Learning Journals

Hi there! Today I would like to reflect upon the importance of using learning journals in the classroom. First of all, I consider it relevant to define what a journal is. “Audience Dialogue,” which is a consultancy, formed in 1999 by Dennis List states that “A reflective journal is a steadily growing document that the learner writes to record the progress of his/her learning.” Don’t you think it is highly significant for your students to keep a record of their everyday experiences in the classroom? Don’t you think it is beneficial for you, the teacher, to know how your students feel, how they face their learning process? Well, all those things, among others, are possible by keeping a journal. It is when we write that we realise how much we have learned and what things need to be readjusted. Besides, when we write, we transmit much more than words; we show who we are and what we think. We, and only we, are the owners of what we write. Keeping a learning journal enables learners to be honest with themselves and with others. What’s more, if teachers encourage students to write down their thoughts using their own words, it will help them clarify those ideas in their mind. Following Jennifer Moon’s ideas in “Assessment – Learning Journals and Logs” (2010), “(learning journals) seem to be helpful in personalising and deepening the quality of leaning (…)”. That is another thing to bear in mind. Learners have the possibility of modifying the journal as they like, giving it their own style. I believe that is quite stimulating since you create the environment you need to write.

To finish, I invite you to read a very nice answer to the question “Why we write journals?”: “In writing a journal we take something from inside ourselves and we set it out: it is a means of discovering who we are, that we exist, that we change and grow.” (Wolf, 1989)

Let’s promote reflection. Let’s allow students to express themselves. Let’s allow ourselves to learn from them.

If you are interested in reading the articles, click here:

“Audience Dialogue” http://www.audiencedialogue.net/aboutus.html

Moon, Jennifer - “Assessment – Learning Journals and Logs” (2010)
http://www.deakin.edu.au/itl/assets/resources/pd/tl-modules/teaching-approach/group-assignments/learning-journals.pdf

The potential of Web 2.0 resources for EFL learners

Hello! Today I want to remind you about the importance of using web 2.0 tools in EFL teaching classroom. Web 2.0 allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social network, in contrast to web 1.0, in which people were limited to the passive viewing of content. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, folksonomies, video sharing sites, and web applications to name a few. Teachers and students can master many of these tools in minutes.

To summarise the differences between web 1.0 and web 2.0, I share this chart with you:

Web 1.0	Web 2.0
Reading	Writing
Individual users	Community
Home pages	Blogs
Taxonomy	Folk
Owning	Sharing
You find news	News finds you

Having said this, I would like to present some web 2.0 tools that you can use in your teaching.

Voki - It is an educational tool that allows users to create their own talking character. 

Create your voki here: http://www.voki.com/create.php

Wordle – It is a visual representation of text data, typically used to depict keywords. The importance of each tag is shown with font, size, and colour.

I used wordle with a student who was practising wh-words to make questions. It worked wonderfully!

 Create your voki here: http://www.wordle.net/create

Shoulders to the wheel!!!

Why use presentations in the EFL classroom?

Using presentations in the EFL classroom is an appealing way of teaching new contents or recycling previous knowledge. You can use presentations at different moments in the lesson to serve a variety of purposes. The design of the presentation will vary according to the audience (secondary, primary students), the purpose you have in mind (promoting discussion, explaining grammatical constructions, playing a game) and how your audience is going to get in contact with it (with a projector as a class, each person in their netbooks, at school, at home).

I would like to show you two very interesting applications to bear in mind when it comes to designing material to work with in class using technology.

The first one is the so well-known PowerPoint presentation. It is a presentation program developed by Microsoft in 1990. PowerPoint presentations consist of a number of individual slides, which may contain text, graphics, and sound. The presentation can be printed or displayed live on a computer. PowerPoint provides numerous features that offer flexibility and the ability to create a professional presentation. For instance, we can create a presentation that includes music which plays throughout the entire presentation or sound effects for particular slides. The ease of use of PowerPoint presentations can save a lot of time for people who otherwise would have used other types of visual aid, as blackboards or overhead projections.

The second one is Prezi. It is a U.S. software company, producing a cloud-based presentation software and storytelling tool for presenting ideas on a virtual canvas. The product employs a Zooming User Interface, which allows users to zoom in and out of their presentation media. Prezi was officially established in 2009.  It can be used by teachers and students to collaborate on presentations with multiple users having access and the ability to edit the same presentation. What is more, it allows students to present their works according to different learning styles.

Now, I want to share with you two presentations I have designed using PowerPoint and Prezi. Concerning the first presentation, it was part of the subject ECO II in the English Teaching Program 2013. We were asked to create a presentation using the technology available and following a book’s unit. Our unit was called “Cappuccino and Chips”. We had to deal with the Simple Present, so we thought of presenting students with an interview carried out by an English boy. Students were asked to build the questions to the answers provided by the boy. Through this interview, they learnt how an English boy the same age they are live every day. 

This is my PowerPoint Presentation. Watch it here:

Eco's presentation ISPB Santa Fe from Sofi Gaite

The second presentation is part of the final exam of EDI I 2013. The topic I chose to talk about was “Ballet in the 20th century in Argentina and the USA”. Of course the level was much higher this time, as I had to inform my findings to teachers of English.

This is my prezi presentation. Watch it here: