Sunday, June 24, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Week 12
"One of the big changes at the heart of web 2.0 is the shift from the
creation of software artifacts, which is what the PC revolution was
about, to the creation of software services. These are services that
ultimately, if they are successful, will require competencies of
operation, of scale, and the like"
Hi everybody, I know it's a little strange, but I'm starting again with this week. I was absent from here for different reasons, but I'm here now to tell you about what I learned this week.
Have you ever heard about Web 2.0? Well, me neither. However there is a lot of information about this topic. Web 2.0 is a concept started by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty for a conference. Web 2.0 is related to web applications that make easier to share information and collaborative work on line. These new advances let people who use Internet to interact and collaborate to develop a virtual community, where every user is the owner of the content, and make possible that everybody could be benefited by using it.
In this time we can use different applications on line to make possible this kind of development. Those applications will be used for different purposes, such as to make animations, recording and videos; blogs, social networks, virtual platforms, wikis and so on.
These applications are important tools to be used in the teaching process because it's possible to make the most these resources with educational purposes. Nowadays, students use technology more than before. For them, it could be more interesting this new way to present homework. It's also a good benefit for teachers, too, because we can share information and advise to do a better job every day, and help other also.
Is mandatory for teachers be aware and prepared to make the most of technology, and learn more about how to apply knowledge to be a better and modern teacher, to be in contact with students and be a competitive member in this new society.
Well, it's all for me for today. Next well I'll be back to share more about what I'm learning and how I'm preparing myself to be a good teacher. Here I leave some web sites and videos to explain better what is Web 2.0 and how to be benefited by using that.
See ya.
VeroElis.
About Web 2.0:
Videos:
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Week 7
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
We meet again because I'm late with my posts. Sorry, it's my fault, but this is the last time I do that. I promise it will never happen again, and also I hope I will recover of my illness soon. This time I'm going to summarize the week from April 16 to 18; it was a short week, but I learned two more important things.
First, Teacher Wilma shown a Power Point Presentation (PPT) about teaching listening. That presentation was a little confusing for us, because we thought it was OK. However, Teacher Wilma explained the presentation was not well made, because it contained too many effects, lots of words and some non-related graphics with the topic. She explained also that kind of presentations don't show a professional work, because the exceed use of effects and too many words could provoke tiredness and visual unease in the viewer. Less effects and related graphics with only key words could show our professionalism in front of the audience, because people would understand better what is the presentation about, and they could pay attention to our explanation.
Finally, we had to make a good PPT about the principal four learning skills (writing, listening, reading and speaking). It was a pair work, and in groups we had to explain about an specific topic. I worked with my partner in our topic: Teaching Reading. According to our research, reading was used as a form to
have
access to the literature written in English, and learn about this language by studying vocabulary and sentence structure, without really reading at all. The purpose of reading is to get and use critical thinking with authors' written ideas and develop communicative skills too, to share our opinions and thoughts about books, essays and many other written works. There are some methods to teach how to read, specially to children. This process must begin with the knowledge of the alphabet, later with the use of phonemes to form words and sentences, and relate the sentences with ideas and experiences to read and understand better a reading extract. In the other hand, there is a problem called Dyslexia. This is a difficulty with learning to read, and this problem could happen to adult people and children too. There are also some ways to teach dyslexic people how to read, however, those methods need a lot of patience, love and understanding of teachers to have positive results. If you know a dyslexic child and you want to help him or her, there are many treatments to use, and you can find more information about this topic on the Internet.
These are two important things that will be helpful during my teacher's life. Actually, I have some dyslexic students, and I was helping them in a good way; but I know some different methods now to help them in a better way.
Well, I finished for today. I will be back next week to share with you more about my classes and the knowledge I'm acquiring now. I leave at the end some web pages and videos related to this interesting skill and how to do an excellent PPT. I think they could be useful.
See ya.
VeroElis.
How to do a good PPT:
About teaching reading:
About teaching reading strategies, methods and Dyslexia:
Week 6
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
Elbert Hubbard
Friday, April 6, 2012
Week 5
Native American Proverb
Hi everybody... This week was short, but interesting. During this, I learnt many things about Diigo, and also about the British Council teaching webpage; two important websites, two useful online tools to learn and share information to develop our English skills.
On Diigo, we learnt to open discussion forums to share different points of view and information about different topics. My discussion group is about learning English through music. I open this group because I'd like to know my classmates' opinions about how important music could be into the language learning process for them, and how to apply this in an effective way to reach good results during our teacher's life.
Moreover, we knew about the British Council teaching webpage (http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/) This site contains many useful activities for teachers to improve their classes, and to improve their knowledge also, by sharing information and tips with teachers from every part of the world who has an account into this, it's easy and free.
