Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Idiomas sem Fronteiras: Brazilian Government special program for language learners
Good News for all language learners and teachers in Brazil. The Brazilian Government has launched a program called 'Idiomas sem Fronteiras' (something as 'Languages without borders') that aims at linguistic development of college students, professors and also language teachers at public schools. The program will offer on-line classes and possibly the opportunity for an exchange experience. Besides English, the program includes French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, Italian, German and also Portuguese for foreigners students.
For more information, check the link:
Marcadores:
Education,
English,
Idiomas sem fronteiras,
News,
Teaching
Saturday, October 20, 2012
The Ducks Go Gangnam Style (or 'what's meaningful learning?')
When I got back from Oregon after taking part on the ELCP course (read more here), one of my first actions was to talk to my students about the experience of living in the US and studying in an American University.
And, of course, I couldn't talk about the University of Oregon without mentioning "the Duck", the symbol and mascot of UO football team. The kids loved that and all the stories that followed.
That was six months ago. But, to my surprise, last Friday, the 'duck' subject arose again. One of my students come to me saying 'hey teacher, do you remember the Oregon duck you talked about? I saw it dancing 'Gangnam Style!'.
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| Psy and the Duck: who has more style? |
At first it sounded like an hallucination and I thought to myself 'what's this boy talking about?', but he explained before I could ask: he had seen a viral video on the Internet featuring the Oregon Duck performing the song 'Gangnam Style', an international mega-hit by the Korean pop singer PSY.
So, what's all of this has to do with teaching or learning? Well, in my view what we call 'learning' is the capability of making connections between different aspects of our experience as 'living thinking beings'. Some connections are really obvious, and based on that, we teachers create our expectations over our students as a minimum curriculum. But some connections go beyond our expectations, which leads to the creative thinking. Of course, this happens on a very personal level, but the quality of the 'input' we offer to our students is crucial for that. The more diverse this input is, the more creative can these connections be.
And then we have marvelous (maybe miraculous...) coincidences like this: a singer in Korea has this song that happens to be a worldwide phenomenon; it echoes on an Oregonian mind who comes up with this parody, that's heard and seen in a small city in the countryside of Brazil by a young boy, who had previously learned about the Oregon Ducks from his teacher and talks back to him, who's now writing about this and coming up with some ideas for a lesson plan, which means that the echo will go further and, therefore, more connections will be made.
By teaching, we learn. By learning, we teach. Both ways we make connections; both ways we get connected...
You may also like: Lyrics that aren't lyrics
Monday, October 15, 2012
Happy Teacher's Day
October 15th, Teacher's Day in Brazil. On a personal level, I have a lot to celebrate. I really enjoy teaching and I have very smart and nice students. But generally speaking, we teachers don't have much to cheer about.
Our Educational System still have a lot to improve and we lack more serious and long term investments. Not to mention all the obstacles educators usually have to face.
And I think that's what makes me keep a little optimistic: even with all these difficulties, we still have commited and hardworking teachers.
Believers? They might be. But by believing, they make me believe.
Happy teacher's day!
Sunday, October 7, 2012
PBS: Positive Behavior Support
Have you ever given any kind of reward to your students for an accomplished task? What about giving them a prize for a positive attitude they had?
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| Behave well and get the Prize |
Marcadores:
Approach,
Education,
ELCP,
PBS,
Positive Behavior Support,
strategies,
Teaching,
UO
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Why is English in the news in Brazil?
'Veja', one of the most popular weekly magazines in Brazil, has dedicated its cover story this week to discuss the importance of learning English for a successful career in different areas.
In order to do that, the story presents some people reporting the problems, benefits and difficulties they had while trying to learn English. It also brings some basic tips about how to deal with false friends and even a Language quiz.
But behind of all the usual stuff there's this uneasy data showing that, generally speaking, the Brazilian results on international English exams are poor.
That's not surprising, if we consider that Education as a whole in Brazil has a lot to improve. We still lack maturity in many aspects. Believe it or not, even today we can find teenagers who underestimate the value that learning English could add to their formation. They rely on technology, like Google Translator, for their basic everyday needs and don't seem to care about communicating effectively. Maybe that's the reason why Veja's story emphasizes that adults still can succeed on language learning. Adults surely understand what our kids don't.
Now that Brazil is economically stronger and about to hold the Fifa World Cup and the Olympics, there's this increasingly worry about the lack of qualified personnel who can really communicate in English.
And that's how the topic became a cover subject. Many companies have to invest in their staff, but we all know that learning a language takes a little time. And on business, time means productivity and profit.
For us teachers all this situation might mean great job opportunities, but it also means a lot of hard work.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
American High Schools: Small Schools Initiative
As I mentioned before, I had the opportunity of visiting some American public schools while taking part on ELCP program at the University of Oregon/U.S. (click here to learn more) 
The first school I visited was North Eugene High School. With a very big and impressive building and a project based curriculum, North Eugene has a very interesting approach to deal with discipline and to help the students to build their values and principles (I'll write about it on my next post).
On the video bellow, you can watch excerpts of North Eugene's principal lecture about how its curriculum is organized. It also includes some pics of the school visit.
The main points here are:
1. Bill Gates and the 'Small Schools Initiative': how Bill Gates' ideas of having schools that don't have more than 400 students have been adapted to fit local communities needs.
2. School Personalization: How the Curriculum in North Eugene High School was remolded considering under this perspective;
3. The advantages of Personalization on Education.
Marcadores:
Education,
High School,
Small Schools Initiative
Saturday, August 18, 2012
English Language Certificate Program for Brazilian Teachers
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| Chalk Talk during a teaching workshop |
I also had the chance to learn a little about the North American Educational System, visiting public schools and talking to American principals and teachers, which undoubtfully broaden my view on Education in general.
