Oxford Bookworms Library Level 4: Emma | Oxford University Press

Oxford Bookworms Library Level 4: Emma | Oxford University Press

Emma Woodhouse, beautiful, smart and rich, has no wish to marry, but she enjoys making matches for those around her. It was Emma who found the perfect husband for her governess Miss Taylor. So when her dear friend Mr. Knightley tells her that she should let people choose their own husbands and wives, she will not listen. But does Emma really understand people as well as she thinks? And is she even right about her own feelings, when she says that she will never fall in love?

Summertime is the perfect language learning time.

 Summer Language Programs

For those lucky enough to have summers off, summer’s unstructured, spare hours mean there’s loads of time to concentrate on “wants” instead of “musts”—and if you’re here, it means you want to power up your language skills. Brilliant!
Summer, with its abundance of light-filled hours, warmer days and slower pace, is oh so casual. And that translates—in any language—to lots less stress. I don’t know about you, but I definitely learn with less trouble when I’m not stressing about things. Low stress equals high concentration potential for a lot of us!
Many language learning programs are only available during the summer, so if you want to grab the goods from one of those, summer is your only option.
Typically, summer programs are geared toward intensive learning. What does that mean to you, the language learner? Well, it’s great news because it means many summer courses are designed to help students gain skills more quickly!
For those lucky enough to have summers off, summer’s unstructured, spare hours mean there’s loads of time to concentrate on “wants” instead of “musts”—and if you’re here, it means you want to power up your language skills. Brilliant!
Summer, with its abundance of light-filled hours, warmer days and slower pace, is oh so casual. And that translates—in any language—to lots less stress. I don’t know about you, but I definitely learn with less trouble when I’m not stressing about things. Low stress equals high concentration potential for a lot of us!
Many language learning programs are only available during the summer, so if you want to grab the goods from one of those, summer is your only option.

Typically, summer programs are geared toward intensive learning. What does that mean to you, the language learner? Well, it’s great news because it means many summer courses are designed to help students gain skills more quickly!

Welcome to Halina's Summer English Courses

 

100 Basic Business Questions & Answers

100 Basic Business Questions & Answers · engVid

Top 20 Innovation Articles of July 2016

Top 20 Innovation Articles of July 2016
To read.

Here are four more strong articles published the last week of the month:

• How to use Design Thinking to get fit and lose weight – by Jeffrey Tobias
• Innovate by Adopting a Role Model Organization – by Paul Sloane
• Innovation in the World Demands Adaptability in the Workplace – by Andrew Heikkila
• The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People – INFOGRAPHIC

13 Free Teacher Downloads for Back to School

13 Free Teacher Downloads for Back to School:
All of Edutopia’s downloadable and printable back-to-school resources are collected here for easy classroom reference.
For my students.

 

The Learning Styles

Let’s look at some ways you can retain the richness of social learning as you make the move to online.

The magic of people in learning

Well-designed face-to-face learning has some great features going for it:

1. Stories and example sharing: rich sources of learning that tend to stick in people’s minds
2. Observations: people can practice a skill and be observed by peers or an expert, who provide feedback
3. Collaborative learning: where people work together on a task and learn from one another
4. Expert guidance: facilitators who provide knowledge, demos, and feedback
5. Competition: there might be some competitive elements that encourage learning to take place. Whether it’s formal or informal, people often try to perform well in front of peers, especially when given tasks to complete and share with others
6. Informal learning: never underestimate the power of the ‘down time’ chats and the networking that inevitably take place— these all work toward the learning goals

The big question is WHAT IS YOUR LEARNING STYLE???

Discover the Global Scale of English

Global standards are everywhere. In business, energy, science and nature. Even chillies have their own scale! So why not English language learning? Why is there no single standard that every person, company and institution can use to benchmark learning progress? Well now there is - the Global Scale of English (GSE), the world's first truly global English language standard which will allow you to measure progress on your English language journey.
http://www.wiziq.com/halina-maria-ostanko

Meet the IATEFL Online Team

Meet the IATEFL Online Team

Carol Read (IATEFL) and Julian Wing (British Council) talk about this year's conference and say goodbye to the online viewers. - See more at: 

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2016/interview/meet-iatefl-online-team#sthash.oleIknrT.dpuf

Click on the link to watch goodbye video.

 <iframe id="viddler-823fbc58" src="//www.viddler.com/embed/823fbc58/?f=1&offset=0&autoplay=0&player=full&secret=23744750&disablebranding=0" width="545" height="349" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Blended Teaching vs Flipped Teaching

Blended Learning vs Flipped Learning

By Halina Ostańkowicz- Bazan

According to Horn and Staker, blended learning is:

“Any time a student learns, at least in part, at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and, at least in part, through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace. The modalities along each student’s learning path within a course or subject are connected to provide an integrated learning experience.”

