Why God Made Teachers

Why God Made Teachers
By Kevin William Huff

When God created teachers,
He gave us special friends
To help us understand His world
And truly comprehend
The beauty and the wonder
Of everything we see,
And become a better person
With each discovery. 

When God created teachers,
He gave us special guides
To show us ways in which to grow
So we can all decide
How to live and how to do
What's right instead of wrong,
To lead us so that we can lead
And learn how to be strong.

Why God created teachers,
In His wisdom and His grace,
Was to help us learn to make our world
A better, wiser place. 

How to Master English Grammar

http://www.english-conversation-online.com/2011/01/how-to-master-english-grammar.html

The following is a guest post by Mike Shelby.
In my view learning English grammar in the following sequence ensures firm solid thorough knowledge of English grammar:

1. 1. Read a short clear easily understandable explanation of a grammar rule.
2. 2. Study several practical usage examples (sentences) illustrating that particular grammar rule. Check yourself whether you have mastered the examples.
3. 3. Do several exercises for that rule with communicative content (with sentences that most likely can be used in real life situations).

Grammar exercises that contain dialogues, interrogative and statement (or narrative) sentences on everyday topics, thematic texts and narrative stories are especially effective for mastering grammatical structures.
Grammar practice should also include exercises in listening comprehension and speaking, not just in reading and writing.
Grammar exercises must help learners not only form correct sentences, but also use them correctly in context in real life situations. Contrastive and contextualised exercises give practice in form, meaning and use.
It is very important to learners for practising English grammar on their own that there are answers provided to the exercises (the key) in the grammar practice book for self-check.
A learner of English can’t rely on real life communication alone to be proficient in using grammatically correct English. Learning English grammar from books, audio and video aids is equally indispensable to substantially accelerate mastering of English grammar.
Correct oral communication in English is based on knowledge of English phonetics, grammar, vocabulary, and on practice and experience in communicating with native English speakers in real life.
I would argue that first a learner must master at least basic English grammar from books with exercises before being able to communicate grammatically correctly in real life with native speakers of English.

100%

A small truth to make our Life 100% Successful

IF

A B C D E F G H I J K L M

N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Is equal to

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

T h e n :

H+A+R+D+W+O+R+K = 8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11

=98%

K+N+O+W+L+E+D+G+E = 11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5

= 96%

L + O + V + E =

12+15+22+5

=54%

L + U + C + K =

12+21+3+11

=47%

None of them makes 100%!!!!!!!

Then what makes 100%

Is it Money? ... .. No!!!!!

 

Leadership? ... ... NO!!!!

 

Every problem has a solution, only if we perhaps change our

" A T T I T U D E ".

It is OUR ATTITUDE towards Life and Work that makes OUR Life

100%Successful..

A+T+T+I+T+U+D+E = 1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5

= 100%

Does that make sense?

Did U Know

Fun Facts You'll Love Reading

1. The quartz crystal in your wristwatch vibrates 32,768 times a second

2. No one can drown in the Dead Sea. It is 25 percent salt, which makes the water very heavy

3. Plants watered with warm water grow larger and more quickly than plants watered with cold water

4. Earth's oceans contain 7 1/2 million tons of gold, dissolved in the water

5. Children who are breastfed tend to have an I.Q. seven points higher than children who are not.

6. It was during the Victorian era that the formerly nude Cupid was redesigned as wearing a skirt.

7. Every day 200 million couples make love, 400,000 babies are born, and 140,000 people die.

8. The amniotic fluid that surrounds a baby in the womb is completely replaced every three hours.

9. There are at least 40 known carcinogens in cigarettes.

10. The earliest British expeditions tackling Everest wore tweed jackets, woolen underwear, and leather boots.

11. During World War II, twice as many fighter pilots were killed during training than combat

12. In 1962 an outbreak of contagious laughter in Tanganyika lasted for six months and caused schools to be closed

13. A nautical mile measures 6,080 feet while a land or statute mile is 5,280 feet

14. The bird flu virus could evolve into a form that is easily spread between people, resulting in a highly contagious and lethal disease.

15. The Chinese, in olden days, used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery.

 

Tips Menjelang Peperiksaan

Menjelang peperiksaan, pelbagai permasalahan disuarakan oleh bukan pelajar tetapi juga ibu bapa. Diharapkan tips dan panduan ini dapat membantu anda untuk menghadapi senario peperiksaan.

