The Sunshine Award

This morning I could hardly wake up, I felt exhausted, it was cloudy in the city of light and just when I switched on my computer to follow the latest news, I read that our "dear" Spanish Education Minister has finally decided to impose an education reform, LOMCE, which has been widely rejected. So, the Sunshine Award came at the perfect time from a talented teacher and blogger I look up to very much for all the effort, energy and heart she puts in everything she does! She and her students write on their blog Stop and Learn English where they create and share their everyday learning and practices.

Thank you very much, Mª Jesus, for bringing me some extra sunshine today and thinking of my blog for this award! You definitely made my day! Who doesn't like a little recognition now and then?

The Sunshine Award is an award given to bloggers by other bloggers. It is given to ...

Bloggers who are positive and creatively inspire others in the blogosphere.

Now do you understand how honoured I feel?

Well, as with other similar awards, there are certain rules to keep to:

Rule 1.  Post the Sunshine Award logo on your blog.
Rule 2.  Nominate 5 to 10 other wonderful  bloggers.
Rule 3.  Announce their nomination in their blog’s comment section.
Rule 4 .Mention links back to their blog, including a link to the person who nominated you.
Rule 5. Answer seven questions about yourself.  This is designed to help people get to know you better.

And my nominees are .... (Drums roll sound):

Think and Dream in English by Pilar Pamblanco for the great amount of ESL resources and interesting news on education and technology she shares on her blog. Thanks for all your support and help on Twitter as well!

EFL SMARTBlog by David Mainwood also deserves this awards because he always shares useful lesson plans which include interesting resources from the net.

My First Blog by María Luisa Sánchez for her great work on encouraging little children and parents to learn English together in a fun way using ICT and other resources to develop creativity.

Movie Segments to Assess Grammar Goals by Claudio Azevedo for his contribution to make language learning through films more meaningful and sharing activities which work in class for him.

Collablogatorium by Carla Arena, always ready to share tips, her thoughts and reflections on EFL learning, teaching practice and technology integration.

Lengüetazos literarios by Silvia Gongo, Una tiza y tú by Carmen González, Educadores Hoy by Isabel Ruiz and Canada Blanch by Mercedes Ruiz (in Spanish), teachers from different subjects, from different educative levels, from different regions, joined for their passion to share, collaborate and change education and the way students learn. Thank you very much for teaching me so much! That would had been impossible without Twitter!

Educación y Virtualidad by Cristóbal Suárez (in Spanish) for your thought-provoking posts on education, collaboration, open learning and ICT. Thank you very much for encouraging me to start blogging when I thought I didn't have anything interesting to share. I have learnt so much from you!

Some things about me...

1. Favourite colour. 
I love purple! For me it's the colour of dreams, it makes me feel calm and usually is one of the best colours on me. 

2. Favourite animal. 
I can't choose one. Can you? So... cats, dogs, horses and dolphins and mythically speaking, dragons.

3. Favourite number. 
Maybe 8?

4. Favourite non-alcoholic drink. 
That's easy! A lovely cup of coffee to wake me up in the morning or enjoy with friends somewhere.

5. Favourite alcoholic drink. 
I'm not a great fan of alcoholic drinks, but it depends on the moment. I always enjoy a glass of wine with some delicious "pintxos" and friends. However, if I go to a party (something I don't do lately... I'm getting old!), I prefer a mojito, a daiquiri cocktail or a chilled champagne sorbet.

6. Facebook or Twitter. 
Well, definitely, Twitter has had a great impact on my teaching life, on my way of understanding education, of collaborating with others, sharing, learning and be informed. Twitter is the gateway to reflection, discussion, resources, free online chats and webinars. What else? Well, this is just my personal experience. I think the Twitter experience is different for everyone, so look for your own one!

7. My passions. 
My family and good friends, travelling, dancing salsa, walking along the beach, sunny days, reading and watching films, new experiences and adventures, writing on my blog when possible, cooking, photography, and of course teaching!

8. Giving or receiving gifts? 
Honestly, both of them make me happy and smile. However, something I find a little bit stressful is trying to find a present for someone just because it's a special day (birthday, Christmas day...). Any day is good to give and receive presents, isn't it?

9. Favourite city or country?
This is one of the most difficult questions for me to answer. I can't choose just one! As a mentioned before, I love travelling and I always discover something marvellous, surprising in any city or country I visit.

I love London, its modern and historical arquitecture, its museums, its lively atmosphere and cosmopolitan lifestyle; Peru, a country full of surprises. Coast, mountains, desert and jungle, all in one place. I love its food and people as well! Greece, what can I say about Greece? It's an amazing country full of culture, sandy beaches, great food and people.

I wish I could travel to all the places I dream of, and take my family and friends with me!

10. Favourite book?
Impossible to choose one, once more! I love reading, it's one of my favourite pastimes. So, some of my favourite books are The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Elogio de la madrastra by Mario Vargas Llosa, El túnel by Ernesto Sábato or Cuentos by Julio Ramón Ribeyro. I also love reading and attending poetry readings, and going to the theatre.

Congratulations to all my nominees! Now it's your turn to spread the positive flow and send the sunshine to other fantastic and inspiring bloggers!  

