"In this first blog posting I'd like us to look at some of the major issues that are affecting education at this time and try to examine them in relation to English language teaching and how they may affect it."
In this first blog posting I'd like us to look at some of the major issues that are affecting education at this time and try to examine them in relation to English language teaching and how they may affect it.
In the United States, about 70 new federal grants for language education to school districts over the past year, more than half include Mandarin programs.
A number of National Foreign Language Center's long-standing recommendations gained support. These include development of the language capabilities of U.S. heritage speakers, teaching languages to higher levels, development of improved K-12 programming in critical languages and articulation among K-12 programs, higher education programs, study abroad, and the world of work. NFLC website
Digital Storytelling
Clay Animation Tutorial on clay animation
Digitales Tips and tricks for creating a digital story
Digital Story Telling Provides a wealth of links for creating digital stories
Digital Storytelling Resources Collection of resources by Meg Ormiston to help educators create powerful digital stories; Curriculum integration
Digital Storytelling Scoring Rubric Sample scoring guide
Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling Instructions, suggestions, resources, ideas
Kitzu Digital story kits for the classroom
Video in the Classroom Digital storytelling in the elementary grades and beyond
There is an assumption that persists in the educational community that more mature teachers are much more difficult and reluctant to be trained on the effective use of educational technology. To some degree, I think this assumption has been built on by the digital native vs digital immigrant myth. But as someone who has trained teachers of all ages all over the world I would say that, from my own experience, this hasn't been the case.
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is a public voice of mathematics education, providing vision, leadership, and professional development to support teachers in ensuring mathematics learning of the highest quality for all students. With 100,000 members and 250 affiliates, NCTM is the world's largest organization dedicated to improving math education in preK‑12.
The Greek mathematician Archimedes approximated pi by inscribing and circumscribing polygons about a circle and calculating their perimeters. Similarly, the value of pi can be approximated by calculating the areas of inscribed and circumscribed polygons. This activity allows for the investigation and comparison of both methods.
Instructions:
In this applet, polygons are inscribed and circumscribed around circles. The area of the polygons around a circle of radius 1 are calculated on the left, and the perimeter of the polygons around a circle of diameter 1 are calculated on the right.
Change the value of n to increase or decrease the number of sides in the polygons, and notice how the calculations of the areas and perimeters begin to approximate pi.
This is one of the important web2.0 tools i would highly recommend for educators . The Plagiarism Checker detects the plagiarized text or chunks of a text in your students assignments , essays, articles .....
This is a "master" list of all kinds of educational technology tools in the areas of social netowrking, teacher's web resources, educational apps for the iPad, 21st-century teaching resources, google tools, and content area resources. Lots of things to see and review!