A way to use ICT in language learning

How  do you learn new words? How can we find out more information about a word? How can we support the pupils when thet learn new words? Our pupils need to learn many new words every day
in order for them to understand what they are working with. I wrote earlier about a tool called Visuwords - you can find it under English here on the blog, it is the second tool from the top. Now I want to give you yet another tool that is nice to use together with Visuwords. It is not visual as Visuwords but you get a lot of information about the word you type into the field.  THe tool is called Wordnik and it gives you a lot of information about etymologies, meaning and a lot of other information. As I see it you can combine these two. Only our own fantasy sets the limit for what you can do with these. Try them out!

Hur kan vi ta hjälp av IKT för att lära oss nya ord?

Hur arbetar du när du lär dig nya ord? Hur kan vi ta reda på mer om ett ord? Hur kan vi stötta eleverna i deras inlärning av nya ord? Våra elever behöver lära sig många nya ord varje dag för att kunna utveckla sitt språk i den takt som krävs för att de ska förstå material riktat till just deras ålder. Jag skrev tidigare om ett verktyg som heter Visuwords - se under fliken engelska, andra verktyget - och vill här ge er ännu ett verktyg som inte visualiserar på det viset som Visuwords men som ger mycket information om ett ord på ett annat sätt än Visuwords. Verktyget jag vill göra er uppmärksamma på heter Wordnik och som ger många exempel på dess olika användningsområden, etmylogi, motsatser, synonymer och mycket mer.
Som jag ser det så kompletterar dessa två varandra väldigt bra och bara vår egen fantasi sätter gränsen för vad vi kan göra med dessa verktyg. Ta tillfället i akt att bekanta dig mer med dem.

Be the change: Unite for a better internet

... är årets tema för SID = Safer Internet Day. I år infaller den här viktiga dagen den 7 februari vilket är ganska snart och vi uppmanas alla över hela världen och gå samman den dagen för att gemensamt visa att vi hur vi tillsammans kan skapa ett säkrare och bättre internet för oss alla att vara på, men särskilt för våra barn och unga. På den här webbsidan: Safer Internet Day

På den sidan kan du se alla olika event som kommer att ske världen över just den här dagen. Var en del av det du med. Registrera dig, lägg in om en händelse som du tänker göra med din klass den dagen. Kanske vill du göra det som ett eTwinningprojekt? Varför inte? Det finns tid. Sidan uppdateras hela tiden med information kring dagen så gå in ofta och håll er uppdaterade, Vill du veta mer vad Thunderclap är? Klicka här.


Be the change: Unite for a better internet
... is the theme of Safer Internet Day for 2017. This year it is on the 7th of February and we are all asked to join in and together show the world wht kind of internet we would like to have. How we would like to make it a safer and better place for us all but utmost for our children and young people. Read more on the link above.

Here you can see all the events that will happen of that special day. Be a part of it as well! Join in, register, upload an event tht you lan to do on that day. Maybe as an eTwinning project? THe webpage is updated often now so be sure to pop in often so you do not miss anything. Do you want to know more about Thunderclap?

Wikipedia 16 år

Idag för 16 år sedan lanserades Wikipedia just den här dagen. På sidan Today in history kan man läsa för var dag om viktiga händelser som hänt just det datumet genom tiderna. Det kan sträcka sig 1000 år tillbaka ibland men oftast börjar det för 4- 600 år sedan. Idag är det 16 år sedan Wikipedia lanserades och då såg det ut så här:

Vidare under dagens datum kan man läsa att Martin Luther King, Jr föddes den 15/1 (1929).

Today In History

Under sökmotorer ligger den här  och här kan man lägga in en webbsida och så kan man se dess historik och hur den har ändrat utseende genom åren. Den 17 april 2007 såg Wikipedia ut såhär...

 http://archive.org/web/

Jag kan se många användningsområden i klassrummet eller i lärmiljön där vi befinner oss i både Today in History och Waybackmachine som du kan läsa om här: Waybackmachine.