The most significant piece of the definition is the “element of student control” highlighting the flowing instructional models to enable improved student-centered learning, giving students greater than before control over the time, place, path, and/or the step of their learning tracks.

Blended learning offers a balanced approach, focused on redesigning instructional models first, then applying technology, not as the driver, but as the supporter, for high-quality learning experiences that allow a teacher to personalize and make the most of the learning.

The technology helps to supply instructors with data, expand student choices for educational resources and learning materials, and deliver opportunities for students to practice and to exhibit the high-character performance.

Broadly speaking, I am for blended learning, which means taking advantage of both traditional f2f techniques and possibilities presented by new technologies.

Flipped Classrooms generally provides pre-recorded material (video or audio) followed by classroom activities. Learners watch the video before or after the class, this happens outside F2F meetings. Thank’s to that classroom time can be used for interaction, such as Q@A sessions, discussions, exercises other learning activities.

This is the perfect way to “invert” doings in the class with activities outside the teaching space.

Flipping is not just about video and technology.

Moreover, technology does not replace good teaching. It enhances good teaching.

Flipping helps us to get the best use of class time. It is a methodology that permits the instructor to involve students intensely in the collaborative community and produce a shared problem-solving workshop.

My students very frequently have to find some info, largely online, and in class, they present materials on a specific subject. We use it as a foundation for deeper analysis and actions.

Sometimes, instead of giving lectures, I call for scholars to watch chosen PPT, videos or podcasts at home, so when we gather in the course of work, we are able to concentrate on the debate, as well as interpretation of the problem.

In my point of view, there are some significant ways to involve students during a lecture such as short demonstrations, surveyed by group debate as well as PPT lecture, followed by expounding, discussing and particularizing the material.

I am convinced that dialogue is necessary for my Polish History and Culture lectures. I take advantage of novel methods to build up active learning skills and to encourage students toward further learning, or else to mature students' thinking skills. For most of my learners, the techniques I use are fresh. They come to study in Poland from all the Globe and the majority of them are not used to blended learning as well as flipped classes.

They have to be talked into active learning and taking the responsibility of their own knowledge. My role as a teacher is to be a learning coach, mentor and a source of support as well as inspiration.

Flipping provides students opportunities such as; interactive questioning, mind exploration, answer “why this is important for me to recognize this?” and student-created content.

During my language classes, I also use flipped methods because I believe in learning by researching as well as having fun while studying.

Wolff, Lutz-Christian, and Jenny Chan. "Defining Flipped Classrooms. “Flipped Classrooms for Legal Education. Springer Singapore, 2016. 9-13.

http://www.inacol.org/news/what-is-blended-learning/

http://www.christenseninstitute.org/blended-learning/

5 tips to improve your critical thinking - Samantha Agoos

Every day, a sea of decisions stretches before us, and it’s impossible to make a perfect choice every time. But there are many ways to improve our chances — and one particularly effective technique is critical thinking. Samantha Agoos describes a 5-step process that may help you with any number of problems.

What is one advantage of critical thinking?AIt’s a process that helps us make only large, important decisions
BIt’s a process that helps us make only small, unimportant decisions
CIt’s a process that helps us create hidden issues, bias and manipulation
DIt’s a process that helps us reveal hidden issues, bias and manipulation

What is the first step (of five) in the critical thinking process?

AGather information
BApply information
CFormulate questions
DConsider implications

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/5-tips-to-improve-your-critical-thinking-samantha-agoos

What is pair teaching? What are its benefits and drawbacks?

 Index Terms—Pair teaching, pair lecturing, team teaching, reflective practice, reflection-in-action, constructive alignment, teacher development.

Pair lecturing enables a more thorough reflection-on-action since the teaching experience is shared with a pair professor. It also allows deeper reflection-in-action, incorporating student interaction into the lecture plan while keeping the assessment methods and the teaching activities affiliated with the course objectives.

A quick search on the phrase “pair teaching “using Google or Scholar gives many definitions.

http://wiley.force.com/Interface/ContactJournalCustomerServices

https://www.teachervision.com/group-work/cooperative-learning/48547.html

http://wiley.force.com/Interface/ContactJournalCustomerServices

https://www.teachervision.com/group-work/cooperative-learning/48547.html

https://www.teachervision.com/cooperative-learning/resource/48649.html

According to Pair Teaching – an eXtreme Teaching Practice by Roy Andersson and Lars Bendix 

https://www.lth.se/fileadmin/lth/genombrottet/konferens2006/Insp06-final.pdf

Pair Teaching, is working with a partner who can help and support you during some or all of four fundamental values: Feedback, Communication, Respect, and Courage.

Pair Teaching is highly repetitious or frequentative and covers some specific practices. The objective of cooperation is to support the improvement of student learning.

