DIGITAL ENGLISH NETWORK: February 2008

Sunday, 24 February 2008

Bringing new technologies into the classroom

Friday, 22 February 2008

TEACHER PROFILES IN EUROPE

Sunday, 10 February 2008

THE IMPORTANCE OF SEQUENTIAL ART

Most all of us are familiar with one form or another of sequential art, a term coined by Will Eisner(1985) to name an art form that has come to include cartoons, comic strips,comic books, and graphic novels. It is an international art form and ranges from an innocent but witty girl called "Mafalda", loved by South Americans, especially "The Rioplatenses", to strong and historical comic characters such as the French Asterix.

Despite its popularity, sequential art has long been misunderstood. After widespread use throughout the first half of the 20th century, comic books in the United States came under attack in the 1950s when psychiatrist Frederic Wertham wrote, in his highly influential "Seduction of the Innocent", that they are a " reinforcing factor in children´s reading disorders" ( 1954).

Despite all this, research by Hanes and Ahrens(1988) highlights the fact that comic books contain a greater number of rare words than ordinary conversation and are thus and excellent stepping stone to more difficult reading. Cary points out that sequential art is rich in ellipses,blends,non-words (uh,huh,humph,sheesh!) and other common aspects of spoken language, exposing students to "the ambiguity, vagueness and downright sloppiness of spoken English". Sequential art is a window on the spoken vernacular, a variety of the target language that is commonly overlooked in efl classes in large part due to its absence in both educational material and in more formal authentic texts. The obvious absence of an informal register from a student´s linguistic repertoire is a key contributing factor to misunderstanding and confusion when students confront a native speaker of English or when they watch a film in English.

Sequential art also provides an up-to-date look at target language culture and society. As an art form that is kept current by active publishing houses, newspapers,and the Internet, it is a widely accesible source of popular topics, concerns, and fashions that can interest almost any age level. And as most comic involve a number of characters from different backgrounds interacting over a long period of time, they can serve as a tool for studying socio-cultural aspects of people,allowing a teacher to design a lesson based solely on cross-cultural differences and similarities between the target language culture and the students´native culture.

from English Teaching Forum, Number 3 ,2007

COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK FOR LANGUAGES

VERY IMPORTANT - CHECK OUT these links, PLEASE !!!
NOT-TO-MISS LINKS, COUNCIL OF EUROPE : http://www.coe.int/

COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK OF REFERENCE FOR LANGUAGES www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/CADRE_EN.asp

ALSO FOR THE EUROPEAN LANGUAGE PORTFOLIO: http://www.alte.org/

Friday, 8 February 2008

INTERNATIONAL EXAMS- British and American

British Examinations
Important link: http://www.cambridgeesol.org/

Cambridge Assessment: www.alte.org/2008/

Cambridge International Examinations Website http://www.cie.org.uk/

FCE - Handbook for teachers, updated and ready to be downloaded

www.cambridgeesol.org/assets/pdf/resources/teacher/fce_hb_dec08.pdf

PET - same link path, click on PET ( CB computer-based or paper-based)
CAE - same link path, click on CAE ( updated as from December 2008)
CPE - same link path, click on CPE

American Examinations

TOEFL Exam www.ets.org/toefl/ (required to enter any University in USA)

Michigan Exam www.lsa.umich.edu/eli/testing/ecpe/register

These two exams are offered in Uruguay by Alianza Uruguay Estados Unidos, if you need further information click on http://www.alianza.edu.uy/

USING LITERATURE IN THE CLASSROOM

www.teachingenglish.org.uk/download/britlit/britlit.shtml COUNCIL OF EUROPE

www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?

INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION

http://www.ncte.org/ NCTE - NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH

Wednesday, 6 February 2008

CREATING A CULTURE OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES
" A successful face-to-face team is more than just collectively intelligent.It makes everyone work harder, think smarter and reach better conclusions than they would have on their own".

- James Surowiecki

What are true learning communities?

Teachers establish a common, concise set of essential curricular standards and teach to them on a roughly common schedule.

They must meet regularly, the ideal is twice a month, for a minimun of 45 minutes, to help one another teach to these selected standards.

Teachers must make frequent use of common assessments, these assessments are pivotal.

With common assessments and results, teachers can conduct " active research" where a "culture of experimentation prevails".

These fundamental concepts combine a " guaranteed and viable curriculum" with continual analysis of actual lessons and units, and improvement of instruction.

We have to be very clear about what true teamwork entails: a regular schedule of formal meetings where teachers focus on the details of their lessons and adjust them on the basis of assessment results. The use of common assessments is essential here. Without these, teams can´t discern or enjoy the impact of their efforts on an ongoing basis.Enjoying and celebrating these short-trm results is the very key to progress, to achieving "momentum" toward improvement.

Taken from " Results Now", How we can achieve unprecedented improvements in teaching and learning. Mike Schmoker , ASCD Publication

Monday, 4 February 2008

SHIFT HAPPENS - IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION

LETTER TO THE BLOGFESOR

Hello friends and colleagues of the blogosphere,

Thank you for visiting my blog and using the resources I have included here. When I decided to make this blog I had hard-working teachers in mind, educators rushing from one place to another with limited time to do research on the web and make intelligent choices about their teaching.

Bearing this in mind I tried to include information and links that might be useful and resourceful to you in your daily search for trying out new ideas with regard to the digital world.

Remember that although we have plenty of fantastic resources on line, these should always be just a starting point to develop and tailor lessons for our students.

We must depart from the premise that all students can learn (a) second language(s) and in this sense, we are in the best position to help them find their own ways because we know about their weaknessess, strengths, likes, dislikes, worries and learning difficulties.

Finally, I would like to say that We teachers are real heroes because we are touching lives, we are preparing younger generations to make our unique world a brighter and safer place to live in.

Best,

Prof. Gabriela Zazpe
gzazpe@gmail.com
Find me on Twitter and Google +

Suggestions and comments are welcome.

TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM

ICT in the classroom

Information Technology is revolutionising schools, both in teaching and learning and as a time-saving tool for school administrative tasks. These include the storage of pupil records to facilitate information transfer when children move schools, saving data, creating letters or emails to pupils' parents efficiently, and much more besides.
More and more children have computers at home. Schools can set the standard for safe, informative IT use, as well as making the most of innovative and interactive resources to make learning more creative and effective. Let´s start sharing what we are doing to the world, remember that together we can!!!

LANGUAGES MATTER

“The first instrument of a people’s genius is its language,” said the French writer Stendhal. Literacy, learning, social integration….Everything transits through language, which embodies national, cultural and sometimes religious identity for each person. It constitutes one of the fundamental dimensions of a human being. Yet specialists estimate that within only a few generations, more than half of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world face extinction, because they are not represented in government, education and the media. For this reason, the United Nations had declared 2008 the International Year of Languages, to be launched by UNESCO on 21 February, International Mother Language Day.

QUOTES TO PONDER

Come to the edge. We might fall. Come to the edge.It's too high! COME TO THE EDGE! And they came and he pushed and they flew... Christopher Logue

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that they are as few as there are any other great artists.

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. John Steinbeck

We must view young people not as empty bottles to be filled, but as candles to be lit. Robert H. Shaffer

Be a wonderful role model because you will be the window through which many children will see their future. Thomas Mckinnon

Tell me and I will forget,Show me and I will learn,Involve me and I will understand. Teton Lakota (Indian saying)

When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die. Eleanor Roosevelt

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I", they think" we" - they think " team" Peter Drucker