Harvard Distance Education

Earlier today, I heard on the radio that Harvard University is just a click away: that's Harvard Distance Education. It offers a wide range of on-line classes, which anyone can attend from anywhere in the world. The offering includes complete lectures that you can watch on-line and you don't have to pay anything for that! One can learn just about anything, from Cellular Metabolism to Sustainable Ocean Environments and Fundamentals of Academic Writing.

http://www.extension.harvard.edu/DistanceEd/online-courses/;jsessionid=KDFLCEOLIEMJ

Classes recommended

Theory and Practice of Web Pedagogies

Educational Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship in Comparative Perspective

Take a Trip Around the World's Most Famous Museums

Art Project is a new website sponsored by Google that can take you and your students to amazing museum explorations all around the world. Take a trip around New York's Met and MoMa, Madrid's Prado and Prague's Museum Kampa, among many others.

Art Project uses streetview technology (just like Googlemaps) and high resolution images. There are magnificient artworks to be explored and that can used to illustrate your classes. Also, there are 360º tour and videos, which are all super easy to use.  You can create your personalised artwork collection for a tailor-made class and share it through social network, such as Facebook or Twitter.



Visit Picasso and other masters



Once Upon a Time... there was a Book Club!

If you and your friends (maybe students?) are into reading, why not found a Book Club?

Follow these tips and enjoy it!

1. Start a book club with 2 or 3 people who have some kind of connection - co-workers, friends, classmates, relatives. If the club is small, don't worry about it. Invite people as you go;
2. Set a regular meeting schedule - the first Wednesday of the month, at 7, at California Coffee or at a member's house (then there will be a host). By setting the time before the club starts, everyone knows that they have to be available for it and you won't play favorites;
3. Advertise the book club through e-mail, Twitter, Facebook; you should also use the oldest midia: word of mouth;
4. Establish rules on how books are chosen, who leads the discussions (maybe you'll take turns every month) and what kind of commitment is expected;
5. Some Book Club guides recommend that reading the book is a must. In case of a member not reading it, they should be dismissed. Well, that may not work well among friends, but you should think of establishing some ground rules;
6. Every member should choose a favorite passage of the book and read it aloud. It can be quite fun if you decide to role play it!
7. Create an atmosphere that keep people coming back. The more controversial the book, the more fun the meetings will be. Leave the easy-reading books to your own night table and choose books that will heat up the meetings.

                                            Oprah also has a Book Club!

http://www.oprah.com/book_club.html

                     The movie: The Jane Austen Book Club

Tesol 2011

JOIN OUR PRESENTATION IN NEW ORLEANS

March 17, 9am

Skype and Task Based Learning: a perfect match for communicative language tasks

http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/convention2011/

Top 100 Tools for Learning

Give it up to Twitter: # 1 in 2010



In 2010, Twitter has been chosen as the Top 1 Tool for Learning. Youtube is the #2 and from the way I see it, both are still underexplored in the language classroom. Most teachers use Youtube for showing music videos and that's all. But there is much more to that than only watching your favorite singer's new single. Smart Technology has put together 100 videos that can be used for teaching purposes and they're definetely worth checking out. Many of those are about showing teachers how to use multimedia tools in the classroom.


Which of Top 100 Tools for Learning have you tried out?

# 3 - Google Docs

# 5 - Slide Share

# 6 - Skype

# 9 - Facebook

# 10 - Moodle

# 14 - Blogger

# 16 - Wikipedia

# 17 - Wikispaces

# 20 - Flickr

# 21 - PowerPoint

# 30 - LinkedIn

# 31 - IPhone / IPod

# 41 - GoogleEarth

# 51 - iTunes

# 54 - DimDim

# 58 - GoogleMaps

# 66 - GoogleScholar

# 81 - PhotoStory

# 82 - Second Life

# 90 - TeacherTube

Begin a Fresh New Story in the Classroom

Photo Story 3 is a software by Microsoft which is great to be used in for communicative activities in the classroom. Students can use digital pictures - from the Internet or their own pics - to create short stories. Those stories can illustrate a book or a text they have read or anything else you and your class can come up with, as Photo Story offers many tools (one of them is the ability to add soundtrack or to edit pictures as red-eye removing).


Is it any different from Windows Movie Maker? Well, result-wise, it actually is not. But it is much easier to use (I have to confess that I find WMM quite confusing to get around), therefore students can learn how to use the tool quite fast and then use it to develop a task in class. Photo Story 3 is downloadable to all computers that use Microsoft hardware, but I'm afraid Mac-users won't be able to use it.

Senna's English skills: was he a winner?

Ayrton Senna’s recently released documentary is definitely worth every minute of waiting in the ticketing line. It is a tribute to his career with exciting images and parts of his story that many people my age didn’t know about. It feels really good to watch him winning again. All car race fans, don't miss it and prepare the spirit: it'll be hard to hold back the tears when you watch Senna waving the Brazilian flag again!

But as any English teacher, I couldn’t help but notice his language skills… Let's put it this way: I had expected more. It kind of surprised me because I knew of Senna’s wealthy background (it was the 80's, not many people were able to afford language classes) and the fact that he had lived abroad many years before joining Formula 1. I’m afraid I have to say that I was kind of disappointed at the extent of his language abilities.
Senna's language abilities got me thinking about communicative, sociolinguistic and strategic competences. Why didn't Ayrton work on his English? That’s not a really difficult question, is it? He didn’t work on improving his language skills just because he didn’t need to. His abilities took him everywhere and he was more than able to express himself in his second language. As we can see in the film, Senna was able to get his ideas across in all kinds of situations, including very stressful ones and the fact that he was a true communicator helped as well. The film shows a polemic interview that Senna gave to a well-known sports journalist named Jackie Stewart, and despite the tricky question Ayrton was asked, he was perfectly able to give him a piece of his mind - in plain English. His communicative competence was great at that moment and I wish I were as concise and assertive as he managed to be. Oh yes, he was a winner.

If Senna managed to communicate successfully in English despite those shortcomings– that maybe wouldn’t call your attention if you hadn’t read this – why do we correct students over and over in the classroom? Once a student told me that he felt he was constantly disappointing me because of all the mistakes he made –and which I fast to spot every time. Is this overcorrection stopping students from communicating freely and more naturally? I’m sure that overcorrecting is a common classroom problem that every teacher reflects upon every now and then. But, at the end of the day, we end up correcting students anyways, don't we? After watching Senna and Prost racing in Japan once again last night, I’ll think twice before driving into a student at a corner again. I got the feeling that those racers' disappointment might be familiar to learners as well.