If you were President...

...what would you do to improve schools?
Here you've got some interesting opinions.




Video taken from Classroom 2.0

Media literacy

Today I would like to recommend a short but interesting interview with Chirsta Pets, member of the European Parliament.
She defines what media literacy is and highlights some key factors to bare in mind:
- media education should help people to realise that personal information is public on social networking websites.
-media education should be a part of formal curriculum, a tool for lifelong learning and a compulsory part in teacher training courses.

Read here the complete interview.

Edupunk?

Edupunk, a new standpoint to analyze elearning that I have just discovered on a post by Jordi Adell on Twitter.
Edupunk was firstly defined by Jim Goom in 2008 as an approach to teaching and learning practices that result from a do-it-yourself attitude (Wikipedia)

Edupunk is about ulearning (Martin Ebner, Graz University). It's about learner's autonomy, a learner's centered approach based on a personal learning enviroment or PLE where the learner can choose the tools to collaborate, communicate and learn (Steven Wheeler, Playmouth University).
Wheeler radicalizes his speech when he says that Virtual Learning Enviroments or VLEs stop learner's autonomy as they are controlled. While Ebner isn't as revolutionary as he tries to find a way to open VLE to free contents and tools.

It's curious to know about Edupunk when lots of teachers are just getting started in introducing VLE in their lessons.I like this new concept as it can be another point of view when checking our teaching basis and improving the VLE that we offer to our students.

Edupunk

View more presentations from Martin Ebner.

Edupunk F-ALT 2008

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

A video about the past?

I hope so...

Certainly not the best teaching strategies but anyway, a really funny video.

Do schools kill creativity? Sir Ken Robinson again.

At the very beginning of this blog, I posted a video of Sir Ken Robinson speech on creativity. Now I have found an interview with him on the same topic. I really love his ideas.
Do you agree with all these? Here you have some of Sir Ken Robinson's statements for you to think about:
The problem is that education systems need to be transformed.
Most education system confuse intelligence with academic ability




Part II

MY UDUTU

UDUTU is a new elearning platform. It's one of a number of "rapid elearning" tools now avaliable on the market thanks to web 2.0.
It's an elearning course authoring tool, which means that you can do your own lessons. It's quite complete as it supports video and audio, tests and it doesn't seem to be very difficult to use.
Anyway it's just another tool to give your students more learning opportunities but you cannot get any information of their work and marks in the course.

Here you have got two pretty good examples:

Begginer guide to online course design -What is online elearning?

Bill Gates steps down course

Happy Teachers' Day!

Today is WORLD TEACHERS' DAY! So, enjoy your day!

Teachers matter! is the slogan of this year by UNESCO.

"Teacher shortage, insufficient training, society’s lack of respect for the profession and the policies needed to tackle these challenges are the emphasis of World Teachers’ Day on 5 October 2008." (taken from UNESCO education website)

Read the World Teacher's Day message 2008 by UNESCO.

A new school year!

The school year is about to start!
Let's start singing as I would do with my Primary pupils. I have chosen a special song, very popular and meaningful for people but even more special for teachers.
Look at this video: Robbie Williams singing "My Way" (Frank Sinatra) at the Royal Albert Hall (London).
The audience is excited as we all may be now because of the new school year.
Let's transfer it into education too. I really believe that the sense of teaching , and the final goal, is that our children can grow as human beings and be able to live a happy life. So, that at any moment in their lives, not necessarily at the end, they can say about themselves that they have lived "their way".
Afther this simple thought just enjoy the song with the fantastic voice of Robbie Williams.

European Day of Languages

26th September is European Day of Languages, launched by the Council of Europe in 2001.

The Day has a wide variety of aims that we could summarize as follows:

# Increasing plurilingualism and intercultural understanding.

# Promoting -preserving and fostering- the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe.

# Encouraging lifelong language learning in and out of school for all kind of puposes (study, professional, mobility and pleasure.

The European Day of Languages is addressed to all citizens, but I think that we, as teachers, have to feel especially concerned about the Day and its message.

Let's all spread the slogan in our schools:

Celebrating linguistic diversity,
plurilingualism, lifelong language learning

First day ppt

Look at this powerpoint presentation. It seems to be the introduction of a class teacher in the first day of class. Notice the organisation of every important item such as behaviour, homework and activities in class. Really interesting, well done but maybe too strict and harsh.


Find more videos like this on Classroom 2.0

Teachers today

Do you really think that teachers do all this today? Or maybe, is it that teachers today should do all this?
Can we really change the world?

Laws

LOE in English

Balearic Island Curriculum

Primary English syllabus of the Balearic Islands

Great paintings

Now, look at this other video in www.teachers.tv:

Great paintings video

Do you remember Sir Ken Robinson's speech? Do you agree with him? Do schools really kill children's creativity?

If you watch this video you'll see a great way of enhancing our children's creativity. Have you ever thought of integrating Art and paintings in your lessons? Have you ever thought about how a great painting could improve your teaching? In which subject of the Primary curriculum could you do a lesson like the one in the video? What aims would you have if you did a lesson like this one? What kind of activity would you ask your pupils to do?

Digital chasm

Another easy and quick video about one of the negative consequences of ICT, that is the digital chasm.
Anyway, I don't feel the last statement in the video is suitable... they compare two facts that cannot be compared, both are different and both are important. What do you think?

Social networking

Listen to the explanation.

Rock ESL

A little naf but curious anyway!

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 in the classroom?
What does it mean?




What's the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0?
Is there a dark side of the Web 2.0? Are these disadvantages great enough to stop us, as teachers, from using the Web 2.0?

Digital learners

There are so many videos about the way we teach and the way our students learn. Let's see some of them.

Our students are digital learners... are we engaging their interest?
If we learn by doing, what are we learning sitting all day?



Why are our schools still the same?



Learners 2.0. How do they learn?

Stephen Downes

Stephen Down is a philosopher of the Internet and Web 2.0.

In his site, there are lots of videos of him and presentations where he explains different relevant items on this topic.
Watch this video. It is just a single example of his thought and all the interesting stuff in his site.



I especially share some of his conclusions:
1. You are the centre of your own personal learning network.
2. And that the three principles expained in the video -interaction, usability and relevance- should guide not only the way we learn, but also the way we teach.

Marià Villangómez in English?

Why not?

Read here about him