I think information exchange by using the Internet is the most powerful tool that we have nowadays, because we can learn about new methods and techniques to apply during our classes when we will be teachers. We are living in a globalized world, so we need to explore all the new thing we have now to be better teacher in the future.
Well, That's all for me. As I said at the beginning, it was a short week. However, there are lots of things to learn forward.
See ya.
VeroElis.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Week 4
“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”
UNESCO
I'm here again to share with you new thing that I learned during this week. I have been feeling so exhausted this time because every day this semester becomes harder, but I have to continue without quitting. I'll try to do my best to get my goal.
During this class we learned about a useful online tool called DIIGO. This site makes possible to highlight important parts of a webpage, to use sticky notes and to store relevant pages that could be helpful without loosing the URL. It is also used as a social network to share information and webpages about different topics. It is easy and free, so you can try to use this interesting site. I learned to use it because I opened my own diigo account, and I'm searching for pages to store into it. I could use those pages to do researches in a better way, and to exchange information with other diigo users, because they could help me with more pages and advice to do a good job.
While we were learning about diigo, teacher Wilma asked us to join into a discussion forum. This forum contains a special website about UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and its labor through the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) to expand educational network around the world, specially in places where is difficult to get access to those kind of sources. To get this goal, UNESCO is guiding teachers to be prepared on how to use ICT in a better way, and to share their knowledge with people through many member organizations in different countries that use the ICT. It is necessary to be a trained teacher, because this world needs at least 9 million teachers to reach the majority of places that do not get access to the ICT yet. Our society is changing constantly because the technological progress, and is important to know how to use it in order to be informed and have a better education than in the past. To make it possible, as teachers we have to be prepared and be able to use ICT, in this way we can teach effectively and interactively, we can offer new sources and materials to get our students' attention and be ready to face new challenges along the time.
In conclusion, we have to face with new challenges as future teachers, and there are many tools available to develop our skills and be better teachers. Is important to make conscience about our society and all the technological advanced we have, because they will change faster than now. Those tools could help us to develop a better way to teach and learn, or could be the opposite if we don't know how to use them correctly.
Well, that's all for this time, I'll be back next week to continue sharing more about this world, called Multimedia and Internet. I leave some pages where you can find more information about UNESCO and its labor with ICT.
See ya.
VeroElis.
UNESCO official site:
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts/teacher-education/
Videos about UNESCO and ICT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m7w3gcGFQ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIMP_kILc_I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0pyle44P-I
Friday, March 23, 2012
Week 3
“Why, simpleton, do you mix your verses with mine? What have you
to do, foolish man, with writings that convict you of theft? Why
do you attempt to associate foxes with lions, and make owls pass
for eagles? Though you had one of Ladas's legs, you would not be
able, blockhead, to run with the other leg of wood.”
Hey, here I am again to share with you what I have learned this week. How I've said, it is a new semester plenty of new challenges and useful things to know. Every week is harder that the last one, and now it was time to know about a crime that everyone have done without realize the seriousness of it. This crime is called PLAGIARISM.
According with Dictionary.com: Plagiarism is "the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work, as by not crediting the author". Plagiarism also breaks the copyright laws, represents a rip-off and it turns you into a thief. Ideas and words from other people, such as professionals, scientists, writers, investigators and so on, could be a good source of information, and could help us when we need to do a research or any kind of homework. However, it doesn't mean we have to do a "copy-and-paste" job; we must have to interpret all the information we get and analyze it to express our own ideas.
To understand about this easily, I recommend you to visit http://www.plagiarism.org/ , it is a complete web site that could help you about how to avoid plagiarism. http://www.pvc.maricopa.edu/researchhelp/plagiarism.html is another web site with many examples of how to use paraphrases, quotes and citations in order to avoid plagiarism and give the credit to the original author. Those web sites helped me to learn about this topic, because I had to write a composition about it by analyzing and understanding every part in those sites.
In addition, into this topic, there is another interesting point, called citation. It is a way to avoid plagiarism. There are many forms to cite a source, but the most used around the world is the APA Style. This style was created by the American Psychological Association, and it is a set of rules that shows how to cite the original source (books, essays, web sites, multimedia sources and so on) in a right way by mentioning the author's name, year of publication, the name of the work and many important information to make easier the searching of the original source to confirm its reliability. If you want to know more about APA Style, there is the web: http://www.apastyle.org/, you can learn about it and how to use it to avoid plagiarism next time you do a research.