Bagi pelajar,masalah² seperti cara membahagikan masa, strategi pembelajaran terbaik di samping petua ulang kaji yang tebaik sering ditanya.

Bagi ibu bapa pula, petua untuk menasihati anak yang masih leka menonton televisyen di saat-saat peperiksaan yang hampir menjelma adalah antara persoalan popular.

Artikel ini cuba menjawab secara umum,akan persoalan dan permasalahan di kalangan calon peperiksaan sendiri, dan permasalahan yang dihadapi ibu bapa,guru dan pihak lain yang prihatin.

Pertama

Hadir di dalam bilik darjah.Dalam tempoh 2-3 bulan ini,anda mesti datang ke sekolah dan hadir di dalam bilik darjah untuk mengikuti apa juga ajaran dan nasihat guru di samping perbincangan dengan kawan sedarjah.

Kedua

Pastikan anda mendapat petunjuk yang sebanyak-banyaknya daripada semua guru mata pelajaran anda. Jangan mengambil kesempatan untuk `tuang` kelas atau bersengkokol dengan kawan² yang kurang motivasi atau tidak jelas matlamat mengapa belajar atau menduduki peperiksaan.Anda mungkin perlu sentiasa berjumpa guru untuk perbincangan di luar waktu sekolah. Lakukan demi kefahaman. Di samping itu,anda perlu ada kawan belajar sehingga 4 orang lagi supaya pembelajaran atau perbincangan anda dengan guru mata pelajaran lebih bererti.

Ketiga

Jangan membuang masa berbincang perkara yang tidak penting. Selama anda berada di kawasan sekolah dari pagi hingga tengahari atau ke petang, sekiranya tidak belajar di dalam bilik darjah, jangan lagi membuang masa bersembang di kantin atau berlonggok di bawak pokok. Sebaliknya,pergilah ke perpustakaan untuk menyelesaikan kerja sekolah atau berbincang dengan kawan² kumpulan belajar, ataupun mengulang kaji pelajaran secara bersendirian.



Ketujuh

Ssanggup bekerja keras. Kalau sehingga bulan Ogos ini markah anda untuk setiap mata pelajaran pada keseluruhannya di bawah 60%, anda perlulah menumpukan lebih banyak masa untuk belajar, memaham dan menguasai topik, fakta, rumus dan simbol mata pelajaran tertentu demi peningkatan pencapaian sehingga 80% ke atas.

Keempat

Mmematuhi jadual pembelajaran dan ulang kaji yang teratur. Bayangkan,anda mengambil 10 mata pelajaran (SPM) atau 8 mata pelajaran (PMR). Jangan lupa, aktiviti ulang kaji ini termasuk membaca, memaham, melukis(melakar), menulis dan mengingat.

Di samping membaca.memaham dan mengingat fakta, bahasa, konsep atau persoalan dan pernyataan, anda mesti mahir melukis peta, rajah, jadual dan graf dan menulis karangan atau jawapan berbentuk rencana. Sehubungan dengan latihan menulis jawapan ini, di sini saya mengingatkan semua calon supaya menguasai bahasa Melayu dengan sebaik-baiknya.
Khusus bagi penguasaan mata pelajaran,anda perlu berdamping dengan guru,buku teks atau kawan yang pandai. Setiap mata pelajaran ada sifat dan ciri umum,dan khusus. Misalnya, bagi menguasai mata pelajaran Matematik, anda perlu menguasai topik, rumus, simbol dan pengiraan.

Kelima

Sentiasa sihat badan dan cerdas minda. Selama belajar ini pastikan anda mengambil makanan dan minuman yang dimasak, bersih, segar dan berkhasiat. Kurangkan atau tinggalkan daripada memakan makanan segera atau meminum minuman bergas dan berais. Ingat!! Otak yang cerdas, pergerakan yang cergas dan emosi yang ceria, datang daripada badan yang sihat. Badan yang sihat ditentukan oleh makanan dan minuman yang baik dan seimbang. Pastikan anda sihat, cergas dan ceria sebelum dan semasa peperiksaan.

Keenam
Sentiasa mengerjakan sembahyang dan berdoa. Bukan sahaja anda, ibu bapa, sanak saudara pun sama tidak meninggalkan solat, dan turut mendoakan kejayaan anda.

