viernes, 4 de marzo de 2011
viernes, 17 de diciembre de 2010
martes, 14 de diciembre de 2010
Educational videos by wendy moreno
The use of media and technology in education has given us many tools and methodologies to take it into practice and make activities very useful in the classroom. If we take into account the different technology resources that we have for teaching, in all of these, we have the video which is a very useful tool that can reach a high grade of motivation to the learning, it is focus In many context as curriculum complement and distance learning. Video is considerd an important audiovisual material, which may have a certain degree of usefulness in the teaching-learning process. For this multimedia tool is necessary an active teacher because its use is based on the achievement of objectives previously made by the teacher.
According to (Marques 2003) the educational videos can be classified in this categories
• Video documentary: it shows information about a particular topic (eg, a video about mining in Catamarca).
• Video narrative: they have a narrative framework through which they are presented information relevant to students (for example, a video that depicts the life of a historical figure).
• Lesson monoconceptual: a very short video focusing on presenting a particular concept (eg, a video on the concept of the food chain, or simulating the flight of a bird.)
• Lesson topics: the classic videos presenting training that will systematically and with adequate depth and recipients gradually the different sections of a particular topic (eg, a video on the influences of pre-Columbian art).
• Video motivator, intended primarily to impact, motivate, engage the audience, even if it means having to sacrifice the systematic presentation of content and a degree of scientific rigor (eg, a video that aims to warn of the dangers of AIDS) . They often have a narrative structure.
Online games and EFL
Individual post
By Abnellys Ochoa.
During the last decades, it is been said that it is necessary to include strategies that promote the interest of students in the process of learning because this is the easiest way in which the new information can be stored in the long term memory. In addition, some authors have studied the influence that motivation has among this process and the result is always the same; when students are motivated they learn things easily.
During the last decades, it is been said that it is necessary to include strategies that promote the interest of students in the process of learning because this is the easiest way in which the new information can be stored in the long term memory. In addition, some authors have studied the influence that motivation has among this process and the result is always the same; when students are motivated they learn things easily.
In this same order of ideas, it is needed to ask ourselves this: what could be more motivating than learning while playing? Online games are an excellent option to learn new words, phases, forms, places and others. This is, of course, something to take into account when teaching or studying English as a foreing language. According to Wikipedia, an online game is a game that is played over some kind of computer network; the majority of the time, this is linked to the use of internet or a similar technology.
Consciously or not, players of online games in English always learn new vocabulary because they need to know the meaning of these words to play or to overcome the obstacles present at the different stages of the games. In this case, the vocabulary appears in a real context what can also help the player to guess the meaning of the words; so, dictionaries are not necessary at all. This is another reason that makes the process of language adquisition more natural.
There are web sites that offer games specifically directed to the adquisition of English as a second language, but not only those pages help Spanish students to learn English. All kind of online games contribute to the language adquisition, in a certain way.
There are some links for you to visit and study what has been written in this article:
jueves, 9 de diciembre de 2010
Evaluation of the website: voanews.com
· Purpose
To help English learners to manage the English language in a more effective way.
· Skills the site builds
The main skills that this web site provides are the following: Reading and listening but remember that those skills work in pairs; so, at the same time it works with speaking and writing through the two mentioned before. It also promotes critical thinking since most of the topics employed in the activities are on the table.
· Objective:
· Audience: worldwide audiende of about 123 million people around the world.
· Target level: General public. There are activities for beginners, intermediate and advanced English learners.
· Sensory input: effectively.
· Feedback: semi-intelligent error feedback.
· Interactivity: lots.
· Content: 1hour.
· Appeareance: average. The site has functional look no major flaws appeareance.
· Navigation: easy. Very easy to find specific pages. Everything organized into categories.
· Load speed: fast.
· Brief description of the site:
The site studied is voanews.com; this website is a type of newspaper or magazine that presents its viewers a varied content that develops topics like culture, education and, of course, informative articles or news about events that happen around the globe. Voe or Voice of america, as it is called, includes different type of multimedia to make more effective the process of communication. So, we cannot only found texts but also videos. Besides, this website offers to its users a section specially created to help non-native speakers of English to learn or improve their English level. These activities consist on a written article, the audio of the same article and series of activities to help readers to understand the text better.
· What we like about the site:
Reading is a excellente way to know the conventions of a language. You can learn both vocabulary and grammar while reading a text and that is a process that your mind does unconciously; in this site reading is the main thing that can be practiced. But it is not only that, the thing is that the info you read there is reall; so, the process of acquisition becomes easier. At the same time, people can listen to the audio of the article while reading it what help them to know how the words they are reading are pronounced. The best thing is that once you have ended the reading or listening of the article you can go to the activities which really help you to fix the knowledge. Another possitive aspect of this site is that articles are organized into categories so you can easily find any of your preference. You can find here information about different topics; so, readers can go there not only to be entertained but also informed.
· What we don’t like about the site:
The home page is not that interesting. IF you are not interested in reading, you should probably close the page of go back before realizing that there are videos and listening activities on the page, but the first thing you can think about a common online newspaper. Another thing is that the kind and size of letters employed are not the best (in our oppinion) in the video section you can barely read the description of the video before seen it. In addition, once you go to the activities, you have to wait to do them because they take a lot time to be ready to do them.
Evaluation score forContent usefulness: 6/6
Interface design: 3/4
My overall evaluation grade: 9/10
martes, 23 de noviembre de 2010
domingo, 14 de noviembre de 2010
Multimedia and ESL Education
Everything in the world changes every day. Some of these changes are big and some others are not, but what is important is that those changes affect people in a certain way. We can see how things that were pretty useful have been replaced by new technological devices and all those actions that seemed to be impossible are now easy to do thanks to internet and some other tools. It is not possible to think that those changes cannot affect or transform teaching, specially language teaching. All these technological advances have improved the teaching of English as a second language.
Before starting to describe the influence of multimedia in ESL education, there is a term that need to be defined:
Multimedia is a term used to express that different forms of media 
work together as a single one. In the list of these multiple kinds of media, there are some that are really important to highlight: text, audio, animation, video and graphs. Text could be considered as one of the most important elements in multimedia because although there are some things that can be described using images even audio, text is always able to introduce the information in a concise way. So, It is not necessary to replace text by images or video; the use of text is excellent.
work together as a single one. In the list of these multiple kinds of media, there are some that are really important to highlight: text, audio, animation, video and graphs. Text could be considered as one of the most important elements in multimedia because although there are some things that can be described using images even audio, text is always able to introduce the information in a concise way. So, It is not necessary to replace text by images or video; the use of text is excellent.For years, ESL teaching have included the use of media to succeed. Text and audio were used in isolation and later on there were integrated getting excellent results. Nowadays, Multimedia have taken the best of each media creating a more complete tool that may be used in different ways, most of them help people; this , of course, can be used in benefit of English and students of English as a second Language. So, the process of learning is not limited because students are able to make the process of language adquisition as natural as they want it to be because, as it was mentioned before, multimedia includes text, images, video and some other relevant elements working at the same time to get the same. This is also an excellent point for teachers because they can take advange of this situation to create a context to promote the learning. On the other hand, teachers are not that necessary in this process of learning because the learners of English as a second language are exposed to the language and Multimedia is just another strategy to make them the best; in this case, a teacher should be there acting as a monitor not as a director of the process.
References:
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)