Developing teachers

And TED goes on enlightening us!!!!

http://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain.html

Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist describes the real differences between the left and right halves of the human brain. It's not simply "emotion on the right, reason on the left," but something far more complex and interesting. A Best of the Web talk from RSA Animate.

"Meetings between parents and teachers—whether they happen at home or at school, individually or with multiple teachers present—always hold the potential for great success or great disaster.

The likelihood of a positive outcome, I think, will be maximized if teachers keep in mind what I call the Princess Leia approach to teacher-parent conversations".....

Want to read on? Want to know what the "Princess Leia approach" is like?

http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2011/02/23/tln_starwars.html

Teaching Secrets: Get Back in Touch With Your Inner Student

By Heather Wolpert-Gawron

Want to read on?

http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2011/03/23/tln_wolpert-gawron_innerstudent.html?tkn=WXQF0yrF6I1958Zq66PFEZYMSE%2F7x7YBLf84&cmp=clp-edweek

Now, share what you think with your peers !!!! Leave a comment...

Monday, April 4, 2011

• The G-8 countries are still leaders in research, but will be overtaken by China in the near future.
• The growing need for open access – not only in developing countries, but for the benefit of science globally.
• 65% of R&D is funded by private enterprise (up from 52% in 1981) in OECD countries. Developing countries have a greater percentage of gov’t funded research.
• Collaboration is on the rise – researchers, institutions, and countries are interconnected in their research (some outstanding images of global collaboration from p. 48-56)
• “Science is happening in more places but it remains concentrated. There continue to be major hubs of scientific production—flagship universities and institutes clustered in leading cities. What is changing is that the number of these hubs is increasing and they are becoming more interconnected.”
• The growing role of foundations (Bill & Melinda Gates in particular) on global health research…along with concerns about transparency of Foundations in general.

If you want to get a broad overview of science and research globally, this is a must-read report.

GEORGE SIEMENS´ BLOG
elearnspace
http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/

Learning Futures Festival Online 2011
13–15 April 2011
http://tinyurl.com/followthesun

Three countries, three time zones, a non-stop global e-learning conference

Beyond Distance is teaming up with the Australian Digital Futures Institute at the University of Southern Queensland for the 2011 Learning Futures Festival.
The festival is a celebration of innovation in teaching and learning in higher education, and offers a chance for practitioners and policymakers to share their visions for the future.
With handovers between Leicester (UK), Seattle (USA), and Toowoomba (Australia), Follow the Sun will begin in Leicester on Wednesday 13th April and conclude in Australia 48 hours later.
Delivered on Adobe Connect 8, Moodle and Second Life (see below), delegates from around the world will have the opportunity to enjoy an online festival of papers, workshops, debates, simulations and asynchronous events that truly is unconstrained by time and space.

Anonymous Bullying on Social Network Seeps Into Schools

“It’s the online version of truth or dare—without the dare,”

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/03/30/27formspring.h30.html?tkn=ZYQFTVH0fEsMzc9gVnKZDrxFGIFeoOxE0ruB&cmp=clp-edweek

YOU CAN ALSO VISIT:

Cyberbullying Research Center.

This programme reveals the critical importance for teachers to provide guidance to their pupils when using the internet for research.
A group of Year 9 pupils at Wortley High School in Leeds are asked to look at three websites. The subject matters are Martin Luther King, the holocaust and Victorian robots.
None of the websites are what they seem. The first two are fronts for racists and holocaust deniers. The last is a good-natured spoof. None of the pupils spot any problems with the validity, reliability or authority of the sites and many say they would cut and paste information from the sites for use in homework or other projects.
ICT expert James Green leads a lesson that reveals the truth to the pupils, passing on valuable tips on website cross-checking and validity.

http://www.teachers.tv/videos/secondary-ict-web-literacy?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Secondary+Update+28+03+11

Building a Better Teacher
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4

UNCOMMON SCHOOLS VIDEOS

http://uncommonschools.org/usi/aboutUs/USIVideo.html

BUT DOES IT WORK?
COMMENTS, REACTIONS, REFLECTIONS…

WORTH READING !!
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

WORTH WATCHING !!
Bill Gates on mosquitos, malaria and education
http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html

Lemov’s 49 Techniques: Transforming Student Outcomes

http://christinescottcheng.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/lemovs-49-techniques-transforming-student-outcomes/

http://thetrenches.blogspot.com/2010/03/lemovs-taxonomy-teacher-specialization.html

http://www.ateacher.org/blog/?p=661

http://wisdomofhands.blogspot.com/2010/03/cassroom-management-lemovs-taxonomy.html

