Link for my final presentation

http://tools4teachingwritingskills.blogspot.com/p/presentators.html

What is the best age to get students into technology?

Nowadays, Technology has become so powerful not only for its facilities to access but also for the programs that it has. Moreover, children are becoming more aware of its use since they are able to manipulate smart phones, laptops, tables and so on. As a result, children are becoming more dependent of technology than adults.

This sounds interesting because it is supposed that adults must be masters in technology but this is not true. Little kids somehow are taking the advantage of technology, for they are curious and like to learn new things every day. The question here is if there is a specific age in which technology could be introduced to kids, I do think that there isn’t any parameter that indicates the appropriate age to introduce technology. Why? Because the age to introduce teachnology to kids is going to depend not only on the social condition of the child’s family but also in his skills.

I consider that if someone teaches a 4 year old kid about how to use a cell phone, how to look for games for example, it is not going to be any problem for him to learn becuase he is going to be attract by it. On the other hand, if a teacher wants to establish an age to introduce technology to a kid it could be fine if the child is 7 years old since it is a transition age in which children start a new school, new friends and new ways of learning too. Also, a 7 year old kid, if more aware of paying attention and his motor skills are more developed.

In sum, I consider that there isn’t any specific age to introduce technology to kids because kids are different. Hence, the way in which kids could become aware of the amazing impact that technology has in life is going to depend on the familiarity that they have with it.

Advantages and disadvantages of having online classes

Thought out the time, the accessibility to internet has become easier. That is why, teachers are becoming more aware of the advantages of assigning online homework and in some cases there are universities that facilitate students to take classes without going to school. This is an amazing discovery of this era because it facilitates those students to work the whole day and study at home.

One of the advantages of having online classes is that people do not have to go to school and spend money or time while they are traveling. Another benefit of this is that students decide where and what time to take the online class. And third,  more people can have access to this type of classes. However, I consider that there are some disadvantages of these classes because students do not have any personal contact with teachers. Second, students are out of the real life and at the same time they cannot make real friends. This is kind of sad because we as human beings have the necessity to socialize. And the last disadvantage of having online classes is that students cannot have an immediate answer for their doubts and maybe this can affect a grade since they have to wait for a long time until they received an e-mail with the answer to their question.

           

Going to school every day is sometimes kind of difficult because of the weather, the transportation and so on. However, attending to school every day, for me, has a lot of benefits to students because in this way they can socialize with their classmates and at the same time with their teachers. Another advantage is that if one student has a question related to the topic developed in class he/she can ask immediately and have the answer as soon as possible because the teacher is there. Another advantage of attending school every day is that students are going to be allowed to face and overcome different problems at work because they have experienced that in their real life while they are students. On the other hand, it is important to say that attending classes every day has some disadvantages too. One is that students can be exposed to different social problems such as delinquency, bulling and weather conditions.

In sum, attending online classes have advantages and disadvantage the same as going to school every day. For that reason, students are going to decide in which of these to kind of methods of studying they belong to depending on the kind of situation they are facing.

How to use Mind42, Youthink, Brainshark, Mailvu and Word Google in a lesson plan?

These tools are new for me, but I guess that all of them are useful if we want to include them in a lesson plan. For example Mind42 is a tool that helps to create Mind mapping for free, fast and simple so that it can be really good if we want to create a mind mapping related to an specific topic. Also, it could be a great way for students to understand a topic. Moreover, we can use it if we want students to develop a homework activity.

Youthink is another tool that it could be interesting to include it in a lesson plan because teachers can make their own quizzes, create profiles, journals, forums and so on. So, I think that Youthink could be so helpful when teachers want to do an online quiz or when they want students to create their own journals.

Brainshark sounds interesting to me because it is for creating online video presentations. In this case, I guess that this tool could be so helpful especially when there is no time for a meeting and the teacher just let students the link of this website and then students watch the presentation wherever that are.

MailVu is almost similar to the previous tool with the only difference that it is an online video recording, video email and video sharing. I am considering this tool more interesting than the last one if I want to let my students practice their speaking skill.

Word Google is similar to Microsoft Word with the only difference that everything is online. Also this is a tool that Google brings. You

can create your profile in Google Drive and start saving your works.

To summarized, i want to say that these new tools are interesting for me and helpful if I want to create an online class or an online homework, ect.

Advantages and Disadvantages of YouTube

YouTube has become a powerful tool nowadays since people can watch, upload and download a variety of videos. It is important to say that YouTube has not only advantages but also disadvantages.

Between its advantages are:

·  1. People do not need to be at home to watch this program. Moreover, laptops, tablets and smart phones are devices that have access to this program, you just need accesss to internet.

·    2. YouTube is free. You only need a registration and a few minutes to personalize your channel to begin to share your ads. And in the case you don’t want to have an account you can watch almost everything, without having an account, on YouTube. The channel personalization offers good opportunities to promote the brand, as well as subscription and comments! It will cost you nothing!

·  3. More effective advertising. Many people switch to another channel while commercials are running and ads themselves are considered annoying. On the other hand, a good, funny or original advertisement is shared by people over the network and is considered a form of entertainment. So, this means that you can create an ad and then uploaded on YouTube, it is easier and free.

· 4. Diversity of content. This is one of my favorite’s advantages because there are several ways in which your video can reach the target group – searching for content using a keyword, as an option for a similar video after the user has seen a certain video.

·  5. YouTube has more freedom. You can watch a lot of ads that were not allowed to air for one reason or another. On YouTube, there are significantly fewer restrictions and often, particularly these ads enjoy great interest.

·  6. Anyone can record a video. You do not need a huge budget to be there. On the contrary - the more easy-going and "amateur" the video is, the more credible it is to the users. For example in my case I used to upload some videos because it is easier and free. Also, I like the tools that this website has since it allows to add subtitles, or to repair the quality of the video.

Disadvantages

· 1. Starts trends can be hazardous to the health and safety of participants, for example some people can do what they have watch in a tutorial or something like that, and they can injure themselves.

·  2. Many videos are inappropriate with no way of parental control over which videos children see since there are a variety of porn videos of tutorials that can cause a trauma in children’s health.

·  3. Everything has to be done through Google+, and sometimes it can be kind of difficult for some people to upload or to join YouTube because they don’t have a Google account.

·  4. No restriction on comments (language, racial slurs, etc)

·  5. Video size is limited to 1024 MB

In sum, YouTube is a website that allows people to look for a variety of videos and watch them without any restriction. In my case YouTube has become one of my favorites websites since I can look for a variety of information and also it has a bunch of educational information.  

How can I adapt Hot Potatoes to teach children, teenagers and others?

How can I adapt Hot Potatoes to teach children, teenagers and others?

Hot Potatoes is a tool that 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 Potato is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project you like. 

First, it is important to mention that this tool is helpful for teachers of all over the world, and it could make their job easier talking about making test. But, the question is how can they adapt this tool according to students’ ages? Well here is a brief description of how I could do it. 

If I had to teach kids, I would use this tool in order to make them familiar with a specific topic. For example if I were teaching them “Farm Animals”, I would introduce vocabulary using JQuiz, in which there would be a name of a farm animal and when Ss click in one name they could watch the picture of the animal. 

On the other hand if I had to adapt this tool to a group of teenagers, I would use Hot Potato to help Ss understand and be familiar with a topic. Let spouse that I am going to teach the “The use of Present Progressive in Daily Routines”. With this topic I would use JCross, JQuiz, JMatch, JMix and the Masher to teach Ss vocabulary, Tense Structure, a reading exercise, and at the end of the topic I would combine the four tools in order to help Ss practice and also to obtain a media that could show me the advance that my Ss could have in this topic.

And if I had to adapt Hot Potatoes to other people, first, I would like to use all of the tools that Hot Potato has since with adults it could be easier to use it and to make them practice.

In sum, I can say that Hot Potatoes is an interesting program for me because I could use it in deferent ways with my students. Moreover, this program has changed my life as teacher because I am sure that it is going to help me to develop a test in a different manner, I mean it won’t be too monotonous for students to make a test or an exercise if they use this tool.  

Cross Word

Phrasal Verbs

Crossword

Complete the crossword, then click on "Check" to check your answer. If you are stuck, you can click on "Hint" to get a free letter. Click on a number in the grid to see the clue or clues for that number.

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19

Across: 2. get to the same point as someone else 5. interrupt 7. escape 8. explode 9. fall to the ground 10. wait a short time 13. separate 15. become an adult 18. wear nice clothing 19. go on a vacation

Down: 1. do again 3. become happier 4. eventually reach/do/decide 6. ask for an answer or opinion 7. stop functioning 11. stand 12. relax after being angry 14. quit a class, school etc 16. invite on a date 17. interrupt