And of course, there are all these wonderful people I had the privilege to meet: the great UO staff, the other international students, the friendly Eugenean people and my unforgettable Brazilian fellows.
On my next posts, I'll share a bit of what I learned during the program.
And to give you a glimpse of what it was like living in Eugene, Or and the effect this experience had over me, I'll leave you with two songs.
The first one, "Back in Eugene", which I wrote the day after my arrival back to Brazil, is about how I was feeling (actually, how I still feel...) about everything that had happened.
The second one, called "Sweet Eugene", had its lyrics written by a fellow participant (Mr. Flávio "Nickel Noisy", who has a very nice blog about English Language and Culture that you can check by clicking here) and I was given the opportunity to turn it into a song whose result I'm really proud of. It is about our routine and all the places we could visit during our stay in Eugene.
Enjoy it!
Marcadores:
Back in Eugene,
Education,
ELCP,
Experience,
Opportunity,
Sweet Eugene,
Teaching,
University of Oregon,
UO
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Managing your classes with a free app for Ipad
Looking for a tool that can help you to manage your classes? So I strongly recommend that you check the 'Teacher KIT' FREE app for Ipad.
Previously known as "TeacherPal", the app was renamed after its last update, but it still keeps the same functionalities as described bellow.
Previously known as "TeacherPal", the app was renamed after its last update, but it still keeps the same functionalities as described bellow.
Once you have created your course timetable and registered your students, you can take attendance by simply clicking on the icon with the students' name or picture (yes, there's this very nice feature that allows you to add students to their profiles).
It's also possible to include students or parents contact information.
You can establish grades and their weights. And if you're worried about losing this important data, you can at anytime upload it to Itunes or send a report with the details to your email, on a spreadsheet that the app automatically generates.
If you teach private classes and have to manage your own groups, 'Teacher Kit' is really worth a try.
Check out this video for more details:
Marcadores:
app,
Education,
Ipad,
Mobile Learning,
Teaching,
technology,
tools
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Mobile phones in the classroom
The idea was to use the students own mobile phones to record themselves asking and answering some questions based on a reading activity they had previously done. It was also part of a project I developed while taking part in the English Language Certificate Program at the University of Oregon, in Eugene/Or during this winter.
The result was satisfactory for a first try, although I need to work a lot more on the methodology.
Check out this video with images of my students performing their tasks:
And I hope you like The Ramones...
***
Unfortunately, due some copyright issues with the song "Rock'n'roll High School" (performed by The Ramones) which I used as a soundtrack for the video, it's not available to mobile devices, which is a great irony. I also can't make any changes on the video, except for deleting it. I apologize for that. The video is really funny.
And youtube, you're not a punk rocker. =/
Marcadores:
Bring your own device,
BYOD,
Classroom,
Education,
English,
Experience,
Methods,
Mobile Learning,
Pedagogy,
project,
students,
teacher,
Teaching,
technology,
video
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Using mobile devices in the classroom
A week ago, the British educator Steve Wheeler posted on Twitter the following crucial question:
Maybe it's just a matter of time as we're still learning how to deal with all this tech issues, but by now we should have something else than just this talk of the potential of technology on Education.
In the Brazilian case, I'd say that we have bits of technology and even smaller pieces of pedagogy. Yes, we have a few computers at our schools and the students have their own gadgets, like smartphones, but I haven't seen it at work the way it should. In São Paulo, for instance, there's a State law forbidding the use of mobile phones in schools. But what if a teacher could create a learning situation in which a mobile gadget would be useful? Isn't it a paradox that they don't allow the use of the most common and handy device and still claim that more technology should be part of the school routines? Of course, there are many reasons Mobile Phones can cause trouble in the classroom, but the fact is that the students do bring their mobiles, even though they're not allowed. So, why don't we use them?
On this direction, there's this BYOD (bring your own device) trend, which I've been looking at with some enthusiasm. And I gave it a first try this past week. I asked my students at the public school where I teach to record themselves and a classmate saying a few sentences out loud. And to do that they had to use their mobile phones. I even recorded myself saying the sentences out loud and shared the file from my mobile to theirs via bluetooth technology. It wasn't the most revolutionary thing in the world but it worked. It was a pretty cool class.
And yes, I'm sorry that I broke a State law...
We have the technology. Do we have the pedagogy?My answer to this question would be 'no', although we're struggling hard to find it. And as far as I can see reading blogs & tweets on the web, this is a global concern.
Maybe it's just a matter of time as we're still learning how to deal with all this tech issues, but by now we should have something else than just this talk of the potential of technology on Education.
 |
| No Mobile Phones allowed in São Paulo - Brazil |
In the Brazilian case, I'd say that we have bits of technology and even smaller pieces of pedagogy. Yes, we have a few computers at our schools and the students have their own gadgets, like smartphones, but I haven't seen it at work the way it should. In São Paulo, for instance, there's a State law forbidding the use of mobile phones in schools. But what if a teacher could create a learning situation in which a mobile gadget would be useful? Isn't it a paradox that they don't allow the use of the most common and handy device and still claim that more technology should be part of the school routines? Of course, there are many reasons Mobile Phones can cause trouble in the classroom, but the fact is that the students do bring their mobiles, even though they're not allowed. So, why don't we use them?
 |
| A student using her own device during the English class. |
And yes, I'm sorry that I broke a State law...
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