Post #1
Blogs
1. Blog de Christina http://www.cristinacabal.com/
Christina has
been teaching English to adults since 1991. Blog de Cristina aims at
providing useful teaching materials and ideas and it’s based on student’s needs
and her own motivation to make her lessons enjoyable, involving and
effective. “In my classes, I try to combine the traditional method of teaching with
the new technologies and for this reason I’m always on the lookout for new
tools to spice up my lessons”.
This is
especially interesting to me because I am all about combining the traditional
teaching methods with what technology has to offer.
2.
Mondo’s ESL/EFL World http://mondosworld.blogspot.com/
This resource-rich Blog
is beneficial for students and teachers alike. It offers numerous video
lessons, song lessons, and writing classes. There are also cartoons,
suggestions for discussions by level, writing topics, podcasts, and grammar
lessons. There are links to newspapers, books, and useful videos. This is a
great site that can be used inside and outside the classroom.
3.
English for University https://englishforuniversity.com/
This blog is meant to
help international students prepare for and do well in college. Students can
find a wide variety of useful guides, including “How to write your introduction,”
“How to survive your summer course,” “How to develop a paragraph,” and “Writing
topic sentences.” The author, a university lecturer in the UK, also posts on
points of language and includes references to outside resources to help
supplement study. This is especially useful for my advanced writing classes.
Twitter
All five accounts are
based on teaching the English Language. I have particularly chosen educators
that integrate technology in their teaching. Since I have been learning more
about web 2.0 tools, it would be beneficial to get ideas of how to use them
more in my lessons.
@TheEngTeacher : Aniya Adly. E-Teaching
Consultant, Personal ESL Trainer.
@MissShonah: Shonah
Kennedy. ESL teacher. Learn English Online. Passionate about language
acquisition and teaching English.
@teflclips:
Jamie Keddie. It is a website dedicated to the role of
YouTube in ELT.
@FelipeMorales: Felipe
Morales. Teacher, Educator, web 2.0, e-learning,
social learning, blogs…
@langwitches: Silvia
Tolisano. She is a 21st Century Learning Specialist-Technology Integration.
Since
I am not a big social media fan, it has been hard for me to keep up with all
the educators that I followed for the sake of this course. The only social
media account that I check regularly (since I have the app on my phone) is
Facebook and sometimes Pinterest. But when I scroll through Facebook, I usually
do it to take a break from whatever I am doing and see what my friends and
family have been up to. Now as I scroll through Facebook, I see educational news-feeds
from the pages that I followed but I honestly don’t always open them for two
reasons.
1.
My mood (since I consider Facebook to be for leisure and not educational
purposes) and
2.
The title of the post (if the title interests me I read the post, if not I don’t).
Another
purpose as to why I haven’t been keeping up with all the social media educators
that I followed and the blogs is because I am not teaching this semester. I
took this semester off to focus on a personal matter. Being detached from
teaching has made me less eager to check out the latest trends in the education
realm. But I am sure that when I get back to work next semester, I will be more
in touch with my teacher self.
Post #2
How do you view Wikipedia and YouTube (or any
non-vetted site) as a resource for your students? Why? Do you let them use
either as a resource? Do you yourself use them during instruction?
Personally, I never had a problem with allowing my
students to use use YouTube and Wikipedia. I seldom viewed either sites to be inaccurate
or inappropriate.
I, myself use them extensively and I can’t but say
good things about them. I don’t mind my students reaching out to those sites
for extra information whenever they need. The only time I restrict their use is
when they write research papers. In this particular case, I ask them to only
use peer reviewed articles. Why? Because this is what I was taught in school. This
is what I was asked to do when I wrote research papers. But even when I write
research papers, I do use YouTube or Wikipedia to further understand certain
concepts even if I don’t use them as resources. So in reality, they do contribute
to every research that I do!
The podcast was very interesting and I couldn’t help
but listen to it until the end. I do understand the discrepancy in the female
to male ratio when it comes to Wikipedia but that doesn’t affect my view
towards their effectiveness. Regardless of who writes and edits articles on Wikipedia
(whether it be males or females) I’ve always thought that they offered reliable
information and no matter what I searched for, Wikipedia had the answer.
Sarah, like you I found the podcast very interesting an I listened to the whole episode. I even went as far as adding Freakconomics Radio to my Podcast list.
ReplyDeleteNow in regards to their Women in Wikipedia I founded disappointing on the women-to-men ratio as editors. I am not a writer myself, nor a data collector but in grade school it is girls who tend to be better writers. Some of my teacher acquaintances go as far as creating after school programs to help boys improve their writing skills. I know there is a significant age gap between elementary students and Wikipedia editors, but I just find it overwhelming that such drastic "changes" are reflected in the professional field.
Rosio,
DeleteI was surprised for a minute but then when I listened to the rest of the episode it all made more sense to me. I've always said that society is not fair. We, women, have a lot more responsibilities than men besides our jobs. A woman that works full time, has to also come home and care for her family.
On another note, knowing that more men than women edit and write in wiki didn't change my perspective! I still find it a reliable source even though most people will argue that its not.
Having more men write and edit for Wikipedia does not affect my views for Wikipedia. Similarly, I believe that gender should not play an important role when hiring. Our reading for these week, however, had made me view Wikipedia and Wiki differently. Dr Daniel Terdiman was interesting because I have never looked into to how creditable Wikipedia is and apparently is pretty realiable. Huijuan Fu article made me reflect on using Wiki in my classroom. Prior to readying Fu's article I thought I was setting myself (and students) back by not even trying to get students on Wiki, now I know that it is ok. Perhaps one day I will, but I will not push it.
DeleteI found it surprising too that there was such a difference in the male to female ratio. While it may not affect the majority of information, I'm sure it does change the tone of some subjects.
ReplyDeleteI use wikipedia for my personal research as well, Sarah. It's the most convenient place to find information on a variety of topics and it's usually comprehensible, especially when first starting to research a topic you're not familiar with. The majority of my high school classes didn't stress peer reviewed articles but college quickly had me adopting those sources for papers. I think high school students should definitely be exposed to those and work their way up to using only peer-reviewed articles.
Sabrina,
DeleteI agree! You would be surprised how many of my students don't know what peer reviewed articles are and that we can only use reliable sources in research! It's very important to expose students to this in high school rather than wait until they get to college!
Both my undergraduate and graduate students often struggle with the concept of peer review vs. sources from the government or .org websites. I don't recall it being an issue growing up, but my K-12 experience was pre-internet. Thus, we knew the difference between journals and newspapers.
ReplyDelete