ICT in our teaching

Technology is not only good for classroom work. It must be regarded as a tool for our personal development.

It is true that the amount of technology is overwhelming, so if it is difficult for you to "go to information", make information "come to you".

You can do this in many ways. You can suscribe to a web page, so you will be e-mailed new posts, you can make an account on google reader, or in the case of a blog, you can add the gadget that allows you to have other blogs at hand. Each time a blog is uploaded, it will appear first in your list.

Among the blogs, I was particular interested in one that gives you ideas as regards how to work with "silent videos" in the EFL classroom. They are so beautiful! If I knew about it before my teaching practice..!!

You can visit the blog HERE  

The author of the blog suggests -among others- the following video 

As a task, he suggests that you should ask your students to write the names of all the type of films they see, to compare them, and then, to add the ones that are missing.... interesting idea, isn't it?

Pecha Kucha

As we are suppoused to design a Pecha Kucha presentation for the end of our course studies, I wanted to have a clearer idea of what exactly Pecha Kucha presentations are.

I found many web pages, but I decided to search in those which I considered the most reliable ones.

This is a very interesting site. Here you can find information as regards what Pecha Kucha is, where you can attend Pecha Kucha Nights, and also, you can watch some presentations.

It is interesting to note that this type of prentation was first meant to help designers and arquitects keep to the point. 

In the website above, there are a number of interesting questions. I will "copy and paste" two of these questions and its answers, which are consider are the most important ones, but I strongly suggest you visite the web page

01. What is PechaKucha 20x20?

PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and you talk along to the images.

02. Who invented the format?

The presentation format was devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture. The first PechaKucha Night was held in Tokyo in their gallery/lounge/bar/club/creative kitchen, SuperDeluxe, in February, 2003. Klein Dytham architecture still organize and support the global PechaKucha Night network and organize PechaKucha Night Tokyo.

04. What are PechaKucha Nights?

PechaKucha Nights are informal and fun gatherings where creative people get together and share their ideas, works, thoughts, holiday snaps -- just about anything, really -- in the PechaKucha 20x20 format.

This other website contains all the information related to Pecha Kucha Night held in Buenos Aires. Most of the presenters are arquietects, but anyone can prepare her own   "Pecha Kucha". 

In this kind of events, after the presentations are made, people have time to talk to each other, to listen to music and to have drink. It is a good idea to take into account when the time of our presentations arrive, isn't it?

What is really surprising to me, is the fact that this kind of presentations were meant for very informal contexts, but  now they are being used in more    formal ones, as a way of setting a standard that helps being clearer and to the point