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010/03/building_a_bett.html

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010/03/building_a_bett.html

http://longistood.blogspot.com/2010/03/lemovs-taxonomy.html

http://nyceducator.com/2010/03/magic-bull.html

"Whether you know it or not, color has a big impact on how your brain sees the world. Did you know if you’re looking at sea green or lemon yellow, your brain feels a different emotion to each? It’s because of the impact color has on the brain, which leads to an impact on your feelings and senses.
“Color impacts the brain because it can greatly affect our physiology, since it influences anxiety, pulse, blood flow and arousal,” Brain Based Biz, a branding blog reported. One of the reasons why color makes an impact on the senses is due to memory. Memory of colors turned out to be surprising, a recent study showed."
...........

WANT TO READ MORE?

http://www.funderstanding.com/content/your-brain-on-color#more-2208

In this programme Professor Stephen Heppell discusses what he thinks learning might look like in the year 2016.

DON´T MISS THE Q&A session!!!

http://www.teachers.tv/videos/stephen-heppell-learning-2016

MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT: (ISN´T IT GREAT THAT OUR BRAIN CAN´T PUT ON WEIGHT? )

CAN TAMIL SPEAKING TWELVE-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN IN A SOUTH INDIAN VILLAGE TEACH THEMSELVES BIOTECHNOLOGY IN ENGLISH ON THEIR OWN? !!!!!!!!

Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teachingEducation scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

The chances of overhearing a conversation in Vlashki, a variant of Istro-Romanian, are greater in Queens than in the remote mountain villages in Croatia that immigrants now living in New York left years ago...

READ ON!!! WATCH THE VIDEO...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/nyregion/29lost.html

WHAT DO YOU THINK? 

Wordsmith.org

If verbs ever needed a spokesperson, they'd find the perfect candidate in the naturalist and author Terry Tempest Williams, who once said:

 This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers.

Williams said it well. Verbs make words come alive. Verbs are the words, literally, from Latin verbum (word).

Should we teach grammar? How should we teach it? What sort of grammar? Teachers are constantly worrying over questions like this. The answers depend to a large extent on what we mean by ‘grammar’.
A theoretical and a practical point of view

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-09/what-do-we-mean-grammar-dave-willis]

Key findings from a two-year research programme, which explored through a survey from over 45
countries and through 18 more in-depth case studies how language teachers are
using the technologies available to them.

* "Normalisation"(that is, when technology becomes "invisible" and embedded into practice)
* The implications for language teachers, materials designers and language
institutions.
* How teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning, and
their understandings of learners and context mediate their decision-making.

PERSONAL COMMENT: Both of them were my tutors when I did my Master's course at the University of Manchester, UK =)
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-08/cambridge-university-press-signature-event-diane-slaouti-gary-motteram

"Teachers have been using online communication in the language classroom for more than ten years now. From an investigation of the experiences of dozens of teachers around the world who have used the Internet in language teaching (Warschauer, l995a; l995b; 1996c; 1996d), a few common guidelines emerge that can assist teachers in successfully planning and implementing network-based learning projects."

excerpt from RECOMMENDED ARTICLE:

"The Internet for English Teaching: Guidelines for Teachers"
BY Mark Warschauer AND P. Fawn Whittaker

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. III, No. 10, October 1997

(Originally published in the TESL Reporter 30,1 (1997), pp. 27-33)

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Warschauer-Internet.html
(ACCESSED March 10th, 2010)

Ice Breakers are ways to introduce people and allow them to get to know each other better. Ice breakers are a great way to begin a course. They help to relax participants, and that makes them more receptive to listening and contributing. An ice breaker can also serve to build a team atmosphere and to generate enthusiasm. Ice breakers can be fun, amusing, humorous, thoughtful, surprising or just plain silly. The most popular are games that have participants reveal something personal about themselves, or which encourage participants to get to know each other personally. The idea is that more than just having fun, the ice breaker will truly help to create group cohesion based on trust and understanding.
(Adapted from http://www.icebreakers.us/

Useful websites:

http://adulted.about.com/od/icebreakers/Educational_Icebreakers.htm
http://www.icebreakers.us/
http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/classmanagement/icebreakers.html
http://wilderdom.com/games/Icebreakers.html
http://www.eslflow.com/ICEBREAKERSreal.html
http://www.icebreakers.ws/
http://www.residentassistant.com/games/icebreakers.htm
http://www.lcc.edu/cte/resources/teachingettes/icebreakers.html
http://www.reproline.jhu.edu/English/5tools/5icebreak/icebreak2.htm
http://osa.stanford.edu/Resources/icebreakers.htm

TASK 1:

VISIT http://www.tesol-spain.org/newsletter/learnertraining.htm

THIS WILL GIVE YOU A BIRD´S EYE VIEW OF THE TOPIC. THEN, VISIT http://learnerautonomy.org/issue38learnertrainingarticle1.html

AND SEE WHAT BARBARA SINCLAIR HAS TO SAY ABOUT LEARNER TRAINING.

WHAT HAVE YOU PERCEIVED ALREADY? POST YOUR ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION AS TASK 1 

TASK 2: VISIT http://innovationinteaching.org/autonomy/practical-tips/

SCROLL DOWN TO WHERE IT SAYS “LEARNER AUTONOMY FAQ” I THINK IT´S INTERESTING AND MEMORABLE. DO YOU AGREE? WHY? POST YOUR ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION AS TASK 2

TASK 3: VISIT http://lc.ust.hk/~sac/advice/english/grammar/G5.htm

YOU GET TO THIS LINK THROUGH ANOTHER ON LEARNER DEVELOPMENT. ARE THEY THE KIND OF ACTIVITIES YOU EXPECTED TO FIND? WHY? POST YOUR ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION AS TASK 3

In a preview of his new book, The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language, and the way it expresses the workings of our minds. By analyzing common sentences and words, he shows us how, in what we say and how we say it, we're communicating much more than we realize.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/164

Is the beloved paper dictionary doomed to extinction? When does a made-up word become real? And could you use "synecdochical" in a sentence, please? In this infectiously exuberant talk, leading lexicographer Erin McKean looks at the many ways in which today's print dictionary is poised for transformation in this internet era.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/161

As language teachers, how many times have we searched for good

materials to motivate our students?

Bingo!

"El pequeño héroe" is the first Uruguayan animated cartoon and we are proud of it!

Spanish teachers/learners of the world: Enjoy!
(to Joe, Ruth, Rachel, Emma, Lou, Chris, Bet and Tessa, in particular!)

Those interested in the Uruguayan past: Enjoy!

You can watch it as from today at ADINET TV

http://www.adinettv.com.uy

For more information, visit

http://www.mtw-studios.com/

To date, there hasn't been an overarching theory of how the human brain really works, Jeff Hawkins argues in this compelling talk. That's because we still haven't defined intelligence accurately. But one thing's for sure, he says: The brain isn't like a powerful computer processor. It's more like a memory system that records everything we experience and helps us predict, intelligently, what will happen next. Bringing this new brain science to computer devices will enable powerful new applications -- and it will happen sooner than you think.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/125

Watch this mini-video

Thinking about designing a cloze exercise for your students?
Would you like to learn to use drop-down lists in WORD?
Here´s how!

I know this is just a fancy trick and that no matter how fancy it is, the students won´t be learning better unless there is solid pedagogy underpinning the activities we plan....

....but, at least, until the novelty wears out, maybe you can motivate one or two reluctant souls....

ENJOY!

INSTRUCTIONS TO USE DROP-DOWN LISTS IN WORD

Previous to this, you have selected the words you want to eliminate from the text, right? Focus on each one at a time.

Click on the VIEW menu and open TOOLBAR for FORMS

Highlight the first word chosen and click on the third box counting from the left (drop-down menu) in the TOOLBAR for FORMS.

The word should now look like a grey box.
Right-click inside this grey box.

Select PROPERTIES. Your screen should now show a sub-menu. (Please see picture above)

Type the “distractors” where it says “items in drop-down list” (in Spanish versions, “elementos de la lista”) and click “ADD”, one at a time. One of them should be a series of asterisks or dots, which is the one you will choose to leave visible.

You can move the items up and down so that the correct option is not always the first, or the second, etc. To do this, after selecting each word, you move it with the arrows on the right of the box.
The “meaningless” item (asterisks, dots, etc) should be right at the top.
Then, click ACCEPT.

NOW comes the crucial part!!!

You have to protect the document, or else, nothing will work.
Therefore go to TOOLS, choose PROTECT DOCUMENT, and MAKE SURE IT STAYS UNPROTECTED for FORMS!!! The password is not necessary.

PLAY AROUND & ENJOY!!!!!!
.....................

Kevin Kelly draws an encompassing picture of humans and machines evolving, and discovers a moral assignment for every one of us.

WORTH WATCHING !!!!

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/19

Would you like to post your reflections?

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity. With ample anecdotes and witty asides, Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize -- much less cultivate -- the talents of many brilliant people. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66

Click here to get your own player.

Food for thought

Hi
I´d like each of you to say briefly what you do - whether you study and/or work, what you enjoy doing in your free time