Friday 30 November 2012

Socrative - smart student response system


Under the motto “as easy as raising your hand”, Socrative is a smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets.
Developed by a team of educators, entrepreneurs, and engineers involved in improving education, it’s a super simple tech tool created to enhance classroom engagement, assessment and personalization. 
As far as assessment is concerned, student responses are visually represented for multiple choice, true/false and short answer questions. For pre-planned activities a teacher can view reports online as a google spreadsheet or as an emailed Excel file.Watch the following video and get into the gist of this amazing tool!


Thursday 29 November 2012

The Rockefeller Christmas Tree 2012 was lit!

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday helped light the Rockefeller Center tree, an 80-foot Norway spruce that made it through Superstorm Sandy.
Thousands of onlookers crowded behind barricades on the streets that surrounded Rockefeller Center. A video screen was provided for those who did not have a direct line of sight of the tree, which was illuminated with more than 30,000 lights and topped by a Swarovski star.
The tree came from the Mount Olive, N.J., home of Joe Balku. Balku lost power and other trees during the storm at his residence about an hour outside of Manhattan.
The tree was taken from his home in November. It had been there for years, measuring about 22 feet tall in 1973 when Balku bought the house. It's now 50 feet in diameter and weighs 10 tons.
The lights were turned on just before 9 p.m. yesterday in the 80th annual celebration. Prior to that, the tree-lighting event included performances from Rod Stewart, CeeLo Green, Scotty McCreery, Il Volo, Victoria Justice, Brooke White, Mariah Carey, Trace Adkins and Tony Bennett, along with appearances by Billy Crystal and Bette Midler.

Source: wjla


 



Photo credits: RockCenterXmas

Wednesday 28 November 2012

Multimedia in ELT


found pic @ Queensborough Community College
Integrating multimedia tools into teaching English supports the implementation of high-quality instruction and explores new issues in higher education. It fosters the pedagogical orientation from instructor-centered to learner-centered instruction. Multimedia tools like audio software, power point presentation, flash animation, and video are used in teaching English. The need for analysing these tools is becoming crucial nowadays.
English Language Teaching is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world. The use of new technologies is an integral and driving component of this growth. Computers deliver multimedia presentations for entertainment, advertising, or education. Edutainment is the term used to refer to the applications which incorporate multimedia entertainment with educational objectives. Multimedia incorporates text, audio, graphics, animations, or real video into English lessons.
Curriculum developers and instructional designers collaborate with skilled teachers and subject experts to create effective, integrated learning strategies which strengthen teachers’ professional skills, make optimal use of classroom time, and broaden student access to learning materials. Audio Streaming, Power Point Presentations, Flash or Java Animation, Video, etc. are the different multimedia tools used in teaching English.
image credits: opened web
Vision and hearing are the dominant senses. Multimedia can provide a sensory and real learning experience; it presents a greater potential for learning. Audio software contains options like play, stop, record, etc. It does not contain images or animations. Power point presentation contains text and images. Audio files can be inserted, if necessary. Flash animations contain text, audio, images, and animations. Videos can be played in any media player. It contains sub-texts for easy understanding of the conversations.
Multimedia plays an important role in all the stages of second language acquisition. Multimedia tools are used widely by second language learners. The different multimedia tools available to teachers include video and data projectors, videos, Internet, and course management programs.
There are many advantages of using multimedia tools in the language classroom. These include more active learning, diversified teaching methods, better student attention, less time and energy for professors, and visual stimulation. However, there are some downfalls to using technology when teaching the courses. They are equipment failures, need for back-up plans, anxiety for teachers, time spent learning new technologies, etc.
The advantages for using technology often outweigh the disadvantages. Many of the problems with using technology and learning materials can be overcome by testing the equipments beforehand and learning how to properly use each multimedia tool. Multimedia has the potential for much more than text-based communication of ideas. It alleviates the loneliness of books, because it is interactive. Multimedia enables text, images, sound, and video to be combined into one and plays an important role in teaching English.

