Survey!

Here is the survey we did with Macarena Albornoz


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bEygdic_Go0LCzgb2YKc9PLeTInOtzjwif9NYEejYME/edit?hl=en_US

Open Course ware

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/9-57j-language-acquisition-fall-2001/

This is OUR topic as Teachers of a foreign language. It would be interesting to know a little bit more about this.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/9-98-language-and-mind-january-iap-2003/

(This is also related to the previous one)

http://ocw.usu.edu/education/research-for-the-classroom-teacher/index.html
Really interesting ...It might help us with our thesis.

An Open Mind

While Reading this article I could not find any significant flaw in the Project.  It has many advantages for many people who do not have the enough resources to go to college and want to expand their knowledge about certain topics. Every person with an internet connection can get access to these extraordinary courses which are intended to be seen by everyone willing to learn something. It opens the “education doors” to the people who could not get a college education, elder people interesting into learning, etc. Today, almost everyone has internet access and it would really help to increase the society’s level of knowledge.

Another advantage this project has is that it helps teachers in different ways: First of all it helps teachers to complement their lessons with these lectures which can clarify some specific topic to students. On the other hand It helps these lecturers to improve their teaching methods and strategies, so the people who is watching these videos and getting these written or oral lessons is getting good quality information.

One “flaw” of this project is that the people who is learning through these Open Course Ware is not getting any kind of grades or certificates of what they have (supposedly) learnt. It does not give any formal certificate; people can take the courses but not “graduate” from them. This is a disadvantage for the people learning through this method but otherwise it would not be beneficial to the Universities that give the courses because in that case no one would go to College.

Another flaw that it may have several years from now, if this project continues, is that it would probably eliminate the contact between teacher and students. It would probably turn teaching into a technological relationship which is not good at all. We, as human beings, have to have social relationships among us; it is vital and crucial to our natural development.

Technology Rubric

Here is it the link to our rubric about technology
Hope you all like it.

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&rubric_id=2068872

WEBSITE ANALYSIS

Grammar translation v/s behaviorism

What we are going to do now is try to find some concrete samples of grammar translation and behaviorism in some website that I am going to mention. All of these websites are related to the learning of a new language.


Let's see...


First of all , we are going to analyze an Italian website called Free Italian course for beginners , which "teach" Italian to English speakers. (http://www.abruzzo2000.com/course/)


At first blush and what caught my attention the most was that there is no introduction , there is no welcoming to the people who visit the page, therefore we can start wherever we want to.

Clearly, if we go to its different explanations, we can see that it definetely a grammar transaliton method of "teaching"; every explanation that it has is in both languages which does not make the visitor think or try to infer what is it about.
In addition to it , there are many excercises which are just vocabulary excercises  and nothing about experiencing with long phrases excercises or with something more complex. There is just one level ( begginer)


The Second webpage that we can analyze is the one that teaches Spanish to English speakers. http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/cardnum1.htm

Here we cal also observe that all the explanations are in English and there is just one type of excercise in very topic which is grammar transaltion, eventhough we can practice every skill.




To conclude, there are different types of websites and different methodologies to teach a language but most of them at least the ones we analyzed today, they are just focused on grammar translation which is the easiest way to sort of "apprach" a language to students but we have to bear in mind that it' s not the best way to achieve meaningful and real leraning.

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