WIKIS

When I want to read or write I simply  use my blog to which I have a direct access through my Igoogle page. When I need to listen to obtain the needed information  I go to Itunes  and listen to podcast episodes or just double click on Audacity to create my own podcast episode and make others listen to me. And at last when I want collective discussions or forums with virtual presence of my peers I use Wiki, one of the 20 tidbits that Liza Dabs offers as a teacher supporter.http://www.edutopia.org/blog/20-tips-new-teachers-lisa-dabbs?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29

Is it me to write this paragraph? If I read it last year I would evaluate it as a paragraph full of incomprehensible   terminological  phrases. At least I would only understand them by their definitions. Fortunately I have managed not only to include these terms into my vocabulary but also to use those web tools and I think that  they are excellent means to provide students with. I am getting more and more flatteners  on my way to realize that the world is really flat. Everything changes so fast that I don’t even believe how fast I can acquire certain skills. It’s me-a thirty-year-old woman with two children. And I am sure that young learners develop much faster.  I would offer future teachers get together and collect teacher ideas in Wiki. And I agree with Kevin Carney that teaching “shouldn’t be alone on an island”.  http://www.edutopia.org/stw-differentiated-instruction-budget-resource-collaboration-video?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29

Teachers should help each other so that they could help to each other’s students. As a class of future teachers we also  start using wiki and store there our valuable judgements. Go to  this link  http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2008/05/using-wikis-for-teacher-development.html you will find two videos instructing you how to embed video into wiki pages, how to use hyperlinks to link together text and pages across the wiki.

Always share your thoughts with your peers in  

Podcasts

Before podcasts

After podcasts

PODCASTS

New technologies lead us to great developments and make our academic life extend the borders of boredom and official style. If blogging has come to replace book reading and essay writing then podcasting is here to provide us with various listening materials giving a great chance to speak and share our thoughts.

I was first introduced to podcasts during our English for Language teachers course. The opportunity to listen to  podcast episodes for different purposes and of various areas seemed to me fascinating. I felt that I was gaining a lot more new information with podcasts than if I were without them. I really agree with Professor Daniel Foster “to weed out class papers in favor of podcasts” because they are more practical and closer to real-life situations.

And this year our New technologies in TEFL course offered us to become  podcast creators. I was shocked. I didn’t expect such a great shift in my life. Previously I was in the opinion that people who created podcasts were real professionals but it turned to be an easy task: I only followed some instructions, downloaded Audacity and……

Podcast creation is very useful as it develops creative skills, contributes to mastering the whole material to be able to express your thoughts. Background music creates harmony and makes you feel relaxed.

I’m impressed and as a future TEFL professional I’ll use this tool to have student-creators. I liked the suggested activities when the students create recipes in dyads, exchange their recipes, critique and put their critiques into podcasts. Here the learners are not only creators but they also review their peers’ jobs.  

                                    

LEARNERS DO WONDERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      When I listened to Sugata’s speech my impression was that he was speaking about the remote village in Armenia which I happened to visit  this summer in Ijevan.

 It was really disappointing to hear that young generation  wants to move to Yerevan and  teachers there are also very ignorant towards their work because they know for sure that there is no future in that village.  Really when I walked through the village I was in the same opinion: no other work to do except for farming, no place to go except for fields, no motivation to learn and no tool to use. I was sure then that children there wouldn’t have the same amount of intelligence as children living in cities have. However, I was wrong in m judgments. As I had to stay there with my family for some days I took my laptop with me. The two children aged 8-10 had the luck to sit in front of my computer during  those days and as Sugata mentioned they acquired the necessary skills to use it very quickly. The desire to conduct the computer made them learn lots of English words by themselves. Here again I agree with Sugata that children are very self-organized, especially those who are more or less unprivileged.  When I was returning home they said they had two great wishes. First they wanted to have a laptop and then desired to know English well to use it. I doubt  if any child living in the city and obtaining a computer could digest so much information for such a short time.

And the same refers to blogging. There is no point in saying that it’s impossible or just quite difficult to use blogs in language teaching. If given the tool, if given the opportunity our learners can really do a lot. And I quite agree with a “snob blogger” Will Richardson that “through blogs more learning happens” and that “students become network creators”.

I will do my best to become a teacher-blogger, making blogs a part of my practice because blogging is what we need for technology access. With blogging I will promote collaboration among my students, their parents and myself. I do agree with Will Richardson in that by blogging students do a metacognitive thinking and improve their reading and writing skills. I will mostly ask my students to read their peers’ blogs and those of famous bloggers.  By the way, RSS has made the reading process faster by means of which they can collect lots of blogs in one place and save time. Also I will ask the learners to synthesize their ideas and write their stream of thoughts in their blogs. It would also be great to motivate the students with positive feedback and high grades.

THE WORLD IS FLAT

 I have always been taught that  "The world is round". And the the assumption that it would turn to be flat was far too far from my understanding. However, Thomas Friedman's lecture proved to be quite promising.

The World is really flat meaning  that there are no walls, no boundaries. New technological flattenners such as: the Berlin Wall,The Netscape, Workflow, Outsourcing, Fiber-optics and many others contributed to the creation of  the  completely new Universal World which is an open platform where people can collaborate and  work in manyfold ways connecting each others' applications.
Do you imagine what it means to be a TEFL professional at this New technologically developed age with such advanced geniuses as Cameron,Dylan, Dana, Nafiza and Olivia.What struck me most is that those children use their technological skills to do useful jobs: animal protection, movie making, helping peers and professors with their problems etc.

