Learning English Through Music

LEARNING ENGLISH THROUGH

My first experience in an English speaking country was right after I finished highschool. I spent 8 months in Dallas, Texas, studying english at Brookhaven college. My English from school was not good at all so when I found myself surounded by English spakers and ONLY English spakers I had to find my own ways to improve my English in order to be able to communicate. The best way I could think of was using my discman and earplogs and play my favourite bands songs and translate all the lyrics. The results were great! I got to learn a lot and it was not hard at all, I enjoyed every second. So, as I considere it a wonderful learning method regarding languages, I did some research and I found this two web sites that I recommend you to check out. Your English regarding vocabulary, pronuntiation and listening will improve for sure.

In this first link you will find quizes, lyrics and song videos. Click here and improve your English while learning more about your favourites songs!

And here is a web site that focuses on english IDIOMS and how to learn them through songs.

Please feel free to comment about this method and add any article or website about it. Have a great day!

This Book Is The Milk

THIS BOOK IS THE MILK

Hi everyone!

As we have seen, one of the goals of using technologies for educational purposes is to help students learn in a funny, enjoyable and entertaining way and distance them from the traditional teaching methods since by having fun when learning, students remember everything in a better way. In this sense, I have found an incredible interview about a new book called This Book Is The Milk, written by Damián Mollá and Alberto Alonso, which tries to make the reader realize he/she knows more English than it seems. In order to do that, we are told eight different methods to teach English in a way students enjoy themselves.

For example, one method is to take advantage of globalization and all the products with English names to learn this language. Then, some Spanish people may wonder how 'picadura' is said in English and they are not aware of the fact that they already know the answer because when a mosquito hurts you, you use a product called 'Afterbite', so here we have the answer: 'picadura' is 'bite'.

Moreover, there is a section in the book where readers are provided with some useful pieces of advice to learn English which (in general) imply the use of technologies. For instance, some are to watch tv in original version, play games in the playstation in English, such as the FIFA, checking the lyrics of our favourite English songs, meeting foreign people, etc...

Hence, if you are interested in non-traditional teaching methods which might or might not include the use of technologies, have a look at this interview.

Web 2.0

This is an experiment, yes, that's what we're doing, we're investigating how to apply new technologies to teaching. We are experimenting with wikis, blogs, Secon Life, Facebook, Skype... even Twitter can become a useful tool too. But, Is there something else out there we are missing? Are these all we can use? Certainly there must be many other sites, services and applications we could be using.

According to Wikipedia (a Wiki site, by the way, as we are experimenting with these tools it seems suitable that we use them too) Web 2.0 services are based on the following characteristics.

Search

Finding information through keyword search.

Links

Connects information together into a meaningful information ecosystem using the model of the Web, and provides low-barrier social tools.

Authoring

The ability to create and update content leads to the collaborative work of many rather than just a few web authors. In wikis, users may extend, undo and redo each other's work. In blogs, posts and the comments of individuals build up over time.

Tags

Categorization of content by users adding "tags"—short, usually one-word descriptions—to facilitate searching, without dependence on pre-made categories. Collections of tags created by many users within a single system may be referred to as "folksonomies" (i.e., folk taxonomies).

Extensions

Software that makes the Web an application platform as well as a document server. These include software like Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash player, Microsoft Silverlight, ActiveX, Oracle Java, QuickTime, Windows Media, etc.

Signals

The use of syndication technology such as RSS to notify users of content changes.

From this information we can easily define Web 2.0 services as web sites based on an exchange of information between 'authors', which would be the 'teachers' in our experiment and the 'receivers', that is, the 'students'. In order to make this exchange of information easier, there are searching devices to look for the information based on tags and it can be enhanced through the use of links to other sites that may contain more information related to the topic at hand. They require certain software in order to support different kinds of files and sometimes they also have a feed system to notify the users when new contents are published.

With all these characteristics, who could argue that Web 2.0 services, and therefore CSCL, is not a good teaching or learning method?

Pros and Cons of Wikis and Blogs (Wiki Pros)

WIKIS PROS

Wikis or blogs?

Wikis or blogs? 

After experiencing first-hand how blogs and wikis work, I feel there are some positive and negative aspects that should be mentioned. 

