ICTs in Eductation

Nowadays, the process of learning in educative institutions has been integrating new technologies like software, web pages, and social pages as virtual and educative platforms that are other tools in class to strengthen system of education.

Technologies of the Information and communication are useful tools in the current academic environments, they can allow teachers to create new sources, and also, they are necessary to prepare young people to play full roles in modern society.

Some of the helpful software that we can involve in our classes is The Hot Potatoes that is a dynamic tool to create interactive Web-based teaching exercises. This includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project you like.

· The JQuiz program creates question-based quizzes. Questions can be of four different types, including multiple-choice and short-answer. Specific feedback can be provided both for right answers and predicted wrong answers or distractors.

· The JCloze program creates gap-fill exercises. Unlimited correct answers can be specified for each gap, and the student can ask for a hint and see a letter of the correct answer.

· The JCross program creates crossword puzzles which can be completed online. You can use a grid of virtually any size. As in JQuiz and JCloze, a hint button allows the student to request a free letter if help is needed.

· The JMix program creates jumbled-sentence exercises.

· The JMatch program creates matching or ordering exercises. A list of fixed items appears on the left (these can be pictures or text), with jumbled items on the right.

What do you think about ICTs (Information and Communication Technology) in the academical process?

Shall we give blogging a try?

We have learned how to set up a blog, we have been participating in our own blog with the aim of getting familiar with it. Now it is time to think how feasible it is for you to start a class blog, considering your own context.

I´ve found a blog created by an English teacher in Australia. The name of the blog is The open classroom. I invite you to read the post called blogging in class in 2008. There she tells us about her experience blogging with her students and links us to some samples of her grade 8 and 7 blogs, which I think you should not miss. Take your time to explore some of her previous posts and you will find useful information that can in some way contribute to open our minds to the possibility of using this tool.

It would also be of great value if you shared with us other teachers´ experiences with class blogs that you have come across.

NEURO LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING (NLP) AND TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS.

There is a bigh relation between Neuro Linguistic Programing (NLP) and the teaching-learning process, In this case, Zorica Antić from Faculty of Medicine, Niš, SerbiaBriefly, give us some characteristics of NLP approach to teaching and learning.

• The teacher- learner relationship is a cybernetic loop, a dynamic process in which meaning is constructed through reciprocal feedback; not a transmission of information from one individual to another, separate, individual.
• People act according to the way they understand and represent the world, not according to the way the world 'is'.

• Of prime interest in NLP are the ways in which people represent the world internally, through sensory imagery (principally visual, auditory and kinaesthetic) and language.
• A learner's internal representations and processing are reflected, in various ways, in their language- and their external behavior.

• Skills, beliefs and behaviours are all learnt.

• An individual's capacity to learn is influenced strongly by their neuro-physiological 'state', and by their beliefs about learning and about themselves.

• Such modification happens through communication between teacher and learner, which takes place through verbal and non-verbal channels, both consciously and unconsciously. The functioning of which human beings are conscious, and which can be controlled consciously, represents only a small proportion of total functioning.
• All communication potentially influences leaning. Crucially, teachers' language and behaviour influence learners on at least two levels simultaneously; both their understanding of the topic in question, and their beliefs about the world, including about learning.

In essence, teaching is a process of (a) creating 'states' that are conducive to learning; and (b) facilitating learners' exploration and/or enhancement of their internal representations; (c) to lead towards the desired goal or outcome of the context.
If we as teachers take into account those principles, our class environment would change and we would work on both the academic and the affective part of our students.