Skip to main content

Week 10 post- Research tools online

This post is about researching online.  I have used several of the sites mentioned but want to focus a bit on the following:

-Idebate. I think I posted this in a previous post, but it is a great site to get the brain thinking about debate topics and critically, both sides of a debate.  Often when we think debate we rely on the side that we think is 'right.' Of course teaching debate requires that we also think and teach about how to support a side that we might not (initially) agree with- how do we see those other perspectives.

-Simple wikipedia. This is great for anyone, but especially for those students learning English or learning how to research a subject in English.  I am always surprised at how many of my students do not know about it-- they have been breaking their teeth on the regular Wiki articles, which can be so dry and complicated even for native speakers.  These articles are not only simplified in content, but the language is also simpler.  Caveat: not every topic appears on Simple.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dynamic vs Static Learning

I have read quite a bit about ideas for dynamic versus static learning.  Static learning is the old-school (pun intended) way of teaching and learning and dynamic is well, not that. Theory is great but when it comes down to brass tacks, concrete examples of what it means to do dynamic learning in the classroom are sometimes harder to come by.  This post actually shows some real examples of assignments that capture the differences between these models.  I have to admit, the projects in the dynamic learning sound really compelling.  What do you think?
1 comment
Read more

Week 3

One of the things I want to share with you this week is on Google Docs. I am sure many of you already know this, but I did not. We have a project at school called the Creative Dialogue.  This project is groups of students who develop a project together and progress through the project creation over several weeks.  As you know, when you have group projects it is often difficult to know who did what- how did each student participate?  Did they all participate somehow?  Though it is not fool-proof, when you create folders and share them with your students as a place to keep their documents, you can also keep track of who wrote what on the document.  As I mentioned, I am sure it is not fool-proof, but it does reflect the login for each student.  Also helpful is the ability to keep track of the drafts they do. It saves everything based on drafts and you can look at the previous drafts by date to see how they have progressed. So, not only does it save paper as th...
2 comments
Read more
I am Mira Gefen and this is my blog for the Language Skills through ICT class.  I have created several blogs for education purposes using Blogger and EduBlogs, but it has been a few years. I am looking forward to this course because I want to be able to engage my learners in ways that are exciting and relevant for them. I am privileged to teach in a wonderful school with terrific young people in my classroom. I hope that this class will help me understand how to better connect them with our subject and the world around them.
1 comment
Read more