Evaluating websites...

Hi again! We have been working in our first practical work and we had to learn how to evaluate different websites according to certain characteristics. I would like to present you with some elements, which must be taken into account when choosing the best website to work with, or just check some basic details that will tell you whether the website you often visit is reliable or not... I also add some pictures from Google.com.

First of all when you enter a website...  you must take into account that the website provides you with the information you´re looking for or if it applies to your purpose...

You also must analize whether this website belongs to a certain organization or is the property of some independent author.
Another thing you can check is the title, specially, if the title corresponds to the same website adress. Check this picture... the name doesn't correspond... maybe some people have created a completely different site and are using this particular name for other purposes, or maybe it is just wrongly written.

Another element you must keep in mind is the reliability of the website... you must look for database, names, address, email, contacts, and the sources of information.
As teachers and students, we must be careful not to rely completely on one single website when we need information, we should not forget books are also useful. Something like this can happen to us as students and in the future, as teachers.

And last, but not least, we have to check whether the website is updated or not, we can find sites being under construction, so we must analize the information before using it...

I hope you are now acquainted with some important details to check as soon as you enter a web page or any site in the internet. Of course, there are other elements... you can contribute now if you want!

See you soon!

Should we teach Digital Literacies? What are they?

Hi everyone!

This time I would like to write about a new term for me I must say, DIGITAL LITERACIES...

Honestly, I haven't heard those words "together" before... so I would like to quote a description of the term taken from a published article in British Council website.

"(...) digital literacies refer to our ability to effectively make use of the technologies at our disposal. We are not just talking about a checklist of technical skills, but also about the social practices that surround the use of new media. So not just knowing how to create a blog entry, but knowing how to use this to connect with a wider community of readers and writers, and what sort of online persona one projects though one's post."

Now, the purpose of this entry is to talk about the question: Should we or should we not teach Digital Literacies to our students?

In my opinion, Digital Literacies SHOULD and MUST be included in the teaching of English Language.
Nowadays, we teach students that form part of a new communicative world. Most of the communication is digital... We, teachers, and our students, must be ready to face it. One way is to teach and learn Digital literacies... I said "learn" because we are going to learn together with students.
The advantages are many... students can profit from this to get job opportunities, communicate with people from different parts of the world, and many more...
And we, teachers, can make our lessons more engaging, more interesting to them, be able to develop more project ideas, different teaching proposals, etc.
If you want, you can contribute with more advantages or disadvantages depending on your position.

I leave you with this picture I have found in google, it's really interesting, in a rather humorous way. I hope you can start comprehending, like I'm doing, what this term means and what these new tools can bring to students and teachers' lives.

See you soon!

Antonela

Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants

Hello!!

I would like you to watch this video on Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants. It was published in YouTube. The director is Christopher Shapiro and the information was taken from Marc Prensky's lecture, the author we read to start discussing about this topic.

I'm sharing this video to create awareness about the existence of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, the differences between them are a fact and we, as teachers, must bear them in mind. Most of us are Digital Immigrants, and we have to learn to cope with this when we wish to include technology in our lessons. These differences showed in the video are also part of today's situations in classrooms, cafes, meetings, etc. Most of us have heard older people complaining because of mobile phone use during dinner... and not having long conversations like it was before...

As we talked about in ECO II, teachers need to know that they are part of a new generation that grew up with technology but still, students need to benefit more from these new technologies to create other things... so I find it really useful to learn how to apply these new means during our teaching programme...

I hope you can watch the video and you are invited to share your opinion...

Have a nice week!
Bye!