From a general point of view, I think some advantages they both share are: they are free and virtual (so it may encourage people to create one or participate); they are useful tools to help us make use of technologies in a deep way; and they provide people with information and allow them to share their thoughts or doubts, so they can communicate. However, a disadvantage would be that, like any other virtual element, there is always a risk of hacking. 

Now, if we analyse them from an educational perspective, we can see that blogs and wikis help students develop their creativity because they play an active role, they are the ones in charge of the blog or the wiki, so the care of them depends on them. Also, in these blogs and wikis they can work in groups, so they learn to collaborate and they can understand their classmates’ viewpoints thanks to the possible discussions and debates that can take place. Nevertheless, if students are not responsible, the blogs or wikis will inevitably fail. In addition, I believe some students might not feel motivated because they think the best way to learn is in class, physically, with the teacher, not virtually. 

Now I’m going to talk about wikis and blogs separately:

With respect to wikis, I really love the fact that we can create different pages with several and distinct information in a very ordered and organized way. Actually, people can find the section they want to look at very easily. In our case, in our wiki Learningenglishisfun3, each of us have a page and there are some others for different aspects: second life, research questions, comments and doubts, etc. Moreover, they are very easy to update. Although I have been dealing with wikis for a few time, I have come to like it so much. In fact, one of the reasons why I like it is the fact that it is rather easy to use (and this is quite important especially for people qho are bad at technologies like me).

Regarding blogs, I hate their structure; that is, for instance, when a blog has several entries, you can spend ages trying to find the one you are interested in (contrary to what happens with wikis). Blogs are also easy to employ, but in comparison to wikis, I find them more difficult to invite people to become members/editors of the blog.

Finally, now that I know the wikis, I prefer them to blogs because they are more practical and even simple, though elaborated at the same time. I would also like to mention that I would use wikis in work group, whereas I feel blogs should be used individually.

P.S.-Here you have a video about wikis and blogs where we are provided with some tips and information. 

Blog vs. Wikispace

Blogs and Wikispace: differences

Computer-Supported Collaborative System (CSCL) tends to imply several technologies such as blogs or wikispace. In this respect, it should be claimed that people have difficulties to explain the differences between these two systems. 

To begin, it can be asserted that both blogs and wikis belong to Web 2.0, i.e. the second generation of the web history which is based on distinct users' communities and a wide range of online applications and services. In addition, it would be interesting to mention that the name 'Web 2.0' was chosen by Tim O'Reilly in 2004. 

Nevertheless, blogs and wikis have some distinct characteristics. On the one hand, with respect to blogs, it may be pointed out that users utilise them more and more since they found it easy to create and update them. Also, blogs allow users to write comments in posts and upload photographs and videos. As for the educational context, learners can employ blogs in order to improve their second language by reading posts written in different languages, for instance. In this sense, there are three types of blogs: the one employed by the teacher to provide students with different general ideas about the course and, hence, the students can only write comments; the one which belongs to the whole class and, therefore, everybody can publish posts related to the topics studied in class; and the one of the learner, which is created by each student so as to express his/her interests. On the other hand, in relation to wiki, created by Ward Cunningham, is a tool based on some pages written by different users. In addition, the users can create, modify and delete some pages after their creation. Nowadays, the most famous and well-known wiki is Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia built thanks to the collaboration of many people. Wiki, in a similar way to blogs, can be applied to the learning process. In this respect, teachers would create the home page to welcome learners as well as to explain the activities that should be carried out. One of the most relevant problems wiki has is related to the fact that learners work collaboratively and they have to decide the final product, i.e. the final version of the wiki, and sometimes they may not come to an agreement. Finally, If you are interested in the similarities and differences between blogs and wikis, it could be a good idea to see the following picture:

Personally speaking, I should admit that I have utilised blogs rather than wikis. In fact, I wrote a blog -called Une croisière sur la Méditerranée- for learning purposes since I had to do a presentation in the French course at university. In this respect, I believe it is easy to create a blog since including pictures and videos is not a difficult task. As regards wikis, even though I have employed Wikipedia from time to time, I did not know this online encyclopaedia was a wiki. Currently, I am creating a wiki with three classmates called 'Learningenglishisfun3'. After using these services, I feel blogs are easier to employ than wikis since my classmates and I have had several difficulties when logging in our wiki, for example. However, from my point of view, wiki is more interesting than blogs  due to the fact that users can share impressions and exchange ideas.