Time for presentations

Again, we had to present a lesson. This time we were supposed to use web 2.0 tools in order to adapt an already planned lesson or a future lesson that we could use. I paired up with Aldana V. (owner of http://aldanamviano.blogspot.com.ar/) and, since she’s about to teach the “has/have got” structure, we decided to plan this lesson thinking about what she could do in her near future.

I will present here this lesson as we did in the classroom.

As aim, at the end of the lesson, students are supposed to create a family tree in Popplet (www.popplet.com) representing their ideal families, that is look for famous people (in Google Images) and say what position they could take in their family tree, and how old they are (searching this date on Google.com). I believe that this could be considered as a mini-webquest.
Level of students: Beginners, 7th graders (12 years old).
The function will be describing their ideal family.
The topic, “Family members”, and the grammar: has/have got.

As the first step, the teacher presents the topic of family members with a video functioning as a visual aid. In this video, Homer describes the members of his family.
Since we didn’t find a video in YouTube in which Homer describes his family, we tried to do something similar. We prepared a text and I recorded it with the Audacity software. Then, we downloaded many videos from YouTube and a couple of pictures and edited them with a program called Ulead Video Studio, which is similar to the well known Windows Movie Maker. The result:

After watching the video, as a second step, students are asked to complete the Simpsons’ family tree in Popplet, stating the relationship between them as they heard in the video, starting from Homer.

As a following step students will be focused on the written form of the text that was presented first as a video. They will be asked to fill in the gaps with the correct form of the verb “has/have got”.

Hello. I'm Homer Simpson. I__________ a son named Bart.
Bart __________ two sisters: Lisa and Maggie.
My wife is Marge, and she _________ two sisters: Patty and Selma.
Their  _____ is called Clancy and their _____, Jackie.
My parents are Abraham and Mona.
DOH'! I almost forget it. I ________ a brother. His name is Herb.

They will be given the chance to watch the video again if they have doubts. Once the activity is finished, the teacher will draw students’ attention to the different forms of the verb “have got”, asking them why they think the verb changes.

As a final step, they are supposed to create a popplet representing a family tree of their ideal families. So first they will need to look for images of their favourite famous people.

In the popplet, students will need to insert the image of the celebrity, write the name of the role they are representing and how old they are.

I hope it works!

About Web X.0 (being X = 1, 2 and 3)

We were talking in class about the terms “web 1.0” and “web 2.0”; even “web 3.0”. You could think that there are some other instances in between, like web 1.5 or web 2.2, but so far there are not such things. Let’s stick to the real terms and try to see their differences.

Web 1.0 was the beginning of the World Wide Web to the general public. People surfing the net in its 1.0 aspect are considered to be passive consumers. They just can read information, maybe download it, print it, but there are not many other types of interaction. The most common format in web 1.0 is HTML (HyperText Markup Language), which allows users to link information to any other information over the internet. As an example, here you have a capture: the official website of Les Luthiers.

Web 2.0, obviously, would be one step ahead. Users are not just retrieving information but they are also creating, sharing, storing data, and so forth. They may also have control over some features. Nowadays, the most popular example of web 2.0 is social networking sites, such as Facebook, Google+ or Twitter, video storage like YouTube, blogs, wikis and many others.

Here you have a map of social networking (you can open it, otherwise you'll need a magnifying glass).

We are not dealing with web 3.0 yet… I mean here, in ECO (or in this blog!). Let’s just mention that it is about artificial intelligence, computers generating information rather than humans. It is called “the Semantic Web”.
You can search for further information on the internet, of course, and if you happen to discover what “web 2.2” is about, please leave your message at http://aldanamviano.blogspot.com.ar (she will be glad).
Soon we will be exploring web 2.0 tools and how to use them in the classroom.