The partner is supposed to help verify the whole process of going through all of the stages of the learning cycle – and carry on doing it.

In the general remarks, we read about the eXtreme Programming concept.

The Pair Programming practice of eXtreme Programming uses the model of a driver, who does the work and takes care of the details, and a navigator, who observes, comments, asks questions, makes suggestions and, in general, takes care of the big picture. Additionally, it recommends switching between the roles of driver and navigator within a pair. There is also the suggestion that taking turns should apply to the practice of Pair Teaching.

The considerable standard definitions of Pair Teaching have absolutely nothing to do with the real setting of teaching in pairs (some of the hits deals with teaching pairs). Pair Teaching is not a well-known and well-defined concept. Searching instead for “team|group|collaborative teaching” gives the impression that these are the words or phrases that are frequently used because of its recurrence popularity.

However, by insisting on the use of Pair, we want to stress the difference between two people solving a task and a group of people building a product (student learning) and for which they might make use of PT or collaborative teaching.

The cost-effectiveness of Pair Programming is observable, in part, because the two activities (writing the code and reviewing the code) are carried out in parallel. In point of fact that there is no tradition of accurate reflection on teaching in PT, we have to rely more on the benefits to justify the added costs of two people presence. Furthermore, the pair will also be able to take care of larger groups than one person.

Teaching a course together seems to have more benefits than drawbacks.

In conclusion, teaching should not be a solitaire activity, but something that is done in pairs. Done the right way, Pair Teaching can bring many benefits that compensate the additional costs.

Some of these benefits are immediate and explicit – like having someone to brainstorm with, someone who can help “sort out” your ideas, the possibility to handle larger groups of students and the ability to step in for each other in the case of absence. However, most paybacks are more long-term benefits.

Alternatively, “hidden” glitches – like communicating information, assuring quality aspects, educating colleagues are significant. It is important to put an accurate value also to these benefits when judging if Pair Teaching is cost-effective or not.

REFERENCES

• Andersson, R., Bendix, L., eXtreme Teaching, in proceedings of 3: ePedagogiska Inspirationskonferensen, LTH, Lund, May 31, 2005.
• Andersson, R., Bendix, L., Towards a Set of eXtreme Teaching Practices, in proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer Science Education, Koli, Finland, November 17-20, 2005.
• Andersson, R., Bendix, L., eXtreme Teaching – a Framework for Continuous Improvement, to appear in Journal of Computer Science Education, 2006.
• Beck, K.: Extreme Programming Explained – Embrace Change,  Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 2005.
• Boyer, E., L., Scholarship Reconsidered. Priorities of the Professoriate, The Carnegie Foundation, 1990.
• Hedin, G., Bendix, L., Magnusson, B., Teaching eXtreme Programming to Large Groups of Students, Journal of Systems and Software, January 2005.
• Kolb, D. A., Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning, Prentice-Hall, 1984.
• Pair teaching in preservice teacher education P Medgyes, E Nyilasi - Foreign Language Annals, 1997 - Wiley Online Library
• Medgyes, P. and Nyilasi, E. (1997), Pair Teaching in Preservice Teacher Education. Foreign Language Annals, 30: 352–368. doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.1997.tb02358.x

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1997.tb02358.x/references

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1997.tb02358.x/abstract

Future of Education Halina MMVC15

My Hopes for the Future Education

"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another." - G.K. Chesterton

My hope is that teachers will make learning personalized rather than standardized for everyone.
My hope allows to improve students’ creativity and teachers increase that natural curiosity with learners. Curiosity is the basis of innovation. Curiosity will power our world to progress.
My hope is that you charge the power of technology in thoughtful and incredible ways. Applied science can connect everyone, everywhere, at whatever time. We should use it to our advantage.
I hope for everyone to be able to discover the things you are passionate about.
I also hope that you have remarkable, encouraging educators and mentors who try groundbreaking and wild teaching techniques to help you grow as a learner.
My hope is you are ready for the challenges as well as the failure.
Making mistakes is a way to learn. It’s not about the disaster; it’s how you respond to the failure.
And finally my hope is that your school is different from most of the current transactional learning models, where the students are consumers of education.
Lastly, I hope for people to be just educational learners fitted in transformational learning approach with opportunity for active, creative and profound personal development. Education can take place anywhere and at anytime. It is not only about reading, writing, and learning mathematical practices.
Knowledge is wide-ranging. It’s breathing. Learning is the future.
“I am not a teacher, but an awakener.”
― Robert Frost
Halina Ostańkowicz – Bazan
July 2015

http://www.naturalreaders.com/onlinetts.php?bookid=181a5e0e-3551-11e5-9cbe-12313d27c687&bookname=NaturalReader&page=1&addr=http://api.naturalreaders.com/v2/storage/pdf/181a5e0e-3551-11e5-9cbe-12313d27c687.pdf