Virtual Field Trips

Virtual Field Trips

A Virtual Field trip is a guided and narrated exploration tour through different web pages or web sites previously chosen by the teacher, in which students can go from page to page only clicking a button. Tramline technology is a very important part in the creation of this useful teaching tool. It helps to teachers to create in an easy way, a connection between web pages instead of giving students lists of links related to a specific topic. This is a real advantage because lists of links are very hard to work for every level of teaching, especially elementary school children.

With Virtual field trips you can show to students a web page and add the information of it in a small window below the web site so the students get in context about the theme they are studying.

Virtual Field trips can make your students travel to anywhere at any time from the comfort of their houses or their classroom. For example, if they are studying about the ancient history you can take them to any museum around the world and you do not have to worry about if it is opened or full. Or if you are studying about volcanoes you can be translated to the Popocatepetl through different web sites.

There are different kinds of Virtual Field Trips. Some trips only consist of a list of links on one web page while some others use navigators or buttons to move through the tour. But there is a new type of virtual trips. It is the Real-time Virtual Trip, which involve the use of video or audio conferencing. This technology lets to students to go beyond the fact of only watch pictures but be a part of the trip in real time.

Since the appearing of The Virtual Field Trips in 1995, is has been seen as a way to organize the educational potential of the internet for students of primary and secondary education making of the teaching process an interesting and way to motivate to the students to fell identify with different lesson of classes that maybe seem boring for them.

Manuel Pereira

Webinar!

WEBINAR

What is a webinar?

A Webinar is a type of conference or workshop transmitted via the Internet. The main characteristic that makes the difference from the Webcast is that the speaker is directed towards the participants and participants can interact between them, so, all the participants (including the presenter) develop the ability to give, receive, and discuss information.

How many people can interact in a webinar?

The participants of a Webinar can be from 2 to 20 people interacting, sharing documents or applications.

When you can make or interact in a webinar?

The Webinars are given in real time, date and in a specific time.

How you can interact in a webinar?

You can participate from any computer connected to the Internet and in which the specific software has been loaded. Most web conferences are held according to the following principles: meeting organizer sends an invitation email that contains a link to a URL and a user ID to access the meeting. At the time of starting it, each participant enters his user identification (ID) for the online meeting. Once logged in, participants can see the desktop of the presenter of the meeting and share with him documents and applications.

Which are the advantages of a webinar?

·    Shared Applications: all participants can interact with the host of the conference.

·    Transfer of control of the keyboard and mouse to a particular person or all participants (allowing them to manipulate the document that is open on the desktop of the presenter).

·    Changing the presenter during the meeting.

·    Tools for notes and drawings.

·    White board.

·   Chat. All the participants can chat between them during the conference.

More about a webinar:

A webinar can be collaborative and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, while pointing out information being presented onscreen, and the audience can respond over their own telephones, speaker phones allowing the greatest comfort and convenience. There are web conferencing technologies on the market that have incorporated the use of VoIP audio technology, to allow for a completely web-based communication. Depending upon the provider, webinars may provide hidden or anonymous participant functionality, making participants unaware of other participants in the same meeting.

I give you a page which contains tips for an excellent conference; those tips are going to help you to make a good Webinar:

  http://wsuccess.typepad.com/webinarblog/2010/12/qa-from-uk-webinar-on-presentation-skills.html

Webinar to teach English as a Second Language (ESL):

There are thousands of techniques to teach English, but, the most successful are the web’s techniques because the students love surf on the internet, and is easier for them to understand a new language just surfing on. So, the webinar is a successful technique to teach English as a Second Language. You can develop the four skills of a language in the students, just using this technique. With a webinar conference we can make the students interested to learn about a second language.

Finally, I invited you to create a webinar to make more interesting your class for your students! Try it!

Here I give you a page that has a lot of links about ESL webinar:

http://info.readinghorizons.com/reading-horizons-free-webinars-reading-teachers/

There is a video of a webinar, enjoy it!

By: Elienai Ferrer!

English Club Evaluation

Name of the site: English Club “the world´s premiere FREE website for learners and teachers of English”.

Site's URL: http://www.englishclub.com/

Author (s): Josef Essberger.

Objective of the site: this web page has as main objective to give English students and teacher resources to make the educative process effective.

Skills the site builds: English Club tries its viewers develop the four skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing; as well as vocabulary and grammar.

Objective: This site offers to their viewers, links to resources as on line activities.

Scope of audience: Worldwide

Target level: We could say that the target audiences of this web page are from intermediate to advanced level students, as well as teachers that want to find fun activities for any level, so we could say that it is focus in Multiple Levels

Sensory input: Poorly

Feedback: No feedback

Interactivity: None

Communicativeness: None

Context: Some

Content: 30 seconds. (There's a little bit of somewhat worthwhile stuff here.)

Appearance: Hideous. (Extremely poor choices of graphics or color either make the site unreadable or nauseating.)

Navigation: Easy (Very clear navigational aids and easy and quick to find specific pages.)

Load speed: Fast (The site loads faster than most pages, or it may load surprisingly fast despite having several prominent graphics.)

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Brief description of the site: English Club comes to you from England. It is written mainly in British English. But they have pages about other varieties of English such as American or Canadian. English Club is free. And English Club is totally independent - unaffiliated to any other language organization.

