What is the Cloud? - Advantages and disadvantages

We can define the term CLOUD as the services where information and files are kept on servers connected to the Internet.

Using the Cloud has many advantages, it is a service created for storage information and files, where you do not need to keep it closer to you anymore. On the one hand the most important advantage is that you can choose the scale and cost of your cloud (referring to storage), depending of your needs because many companies gives you free storage (with a limit) and you can amplify your storage by paying for it. In fact, you can have your files in any digital device you work with: computer, smartphone or tablet.

On the whole, many people nowadays use digital copies for everything, photos, books, music, video, etc., so it is normal that young generations’ uses these services to keep their files safe and to manage them in every device they use.

On the other hand there are disadvantages too, not everything in the cloud is good. For instance, the security might be a problem if someone stole your password and your files. There is a lack of control of where your files are, the “cloud” is a vague term to call “somewhere on the Internet”, and these could affect to your reliability. Also, there are not offices with Customer Support to ask about the problems that you could have. These services have a strict policy that could help you or not depending on the country where you live.

In any way is a useful tool to keep and share information with another people, and I normally use some of them, for example:

•  Dropbox, where I share with my friends our photos and useful documents for our studies.

• OneDrive or SkyDrive at my home with the computer, tablet and smartphone to have all my music, e-books and photos in all the devices I have.

• Google Drive for group work, and to keep personalized maps of the cities that I am going to visit.

If you want to know more about the Cloud, or Cloud Computing you could take a look to this websites where I found information:

Articles: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/guides/what-is-cloud-computing

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2683784/cloud-computing/what-cloud-computing-really-means.html

Video:

Interaction in class

Work through interaction could motivate students and teachers. Following the examples above, we are going to context our class at 4th of ESO, in a History lesson. 

We are trying to stimulate our students, so we would like to use an interactual methodology, where the classroom could learn because of their work at the class, where the good students could help the others. How could we do this interaction classes?

• Group tasks. Maybe this is the easiest way to start an interaction between students; they could help each other, then explain their work, and evaluate themselves.
•  Debate. History could help students to be critic; they can share their reflections and ask why something happened. Debate could afford them to be more open and make easier to understand history for some students. In this area maybe role plays could be an option, where the students could participate as members of the history, make them act as a politician or a burgess.
• Blog. Not all students learn the same way, or are equal. Many students are shy, well; the blog is a tool where they can share doubts, news about the period we are studying and also a way to interact outside the classroom.
• Brainstorm. Starting a new unit could be easy if you start asking to the students what they think they are going to study next, and the brainstorm could help to separate myths of history.
•  Games. The classroom could be fun too, trivia games of the unit that you are teaching could make them more interactive.

On the one hand, the principal advantage in this list is the promotion of the interaction in class, the students can learn not only as receivers also as teachers, classmates, etc. They could be more independent of the teacher explanations and be more active searching information for the class.

On the other hand, there are disadvantages too. The biggest one could be the schedule, because this activities need time and the curriculum and the time of the classes are subject. Maybe these list could like to students but all depends in the type of class, if they are participative, if they have a good relation between them... Maybe group tasks could be stressful for people who does not like to share time with ther classmates for different reasons, we have to think for who are you teaching/working and adapt to them.

A cloud of words

Using wordle.net we can create our clouds of words. In this cloud we can read 10 different words, and all are related to the content of History. 

Thinking in a class of 4th of ESO, we should adapt the definition of terms to A1 level. Here is an example: 

• Revolution: usually violent actions that people use to end a government to start a new one.
• Industrialization: the period when factories start in a city, region, country, etc.
• Imperialism: a policy where a country increases its power by gaining control over other areas of the world.
• Ally: country that supports and helps other country in a war.
• Democracy: a form of government in which people choose leaders by voting.

CORPORA

The use of expressions and idioms, make our conversation more fluid and natural, but when we are learning, we need to know how to use these expressions or prepositions to be clear about what we are trying to say.

We have two good websites to search information about corpora: the British National Corpora and Linguee (parallel corpora). The first page, could help us to find results of expressions in context, and the Linguee page could advice us about appropiate translations.

Well, if we search in both sites the expression: take it easy, in the Linguee site we could see that in the first section we have a dictionary English - Spanish, then a Wikipedia source about the expression, in this case related to a country song, and by last a list of text that uses this expression, and their translation

If we search the same expression in the British National Corpora, we see that more than a hundred of results give us information about where this expression appear, and all the meanings could have.

Working with Thesaurus

The thesaurus could help us to avoid repeating the same words when we are writing a composition. It is helpful too when we need to understand better a term, or maybe if we need to say the opposite thing.

In this exercise, we use www.thesaurus.com/ to search a word, related to History, in this case "ally", and the information that we obtain is very sensible. Firstly, thesaurus gives us a small definition of the noun, and a list of synonyms and antonyms. But if we need a concrete use of the word, this web offers us different groups of words related to the one we search.

So, if we ask for different words to increase our language, or simply for writing a composition, the use of Thesaurus is important, it gives us not only a list of synonyms, also the right words refered at what are we trying to describe about.

Comparing dictionaries

Dictionaries are a perfect tool to understand and learn a new language. There are many on-line tools to search information about new words, but anyone is better than a dictionary and we can use different ones. Well, we are going to compare four different dictionaries, searching the same word, in this case "revolution" for looking to the best one for our students.

The first is in the Oxford Dictionaries, and the search defines Revolution as "A forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favour of a new system". Also it is "a dramatic and wide-reaching change un conditions, attitudes, or operation".

