Skip to main content

Home/ Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0/ Group items tagged vocabulary activities

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Geoffrey Smith

Vocabulary, Vocabulary Games - www.MyVocabulary.com - 24 views

www.myvocabulary.com

vocabulary puzzles activities language resources education word english teaching Web2.0 games free quizzes

shared by Geoffrey Smith on 11 Jun 11 - Cached
  • Geoffrey Smith on 11 Jun 11
     
    MyVocabulary.com offers free vocabulary lessons, word lists, and word puzzles designed for middle school and high school students. The vocabulary lists are based on books commonly used in middle school and high school classrooms. MyVocabulary.com also offers word lists and activities based on SAT vocabulary. Visitors to MyVocabulary.com will find stand-alone vocabulary lessons as well as activities to complement the reading of specific stories. Applications for EducationIf you're planning a series of lessons on one of "standard books" for middle school or high school, MyVocabulary.com could provide you with some good vocabulary lists and lesson ideas to get started. Students prepping for the SAT should take some time to explore the SAT word puzzles offered by MyVocabulary.com
Cara Whitehead

SpellingCity for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch on the iTunes App Store - 7 views

itunes.apple.com/...id538407602

free ipad iphone ipod touch ipod itunes app vocabulary spelling spellingcity vocabularyspellingcity

shared by Cara Whitehead on 15 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Cara Whitehead on 15 Sep 13
     
    VocabularySpellingCity is a fun way to learn spelling and vocabulary words by playing engaging learning games using any word list. The most popular activities are Spelling TestMe, HangMouse, and our vocabulary games, available to Premium Members. The most popular word lists are Sound Alikes, Compound Words, Hunger Games and SAT Words. This is a free app!
Geoffrey Smith

Digital Dialects language learning games - 18 views

www.digitaldialects.com

language Web2.0 interactive learning vocabulary

shared by Geoffrey Smith on 21 Aug 11 - Cached
  • Geoffrey Smith on 21 Aug 11
     
    Digital Dialects offers a nice selection of educational games and activities for learning 55 different languages. Most of the games are designed to learn and practice the basics of each of the 55 languages listed on the Digital Dialects homepage.  Another good website for learning and practicing language basics is Literacy Center.net. Literacy Center offers games for learning and practicing French, Spanish, German, and English. The Literacy Center is a 501c non-profit with a contract from the US Department of Education.  Applications for Education The educational games and activities found on Digital Dialects and Literacy Center are great for students just beginning to learn a new language. The games provide instant feedback to students and parents so that they can monitor progress and choose a skill or set of vocabulary terms to practice. 
Barbara Lindsey

Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice - 1 views

www.infed.org/...communities_of_practice.htm

CoP community education wenger collaboration practice learning communities mafla09 actfl09 blended learning