Why choosing multimedia resources?
Multimedia is becoming indispensable in the classrooms. It allows teachers to diversify their lectures, display more information, and enhance student learning. It helps them save time and energy; it allows for more attention to be paid to the course content. There are different multimedia tools available in the market. Audio streaming, PPT, animation, and video are quite familiar with the teachers and students. Pronunciation, accent, vocabulary building, note-taking or note-making skills, reading comprehension, writing skills, etc. are taught using the multimedia tools. There are different purposes for analysing the multimedia tools:
  • To decide whether the multimedia tool has had the intended effect;
  •  To identify what effect the multimedia tool has had;
  • To justify future courses of action;
  • To identify areas for improvement in a multimedia tool.
Multimedia tools prove to be effective in teaching English. However, they are not tailor-made. Teachers should analyse them predictively and retrospectively to use them effectively in the classroom. Feedback from the teachers and students can be utilised to improve the efficiency of the multimedia lessons. Multimedia tools should be used appropriately and frequently to increase the scores of the ESL students.
To sum up:
Cognitive models for multimedia learning with animated pedagogical agents (image credits: db-thueringen)
You may also like to have a look at Richard Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning.

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Bond Street

photo credits: BBC

Bond Street is one of the most important streets in the West End of London that runs north-south through Mayfair between Oxford Street and Piccadilly. Bond Street is revered throughout the world for its wealth of elegant stores, exclusive brands, designer fashion, luxury goods, fine jewels, art and antiques. Set in the heart of historic Mayfair, in London’s popular West End, Bond Street has become a haven for gracious living.
Since its foundation in 1700, Bond Street has been a playground for society’s wealthiest, most stylish and influential people. Past residents of the street have included Admiral Horatio Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton as well as a number of renowned authors and poets. Today over 300 years on, Bond Street remains a much-loved destination for celebrities, socialites and the international jet set.
Bond Street and its surrounding area boasts a impressive number of Royal Warranties and is home to some of the world’s most individual and unique hotels and restaurants, including Claridge’s and The Ritz, as well fine establishments such as The Royal Academy of Art and the world famous auction house, Sotheby’s.
It has been a fashionable shopping street since the 18th century and is currently the home of many high price fashion shops. The southern section is known as Old Bond Street, and the northern section, which is rather more than half the total length, is known as New Bond Street. This distinction, however, is not generally made in everyday usage. It is one of the most expensive strips of real estate in the world.

Image credits: Wikipedia
Bond Street takes its name from Sir Thomas Bond, the head of a syndicate of developers who purchased a Piccadilly mansion called Clarendon House from Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle in 1683 and proceeded to demolish the house and develop the area. They also built nearby Dover Street and Albemarle Street. At that time the house backed onto open fields and the development of the various estates in Mayfair was just getting underway. It moved predominantly from south to north, which accounts for the southern part of the street being "Old" Bond Street, and the Northern half being "New" Bond Street. The latter was added in a second phase 40 years later. John Rocque's map of London published in 1746 shows the whole length of Bond Street and all its side streets fully built up.

New Bond Street
photo credits: The Clothes Whisperer
At one time Bond Street was best known for top end art dealers and antique shops, clustered around the London office of Sotheby's auction house, which has been in Bond Street for over a hundred years, and of the Fine Art Society, present on the street since its foundation in 1876. A few of these remain but many of the shops are now occupied by fashion boutiques, including branches of most of the leading premium-priced designer brands in the world. In recent years Sloane Street, which is a mile or so away in Knightsbridge, the other shopping district in central London concentrating on items de luxe, has become a rival to Bond Street, with duplicate branches of many of the top boutiques.
The northern end of Old Bond Street, in particular, is also notable as one of the world’s greatest concentrations of outlets of upmarket jewellers, to the extent that presence on the strip may now be regarded as de rigueur for any brand wishing to proclaim the highest international standing.
The street features "Allies", an unusual statue by Lawrence Holofcener of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who are portrayed sitting on a park bench in conversation.
photo credits: Wikipedia
Shops currently located on Bond Street include Boodles, Smythson, Armani, Louis Vuitton, Graff Diamonds, Cartier, Dolce & Gabanna, Tiffany & Co., Hermès, Polo Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Prada, Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo, Burberry, DKNY, Ermenegildo Zegna, Yves Saint Laurent, Bulgari, Harry Winston, Dior, Anya Hindmarch, Jimmy Choo, Chopard, Mulberry, Longchamp, Anne Fontaine, Calvin Klein, Alexander McQueen, Missoni, Victoria's Secret and Miu Miu (I've just highlighted and linked my favourites, notwithstanding the fact that I can't afford most of them!).
Bond Street is mentioned in a number of works of literature, including Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility, Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway, and Suzanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It is also a square on the British Monopoly board, the same colour as Regent and Oxford Streets – green – and is the most expensive of the three.
In 2011, Bond Street was Europe's most expensive retail location. Rent rates rose 19.4% from the year before.
If you are going to London, Bond Street should be a 'must-visit' in your list! Click here for a printed guide and for maps to take you there from different places in the city.
photo credits: Visit London

