Diseño de Materiales' experience

This is an audio in which you will listen to my experience with Diseño de Materiales subject. One subject in which i learned many useful resources to be used as a teacher, i'll never forget this subject and professor Liliana, thank you for your big effort. I hope you enjoy this tape with my experience.

Augmented reality

By July Cano

This might be an interesting topic when you hear about it. There are several things that come out to your mind when you hear that term, but what does it really mean?, well here we have a brief concept of Augmented Reality (AR), according to Nik Peachey "can be defined as the interweaving of virtual Internet based materials with or physical reality." Another concept is the one defined by Ronald Azuma who says that augmented reality combines real with virtual things, it is interactive in real time and it is registered in 3D. So, it can be seen that augmented reality is related to the real word and the virtual technology used nowdays.

A clear example of this is the one we see in the GPS that almost all new mobile phones have. This system helps us to track things, places and people in real time and position all over the world because it uses the information in real position so you can have that vey specific information in your mobile phone, another example that David Read uses to explain AR is that in films like Terminator or Robocot when something or someone is pointed you can see all the information related to that object or person, so if you want to go to eat in a place you do not know you can use your mobile phone with this kind of application and you can choose which one you like the most by just seeing the information that your mobile phone provides.

Now it is a bit clearer what this new term is about. So if this seems to be a wonderful tool for everyday life, imagine what teachers can do to present new material from the real life using this new amazing technology. This is actually being used by many teachers and professors around the world because it can  related reality and make learning funnier and easier. For expample in ESL teaching and learning it results wonderful because using your mobile phone's camera you can take a picture from something you do not understand and it can be translated into any language you choose. It is ideal when you are traveling and you do not know a place and you want to know where you are or what you are reading. I really think this is a powefull tool that it is going to take more power the next few years, i invite you to keep on searching more interesting information about this new tool in ESL learning and teaching.

Here i leave an interesting video where it is a bit more explained Augmented Reality by Vint Cerf.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ericssonmultimedia?v=3f1PS04LyME&feature=pyv&ad=5422246116&kw=augmented%20reality&gclid=CKbT96S09qUCFYNl7AodZmLgng

This other video is from a Nokia translator using AR

Bibliography:


-Common Craft (2010). Augmented Reality Explained by Common Craft. Online document retrieved on 12/17/10 at the web page: http://www.commoncraft.com/augmented-reality-video
-Peachey, N (2010). Future of Educational Technology 3: Augmented Reality and ELT. Online document retrieved on 12/17/10 at the web page:  http://quickshout.blogspot.com/search/label/augmented%20reality
-Read, D (2010). Augmented Reality in language learning. Online document retrieved on 12/17/10 at the web page: http://mobileesl.blogspot.com/2010/02/augmented-reality-in-language-learning.html
-Wikipedia (2008). Augmented Reality. Online document retrieved on 12/17/10 at the web page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

Evaluation of the web site Esol Courses

Name of the site: Esol Courses
Site’s URL: http://www.esolcourses.com/
Author(s): Sue Lyon-Jones
Last update: There’s not a specific date posted.
Purpose of site: The purpose of this web site is to facilitate tools for English students to learn and practice the second language by listening free lessons or reading exercises, quizzes and games
Skills the site builds: Listening, reading, grammar, vocabulary, cultural knowledge.
Objective: The web site is focus in practicing, improving and developing students’ English skills by solving exercises, quizzes, crosswords, word search, playing on-line games (puzzles) and watching videos and then answering to a few questions.
Scope of audience: Worldwide. 
Target level: Beginners to Advanced learners.
Sensory input: Poor: Effectively
Type of feedback: Semi intelligent error feedback.
Interactivity: None.
Communicativeness: None.
Context:  Lots.
Content: Half hour
Revisitability: Once a month. There are lots of activities in the website, and some posts, activities, games and vocabulary according to the holidays (Christmas), that makes us think there is activity at least one a month. There is not a specific date posted.

Appearance: Good but not outstanding. There is a bar for ads in the left side of the main page which I find unnecessary. These ads are next to each activity or game all over the web site. We find them annoying.

Navigation: Somewhat difficult, links are kind of untidy.
Load speed: Fairly fast. Images, activities, videos and games load fair fast.
Brief description of the site: This ESL web site is focus in practicing, improving and developing students’ English skills, reading, grammar, vocabulary, cultural knowledge by solving exercises, quizzes, crosswords, word search, playing on-line games (puzzles) and watching videos and then answering to a few questions. The website facilitates tools for English students to learn and practice English by listening free lessons or reading exercises, quizzes and games.

What I didn’t like about this web site: The links are a little bit untidy, there is very useful information in the website but somehow we don’t feel motivated to surf all over the web site because at some point too much useful, but messy information wears us out. Also, the interface is good, but not outstanding

What I like about this web site: English teachers or students can find any activity for practicing listening, grammar, reading, vocabulary and some cultural knowledge. There are a lot of activity, games, and quizzes to solve in the web site.

Evaluation score for
Content usefulness: 6/6
Interface design: 2.5/4
My overall evaluation grade: 8.5/10

Web 2.0 and teaching

Web 2.0 is known as a new and innovator tool  for teaching. This is becoming popular in schools for several reasons, its ability to combine technology with collaboration. Students are easy adaptable to this method because they are familiar with webs like twitter, facebook, blogs, wikis and pages where the interaction is given. and Also, it provides an avenue to communicate with professionals, subject experts and other students who have Internet access.

-Writing can be transformed from a one-on-one communication between teacher and student.

-Videoconferencing brings the world into the classroom.

-RSS, also called Web feeds, are becoming popular with administration and high school teachers.

-Podcasts are gaining popularity, the ease of mass communication.

Taken from: 

Andrew, T. (30 de marzo del 2008). Suite101.com. Recuperado el 27 de Noviembre del 2010,  de http://www.suite101.com/content/teaching-with-web-20-a49204

HOT POTATOES' BRAIN MAP

Bibliography:

Hot potatoes. document taken from the world wide web retrivered on July, 24th 2010 from: http://www.aula21.net/segunda/hotpotatoes.htm

What is Web 2.0?

The term Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web (WWW). The term Web 2.0 refers to cumulative changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web. The Web 2.0 is meant to be collaborative medium, a place where we could all meet and read and write, which makes it perfect for the Education field. 

A Web 2.0 site gives its users the free choice to interact or collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users  are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. 

Examples of Web 2.0 include:

• Social-networking sites (Twitter, Facebook)
• Blogs (Blogger, Wordpress)
• Wikis (Edmodo)
• Video-sharing sites (You tube)
• Web applications, etc.

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! In this blog we will share as much information as possible about learning English through the Web 2.0. The authors of this site are July, Darvid and Virginia, we are students of the University of Carabobo, that attend to Education School and which majoring is English Teaching. We are currently taking a subject in the 8th semester called " Material Design for teaching English", this subject is very interesting because it teaches us how to use certain tools (technology type) in order to improve our work as teachers inside and outside the classroom.