Children,children.....

They really deserve great attention. I am sure that all the children are skillful enough only to  be given the right tools to use. In my turn  I shall encourage  my own children and students  to sit in front of the computer,why not help me with my problems as those children's professors did.  We future teachers should make our classes technologically biased, our students should be guided through the Flat World where technological knowledge is the key core.

ADDICTION

In one of my previous blogposts I was speaking about emotions in general. Now I would like to speak about addiction which is one of the secondary emotions.

Why do people keep doing these damaging things to themselves?  Why  do they lose their dignity and body? What makes the drug so important?

To give answer to this question let’s look at the drugs.They  contain opiets, which kill both physical and emotional sufferings.

                                                    

In our brains we all have receptors for drugs. As we have natural opietes which are called endorphines. Endorphins are necessary to reduceb overjoy, thrilling, reward. If one hag flood of endorphins in his brain, he would be addicted to drugs and many other dangerous activities.Endorphins connect infant to parent. When a baby is looking into his mother’s eyes, endorphins move in his brain. Endorphins are molecules of love.If they are knocked out, the baby wouldn’t get upset if separated from his mother. There swould be no feelings.

Dopamine is another chemical which is involved in addiction. It is also necessary for human life. It makes us curious of something. It makes us explore, it gives us motivation and excitement.looking for food increases dopamine level  for 50%.

The drugs are not addictive in themselves just like a pack of cards.

 One can try but not get addicted. When a person is destressed easily, he then can easily be addicted. It is a means to relieve stress.

It’s also important to control impulse. Impulses are motivations to do something. There is something in the brain that says”ah, not a good idea to do it.”

When a person is addicted, he doesn’t have impulse control in himself.

Therefore, there are four essential brain cicuits: opients, which are  love, connection, reward, pain, relief, dopamine: motivation, curiosity, sense of being alive, impulse control and stress control.

 They should neither be limited not to be emotionless, nor overloaded not to get addicted! 

Always BE HAPPY and in a GOOD MIND STATE!

Sickle Cell Trait

                                                                               

I want to represent a podcast  entitled “Athletics trainers warn about dangers of sickle cell trait”  Gary Mihoces speaks on sickle cell trait which  describes a condition in which a person has one abnormal allele of the hemoglobin beta gene. Sickle cell trait prevalence is highest in West Africa (25% of the population). However, it also very infrequently appears in Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Greece, and Spain, where it most likely expanded via the selective pressure of malaria, a disease that was endemic to the region. It  It says that two twin  sportsmen brothers Devard  and his brother Devaughn Darlings suffered from this blood condition.One of the brothers died and the other wants to save lives of thousands of people including himself.Devard advises to take precautions. It said that sicke cell trait is a benign condition outside of an intense, sustained physical activity.The sickle cell gene is inherited, it is so common in people originating from malarial regions especially in West Africa. During exertion[igzysyn]sickle cells can change red blood cells from round to sicke- shaped creating a “logjam’in blood vessels and kill. Nine athletes died in during the previous seven years, including 5 colledge football players during their participation.  

Heat, dehydration, altitude and asthma can increase the risk of sickling.It trecommends cessation of activity when there are symptoms such as cramping, pain, swelling and shortness of breath.

Devard says that his brother died during the training. The teammates say, that at that time Devaughn couldn’t see and was  blacking out. Clearly, there were signs for him to stop.He advises young athletes to know their limitations. It’s important to stay hydrated. They need a little rest.

They say that out of 10-12 Africans carry sickle cell trait.

My advice to all the athletes in the world: Be Attentive. Train a lot but find time to relax when you start to feel exhausted.

This is a useful sickle cell trait recommendation link.If You're interested you may use it.

http://www.sicklecelldisease.org/index.cfm?page=sickle-cell-trait-athletics

EMOTIONS!!!

 I've listened to Dr Phillippe Goldin's podcast where he is speaking about emotions,their origin and types.

He started with history. Darwin said that animals need emotions to survive, so do people.They need fear as a trigger to escape predators and aggression to defend their territory. So emotions are maintained from our animal past.People rely on emotions to make complex decisions.

Emotions help to direct our attention, they help to enhance our memory,it helps to organize our behaviour and our orientation towards other people,It helps to drive social approach within social avoidance.Emotions help to develop moral and ethical behaviour.When emotions function well -they bring  to  an adaptive system, when emotions fail to function and are disregulated they can bring to tragedy. 

 There are different classes of emotion and the six basic or primary ones are:happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, anger.

The sense of well-being is contrasted to malaise,sense of calmness to tension and pain to pleasure.

There are also social emotions or secondary  that deal with social interactions:embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, shame, pride.

I'm Ashamed

I'm Disgusted

I'm Embarrassed

I'm Frightened

I'm Guilty

I'm Happy

I'm proud

I'm Sad

I'm Surprised

I'm Angry

Emotions are obviously expressed.There are more than 600 words in English to describe different emotions,42 muscles in our faces to express emotions, The identification of different facial expressions is cross cultural.

Emotions are an important source of information and feedback that help to direct our behaviour and social interactions.Emotions are really contributing to cognitive processes, to decision making.Emotions can go from normal degree to the extreme.As e.g from sadness to depression,from anger to unprovoked aggression, pleasure can lead to addiction,Fear can become an anxiety, phobia, panic.And worry, being out of control can turn to anxiety disorder.

http://www.english-at-home.com/vocabulary/english-word-for-emotions/

This is a useful link to find emotion words there!!!!