Patricia’s posterous



October 11, 2008

What is RSS?

RSS, was it a political party? 
Somebody would ask, "So what's new?" "Well,  I belong to the RSS." People would probably back away in horror!

Then,  demystfying the letters,  totally useless. 
Some say 'Really Simple Syndication', others 'Rich Site Summary'.

So definitions:a format for delivering regularly changing web content.  Easily stay informed content from the sites of your interest in one. Save time, no visits to  individual sites. 

RSS feeds allow you to see when websites have added new content.
You can work  different blogs in one page (student owned?),  have indivdual discussions on different topics.

Comments [3]

October 5, 2008

About Blogging

Blogging is diversity and sharing.
This is a photograph that was taken from the net and that was used in a presentation by Margarete Oliviera and I in the CTJ seminar this year. It exemplifies diversity of peoples, cultures, ways of thinking and at the same time, united in a circle.
I think this is what we have gone through these two weeks. The last one with the millions of options of different sites and possible activities with all the tools we can find available.
This week brought us the possibilities with blogs; blogs as a form of self-manifestation, an opening your heart to the world, not only to your best friends. Mary Hillis has shown us in her flowgram the fantastic possibility of getting responses from all over the world to such personal topics as "my favorite sweet". Who would have imagined of sharing ones tastes with anybody but  family or at most a best friend. Now here we are, sharing this with people living in Japan or Czecholosvakia for all we know. And at the same time discovering what a vast diversity this world of cultures has to offer us to open our eyes.

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September 27, 2008

Feelings at Having to Choose Sites

Anyone else felt like I did? Welcome to the club!

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September 27, 2008

Do you Diig social bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is one of the greatest forms of sharing information that has been thought about since we started to use bookmarks that everybody could see. Do you remember ikeepbookmarks? In a certain way, this was already a start to where we have gotten now. The idea is that when you do something, which can be searching for sites that can help you think of activities to make you a better teacher, in groups, the result of the work done in group is much bigger than the sum of its parts. The fact that you are providing others with information that would only be done ion a personal basis, by handing out addresses or sending e-mails or even through the phone, now is done on an "electronic notepad" to which everybody has access to. You can benefit of discoveries made by others without having to have spent hours looking through sites that could give you what you were in search of. It is time-saving, on the one hand; however, it is also time-consuming because of the fact that you suddenly have all the sites that may interest you there and make it difficult for you  to stop browsing through all of them.

How can it be used with your students?

In the same way teachers benefit from sharing sites that have activities to use in class or teacher development topics, students could share sites where they could find food for thought for the compositions they have to write or news they will talk about in the next speech class. They could share their own blogs (they all have them), which might not be in English, but which would develop rapport and a sense of group, important for a succesful class.

Did I find any difficulties in getting started in social bookmarking?

Technically speaking, no! Nonetheless, what really backfired was the amount of sites that were suddenly available for us to choose from. How could I,  find the time to look through all of these and then be able to choose two? Not many to choose, but too many to choose two from. Focus! I told myself after whining a bit on line, and feeling overwhelmed.

Did I find any interesting resources to be shared? Oh did I!!!!

http://www.photoshow.com/home/start

On this one you can make a slide show such as the one Victor did. I haven't tried it yet. But can you imagine having your students writing about their last but with pictures to go with what they say? Maybe then, they would be more willing to write?

 

 

 


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September 17, 2008

Reflecting on learning and tech-richness

  • How do your students learn?
  • Well, what I believe happens in my students is that they learn from their experience in life, not only what goes on in their English class but everythng they do builds up on their learning. Watching a film and recognizing something they have seen in class or viceversa is building new schemes or corroborating the old ones, for example. Everything they see, they hear, theylive through has this effect on them. some of them will do it more consiously, while others don't even know this is happening.

  • How much tech-richness does your curriculum provide?
  • I think that our new books are begining to rely more on tech-richness and therefore, in certain extent, leaving us a little more time to plan on those resources for our classes as well.

  • How are you using the WWW to teach your students?
  • I have already tried on-line projects with other teachers around the world, I think they really work wonderfully, but our schedules at school do make it difficult because there is a very big work load on the students to do both. This, when the projects are big. There are other less time-consuming projects that are fun and envolving too.
  • Using WWW to research material to show in class as an illustration of what we are studying is another use that I have been making and that has worked nicely. It makes the class a more colorful environment that is in some way more linked to "reality".

  • How do we turn our 21st century classrooms into learning engines?
  • Maybe if we make our students do more projects, where they are going to do the researching on what they really want to learn, this would turn our classrooms into learning engines. Then in collaboration with other students, the material would build into greater constructions of learning and learned chunks.

  • Are you engaging your students?
  • I think I could give them more responsibility and engage them in the search for knowledge.

  • What are your main barriers to incorporating technology into your classroom?
    • Time, time and time. We have to book our time at the computer labs, so we can give all teachers to take their students to work there. Many times when you do have some time in your schedule to do it, there is no time available at the lab or the other way around. Sometimes, it would be nice to spend just a few minutes on an activity, but since you have to count on the time to walk to the lab with the students and them bring them back to the classroom, it is better to think of something else that doesn't take so much of the precious class time.

    Comments [8]

    September 17, 2008

    Blogging through English

    Replace the subject line and body with your first blog post and hit send! Include pictures, an mp3, or anything else you want to share. It's just that simple.

    Comments [0]