depend on technology for doing my classes intersting for my students. Personally I agree in part with the Instrumentalists, who say that we have to use technology just as a tool to get our goals. Besides, I personally believe that sometimes it is good for children to leave technology aside to develop much more abiliities in theirselves; for example their handwriting. Finally, we do not have to think just in computers when we talk about technology, because it is just a "generic name"... we have to think that even a small radio with a tape is an example of technology, the one we can use in our EFL lessons.

Podcasts!

1. Podcasts that may be good for me as an English Language Teacher

http://www.listen-to-english.com

http://www.englishteacherjohn.com

http://tvinjapan.com/blog/2008/03/28/real-esl-with-kim-purcell-our-new-video-podcast-for-esl-students

http://www.sonibyte.com/rssfeed/poem/4.xml


2. Podcasts that may be good for my students as English Language Learners

http://www.download-esl.com/

http://www.esl-lab.com/phone/phonerd1.htm

http://www.littlepim.com/English/?gclid=CLT87cjPvZUCFQIogwodwlOyPg

http://www.sonibyte.com/rssfeed/poem/4.xml


3. Podcasts that may be good for you as English native speaker to learn Spanish


http://ocpodcasting.blogspot.com/

http://www.spanish.ms/podcasts/podcast2.xml


4. My ideas about the creation of podcasts

I would like to record videos about different places of the city where my students live, and through these videos teach them everyday vocabulary of the specific topic that I am teaching them in the lesson. Besides, through this I would teach them more about their own culture and I would be teaching them to have respect of the place where they live in.

Skype and postcasting

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Skype and Podcasting: Disruptive Technologies for Language Learning

New technologies provide several opportunities for language learning. Onto these opportunities we can find a series of options for oral language practice. A good example of these emerging technologies are Skype and podcasting and they both allow for new and different ways of doing familiar tasks. Skype is a free alternative telephone service, this service requires a high-speed internet connection to function properly. Podcasting, also known as the "radio for the people," provides a different version of broadcast media. Both have had intense interest and have reach great popularity. Both technologies offer great opportunities for language professionals and learners, as they provide additional channels for oral communication.

I personally think that both, skype and podcasting are good alternatives to teach english or any other language but it will be necessary a great training to teachers for them to use these programs in classes properly. Besides, I think that it is not always possible to get the materials required for the usage of these programs, specially in poor schools, where internet is their maximum resourse. For example in the cases of Skype or audioblog it is indispensable to have access to headphones and microphones and most of the times those gadgets do not work very well or even they are not present at schools. However, it is very important that the teacher teaches these programs to his/her students in order they to know how to use them and how to seize the resourses they are given.

In my opinion, we as teachers of english, should learn about most of the new technologies to improve our lessons and make more significant our classes, thus our students will feel more comfortable and will enjoy even more our classes.