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 03 May 09 - Cached
Dianne Rees liked it
  • Supposing learning is social and comes largely from of our experience of participating in daily life? It was this thought that formed the basis of a significant rethinking of learning theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s by two researchers from very different disciplines - Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Their model of situated learning proposed that learning involved a process of engagement in a 'community of practice'. 
  • When looking closely at everyday activity, she has argued, it is clear that 'learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity, though often unrecognized as such' (Lave 1993: 5).
  • Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. (Wenger circa 2007)
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Over time, this collective learning results in practices that reflect both the pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations. These practices are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise. It makes sense, therefore to call these kinds of communities communities of practice. (Wenger 1998: 45)
  • The characteristics of communities of practice According to Etienne Wenger (c 2007), three elements are crucial in distinguishing a community of practice from other groups and communities: The domain. A community of practice is is something more than a club of friends or a network of connections between people. 'It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people' (op. cit.). The community. 'In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other' (op. cit.). The practice. 'Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction' (op. cit.).
  • The fact that they are organizing around some particular area of knowledge and activity gives members a sense of joint enterprise and identity. For a community of practice to function it needs to generate and appropriate a shared repertoire of ideas, commitments and memories. It also needs to develop various resources such as tools, documents, routines, vocabulary and symbols that in some way carry the accumulated knowledge of the community.
  • The interactions involved, and the ability to undertake larger or more complex activities and projects though cooperation, bind people together and help to facilitate relationship and trust
  • Rather than looking to learning as the acquisition of certain forms of knowledge, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger have tried to place it in social relationships – situations of co-participation.
  • It not so much that learners acquire structures or models to understand the world, but they participate in frameworks that that have structure. Learning involves participation in a community of practice. And that participation 'refers not just to local events of engagement in certain activities with certain people, but to a more encompassing process of being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities' (Wenger 1999: 4).
  • Initially people have to join communities and learn at the periphery. The things they are involved in, the tasks they do may be less key to the community than others.
  • Learning is, thus, not seen as the acquisition of knowledge by individuals so much as a process of social participation. The nature of the situation impacts significantly on the process.
  • What is more, and in contrast with learning as internalization, ‘learning as increasing participation in communities of practice concerns the whole person acting in the world’ (Lave and Wenger 1991: 49). The focus is on the ways in which learning is ‘an evolving, continuously renewed set of relations’ (ibid.: 50). In other words, this is a relational view of the person and learning (see the discussion of selfhood).
  • 'the purpose is not to learn from talk as a substitute for legitimate peripheral participation; it is to learn to talk as a key to legitimate peripheral participation'. This orientation has the definite advantage of drawing attention to the need to understand knowledge and learning in context. However, situated learning depends on two claims: It makes no sense to talk of knowledge that is decontextualized, abstract or general. New knowledge and learning are properly conceived as being located in communities of practice (Tennant 1997: 77).
  • There is a risk, as Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger acknowledge, of romanticizing communities of practice.
  • 'In their eagerness to debunk testing, formal education and formal accreditation, they do not analyse how their omission [of a range of questions and issues] affects power relations, access, public knowledge and public accountability' (Tennant 1997: 79).
  • Perhaps the most helpful of these explorations is that of Barbara Rogoff and her colleagues (2001). They examine the work of an innovative school in Salt Lake City and how teachers, students and parents were able to work together to develop an approach to schooling based around the principle that learning 'occurs through interested participation with other learners'.
  • Learning is in the relationships between people. As McDermott (in Murphy 1999:17) puts it: Learning traditionally gets measured as on the assumption that it is a possession of individuals that can be found inside their heads… [Here] learning is in the relationships between people. Learning is in the conditions that bring people together and organize a point of contact that allows for particular pieces of information to take on a relevance; without the points of contact, without the system of relevancies, there is not learning, and there is little memory. Learning does not belong to individual persons, but to the various conversations of which they are a part.
  • One of the implications for schools, as Barbara Rogoff and her colleagues suggest is that they must prioritize 'instruction that builds on children's interests in a collaborative way'. Such schools need also to be places where 'learning activities are planned by children as well as adults, and where parents and teachers not only foster children's learning but also learn from their own involvement with children' (2001: 3). Their example in this area have particular force as they are derived from actual school practice.
  • learning involves a deepening process of participation in a community of practice
  • Acknowledging that communities of practice affect performance is important in part because of their potential to overcome the inherent problems of a slow-moving traditional hierarchy in a fast-moving virtual economy. Communities also appear to be an effective way for organizations to handle unstructured problems and to share knowledge outside of the traditional structural boundaries. In addition, the community concept is acknowledged to be a means of developing and maintaining long-term organizational memory. These outcomes are an important, yet often unrecognized, supplement to the value that individual members of a community obtain in the form of enriched learning and higher motivation to apply what they learn. (Lesser and Storck 2001)
  • Educators need to reflect on their understanding of what constitutes knowledge and practice. Perhaps one of the most important things to grasp here is the extent to which education involves informed and committed action.
Ashley Haseman

4th Grade, Spelling and Vocabulary Activities - 0 views

treasures.macmillanmh.com/...ling-and-vocabulary-activities

spelling vocabulary education Tools technology resources learning teaching

shared by Ashley Haseman on 13 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Ashley Haseman on 13 Oct 13
     
    Ways of helping students learn the words they need to know.
Clif Mims

WordAhead: Vocabulary Videos - 10 views

www.wordahead.com

shared by Clif Mims on 11 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Clif Mims on 11 Oct 09
     
    "This website has a collection of short, simple and fun video clips to correctly define and provide examples of around 800 words in context. The videos are entirely appropriate for middle and high school students. The students are encouraged to play with words,create their own vocabulary videos and upload their work to the website. Teachers may direct activities and assign word projects to the students. The Study Room allows personalized list creation and sharing. Visitors can also sign up to receive a word of the day in the email."
zebrians

Brilliant Ways to Develop Your Communication Skills - 1 views

thetalk-room.com

communication course English development personality

shared by zebrians on 05 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • zebrians on 05 Feb 22
     
