Webquest: The Labor Day

Why American people celebrate Labor Day the first Monday of September?

Why do people say not to wear white after Labor Day?

What is the relation between the Knight of Labor and the Labor Day?

http://www.history.com
http://www.dol.gov
http://media.www.thehilltoponline.com
http://askville.amazon.com/people-wear-white-Labor-Day

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EXPERT AND NOVICE TEACHERS TALKING TECHNOLOGY: PRECEPTS, CONCEPTS, AND MISCONCEPTS

Carla Meskill, Jonathan Mossop, Stephen DiAngelo, and Rosalie K. PasqualeUniversity at Albany, State University of New York

http://llt.msu.edu/vol6num3/meskill/


This article talks about a project led by four experts in education and English teaching around the world. They contrast and compare the experiences of expert and novice teachers. They point out the importance that the experience of experienced teachers and technology users have in using computers in their classrooms. According to the authors those experiences really can inform novice teachers how to use technology and how to deal with unexpected situations.

Through interviews with eight teachers - two expert teachers and technology users, five novice teachers of public schools but with limited experience in teaching and with computers and one called "transitional expert" an experienced teacher but with any experience in technology at all - the authors illustrate the differences between them in terms of appreciation of the potential of computers and how they apply technology in their classes.

The main differences between these three groups were: expert teachers see the computer as a tool. They are focus on learning and the relation between students and technology. They are able to work with and without computers. Expert teachers can shift their plan according to the students needs and behaviors. They do not see themselves as "the most important character in the class" they give support and can assume a new role easily.

Novice teachers, on the other hand, are centered in computer. Sometimes they do not feel confident about their capacity and knowledge about teaching. They are concerned about children behavior when they are in front of the computer. They see themselves as people who start with every activity in the class, they start the learning process.

The "transitional expert" move from a skeptical view of technology to a more open perception of the educational power of computers. Like novice, this teacher feels herself as the main figure of the class, but she relies in her capability and in her experience of how to manage a class.

In my personal opinion this article is pretty interesting because we can relate it to our experience as students. We as future teachers have been trained in some aspects of technology usage, especially Internet. I think that it is very important to have these experiences in mind when we teach in the future. We need to understand that achieve learning is the main goal of our work as teachers. We have all kind of materials and tools at hand and we must know how to use them.

What i liked the most about this article is the fact that we can relate it to the discussions that we have had in this workshop. We have talked about many topics that appear in the article such as student-centered teaching, the importance of planning activities and the belief that computers in classrooms are really useful and help to improve teaching and achieve learning.

LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY WORKSHOP

In these four days of Language Technology Workshop we have discussed and learnt about how technology has been used in the last twenty years. We have red about theoretical background and different approaches which is really important to support the usage of technology with an educational purpose. This knowledge can help us as teachers to improve our teaching skills about this matter in order to find good and different ways to teach English in our country. To me read about why technology is useful in teaching and learning has been really important because I could find that this topic has been studied and researched deeply for many years taking into account different approaches and different thoughts.
Internet and software development have become very powerful tools. We as teachers need to know how to use them and where find them. It highly important that teachers have the necessary insights to plan and apply these pieces of technology in their classes.

This was created by me using this website http://wordle.net

http://www.real-english.com

On this website we can find ESL videos of people speaking real English on the street. Here we can find two different versions of the very same video, the regular version and the one with English subtitles. This website provides exercises for each lesson.

1. Interaction: we can achieve interaction with this website depending on the activity chosen by the teacher. Mainly you can work on listening, reading and writing, but you can also use it for speaking too; work in pairs in order to do the exercises in the same website.

2. Authentic Audience: in my opinion this condition does not apply to this website.

3. Meaningful Activities: from my point of view the activities presented in this website are meaningful for the students. They can watch, read and listen to how language works in a real situation. They can relate their experiences to real conversations in different contexts.

4. Exposure to/Creation of varied language: students are exposed to different kind of English speakers from different nationalities. They can perceive the differences between native and the non-native speakers.

5. Right Amount of time/Feedback: not only we can use this website in class guiding the activity and giving some support to the students, but also students can work by themselves whenever they like. They can assess understanding and increase difficulty by themselves.

6. Appropriate for Styles, Personalities and Intelligences: students can learn the content of the activity in different ways. Some of them can listen to the speakers and understand what they are talking about. others are going to listen to and read the English subtitles at the same time so they can understand better what the conversation is about.

7. Motivating: I think that students can feel more motivated when they see and understand how language works in a real context. trying to understand what people are talking about it is a challenge to them.

8. Student-centered: the main goal of this web page is to help students of English and people interested in it. Everything is designed to help students to improve their listening and reading skills and have a better understanding of the culture.

9. Autonomy: as I said before once students learn how to use this web they can work on it whenever they want and of course they can increase difficulty when they feel comfortable.

10. Multimodal: real-english.com provides different ways in which material is presented. Students can watch real people on the street, listen to them and read what they are saying which is quite important because students can understand better the new material and put into practice what they learned.

11. Comfortable Environment: for some people this website might be a bit confusing and messy. Maybe it is difficult to get use to it but it is a matter of time to feel more comfortable working on it.

It's been a long road here.

This is a dream come true ... studying in the USA is such an experience.
I wanted to come here since I was fifteen or something so I want to live it as much as I can. It's going to be awesome!