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it gives us a full definition and it defines revolution as: 

 A:  a sudden, radical, or complete change

 B:  a fundamental change in political organization; especially:  the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed

 C:  activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation

 D:  a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something:  a change of paradigm <the Copernican revolution>

 E:  a changeover in use or preference especially in technology <the computer revolution> <the foreign car revolution>

And according to Word Reference, revolution is a “forcible overthrow”, and then translates the word in Spanish. In this on-line dictionary also gives compound forms, which can be helpful if we are interested in a particular "revolution" as the "French Revolution", but the information given is more a translation than a definition. 

Finally, at the Learner's Dictionary defines Revolution as "the usually violent attempt by many people to end the rule of one government and star a new one".

All of these dictionaries are good enough for our class, but if I have to I probably choose the Learner's Dictionary or Merriam-Webster. The reason is, firstly that both dictionaries uses more or less the same definition, in the Learner's Dictionary we could find an easier definition, and for a class in 4th of ESO could be approximately more understandable than maybe the Oxford Dictionary. Also the Merriam-Webster had a very good definition, with many examples that could be easier for the student to understand the word. And the problem with Word Reference is that this dictionary gives a translation, and the students do not increase their knowledge for a new word.

Students' needs

History is a conversational subject between teacher and student. Sometimes is difficult for our students to follow the teacher's explanations, and maybe using a different language to their mother tongue could be a risky task. Well, we set our class of History at the level of 4th of ESO, where historical content part from the eighteenth century to the present day, and the units or modules includes:

UNIT 1: The eighteenth century and the crisis of the old regime

UNIT 2: The era of revolutions.

UNIT 3: The development of capitalism, imperialism and World War I.

UNIT 4: The crisis of interwar and World War II.

UNIT 5: The world after 1945.

UNIT 6: Spain: from Franco's dictatorship to democracy.

UNIT 7: The challenges of the 21st century: geopolitical changes, globalization, and environmental crisis. 

If we think about the linguistic exchanges that students need in our class, it is important that students should be able to express their problems about the lesson and of course to ask to the teacher, I mean, to develope a fluent conversation about history between the class and the professor. Also, students needs to write compositions, define historical concepts, analyse historical documents (text or image), etc. On the whole, Students should be able to understand the subject and, of course, explain it correctly in the way we demand it.

So, students must have control about language skills, related to the History (debate, writting, defining, expressing, etc.). Besides, they must control this in a different language, as it is English.

Teaching History using ICT

"When somebody uses a computer at class, it isn't using an ICT". These quote that one teacher said at class when I was studying made me think in the way that some people teach at schools. History is a subject related to a book, and sometimes when someone want to “innovate” the method, usually that became to use a computer at class, but at the end what occurs is that all we changed is the paper for the screen.

That’s the reason that I choose this video to show how important and relevant is to create ICT at history class, as the video says teaching in the 21^st century. I liked this video, and I recommend it because with only few tools that every student uses, as Twitter, you can make a difference in your class, is not the facilities that the school can offer is the teacher creativity to achieve curiosity in their students.

I hope you like it!

What's a blog?

Nowadays Internet becomes our tool case for everything we search: recipes, movie reviews, or in an educational way activities or help. These things usually are written in blogs, but what is a blog?

As we saw, a blog is a personal site where writers (or bloggers) explain things for a large public in a model like an online diary or a journal. The blog structure is chronological, what it helps to understand and find the information you are looking for.  If we refer to the examples given to us, we could see different types of blogs: one of them written by a student, another by a teacher, or belongs to the municipal library. The thing that this blogs has in common is that all of them want to share information to everybody who needs help about different tips: counselling at the classroom, new dynamics, or share poems for children.

As a result, we could say that a blog is a personal site where you can share information to everybody and, in the same time, where you can receive comments about what you write. It is a mode of conversation between you and the people who share your interests.  In fact,  blogs are a useful tool at the classroom, as we see at the Lesson TS3*, a blog is a way to interrelate with your students, introducing an activity that allow the student to be responsible and creative about it in the comfort of their homes.

Finally, if we look at the Internet there are a lot of sites where people explains what a blog is, and how it works. We find some of them: blogs.law.columbia.edu, firstsiteguide.com/what-is-blog/, or socialnetworking.lovetoknow.com/everything-blogging/how-do-blogs-work. In this sites people help to understand this things, and encourage us to try and get a blog, because the best way to learn what a blog is, is not other than try for yourself.

*Lesson TS3 is in the book: Teaching Guidelines from the European Project LTE: Guidelines and Lesson Plans.

Introducing me

Hello everybody!

My name is Thais and I am from Cocentaina, a village located in the province of Alicante. I have studied History at the University of Valencia, and two years ago I studied a master's degree in secondary education. Nowadays, I am unemployed, but I still studying for oppositions. However, I have had experience teaching in my practice at the master's degree for four months, and I am expecting to start to work with my own students. 

This is my first blog, and it is in English! Recently (four months ago), I pass my English exam of Cambridge, achieving a B2 level. I love learning a new language and I continued studying and I hope to get the C1 level this year, so wish me luck!

This is me, celebrating my B2 level at home!

As my contemporaries I have a laptop and a smartphone, and my knowledge about computers it is quite good. I normaly use Facebook and Twitter, and I like to read some blogs about fashion, education and, of course, about history as clapir.org .  This is not my first online course, I have studied some online courses of valencian, but it is my first course with the University of Alicante. 

Hope you like my blog!