Friday 23 November 2012

Black Friday


For millions of people Black Friday is the time to do some serious Christmas shopping, even before the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers are gone. Black Black is the Friday after Thanksgiving, and it's one of the major shopping days of the year in the United States, falling anywhere between November 23 and 29. While it's not recognized as an official US holiday, many employees have the day off -except those working in retail.
image credits: Infographic Journal
The term “Black Friday” was coined in the 1960s to mark the kickoff to the Christmas shopping season. “Black” refers to stores moving from the “red” to the “black,” back when accounting records were kept by hand, and red ink indicated a loss, and black a profit. Ever since the start of the modern Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the Friday after Thanksgiving has been known as the unofficial start to a bustling holiday shopping season.

In the 1960's, police in Philadelphia griped about the congested streets, clogged with motorists and pedestrians, calling it “Black Friday.” In a non-retail sense, it was originally used to describe something else entirely — the September 24th, 1864, stock-market panic set off by plunging gold prices. Newspapers in Philadelphia reappropriated the phrase in the late 1960s, using it to describe the rush of crowds at stores. The justification came later, tied to accounting balance sheets where black ink would represent a profit. Many see Black Friday as the day retailers go into the black or show a profit for the first time in a given year. 
The term stuck and spread, and by the 1990s Black Friday became an unofficial retail holiday nationwide. Since 2002, Black Friday has been the season's biggest shopping day each year except 2004, according to market-research firm ShopperTrak. Nevertheless, retailers continue to tie one-day in-store sales to Black Friday. In the Internet era, bloggers race to obtain leaked circulars and post them online weeks in advance of Thanksgiving. Many forums  and websites  chart the deals, helping shoppers make a plan of attack for the big day. And attack they will — the National Retail Federation anticipates 134 million people will hit the stores on Thanksgiving weekend.

Why did it become so popular?

photo credits: Time
As retailers began to realize they could draw big crowds by discounting prices, Black Friday became the day to shop, even better than those last minute Christmas sales. Some retailers put their items up for sale on the morning of Thanksgiving, or email online specials to consumers days or weeks before the actual event. The most shopped for items are electronics and popular toys, as these may be the most drastically discounted. However, prices are slashed on everything from home furnishings to apparel.
Black Friday is a long day, with many retailers opening up at 5 am or even earlier to hordes of people waiting anxiously outside the windows. There are numerous doorbuster deals and loss leaders – prices so low the store may not make a profit - to entice shoppers. 

Most large retailers post their Black Friday ad scans, coupons and offers online beforehand to give consumers time to find out about sales and plan their purchases. Other companies take a different approach, waiting until the last possible moment to release their Black Friday ads, hoping to create a buzz and keep customers eagerly checking back for an announcement.
More and more, consumers are choosing to shop online, not wanting to wait outside in the early morning chill with a crush of other shoppers or battle over the last most-wanted item. Often, many people show up for a small number of limited-time "door-buster" deals, such as large flat-screen televisions or laptops for a few hundred dollars. Since these coveted items sell out quickly, quite a few shoppers leave the store empty handed. 

image credits: CNNMoney



Sources: Black Friday, Time

Thursday 22 November 2012

Thanksgiving glogging

Happy Thanksgiving


image credits: CDN4
Thanksgiving is celebrated today, November 22nd, as always in the fourth Thursday of this month, all across the USA and Canada and precedes Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days in the USA.
In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an Autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn't until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.