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Docking at the Right Harbour

Have you ever had problems to find useful resources on the net for teaching English? Have you ever wonder what are the best ESL/EFL resources, the best Edubloggers in the English teaching field? Many times when we want to use Internet as an education tool, we get lost due to the great amount of information contained on the net. In order to avoid this, Gorka Palazio, professor of the University of the Basque Country, has developed two great sites: English Harbour and English Tube.

English Harbour, a RSS website where you will find a selection of the best content for English teachers and students. This tool captures the last posts of top English edubloggers. Therefore, you can be up to date with these teachers' experiences in the classroom and with advances in new technologies applied to English teaching. But the advantage of visiting English Harbour is not only to read interesting post written by other ESL/EFL teachers or ELT proffessionals, but also to interact with those teachers who are interested in the same topics that you are. In this way, we are contributing to create a real learning virtual community, which can be expanded Twitter. The URL of Twitter is English Harbour.

However, if you are looking for new resources, English Tube can add visual spice to your University lessons mainly. After class, your students can continue learning English at home, in a cyber café or wherever they wish, watching videos on this site. The videos, which have been taken from the major video services such as Youtube, Blip, Vimeo, Veoh or Metacafe, are organized by level (beginner, intermediate and advanced) and by skills (grammar, listening, speaking and writing).

One thing I love about English Tube is that its content is really well-organized. Besides, it is an interactive site in which students can leave their comments on the videos they have watched. I hope that this is only the first step to expand and create a bigger English Tube full of videos for primary and secondary students, as well. A great idea would be that all those useful videos included subtitles, and there was an option to show or hide them depending on the student's English level.

Expocampus 09 Palazio

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Top Ten for Education. Number 2 is for Blogs.

As Tiscar Lara says in "Cuadernos de Comunicación e Innovación" magazine, 'Weblogs have a great potential as a tool in the educational field since they can adapt to any discipline, educational level, or teaching method'. Besides, what makes weblogs attractive for ESL/EFL educators is that students can take control of their learning process, express their ideas and interact with their teachers and other students in their same class or in English speaking countries. Therefore, students are exposed to real language what is really stimulating for them since they feel English is something real and not something they can only use in the English classroom.

But, what is a weblog or blog?

A blog is a free personal website where a person or a group of people usually write posts, include videos, personal opinions, slideshares, links, photos, gadgets, news, I mean, it is like a personal online diary. However, blogs were not created for education but they give teachers a great amount of possibilities to interact with the students, to motivate them with activities the teacher adds to the blog. Blogs have become a collaborative tool for information exchange and reflection on the topics studied in the classroom.

Nevertheless, a blog should not be just something for students to do when a teacher doesn´t know what to do in the classroom but a tool for achieving the persued learning goals. Effective teachers have to give simple and clear explanations if they want their students accomplish the activities in a successful way.

Teachers can use all kind of resources for the activities: videos, photographs, comics, website links for carrying out a researching task, etc. However, teachers have to organize, categorize and order resources to avoid "cognitive overflow". If we ask our students to search information for an specific topic on the net they can get lost since they can find a lot of information on the net but they cannot distinguish between high quality and low quality sources. A blog allows teachers to organize information through categories, structure information in an easy and quick way.

Advantages of using a blog with your ESL/EFL students

1. Teachers can interact with their students in the target language outside the classroom in an easy and fast way.

2. It is a way to give voice to your students to express their opinions, ideas and upload the work they have done in class, for example.

3. Students are actively involved in their learning process.

4. Teachers in non-English speaking countries, thanks to the net, can have access to real material for their classes and include it on the class blog.

5. Teachers can expand their classroom boundaries and their students can go on working wherever they want.

6. Students can get 'feedback' on their works from the teacher.

Ideas to use a blog outside the classroom

1. Divide your students in small groups (3-5 students per group) and ask them to create a blog for publishing the project they have been working on. Create a questionaire to know how your students have worked, if they have enjoyed the activity, what they have learnt, etc.

2. With adult students, you can organize and international classroom language exchange with other English teachers to know cultural similarities and differences with British, French, American or Portugues people, for example.

3. After a reading and discussion in class you can ask your students to create a new story using stripes, they can draw the story or use Toondoo for doing this task. After that, they have to publish them on the blog and other students have to decide which story is the best.

4. After introducing a reading about London city, you can tell your students they are going to London only for three days in July. They have to work in small groups. London is a very big city, therefore, they cannot visit all the interesting places there. They have to decide when are they going to visit London, what kind of clother are they going to take in their suitcases (you can include a link to a weather report website from U.K), what places are they going to visit (include a London guide website), where are they going to stay (bed&breakfasts, hotels, hostels, Inns, etc). They have to interact with the other students to take all these decisions. When they have finished the research, they have to publish a summary on the blog. With this activity they can review vocabulary (clothes, weather) and grammar (going to).

5. You can provide your students with a reading from the web uploading it to the blog and ask them to write a summary.

You can find more information in More Blog Ideas.

Disadvantages of using a blog with your students.

1. Not all students have internet access at home.

2. Not all students have a homogeneous NTIC knowledge.

If you are interested in this topic you should visit this Web 2.0 in the Classroom Blog entry called "Using Blogs to Promote Authentic Learning in the Classroom"and "Blogging for ELT" by Graham Stanley. They really worth!

Would you like to integrate blogs in your English classes? 

You are always welcome to contribute with your ideas!!

Next: Top Ten for Education. Number 3 is for Voicethread.

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