What we liked about the site: it was that this web page offers to teachers useful activities to carry them out in classes, in order to make of teaching a fun way to learn for students. It contains a lot of relevant information to be applied by teachers, besides of some activities for English learners.

What we don´t like about the site:  the things that we don´t like about this web page, are the amount of sponsors include on each window of this page and the amount of links that sometimes makes it hideous if you want to find an specific information.

ESL/EFL Pedagogical implications of the site: EnglishClub.com is a free website designed to help you learn English online through fun activities and make the students reinforce what they have learnt or have been learning.

Technical (HTML) quality: Problem-free (no noticeable errors)

Evaluation score for 
Content usefulness:  4/6
Interface design:  1/4
Our overall evaluation grade: 5/10

WHAT IS HOT POTATOES?

Hot Potatoes is a set of six author's tools, developed by the equipment (team) of the University of Victory CALL Laboratory Research and Development, which allow you to elaborate interactive exercises based on web pages of six basic types.

The interactivity of the exercises is obtained by means of JavaScript (a "Script" is a bit of code that does something in a web page). This code is done by a language called JavaScript invented by Netscape. Later you can publish the above mentioned pages in a servant Web. 

In addition, the program is designed in order that you could personalize almost all the characteristics of the pages. Therefore, if you know something of HTML code or of JavaScript, you will be able to do any change that you wish in the way of working of the exercises or in the format of the pages.

From the year 2009 it is a program freeware, previously it was free for teachers who were using the non-profit-making program but it was necessary to register the program; in opposite case, the program did not have a complete functionality and took limitations as the number of questions that they can put in an exercise, but it already went on to the history.

Utilization: The information editable from every type of exercise is saved in a specific file of every HP's application. From the same one there will be generated the final interactive document in format *.HTML. This page is raised to the web servant. The pupil does not need to have the program installed in his equipment Hot Potatoes to realize every exercise. It is only needed to accede using an Internet browser as Internet Explorer 5.5 or Superior.

How to Prepare a Web Quest for ESL Students

WebQuests are one way to motivate ESL students to learn English and raise their academic proficiency. Following these step-by-step instructions, you can prepare a WebQuest for ESL students to do at school.
 

Instructions

1.      Decide on a WebQuest topic that is motivating for your students. You can find this information by conducting an in-class survey or simply by taking a show of hands in class. Have a second or third preference in case you cannot find enough websites.

2.      Conduct thorough research to see available sites that you can use for your WebQuest topic. Not every site is suitable. Check for linguistic, thematic and syntactic appropriateness, and make sure the link is active.

3.      Skim and scan the site. Familiarize yourself with content, how to navigate the site and the kinds of information students will learn.

4.      Design a series of interesting questions based on the website that direct students to the site or to various links and tabs. For differentiated instruction, include a wide variety of questions.

5.      Explain the purpose of the WebQuest beforehand with your students in class. Make sure they understand what is expected of them and how they are expected to behave during the WebQuest session.

6.      Take your students to the computer lab and distribute the WebQuest worksheet. Encourage students to answer as many questions as possible.

7.      Have students sit in pairs or groups of three to perform the WebQuest.

8.      Have students finished the WebQuest at home or in class (two sessions are sufficient).

9.      Decide if you will grade the WebQuest and on the criteria for grading (if relevant to subject matter).

10. Ask students to reflect on their work during the WebQuest session and, particularly, if they learned something from it and how the activity could be improved.

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO WebQuests

  One of the most current activities effected by the pupils in Internet is the search of information, often with help of the search engines as Google, Alta Vista or Yahoo. Nevertheless, these investigations are difficult activities that take a lot of time and that can turn out to be frustrating if the aims are not reflected clearly and explained initially.

  WebQuests is structured and guided activities that avoid these obstacles providing a definite well task to the pupils, as well as the resources and the slogans that allow them to realize them.

  Instead of losing hours in search of the information, the pupils appropriate, interprets and exploits, the specific information that the teacher assigns them.

  To investigate in the Web is simple and of simple application, since it is easy to realize and it is allowed that both raw and expert in Internet they take part. Investigating in the web one incorporates the students in effective tasks, stimulates to the collaboration and discussion, and is of easy integration in the school curriculum.

  The teacher must suggest a topic of exploration and point at some sites of the Web where the pupil will look for the information that they need. As the teachers go familiarizing themselves with the web and the mechanisms of search, and they learn to develop strategies of optimization of his knowledge across the communication, search and processing of information, they pass to propose the topics and the pupils are going to look only for the solutions. In the last state of total autonomy, the students can propose topics of interest to the teacher who happens to choose between them what is more suitable for the personal learning and of the group.

  That of the WebQuest, it is a didactic strategy in which the pupils (from half of primary up to university) are those who really construct the knowledge that then they are going to learn. One organizes them in groups; roles are assigned to them and have to elaborate a product that goes from a presentation, or a document, up to a theatrical staging or a wireless script, etc., representing as exactly as possible the different positions (attitudes) of the roles. It is a very promising design.

  This is not only a new way in order that the teachers teach, but also is a new way in order that the pupils learn. And finally, here you have two of the most important sites about WebQuests

http://www.world-english.org/webquests.htm
http://www.webquest.org/