THANKSGIVIG AT PLYMOUTH

found pic @ mbeinstitute
In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers - an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. A month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth. Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.


found pic @ ucls-chicago
In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”—although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time—the festival lasted for three days. While no record exists of the historic banquet’s exact menu, the Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow wrote in his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a “fowling” mission in preparation for the event, and that the Wampanoag guests arrived bearing five deer. Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Because the Pilgrims had no oven and the Mayflower’s sugar supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621, the meal did not feature pies, cakes or other desserts, which have become a hallmark of contemporary celebrations.

THANKSGIVING BECOMES AN OFFICIAL HOLIDAY
found pic @ Google images
Pilgrims held their second Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 to mark the end of a long drought that had threatened the year’s harvest and prompted Governor Bradford to call for a religious fast. Days of fasting and thanksgiving on an annual or occasional basis became common practice in other New England settlements as well. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress designated one or more days of thanksgiving a year, and in 1789 George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the United States; in it, he called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the country’s war of independence and the successful ratification of the U.S. Constitution. His successors John Adams and James Madison also designated days of thanks during their presidencies.
In 1817, New York became the first of several states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday; each celebrated it on a different day, however, and the American South remained largely unfamiliar with the tradition. In 1827, the noted magazine editor and writer Sarah Josepha Hale—author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”—launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. For 36 years, she published numerous editorials and sent scores of letters to governors, senators, presidents and other politicians. Abraham Lincoln finally heeded her request in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” He scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday in November, and it was celebrated on that day every year until 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s plan, known derisively as Franksgiving, was met with passionate opposition, and in 1941 the president reluctantly signed a bill making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.
 

THANKSGIVING TRADITIONS
found pic @ fashionpill
In many American households, the Thanksgiving celebration has lost much of its original religious significance; instead, it now centers on cooking and sharing a bountiful meal with family and friends. Turkey, a Thanksgiving staple so ubiquitous it has become all but synonymous with the holiday, may or may not have been on offer when the Pilgrims hosted the inaugural feast in 1621. Today, however, nearly 90 percent of Americans eat the bird—whether roasted, baked or deep-fried—on Thanksgiving, according to the National Turkey Federation. Other traditional foods include stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Volunteering is a common Thanksgiving Day activity, and communities often hold food drives and host free dinners for the less fortunate.
Parades have also become an integral part of the holiday in cities and towns across the United States. Presented by Macy’s department store since 1924, New York City’s Thanksgiving Day parade is the largest and most famous, attracting some 2 to 3 million spectators along its 2.5-mile route and drawing an enormous television audience. It typically features marching bands, performers, elaborate floats conveying various celebrities and giant balloons shaped like cartoon characters.
Beginning in the mid-20th century and perhaps even earlier, the president of the United States has “pardoned” one or two Thanksgiving turkeys each year, sparing the birds from slaughter and sending them to a farm for retirement. A number of U.S. governors also perform the annual turkey pardoning ritual.



THANKSGIVING IN THE UK


photo credits: US Embassy in London
Thanksgiving Day in the United Kingdom is celebrated as a harvest festival. This day is a religious honouring to convey a feeling of gratitude to God for the year's plentiful and fruitful harvest and thanking family and friends for their love and support. The day is celebrated by preparing a special meal of large roasted turkey, which is a native American species, along with cranberry sauce, stuffing, with veggies. A variety of different pies with apple, mincemeat, pumpkin and pecan form the dessert menu. Gifts are also exchanged on this day which include flowers, jewellery, baked cookies, candy and wine. 
Many towns and cities stage spectacular parades on this day. Many people are on the roads to enjoy the decorated floats, the costumes, the music and the heavy balloons.

Source:  The History Channel (abridged and adapted)

You may also check relevant multimedia resources on this topic @:
You can get ELT resources (further info, lesson plans, printables, posters, slideshows, recipes, graphs, crafts, colouring pictures and greeting cards) on the topic @: