Educational Materials Design
The purpose of this blog is to share information related to education and technology in order to provide students of Education majoring in English of the UC different strategies and tools for teaching English using technological resources. We hope you can enjoy it!
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sábado, 5 de marzo de 2011
martes, 14 de diciembre de 2010
Computers, Culture, Books, and English
In an age where the media have come to inhabit numerous conduits for the production of culture, it is difficult to imagine culture without its mediated form. From television and comic books to fashion and postcards, culture comes to us in diverse vehicles shaped by agents distant form our everyday life. The entwining of media and culture is a feature of our age; we need only consider the close linkages between the Olympics and television, the collective memories of Vietnam and cinema, or the appreciation of popular music and MTV.
We experience our cultural life through the media in various ways. Romance novels, televised soap operas, magazines, and fashion shows provide respite from the routines of daily existence, but often so do documentaries and even the local news. The Internet is increasingly recognized as a forum through which culture is relayed and articulated, yet the Internet is a significantly different vehicle of cultural for the elderly, for adolescents, for Holocaust deniers, and for members of militias.
In the convergence of democratization, electronic technology, and rhetorical theory that is creating postmodern culture, technology has been pondered variable. We are coming to the end of culture of the book. Books are still produced and read in prodigious numbers, and they will continue to be as far into future as one can imagine. However, they do not command the center of the cultural stage. Modern culture is taking shapes that are more various and more complicated than the book-centered culture it is succeeding.
So: are we watching the slow death of the book? Is this the difference that computers will make to our profession? Those who argue for “distance education,” as opposed to the campus model, note that increasing energy costs, and the decreasing cost of electronic technology, make it inevitable that in-person education will price itself out of the marketplace. The escalating cost of American postsecondary education seems to support this position. Can we make the same argument for books? That for economic reasons they will be priced out of the marketplace and replaced by on-line text forms? Not now, and perhaps not soon. The book is still wonderfully portable, accessible, and pleasurable. But, as I consider the cost to me of this particular dysfunctional book, the virtues of on-line text become more and more apparent. Computer technology has already made a difference to English. And it has hardly begun.
Posted by Alexander Noguera
Technology in the classroom for teaching English
viernes, 10 de diciembre de 2010
Evaluation of the web site Real English
Site´s URL: http://www.real-english.com/
Author(s): American and British ESL teachers of the Marzio School
Last update: June, 2dn, 2010.
Purpose of site: The main purpose of the site is to provide students of ESL and EFL with some videos the way to use a real English language in different contexts.
Objective: The main objective of the site is to show the grammatical structures, lexical items and social functions of the English language through some videos providing language tutorials based on real people’s particular situations of their everyday lives.
Scope of audience: Worldwide.
Target level: beginners to intermediate level.
Sensory input: Effectively.
Type of feedback: Semi-intelligent and intelligent feedback.
Interactivity: Some.
Communicativeness: Some.
Context: Lots.
Content: 1 hour or more.
Revisitavility: Once a year or less. The first videos were published in 1993.
Navigation: Fairly easy.
Load speed: Somewhat slow.
Brief description of the site: The Web site Real English is directed for ESL and EFL students which levels go from beginners to intermediate level. The Real English site provides lots of different videos which contain the use of real vocabulary, grammar structures, lexical items and functions of the English language in an easy way. The videos present the English language structures in different contexts and the participants are real people (not actors) who are just walking around the street, these are the interviewees and the teachers are the interviewers. There is also a set of activities for each lesson, these activities are tested by a system in which the student has to put an answer and at the end of the exercise there is a check button to get a semi-intelligent feedback. Another important characteristic of these exercises is that students can record themselves in order to make comparisons with the original audio of the video and in that way they can improve their pronunciation. Besides if the students have some doubts they can send a comment to the teachers via facebook. Another way to receive feedback is going to their channel on Youtube or on their blog, students can ask what they need to know and the web administrators will clarify any doubt. The authors of the site offer some extra links about ESL/EFL Language Resources like: Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL), learn english feel good.com, A Byte of Language, Le Centre de Linguistique Appliquée, Université de Franche-Comté, Webhead Teresa Almeida d'Eca's bilingual site, in Portuguese/English, English4u, Everyday English, Cybrary Man's Educational Web Sites, Aulas Particulares de Inglês, The "OOPS" ESL/Foreign Language Page, CESOL, TuitionPlaza.com , The Language Training and Testing Center
click on the link you want and visit it.
What I don´t like about the site: The only aspect that I did not like about the site was the distribution of the content and the videos, sometimes it tends to be confusing and the options for recording the learners’ voices in some lessons do not work.
ESL/EFL Pedagogical implications of the site: The Real English site is very helpful for people who have difficulties to express themselves in English. Most of English learners just know how to use grammar structures and some vocabulary, but when they go to the real world and need to communicate in a natural or normal way, they just get stuck. This site provides the possible situations in which the English language is used in a natural way, being fluent and at the same time being coherent in order to encourage learners to feel free to speak.
Content usefulness: 6/6
Interface design: 2/4
My overall evaluation grade: 8/10