IN HONOUR OF CHARLES DICKENS ON THE TWO HUNDRED ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH

From my blog I want to make my little contribution to this original idea.

Charles Dickens has been one of the most famous novelists of the nineteenth century. His novels were characterized by a great social criticism. Among his most important novels are "Great Expectations", "David Copperfield", "Oliver Twist" and "A Christmas Carol" (I have inserted a picture of this novel below).

                                                            

                                 

I have been thinking of how to honour Charles Dickens and I have decided to make my own tribute to him remembering four of his most famous quotes (these are the four I have liked the most): "I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year", "The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again", "The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists", and "There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts". 

With this quotes, Charles Dickens demonstrates to us his culture, his literary richness and his creativity. 

                              

Charles, you will always be in our hearts and in our minds.

MY WIKI EXPERIENCE

When I began with this subject in October 2011, I thought I never managed to do something on my own. But now in December 2011 I am very surprised at everything I have learnt and at the possibilities web 2.0 has. For me this subject has been a great challenge, because I have never heard of web 2.0 in general, and of wiki in particular.

Obviously, I did not know what a wiki was, and once I have studied how it works I have realized the advantages and the disadvantages this tool has. One of the most important advantages of this resource is that teachers and students can share a page dealing with a specific subject, in which all of them can add the materials they think the rest can benefit. Another advantage is that you have the possibility of establishing discussions among students, and between students and visitors. One disadvantage could be that these sites usually deal with one concrete subject and students will not share two subjects or themes in the same wiki.

I think, from my point of view, a wiki is a very useful tool in the educational environment. I, as a future teacher of English, can open a group wiki with my students and improve our English through it. I consider that Google Calendar could be a very interesting tool to apply in our wiki, because parents can control their children´s work and both of them, students and parents, can see deadlines and exams dates among other things. I also think that any tool to make photo music videos, such as Animoto, can be very amazing, and students could learn in a more attractive way.

As a brief conclusion, I consider that a wiki is a very revolutionary tool which nowadays is probably improving the future of education all around the world.

VIDEO: WIKIS IN PLAIN ENGLISH

MY FAVOURITE EMBEDS FOR EDUCATIONAL WIKIS AND BLOGS

Google Calendar is a quite interesting tool to embed in our wiki. The most important advantage of this tool is that parents can view the calendar on your page or if the page is public they can subscribe to it, so they can know everytime what their children have to study and what their homework is. Parents can control their children´s work. This is a quite useful tool in order to mark class events and major deadlines among other things. It could be a good way of organizing the course. To find the embed code follow these directions.


Another relevant tool to take into account could be Slideshare. This tool allows us to convert our PowerPoint presentations into the embeddable slideshows. This tool can be very useful, from my point of view, to embed different slideshows in our wikis, so students can see these presentations and learn more about the subject.


An amazing tool which help us to make photo music videos is Animoto. To create a video is very easy, and once we have created it, it can be embbeded on our wiki or blog. Web 2.0 has a lot of possibilities, and this one is very representative in order to encourage our students to study and to improve in a very atrractive way, through music and images. At the same time and with the same activity, students learn and enjoy themselves.

 

MY OPINION ON DIFFERENT EDUCATIONAL WIKIS

ONE CLASSROOM WIKI: LATIN WIKI

Obiously this wiki is about Latin and it is a group wiki. The Latin´s teacher and students can edit the wiki. In this wiki students can organize their latin knowledge and create intesting material which everyone can use. At first sight it seems that this wiki is very well organized and it has a very large amount of information, since it has a lot of pages dealing with the learning of Latin. In the discussion section, which is very large, there are a lot of interventions and questions made by students, and this can be very useful for the subject´s improvement. 

TWO STUDENTS CREATED WIKIS:

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY ENGINEERS HOME

This wiki was created at the Concordia University and it helps students in order to do exams. Students at this University or others can edit this wiki. I think this wiki is very useful for students, because they can share their exams and help them in order to prepare them. The fact that in the first page students had useful links to other similar sites seems also very useful. The page entitled Sample Exams is very well organized since the exams are distributed by subjects, and students can find easily the exams they are looking for.

PROFESSIONAL WRITINGS

This wiki has the material and the information of how to write a professional essay. Essentialy students can edit it, but any person who was interested in this topic also can. At first sight the presentation is very attractive, because of the images and the mixture of colours, but when you move through it you realize, from my own point of view, that it has too much information and this can be a disadvantage. The first page is very long and it has a lot of pages, 25 to be exact, and this can be chaotic when you are looking for a very specific information. 

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF EDUCATIONAL WIKIS:

USING WIKIS IN THE CLASSROOM

As the title of the wiki says this wiki is about how to use wikis in the classroom. Overall teachers are the people who can edit it, although any person can do it. From my point of view this site is very interesting since the participants will be introduced to the easy-to-use world of wikis and to the large number of possibilities this tool has in the classroom. I also consider that this wiki could be very interesting for me and my fellows as future English teachers. A good aspect of this wiki is that it is focused on new teachers and participants who are not got used to these concrete tools. Ii begins with the description and construction of a wiki.

GOOGLE

The two interesting texts I have found in Google Scholar are the following:

Dynamic Assestment of EFL Text Comprehension

The Acquisition of Semantics-Syntax Correspondences and Verb Frequencies in ESL Materials


I have selected this book from Google Books. The title could not be another than Google and it has been written by Virginia A. Scott.

GOOGLE by VIRGINIA A. SCOTT


Here it is the link to Ippolita´s book:

THE DARK SIDE OF GOOGLE


This is a video explaining what RSS is. The video is entitled RSS in Plain English.

EDUCATIONAL USE OF GOOGLE TOOLS

Google tools are revolutionarizing the future of the education and they are opening a new future in the way of teaching English as a second language. Acording to this, Google tools are very useful for educational purposes. As I have pointed out in other activities of this subject Google tools and Web 2.0 tools in general are very useful for both students and teachers. On the one hand I think overall that the majority of teachers use Google Reader in order to suscribe the favourite blogs can help them in his/her daily work. Students can use Google Reader with the purpuse of suscribing the preference blogs they desire, although I think they use it less. From Google Reader both of them will receive the new information attached to these pages. All Google tools are important but in my opinion one of the most interesting Google tool is Google Doc. It helps teachers and students equally. It offers students the possibility of sharing information and doing the homework. Teachers are also beneficiary since they can publish the homework and the documents they desire and they can also read and correct all the homeworks at the same time. I think that Google tools facilitate teacher´s labour. But on the other hand students and teacher mustn´t forget that textbooks and other resources exist.

POST COMMENTING ON FOUR OTHER BLOGS

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org

The blog created by Larry Ferlazzo seems to be very organized at first sight. The presentation of the blog is very transparent. He has at the top of the page the different options you can choose, that is, Home, About, Contact me... Then he has the things that can be more interesting for the bloggers. A column in which he publishes his most important news addressed to his students and followers, another column in which he encourages us to suscribe to his blog and he invites us to know his publications, and a third column in which he puts different websites in order to help EFL teachers in their daily work. This blog is very user friendly because you can accede any place easily. The content of the blog is very wide since it has a lot of possibilities and information. I have no doubt that this blog is very useful for English students and also for teachers, since it gives useful information for both.

http://eslresources-euge.blogspot.com

The presentation is also good but I think it is not as well organized as Larry Ferlazo´s one. At first sight the reader has not a full view of the options he/she has. One column is very much longer than the other and this can create an effect of disorder. This blog does not seem to be user friendly, since it has a lot of labels and the followers (students, teachers, etc) can feel overwhelmed with so many options. As a consequence they can change to another blog since they do not know what to choose. In spite of everything this blog can be useful if you are looking for activities as a student or as a teacher. In the first column a lot of exercixes, drills and tasks appear. On the one hand the content related to the teaching of English as a second language is very big, because there are a lot of possibilities in order to help students and teachers to practice their English. In the other hand the content is very much limited since it has only resources related to the learning of the language.

http://recursostic.educacion.es/blogs/malted/index.php

I think the presentation is not very attractive at the sight of the blogger. The main page is very long and the reader has a lot of information just in one second. The background of the page is simply white and the foreground has not so many colours, except from the pictures, and it has too many long texts. As for the user friendilness of the blog I think it is easy to handle. Although the page is very long the information is very well organized and this fact helps the readers to found easily what they are looking for. If we refer to the usefulness of the blog I have no doubt that it is very useful, especially for teachers. Teachers have in this blog a lot of resources, formation and classroom experiences. The content of the blog is very wide and varied, since there are a lot of different information within it, that is, activities destined for the teaching of English, tools, applications, materials, and resources for the classroom among others.

http://fceblog.blogspot.com/

I think Claudia Ceraso created the presentation of this blog in a more attractive way. If we compare this blog with the previous one, it can be seen that this one has more colours and the background is not only white, there is also a grey part. In her presentation she uses photographs, pictures and videos. This blog is also user friendly. It has all the information very well organized and the followers can handle it easily. Although this blog is only useful for people interested in the FCE exam, it can be very valuable for them in order to do this specific exam. The negative counterpart of this is that other type of bloggers who are not interested in this exam can not use it. In spite of everything this blog has a very good content, it offers a lot of activities, exercices and tools in order to pass the different parts of the FCE exam. It has also a lot of archives, in particular since March 2006. It offers also to the FCE students the possibility of putting them into contact.