This class, and all we can learn during it, was very important, because as many people, we have made bad things only by ignorance. We don't realize it is a crime, and we have cheated a lot in our homework only by doing copy and paste. Many countries have strong penalties to punish plagiarism. We must refuse living in ignorance and develop the critical thought and analysis skills in ourselves and in our students. As future teachers, we have the responsibility to transmit this knowledge and show with facts we are doing things differently. Every good thing could be learned since childhood, and our first students could be our own children.
In conclusion, it's necessary to know first what is plagiarism, how serious could be this crime and how to avoid it. Think about it and put in practice everything you learn about this topic. Internet is a huge source of information, so, if you want to search by yourself, there are many pages that could help you to understand better this crime. I'm leaving other sites with videos and information about plagiarism. I hope they could be useful.
"That's all folks". Jajaja I'm plagiarizing the Bugs Bunny's phrase, but for today it's all can I say. Next week I'll back to share more things with you.
See ya.
VeroElis
Videos about plagiarism:
How to use APA Style:
Friday, March 16, 2012
Week 2
"The march of science and technology does not imply
growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often
means the opposite."
Thomas Sowell
I'm here again to tell you about how much I learned this new week in Multimedia Classes. As I said last week, this is a new challenge for me; so it becomes harder every time.
This week, we learned about the virtual classroom in the university's web page. We had to register in this site to upload our homework, to start a discussion forum to exchange opinions and share knowledge; and to know what do we do to take advantage of this tool in an effective way. It was a little complicated, because I have some difficulties using technology, but I had to put attention to make those things well.
We also had to start a discussion forum with our classmates. We had to put our opinions about the last topic: Evaluating Web Sites. This time, we could know more with the information from http://liblearn.osu.edu/tutor/les1/pg1.html. It helped us to complete and complement the last information we had about the same topic. This page also has complementary exercises to prove if we can recognize reliable and unbiased pages by applying all its advises and clues. If you want to try, you must visit this page.
Finally, we have to keep a virtual portfolio with the most important work we have made during this semester. Teacher Wilma explained us how to develop this to avoid mistakes and misunderstandings. This portfolio is going to help us to be more critical and analytical with everything we are doing, and to be better professionals and reflect this with our evidence.
As an addition, there are some links to help you to understand better what a portfolio is, and how to use it with a real educational purpose.
That's all from me now. I'll be waiting for your comments, let me know what do you think about. There will be new info next week.
See ya.
VeroElis
http://www.pgcps.org/~elc/portfolio.html
http://www.ukcle.ac.uk/resources/personal-development-planning/portfolios/one/
http://www.adprima.com/student_portfolios.htm
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Week 1
Hi, everybody. A new challenge have started for me this time and I want to do my best to don't have any problem and pass this better than before. I'm here to share with you some things about this new class, called "Multimedia and Internet Resources" in this new semester that we begun recently this week.
The first class was interesting and comfortable, because we've already known the teacher, Miss Wilma Suarez, and we know also she is an expert in this academic field. We started to know how we are going to work with her and all the resources we are going to use. It sounds a little difficult, but I know it is going to be useful today, and in our future lives as teachers or whatever we're going to be.
One of the dangers of the Internet is you can find many pages related to
a topic or subject, but not all could help you with reliable
information. This time, we receive information about "Evaluating Web Pages", because is important to know many aspects BEFORE to choose information from an unreliable web page. For researching in a better way and avoid using wrong information, you have to be careful and look for some clues, as:
- The URL and the domain: It could show you about who is the provider of that information and, if the page is controlled by an institution, to search if that exist or it's real information.
- The author's credibility: Many pages could contain uploaded information by people who had given their personal point of view, without enough academic or historical investigation. So, to search the author's data in a web page can help us to verify his or her credibility and accuracy in a topic.
- Quality: Links, dates and footnotes are really useful to know about the author's resources, and how often the author update his or her web page content. If links don't work, or there aren't new upload information, the web page could be suspicious.
- Others' opinion and contributions: Reliable web pages have unbiased information, and contain links related with others' point of view. Other authors or pages could contain information about the owner or the author of a web page, and also other authors could exchange information, collaborate to do some articles, or recommend others to use that web page.
Those things are going to help us to be more observant, and to do better research. I think also all this information could help me to have better grades, and to be more reflective with thing I get from the web, because in my professional life, I need to have reliable information to share with students, and don't confuse them.
The Internet is a huge source of information, and the greatest way of communication and entertainment today, but free expression could confuse people and many people could say anything they want. It's important to identify and recognize if a web page could be useful or don't. Be careful and pay attention next time when you're searching information, because not all in the Internet is the truth.
Well, I thinks that's all for today. I'll be back next week to share more about I'm learning this semester, and I have here an interesting video to help you more with this topic. I hope it could be helpful.
See ya!VeroElis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4nmiJLhB5c&feature=related
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