    People who speak English often feel that their language skills are not perfect. Very few people can claim to have a very good command over the language and this becomes very prominent when they have to communicate in English. They feel that their communication skills are not as good as they should be, especially if they are communicating with foreigners. However, it is important to understand that in order to improve your communication skills, you need to take active steps towards it. It does not happen by itself and you will have to put in some effort before you can reach the level of fluency that you want. Good communication skills are very important in life, not just for students but also for teachers, managers and corporate professionals. It is a fact that people who can speak English well have more opportunities than people who do not have this skill. While there are many ways in which you can improve your language skills, we offer you some excellent tips that can help here: Make an effort to learn new words every day and use them One of the most effective ways of improving your English language skills is to make an effort to learn new words every day and use them whenever you get a chance. Reading The number one rule is to read as much as possible! Reading books, magazines, news articles, or even blogs can help you learn new vocabulary and take in new information. It will also help you with your grammar. You could get some audiobooks, so you can listen while you are doing other things like commuting, exercising etc. Watching movies and shows Watching movies and TV shows is another excellent way to learn English. Most movies have subtitles that display the text on the screen at the same time as it is spoken. Start out with a few movies or shows in your native language (with English subtitles). As your skills improve, try watching them with English subtitles first, then eventually turn off the subtitles altogether. This will help you get better at underst
Cara Whitehead

February: Black History Month - 3 views

www.spellingcity.com/view-spelling-list.html

february black history spelling vocabulary tools

shared by Cara Whitehead on 02 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Cara Whitehead on 02 Feb 14
     
    February is Black History Month. Here's a word list to add to your lesson plans! This list can be used to play all of the games and activities on our site. http://www.spellingcity.com/view-spelling-list.html?listId=2851114
Michael Johnson

E-Learning 2.0 ~ Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes - 20 views

www.downes.ca/31741

eLearning social media teaching learning web 2.0 e-learning Downes

shared by Michael Johnson on 12 Jan 11 - Cached
  • In general, where we are now in the online world is where we were before the beginning of e-learning [1]. Traditional theories of distance learning, of (for example) transactional distance, as described by Michael G. Moore, have been adapted for the online world. Content is organized according to this traditional model and delivered either completely online or in conjunction with more traditional seminars, to cohorts of students, led by an instructor, following a specified curriculum to be completed at a predetermined pace.
  • networked markets
  • In learning, these trends are manifest in what is sometimes called "learner-centered" or "student-centered" design. This is more than just adapting for different learning styles or allowing the user to change the font size and background color; it is the placing of the control of learning itself into the hands of the learner
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • creation, communication and participation playing key roles
  • The breaking down of barriers has led to many of the movements and issues we see on today's Internet. File-sharing, for example, evolves not of a sudden criminality among today's youth but rather in their pervasive belief that information is something meant to be shared. This belief is manifest in such things as free and open-source software, Creative Commons licenses for content, and open access to scholarly and other works. Sharing content is not considered unethical; indeed, the hoarding of content is viewed as antisocial [9]. And open content is viewed not merely as nice to have but essential for the creation of the sort of learning network described by Siemens [10].
  • "Enter Web 2.0, a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into "microcontent" units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we're looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways"
  • Web 2.0 is not a technological revolution, it is a social revolution.
  • It also begins to look like a personal portfolio tool [18]. The idea here is that students will have their own personal place to create and showcase their own work. Some e-portfolio applications, such as ELGG, have already been created. IMS Global as put together an e-portfolio specification [19]. "The portfolio can provide an opportunity to demonstrate one's ability to collect, organize, interpret and reflect on documents and sources of information. It is also a tool for continuing professional development, encouraging individuals to take responsibility for and demonstrate the results of their own learning" [20].
    • Michael Johnson
      Michael Johnson on 12 Jan 11
       
      Also a place to receive and give feedback. I believe that one of the things that learners need to have to be prepared for learning in this space (social media or web 2.0) is the ability to evaluate, to give good feedback. Additionally, to be able to receive feedback constructively.
  • In the world of e-learning, the closest thing to a social network is a community of practice, articulated and promoted by people such as Etienne Wenger in the 1990s. According to Wenger, a community of practice is characterized by "a shared domain of interest" where "members interact and learn together" and "develop a shared repertoire of resources."
  • Yahoo! Groups
  • Blogging is very different from traditionally assigned learning content. It is much less formal. It is written from a personal point of view, in a personal voice. Students' blog posts are often about something from their own range of interests, rather than on a course topic or assigned project. More importantly, what happens when students blog, and read reach others' blogs, is that a network of interactions forms-much like a social network, and much like Wenger's community of practice.
    • Michael Johnson
      Michael Johnson on 12 Jan 11
       