Petua Motivasi Diri

Petua 1: Lupakan masa silam yang kelam

Sebelum anda boleh mencipta masa depan yang lebih baik, anda harus melupakan peristiwa malang anda di masa lalu. Gagal sekali bukan bermakna anda akan gagal selamanya. Belajar dari sejarah, tetapi jangan biarkan hal itu menjadi sebagai penghalang antara anda dan impian anda.

Petua 2: Ingatkan kejayaan

Sama pentingnya dengan belajar dari masa lalu dan mengatasi kegagalan adalah mengenang kejayaan masa lalu. Tidak kira siapa anda, anda pernah berjaya di dalam sesuatu hal pada suatu ketika dahulu. Renung kembali saat-saat tersebut. Gunakan kenangan kejayaan anda untuk memotivasikan diri anda bahawa anda sebenarnya boleh mencapai matlamat anda.

Petua 3: Menyedari segalanya berkemungkinan

Tiada yang mustahil, segalanya boleh berlaku. Impian yang tersemat di dalam hati anda, jika dipindahkan ke dalam minda dan diusahakan pasti boleh dicapai. Terimalah kenyataan bahawa anda sebenarnya boleh mencipta kehidupan yang lebih baik. Ini akan bertindak sebagai batu loncatan untuk meneguhkan kepercayaan anda untuk berjaya.
Petua 4: Impian yang besar
Agar impian dan keinginan anda dapat memberi inspirasi kepada anda untuk bertindak dan mencapai matlamat, maka impian dan keinginan perlu menjadi besar. Jika anda tidak ghairah dan bersemangat tentang apa yang anda rancangkan untuk masa depan, anda tidak akan dapat menemukan inspirasi yang anda perlukan untuk mengubah hidup anda. Impian yang besar boleh menggerakkan jiwa, dan ketika anda berimpikan sesuatu besar, anda akan terdorong untuk menjadikan impian anda sesuatu yang realiti.

Petua 5: Bertindaklah untuk berubah
Tidak peduli bagaimana anda ingin sesuatu hal itu terjadi, perubahan tidak akan berlaku jika hanya sekadar berfikir - anda harus mengambil tindakan!. Dunia khayalan tidak membawa anda ke mana-mana, tetapi hanya mereka yang bertindak atas keinginan mereka akan benar-benar mencapai impian mereka.

ICT in ELT

http://ictinelt-george.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, 29 March 2011

Webquest... A well-planned project

I have to make a confession here. I regret so much that I didn't have discovered Webquest.org earlier.

What's this

Dudeney and Hockly(2007: 54) define webquests as 'mini-projects in which a large percentage of the input and material is supplied through the web'. From the same book and the classes we had in the ICT in ELT module I learnt that Bernie Dodge, a Professor of educational Technology at San Diego State University is the pioneer for this educational tool.

How it works?

There are specific guidelines, in order to design your own customised webquest. The under-pinning langugae learning theory is, in my opinion, Task-based learning. In Webquest design there are stages as exactly there are stages in a language learning task. However, Webquests are classified more as projects than tasks (Dudeney and Hockly 2007:57). In order to design a webquest you will need an authoring tool. QuestGarden is the one.

For extra help on how to do it check this out:


A tip: Bear in mind all the steps and the level of the students in order to create a successful WebQuest.

Benefits

• Learner develops  research skills.The learner is looking up information on the web in order to complete the task.
• Learner develops analytical skills. Questions are designed to stimulate analytical thinking.
• Learner develops word processing skills. Students need to write down the answers and edit  texts.
• It is virtually motivating as each webquest is tailored to students' interests.

Limitations

• It is not free (well it's pretty cheap-a two years subscription to QuestGarden is $20)
• The design of the quest is a bit poor and might be a bit blunt.  

 

 

Quizzes

“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.”

Nancy Willard

Socrates use to make his students getting interested on a topic by answering questions. Asking questions is the only way to find the truth. I strongly endorse this view as the majority of the teachers does. On the web there are thousand sites for quizzes. I have tried many of them but here there are two quite useful in language learning:

BBC is one of my favourite site for authentic material. The learning English pages are extremely useful. There are many games that you can use in the classroom such a crosswords and beat the keeper(It's fun!). BBC's quizzes could be extremely useful in teaching idioms or colloquial expressions. Try it!

 
One of the largest quiz databases in the Web. You can find some really good quizzes of general knowledge and some of them , belive me, are really challenging! Quizzes come both in HTML and Flash form.
I really enjoyed a quiz about what is sarcasm!(For those of you that find it difficult to teach abstract concepts).  One drawback of this site is the advertisements(sometimes there are pop-up windows as well).

