WEEK 6

The main goal of education is to create men and women are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generation have done.
Jean Piaget


Hello my friends! In this last week in my Internet and Multimedia class, we received a seminar about Effective Use of Technology in the EFL Classroom. In that seminar my teachers explained about the topic in a very interesting way. I really appreciate the seminar, because we learned about: The Internet as a teaching & learning tool; Web sites for the EFL classroom; Bookmarking web sites; and Nicenet.

First, we learned about how we can use the Internet as a teaching & learning tool. So, we can use internet tools to active learning techniques, authentic materials, teaching resources, interaction outside the class and to prompt feedback. After that we reviewed some web pages about Authentic materials like: newspaper online and books, and some Podcasts; also we checked web sites to find Teaching resources such as: flashcards, Breaking news English, Lesson plans and ESLflashcards; Interaction outside the class, here we reviewed some sites like: facebook, edmodo (where we created an account as students), twiter and some google sites. Finally we reviewed some different ways of learning like: audio and video.

In another hand, we knew a Research tool called NoodleTools that helps us to create, organize and store, take and organize your notes, receive teacher and librarian comments, prepare a correctly and formatted bibliography. Also, here we watch a video to learn how it works. After that we talked about our learning reflective blogs and in which way it helps us to understand create our critical thinking. Blogs could have different educative purposes, it is very important for our reader understands in a better way our blog purpose. Finally, in that part of the seminar we checked about Active learning techniques such as: Online courses, Collaborative projects, Interactive exercises and Audio and video activities.

Second, we learned some Web sites for the EFL classroom. First, we checked some Web sites to develop the oral / aural skills like: teachingenglish.org and esl-lab.com. Second, we viewed some Web sites to develop reading and writing as for example: Online Newspapers - North America and UNC Writing Center. Consequently, these web sites are very important to include into our classroom.

Third, we studied about Bookmarking web sites. I had to create an account in Delicious, it is a social bookmarking web similar to "diigo". Then, we talked about NICENET. It is an Internet Classroom assistent for English teachers it helps them to revise students' assisgments easy. These are the main characteristics about NICENET: it is free, easy to use, no special support or hosting required and you can create as many classes as you want.

Finally, after to take the seminar we wrote our comments about what we learned during the seminar. The seminar was very interesting for me because it helps to create and share my knowledge in the classroom.