      So, I believe he is saying that virtual communities of practice that form naturally are more real and approach what Wenger was talking about better than contrived "communities" put together in classes. That may be true. but does it have to be? If people come together to with a common purpose and the instructor allows the students freedom to explore what is important to them then I would hope that this kind of community can develop even in formal educational settings. Relevance is a key issue here!
  • "We're talking to the download generation," said Peter Smith, associate dean, Faculty of Engineering. "Why not have the option to download information about education and careers the same way you can download music? It untethers content from the Web and lets students access us at their convenience." Moreover, using an online service such as Odeo, Blogomatrix Sparks, or even simply off-the-shelf software, students can create their own podcasts.
  • The e-learning application, therefore, begins to look very much like a blogging tool. It represents one node in a web of content, connected to other nodes and content creation services used by other students. It becomes, not an institutional or corporate application, but a personal learning center, where content is reused and remixed according to the student's own needs and interests. It becomes, indeed, not a single application, but a collection of interoperating applications—an environment rather than a system.
  • Web 2.0 is not a technological revolution, it is a social revolution. "Here's my take on it: Web 2.0 is an attitude not a technology. It's about enabling and encouraging participation through open applications and services. By open I mean technically open with appropriate APIs but also, more importantly, socially open, with rights granted to use the content in new and exciting contexts"
  • This approach to learning means that learning content is created and distributed in a very different manner. Rather than being composed, organized and packaged, e-learning content is syndicated, much like a blog post or podcast. It is aggregated by students, using their own personal RSS reader or some similar application. From there, it is remixed and repurposed with the student's own individual application in mind, the finished product being fed forward to become fodder for some other student's reading and use.
    • Michael Johnson
      Michael Johnson on 12 Jan 11
       
      I like the idea of students passing on their work to be fodder for someone else's learning. In this way we change to from a learner to a learner/teacher! (See Dillon Inouye's work and Comments from John Seeley Brown)
  • More formally, instead of using enterprise learning-management systems, educational institutions expect to use an interlocking set of open-source applications. Work on such a set of applications has begun in a number of quarters, with the E-Learning Framework defining a set of common applications and the newly formed e-Framework for Education and Research drawing on an international collaboration. While there is still an element of content delivery in these systems, there is also an increasing recognition that learning is becoming a creative activity and that the appropriate venue is a platform rather than an application.
    • Michael Johnson
      Michael Johnson on 12 Jan 11
    • Michael Johnson
      Michael Johnson on 12 Jan 11
       
      Jon Mott has some cool ideas related to this paragraph.
  • he most important learning skills that I see children getting from games are those that support the empowering sense of taking charge of their own learning. And the learner taking charge of learning is antithetical to the dominant ideology of curriculum design
  • game "modding" allows players to make the game their own
  • Words are only meaningful when they can be related to experiences," said Gee. If I say "I spilled the coffee," this has a different meaning depending on whether I ask for a broom or a mop. You cannot create that context ahead of time— it has to be part of the experience.
  • A similar motivation underlies the rapidly rising domain of mobile learning [24]—for after all, were the context in which learning occurs not important, it would not be useful or necessary to make learning mobile. Mobile learning offers not only new opportunities to create but also to connect. As Ellen Wagner and Bryan Alexander note, mobile learning "define(s) new relationships and behaviors among learners, information, personal computing devices, and the world at large"
  • "ubiquitous computing."
  • what this means is having learning available no matter what you are doing.
  • The challenge will not be in how to learn, but in how to use learning to create something more, to communicate.
    • Michael Johnson
      Michael Johnson on 12 Jan 11
       
      I still think part of the challenge is how to learn. How to wade through a sea of all that is out there and "learn from the best" that is available. Find, organize, evaluate, analyze, synthesize, as well as create. I agree with Chris Lott (@fncll) that creativity is vital! (I am just not so sure that it is a non-starter to say that we should be moral first...though it could be argued that we should become moral through the creative process).
  • And what people were doing with the Web was not merely reading books, listening to the radio or watching TV, but having a conversation, with a vocabulary consisting not just of words but of images, video, multimedia and whatever they could get their hands on. And this became, and looked like, and behaved like, a network.
  • Michael Johnson on 12 Jan 11
     
    Stephen Downes' take on eLearning and what the future holds
zebrians

People who spea - 0 views

image

started by zebrians on 05 Feb 22 no follow-up yet
1 - 14 of 14
Showing 20▼ items per page