You can find million and millions of videos to consume in YouTube for consumtion either in or out of the classroom. The sites featured here contain videos intended for more educational use than the funny videos in YouTube. However, there are educational channels aor universities channels quite interesting and I will try to cover them in the future.

Why to use Videos?
 The answer is simple: To stimulate your students' brains. If you have the appropriate equipment for showing videos can be a part of a warm up activity or an excellent source of information or even the prompt to start a conversation.

TeacherTube


Good site specially designed for teachers. Contains loads of educational videos and also some interesting resources such as lesson plans. Here is an example of a video and how to use it in the classroom:

Fashion



Last year I had to teach a unit about fashion in B1 level. In the course book there were activities for all skills and the last activity of the unit is always the writing and speaking activities. The text about fashion at the beginning of the unit was a bit blunt. The classroom had an IWB so what I did was to show students a video like this in order to stimulate them and motivate them to take part in the speaking activity first and then come up with some ideas for the brainstorming pre-writing part of the writing task.



BBC learning zone

BBC's educational portal is extremely good and full of ideas. Although it is mainly attended to native speakers it is ideal for a CLIL(Content and Language Integrated Learning) context. One of the benefits of using BBCs videos in language teaching is that it is an authentic material specially designed for learning. Well, I won't write more, go and check it out yourselves.Here is a video about the climate change:

Hot potatoes: Creating exersices is easier than baking spuds!

What's this?
It's an authoring tool to create your own exercises. Basically it is a programme you can download here and install it to your computer.

Why to use it?
To create on-line quizzes for the classroom of course. Quizzes are fun and capture learners' interest.


How to use it?

Hmmm... This might take some time just to get used to the interface. To get an idea start watching tutorial videos like this one below or go to website's tutorial list here



Limitations

• The same old good six typical exercises you will find in books.
• It is time consuming to create an exercise(10 items took me half an hour-but then maybe it's because that's just me)

Computers 1 | Learning Chocolate

This Website presents words in groups using some interesting pictures as a visual aid in order to memorise vocabulary.
Special features:

• You can listen the word(good for racticing pronounciation)
• There is a bunch of exercises useful for further consolidation.

Why is this useful?
As most of us did we learn by seeing. And the fact that they are grouped makes the site interestingly useful.

In the language classroom?

 I would use it in presenting a group of vocabulary with an interactive white board.

 

Audioboo!! Recording-Sharing-learning!!

audioboo

What's this?

Website for recording and sharing your sounds. Create you podcast and share them instantly!! Watch this video tutorial for more details.



Why is it useful?

Podcasts  can be used both by learners and teachers.

Teachers can:

• Record feedback and share it with the learners.
• Record a conversation among teachers(native and non-native speakers), another lesson, record learners.
• Create ''improve your pronunciation'' podcasts.

Learners can:

• Record themselves reading a text (improving intonation and pronunciation)
• Create their own podcasts.
• Record themselves discussing a topic and then sharing it with the classroom. 
• Sing...

Audioboo's most significant feature is easy sharing. You can publish your podcasts anywhere! a

The Usefulness of Second life for Language Learning on Prezi

 That was the presentation Carina and I did in classroom about second life. There are so many things to say about Second Life. Many universities already use it to deliver some of their distance learning courses.

Of course, SL is used in language learning with success. 

Watch this video:

Benefits:

1. It maximizes experiential learning through the interaction with virtual word. Learners have the opportunity to see, hear and touch objects and learn their names or read floating text etc.
2. Inter-cultural communication takes place more often than in traditional classrooms.
3. Interaction with native speakers who use second life.

Of course the list of the benefits could be expanded and we could discuss further the above statements. But when I was working on this presentation I thought that SL is to good to be true.

Drawbacks:

1. It is for adults not for children. When you enter SL you might experience cyberbullying or sexting. \Linden Labs ,which is the company that launched SL, has set the age limit at 18.
2. It is a virtual not a real world. Yes, simulation can be really good for practice but I am not sure how "prepared" the learner would be when faces a real-life situation.
3. It can become addictive for some learners. Being whoever you want to be and do whatever you like in a virtual world might be extremely appealing and therefore addictive.  A dystopian possibility could be that people spend more time in their virtual lives rather than in real life. 

Conclusion


SL could become the future in education. The graphics will improve and the environment will become more real. However, it is not only used for educational purposes. Users(or residents in SL context) should be responsible on how they are using it.