16 years ago was the day that Wikipedia first entered the internet world. On the webpage Today in history (see the link above) you can read about important things that has happened each day of the year and some days it goes back a thousand years. In 1929 Martin Luther King, Jr was on born on this day,

You can find the search engine that helps you browse through a webpages history and you can see haw it has grown and developed during the years of it's existens.

Behöver du ett alternativ? Need an alternative?

Har du haft något digitalt favoritverktyg som har lagts ner? Haft svårt att hitta någon ersättare? Det är hyfsat vanligt att gratisverktygen går ur tiden, lägg ner, upphör att underhållas och uppdateras. Det kan kännas tråkigt att bli av med ett verktyg som man har trivts med och som man har lärt sig. Dock är det oftast så att det leder till nya verktyg som är ännu bättre, lättare att hantera och än roligare. Men det kan ta tid att hitta dem. därför vill jag tipsa om ett verktyg som hjälper dig att hitta alternativ du kan prova. Här får du massor av förslag. Prova den gärna: se länken längst ner i inlägget.

Have you ever experienced that a digital tool that you like a lot is shut down? Have you had difficulties trying to find a replacement? It is kind of often that the free tools is taken away, gets old, is no longer updated or maintained. It is not fun when a tool that you liked and knew well how to run it stops with its services. The upside is that often you find something even better and that works even easier and is more fun. But it takes time to find them. Therefor I want to give you a link to a site that helps you with that: you just write the tool you want to find an alternative to and you get a lot of different hits. Try it out here: 

Alternativeto

Provocative and important new paradigm

I have written about this before in a different way and now I want to emphazise and go deeper in my thoughts about how we need to change teaching and learning in our schools all around the world. Th first thing we need to do is learn to not only accept change I think but also invit it, encourage it and welcome it- it is the one thing we know our children growing up today will meet.

Everything changes so fast around us. New things are invented and evolved. As the technological evolution keeps accelerating we need to adjust and adapt to the change of paradigm that is needed and most of all we need to prepare our children and let them build the key competences they will need to become world citizens when they grow up and being able to take the responsibility needed to build a sustainable society. Thomas and Brown talk about A new learning culture in their book and it is well worth the time it takes to not only read it but also consider how it affects us in our profession. THe book upends our way of looking at teaching and is a mindbender that encourages us to think outside of the box. I totally agree with them concerning why learning is changing in the society and so also in our schools. The most important thing to cultivate within our students is their imagination and keep our minds playful, then we will be creative and can think creational and there will be no limit in what we can achieve.  It is time for us to leave the old ways behind and embrace the changes that are already here. It is my strongest believes that we (all teachers and schools in the world) will succed in changing (not adding) our methods and ways of working and our view of learning and start working with blended learning, flipped classroom, open sources, mastery learning, gamified learning, and create learning environments that encourage our students to become curious and motivated. Those learning environments do not have to be at a certain place as I see it it can be anywhere we choose it to be. ICT will be of great help and we will know when we are there bcause our biggest problem will be: What are we going to do with all the time we have on our hands in school, no mor estress, plenty of time to help the students develop their skills for the 21st century. This we will grow into a few steps at the time I am sure, only we will all do it differently, with different approaches and there are no rights and wrongs here. The one thing that we cannot do is stand and watch the world move forward, we have to create this together with not only colleagues, but with our students and colleagues from all over the world. We need to share with each other, learn together and fail together. There is nothing wrong in failing, that is how we learn and develop our skills. To me failing is a success, it shows me new ways to do things, how I can approach them in new ways and what does not work. We find new solutions.

Bilden kommer från:
http://www.dumpaday.com/quotes/quotes-of-the-day-21-pics-3/

We need to go from fixing a problem to grow a solution. This is exciting, thrilling but also scaring, it is therefor such a relief that we have each other.  We do this beacuse we care, we care abut our students and their future. We need to teach the pupils to embrace change and in order to do so we need to become good rolemodels and start embracing changes ourselves. Today. Now. Together...